Printing problem with Xerox PrimeLink 9065/9700

[draev]

Hello,
we have a problem with the printing of Xerox PrimeLink 9065/9700. At this point, we are unable to find a solution. The machine is new - approximately 20,000 copies. It works this way from the beginning. The faces in the photos after printing look like "sprinkled with sand". Our company mainly produces photo books and this printing does not meet our needs. Please help and solve this problem. 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/129_K6-_1CMlVXhnBCOfUgfZN4vOwqgBZ?usp=sharing 

[andymbody]

Not sure what you mean by "sprinkled with sand".

The three things I see in the posted photos are...

1. Possible low resolution images.

2. Line-screen (halftone) rosettes (small circle and diagonal textured pattern)

3. Anti-Counterfitting patterns (yellow dot patterns) - These are normal and cannot be removed/prevented

Questions...

Q1. Would you say that number 2 is the issue?

Q2. Does this device have a fiery attached?

Q3. Which driver are you using to print these?

Andy

[draev]

Hi again, 

By "sprinkled with sand" I mean that the "texture" of the picture does not look smooth (even), but rather "grainy". The problem is not with the low-resolution, nither the printing is line-based. Actually, the settings we use are as follows:
Printer screen mode: 200 dot
Image smoothing is switched on, but we tried it also with off and this does not change the picture at all. In fact, we tried every single setting, but the result is still the same.
The problem we face is mainly with printing small-size (e.g. 4cm by 5cm) images and always proves worst when printing faces (skin). Having in mind however that we print mostly images of people (photo-albums and photo-books and portraits) because our main business activity is photography, printing high-quality images is essential.
Below, I copied the about info of the Fiery Application for your reference:

Fiery Command WorkStation Package : 6.6.0.488
Fiery Command WorkStation : 6.6.0.47
Calibrator 2 : 2.3.0.12
Calibrator 3 : 3.3.2.7
Color Editor : 7.3.1.6
Color Tools : 7.2.0.26
Control Bar Builder : 1.4.0.17
Fiery Finishing Designer : 1.1.0.22
Fiery JobExpert : 1.0.0.08
Fiery Preflight Pro : 1.0.0.13
Image Enhance Visual Editor : 2.3.3.9
ImageViewer : 4.4.0.38
Impose/Compose/JobMaster : 6.1.2.32
Impose Plus : 6.1.2.32
Job Editor : 8.2.0.38
Job Editor : 7.3.1.57
Job Properties : 3.6.0.45
Preflight : 1.9.0.1
Raster Preview : 4.4.0.38
Server Manager : 7.3.1.57
Spot Pro : 1.3.023
Versioning : 1.6.0.6

We would really appreciate your expert opinion on this issue, as we don't seem to be able to tackle it by ourselves.

Best regards, 

Draev

[andymbody]

It's difficult to assist with this remotely since I'm not sure which defect you are referring to. An onsite tech would be better for this situation. If you have a service contract on the primelink, place a service call to have a tech visit. He can get a better idea of what you are asking about. And can run tests to isolate whether something is going on with the machine (I don't think so based on your prints) or which portion of your workflow should be adjusted to change the appearance of the prints.

I can tell you that the c9070 will not provide continuous tones that would compare to a photo developer. If this is what you are expecting, you will be disappointed. The C9070 is an office printer, not a photo printer. You can get better results from the C9070 with fiery than just an ordinary office document printer, but the photo reproduction will not be created without a visible line screen. The line screen will always be visible to some extent on this device. If you require photo quality prints, this is not the device that will produce it.

Have you tried a higher screen mode?

Also paper quality makes a big difference as well.

Also make sure you are using the proper fiery driver (not the primelink driver) when printing these.

Good luck
Andy

[andymbody]

 
The last photos that you posted are too small to inspect.

Here is some good info about line screen, lpi, halftone, DPI, etc that you may want to take a look at.

LineScreen info

I don't have a device I can connect to right now in order to open Command Workstation and see if there is a way to adjust the lpi in there. But if you use Command Workstation (and you should for best results) you may want to take a look to see if there is a way to adjust this (or a similar setting) to a higher value. My theroy is that it may allow the linescreen to compress and be less visible in the print. But this is just a theory.

Andy