4500 and 4550 Vivid Color Driver: Setup Procedure: In windows 95 and up, your printing colors are always RGB. In Macintosh, your printing colors are CMYK. This is the reason you have various different drivers to choose from after installing the drivers for your printer. The different drivers are HP 4500, PCL5c and the HP 4500/50PS. The HP 4500/4550 actually have two seperate printing formats. The HP4500 has HP colorsmart and Manual Vivid Color Systems. The 4550 has an updated colorsmart system and PCL5c vivid color system. Each of these drivers provides you with a different mix of colors. This means they each have a special color they emphasize. We have found that in Corel Draw you will want to set up your printer and drivers as follows, but if you are not using Corel Draw just keep reading and we will explain how to calibrate your computer to your printer. Setting up your HP 4500/4550 PCL5c STEP 1 Double click on My Computer Double click on Printers Click one time on HP C Laserjet 4500-HP. For the 4550 choose the PCL5c Click on file Click on Properties Click on Details Click on Setup STEP 2 Click on Manual Click on Options Here you will find three folders, TEXT, GRAPHICS, PHOTOS Here you will also find VIVID COLORS Here you will also find HALFTONE - SMOOTH and DETAIL You will need to have all three folders listing as: Vivid Colors Under text you will select Halftone Detail. The other two will be listed as Smooth STEP 3 You will need to change the settings on your printer to 0 on all density levels. (make sure that you push select after each density change to lock it in) At a later date (if you so choose) you can change the three colors to -5. STEP 4 When in Corel Draw you need to make sure that you are using Uniform Color Fill (CMYK). When printing use the above driver and your screen will match your print 100%. If you are not using Corel or this driver does not work for you, simply go into the program of your choice and make two boxes. Color fill one box with Magenta and the other one with Cyan. You will make three prints, one using each of the three drivers mentioned above. All you are looking for is the driver that prints (in sublimation) these two colors as they appear on your screen. You do not need to use any other colors. When these two colors match (and they will) you will be 100% color accurate. All your colors will now be more vivid and brighter. For your information- If you are printing anything with text on top of a picture it is better to print this file with the text being the last thing to come out on your paper. This means it would be better to also do a vertical flip before printing. When using a scanner, always make sure to brighten your image up at the scanner. Use the saturation tool in Corel for all other changes. Ron Preuss