Digital Prints

Printer Drivers and Printing Software
Printing software allows you to access and interface with your printer. Before you can print
from a drawing, painting, image-editing, or page-layout program, the printer software program
must be correctly installed onto the computer, usually from the CD that comes with
your printer. (Photo-direct printers that take media cards don’t require computers, and the
printer software can be accessed directly from the printer itself).
Every print device requires a particular “printer driver” for the specific operating system
of the computer. (Note that it’s your computer’s operating system that you match to the
printer, not the software application.) You must have the right driver for your printer in
order to support all the printer’s features (paper selection, quality level, and so on) and to
tell the print engine how to correctly render the image’s digital data. If you change your
operating system, you may need to install an updated printer driver, which you can normally
download from the printer-manufacturer’s website.
When you select “print” from your application’s File menu, what you get is a series of menu
screens and dialog boxes for that particular printer driver (see Figure 2.17). If you have a
PostScript printing device, you need to use a PostScript driver and select it.
Chapter 2 ■ Understanding Digital Printing 57
Figure 2.16 The Xerox Phaser 7750
color laser printer uses both halftoning
and dithering. Fantasy Island artwork
by Ciro Marchetti.
Courtesy of Xerox Corporation and Ciro
Marchetti/www.ciromarchetti.com