[Misc] BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

[va2ir]

Good day. I have a Bizhub C220 - works well.

I have 500 booklets to print, 44 pages, so thats 11 sheets of 11x17 2 sides.

3 sheets of the 11 have color on 1 side only, the rest of the pages are black and white. the original file was PDF with color right thru, so I converted the PDF to hi-rez tiffs, twice, once for color, once in greyscale, using the color pages only when needed in my final layout in Corel 15.

So I did a test today, using the "autocolor" setting in the PCL driver menu. According to my dealer, only the color copies (3) would be counted as color and the rest as black. well, they were wrong, and the whole thing is being done as color, so the grey pages are a little "mauve" as the grey is being interpreted as CMYK.

Is there any way around this? should I tag the greyscale pages as black and white in corel?

Thanks

Ian R.

[allan]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

ACS auto color selection.

If the document is mixed...

Will only retract the the transfer belt and disengage the color drive after it detects a set number of B/W pages in a row in the same document.
The retraction will make printing pause for a while. So if every second page is in color the printing process would be extremely slow.

It bills even the B/W pages before retraction as color because of the use and aging of the CMY imaging units that needs to rotate as normal before retraction.

Sound to me like its printing the B/W pages as 4 PC (CMYK) black instead of 1 PC black K only.

I am sure there is someone here with more insight.

You would need to print and collate manually.
For the double sided you would need to run the pages thru the machine a second time printing the B/W side first.

Not a lot of customer picks up on this.

[Copier Addict]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

It is the program you are printing from that is overriding the settings of the print driver. You will have to go into the program settings to fix it.

[copier tech]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

That sounds like a big job for an old C220! hope it survives

[Copier Addict]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

ACS auto color selection.

If the document is mixed...

Will only retract the the transfer belt and disengage the color drive after it detects a set number of B/W pages in a row in the same document.
The retraction will make printing pause for a while. So if every second page is in color the printing process would be extremely slow.

It bills even the B/W pages before retraction as color because of the use and aging of the CMY imaging units that needs to rotate as normal before retraction.

Sound to me like its printing the B/W pages as 4 PC (CMYK) black instead of 1 PC black K only.

I am sure there is someone here with more insight.

You would need to print and collate manually.
For the double sided you would need to run the pages thru the machine a second time printing the B/W side first.

Not a lot of customer picks up on this.

I just created a word document with colour on one page and black on page two. I printed it with "Auto Colour" and duplexed it. I checked the counters before and after the job and it counted one for colour and one for black, so it isn't nearly as complicated as you described.

[allan]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

Just remember this from one of the training tutors could be from a different model??

Thanks for checking and correcting me.

[allan]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

Is corral draw the culprit doing everything in CMYK anyway?

[Synthohol]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

hey, i've run into this dozens of times and it seems to always be an adobe app not sending the correct color/bw info correctly.
just for giggles (and to see this is normally the fix because adobe knows of the issue and has not fixed it yet) download Foxit reader and print the same booklet with that app. the color vs bw counter issue is fixed ill bet.

https://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/pdf-reader

[allan]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

I just created a word document with colour on one page and black on page two. I printed it with "Auto Colour" and duplexed it. I checked the counters before and after the job and it counted one for colour and one for black, so it isn't nearly as complicated as you described.

This was bothering me so i checked the theory on this machine.
The tutor did not do a bad job of explaining the process and works similar to my explanation.
My bad i was lead to believe it would affect the billing??

There are dip switch settings to change the way the machine starts a job.
One to start the jobs with the color engaged and one that starts with the colors disengaged.

[blackcat4866]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

I've addressed this issue on a Sharp MFP. The biggest problem for us was that the enduser was creating documents in Microsoft Publisher, which often inserts color pixels, even when properties specified as monochrome. You can use a utility like ColorPic to identify the CMYK content of the pixels in your document.

Sorry, I have no experience with CorelDraw, but it does take diligence to catch every color pixel on those mostly monochrome pages. All it takes is one color pixel to be a color page.

The Sharp recommended using Adobe Professional to compose the documents. I don't know if Konica Minolta has a recommendation. =^..^=

[NeoMatrix]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

Re. Image editing/document software.
I believe the forced colour recognition may come from the use of image transparency when the image is inserted on to the white or coloured background of the page. The document inserted image background transparency colour comes from a single pixel which is usually the single pixel on the lower left corner(origin) of the image. Most software will inset the user image using the lower left pixel by matching the document background colour. If the image is reduced to grey scale using any non-standard origin(lower-left) pixel colour, the software may keep the origin pixel registered within the document as a colour pixel, even though the image is shown as grayscale/b&W.... If the document is printed in its original form (vector not raster) then the MFD may see the document registered with colour pixels and print the page as stated.

This thread subject has raise my interest...

[B0265]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

I think the problem is that when you convert an image to greyscale, if the RGB values are not equal the machine will count the page as a color.

[Copier Addict]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

This was bothering me so i checked the theory on this machine.
The tutor did not do a bad job of explaining the process and works similar to my explanation.
My bad i was lead to believe it would affect the billing??

There are dip switch settings to change the way the machine starts a job.
One to start the jobs with the color engaged and one that starts with the colors disengaged.

Softswitch 50 hex 01 will turn it to black ready, which only means the colour drums are disengaged by default. I don't think it affects billing either way. It only prevents unnecessary wear on the colour drums.
The newer machines come defaulted this way, but older machines do not.

[Synthohol]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

has anyone tried Foxit reader for printing mixed PDFs?
give it a try, you may be surprised.

[Copier Addict]

Re: BIZHUB C220 Autocolor question

has anyone tried Foxit reader for printing mixed PDFs?
give it a try, you may be surprised.

I was told the same thing about Nitro and it turned out to be very un-user friendly. I will just stick with Adobe, it has it's own issues but I am used to it.