Printing

Here you can find information on how to sucessfully print OIDs along with a hardware compatibility list.

Tips and tricks

print in 1200dpi if possible, sometimes 600dpi seem to work, too
play around with the quality settings, resolution, contrast (particularly graphics/image/text quality optimization settings can have a big impact)
use different paper
try black-and-white versus color prints
try to lighten up your picture
make sure that you print at without re-scaling the images (i.e. at 100% scale).
A good starting point to test whether the problem is your handling of the oid images generated by tttool or the printer itself is to print the test PDF from Ravensburger. If the test PDF does not work with any combination of print driver settings, it is likely that your printer simply cannot handle the fine patterns of the oid codes.
avoid too much structure under the OIDs
print background and OIDs in two passes, first the background, then the OIDs
try bigger dots in your OID graphics
avoid any zooming
try doubling OID dot size for 600dpi. This can be done by specifying tttool --dpi 600 oid-code or tttool --dpi 1200 oid-code. Alternatively (for example for existing PNG files) you can use this small shell script for achieving this using ImageMagick (by Sven Scholz) (save as double-oid.sh). This will overlay 3 further layers of the OID each shifted by one pixel (one layer right, one down, and one down+right):

#!/bin/bash
# Usage: ./double-oid.sh oid-<nn>.png
# -> produces oid-<nn>-composite.png
while [ $# -gt 0 ];do
   FILE=$1
   OUTPUT=${FILE%.*}"-composite.png"
   echo $FILE: $OUTPUT
   convert $FILE $FILE -geometry +1+0 -composite $FILE -geometry +1+1 \
      -composite $FILE -geometry +0+1 -composite $OUTPUT
   shift
 done

When printing SVG-Based OID, try different browsers and applications. Firefox seems to work well.

Success stories

Brother

Brother DCP-7030 as a network printer (CUPS)
- Moderate Success with HQ 1200 mode (The HQ 1200 option uses resolution enhancement to achieve a 1'200dpi-like print)
- Recognition success dropped after changing toner cassette
Brother HL-2135W (USB / Windows 7)
- Parameters --dpi 600 --pixel-size 2 worked perfectly printed on foil to enhance a non-tiptoi product.
Brother MFC-9340CDW as network printer from Mac OS X or Windows 7
- Success with 600 dpi and doubled pixel size (tttool --dpi 600 oid-code), printed with Gimp. In Gimp set the resolution manually to 600 dpi for printing. Disable centering. Align picture to the bottom and left. Other alignments may cause the image to be scaled.
- Works on white background and fully saturated red/blue/green backgrounds at least.
- 1200 dpi (neither plain nor doubled) did not work.
- No success printing with Mac OS X Preview. I was unable to set the scaling so that it was printed unscaled at 600 dpi, always resulting in distortion which destroyed the OID patterns.
Brother MFC-L2700DW b/w laser as a network printer (Mac OS X with brother drivers)
- This is a relatively affordable (~170 EUR) consumer grade laser printer which seems to work out of the box:
- 1200 dpi patterns created with default settings in tttool work on white background
- best/most reproducible results were obtained with --dpi 1200 and --pixel-size 3 on white background (and only on white background)
- PNGs were printed from Preview with 100% scaling
- Relevant printer driver settings:
  - Resolution: 1200 dpi HQ
  - Graphics quality: Graphics
  - All other settings default
Brother MFC-L2740DW b/w laser as network printer (Windows or Linux with brother drivers)
- Success:
  - Resolution 1200 dpi HQ
  - Graphics quality: Graphics
  - all image enhancement features disabled
  - no scaling
Brother MFC-L2700DW (network printer, macOS, Brother driver (CUPS))
- 1200 dpi created with default tttool settings
- printed from Preview with 100% scaling
- tested on white background
- Relevant printer driver settings:
  - Resolution: HQ 1200
  - Graphics quality: Text (Graphics did not work for me)
  - Improve Print Output: Improve Toner Fixing (marginally better ?)
Brother MFC-L2700DW - Success
Brother HL-L2300D
- Success:
  - Resolution 1200 dpi HQ
  - Quality Setings: Text
  - Tonerfixing on
  - TTTool Settings to 1200 and 4 (!) pixels, 3 as above didn't work for me but probably due to the printer being little less top notch
Brother HL-L2350DW
- Used Foxit Reader when printing from PDFs. Disable 'Print as grayscale' and 'Print as image'
- Basic Printer Settings
  - Resolution: HQ 1200
  - Print Settings: Text
- Advanced Printer Settings
  - Other Print Options - Density Adjustment: +3
Brother DCP-585CW - Fail
Brother HL-L3230CDW series
- On white background tested successfully with:
  - "Document type" -> "manual"
  - Document type settings menu: all image enhancement features disabled.
  - 600 DPI (2400 made problems at first try so I aborted further tests)
- On colored images tested successfully with:
  - Set 1
    - "Document type" -> "manual"
    - Document type settings menu:
      - Disable all exempt the "Increase black printing" option. Without this option you have to increase the OID dot-size at least on 6.
      - "Improve pattern printing" seems to make the recognition of OIDs a bit more reliable
    - 2400 DPI
    - Turn off the "Save Toner" option
    - Tested following OID-generation settings with Photoshop on 2400 DPI-project:
      - Increase dot size to 5 and export as PNG on noisy background
      - Colour management set to printer in print settings
  - Set 2
    - Document type:
      - "image/picture" OR
      - "manual"
        
        Document type settings menu:
        
        Disable all
    - 2400 DPI printing (Printer supports only 600 and 2400)
    - Turn off the "Save Toner" option
    - Tested following OID-generation settings with Photoshop on 1200 DPI-project:
      - Colour management set to printer in print settings
      - Dropdown option "normal printing" (not "hard-proofing")
        
        ICC profile rendering intents
        
        Absolute Colorimetric
    - Tried with printing OIDs separated from illustration
- Printing too much OIDs in the roll (~ 30) with "Increase black printing" damaged my black photo conductor unit (PCU). This could also be caused trough other environmental factors but I want to mention it.

Canon

Canon LBP 1760(e) b/w PCL 5e on Windows 7x64
- Resolution 1200 dpi , raster
- all image enhancement/eco features disabled
- GIMP 2.8
Canon LBP 5050N on Windows 10x64
- Success:
  - OID mit tttool --dpi 1200 --pixel-size 2 --code-dim 100 oid-code
  - GIMP 2.8 A5 1200dpi
    - Export als Bitmap
    - Export als PDF
  - Bitmap druck über IrVanView
  - PDF druck über PDF-Exchange-Viewer
    - Glättungsfunktionen ausgeschaltet
Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE 525iZ
- Note: Never render to bitmap at any point. Always keep vector data.
- No Success: Linux with "Canon iR-ADV 525 PS" driver in vector mode
- Success: direct PDF print via USB
  1. Media Creation
  - Create oid codes as SVG.
  - Increase dot size by 2 (pattern is very noticeable).
  - Assemble SVG images into A4 PDF.
  - Store PDF on USB drive.
  1. Print Settings:
  - 1200 dpi
  - all gradation: high quality

Dell

Dell C2665dnf Color MFP on macOS (600 dpi printer)
- Success: OID code resolution 1200 and OID pixel size 4, directly from the browser.

Epson

Epson Home XP 322 on Windows 7
- Success: 600 dpi OID, printed with 'extra fine' settings
- seems to be the first ink-jet printer with reported success
Epson WF-3720 Series
- Success: Plain papers, High quality, Color or Grayscale, Custom color correction, everything else "off"
- Make sure to look on the "More Options" tab -> "Image Options"
- Original ink cartridges
- Tested with ttaudio printouts

HP

HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M476dw PCL 6
- Success with High Quality Print Setting (test pdf-page form OIDProducer with sonix 1.5G 600dpi)
- Very well recognised by the pen (some more codes than 4x4 was recognized
- Pattern is "visible" with naked eye
HP Color Laserjet Pro MFP M277dw (600 dpi printer)
- Somewhat works with 2x2 pixels after fiddling with the settings but does not work with printing over an image
- Works great with 4x4 pixels, but they make the image darker
- Printed two passes (first color, then OID in black and white)
HP Color Laserjet CP4025 on Linux at 1200dpi
HP LaserJet Pro M148fdw
- Flawless result with 600dpi PDF out of the box (on Debian)
HP Laserjet 1200 on Ubuntu 14.04
- Success: using eog (Driver HP LaserJet 1200 pcl3, hpcups 3.14.3). Scale picture in printer settings to 100x100mm and set Quality to 'best'
- Success: using gimp
HP Laserjet 1320 (1,200 dpi)
- Success with pdf
- Tested with Linux CUPS + HP LaserJet 1320 hpijs 3.16.11, High Quality printout mode
HP Laserjet 4050 (600dpi) on Windows10, Windows7, Vista, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04
- Success: Using original HP-Toner, made Problems with cheap Replacement-Toner (drivers like recognized from operating system as network printer)
HP LaserJet 4250, black and white, 600 dpi, Linux Debian Jessie with CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.10
HP Laserjet 5
- Success on Windows 7 with HP driver Printer Settings: 600x600dpi; Enhanced Print Functions ON; Print Optimizer ON; Economy-Mode OFF; REt ON;
HP Laserjet 5000N (600dpi) on Linux Ubuntu 14.04
- No success when trying with various different settings, PDF printing, Gimp Gutenprint, ...
HP Laserjet 5500DN (600dpi) on Windows10, Windows7, Vista
- Success after using the HP Laserjet 5i driver (black only printer)
- No success at all with the detected original driver, nor HP Universal Printing PCL 6 or PCL 5 drivers
- still trying from Ubuntu Graphic-Mode HP-GL/2 Gimp-Settings: Picture-Settings x&y-Resolution 600dpi; Ignore Page magins
HP LaserJet CP 1025nw
- No success yet with pdf
- Success with kompass example from make magazine with 600dpi (tttool --dpi 600 oid-code) on Mac and Linux with gimp, quality setting best (normal for linux), no centering, oid over images works ok (not over dark parts)
HP Laserjet P1005
- Ubuntu 14.04: HPLIP(3.15.11) did not seem to work (neither PDF nor GIMP)
- HP Windows Driver worked fine (600 or 1200 DPI, both produced acceptable results), GIMP was used for printing
HP DeskJet 3630
- No success
- Very rarely works with new "player" TipToi. No at all with the old TipToi.
- Tried different --dpi and --pixel-size without any improvement
HP Photosmart 8050
- Succcess
- HP Windows Driver for Windows 7
- 1200x1200 dpi printed with gimp or openoffice writer embedded image
HP Color Laserjet 1600, 2600n (600 dpi printer)
- Linux with CUPS, foo2hp driver within ghostscript-printer-app
- No success with 2x2 pixel PNG images, very poor detection with 4x4 images
- Success with SVG vector images that are converted to PDF with rsvg-convert in librsvg2-bin.
HP Laserjet 1010
- Linux with Cups, HP LaserJet 1010 Foomatic/pxl1010 driver
- No success with Cups, HP LaserJet 1010, hpcups 3.16.3 driver
- Printing SVGs using Firefox/Windows. Also printing to pfd and then to the printer.
HP PageWide MFP Pro 477dw (an office inkjet printer)
- Linux with CUPS, HP PageWide Pro 477 MFP Postscript driver
- Printing with 1200x1200dpi, either OID tables as PDF printed with evince or included in SVGs and printed with Inkscape.
HP Officejet 6600 Tintenstrahl/inkjet
- Success on Mac OS: Printing single OID code PNGs generated with 600 DPI from the Preview app.
- Printersettings: 100% size, color, quality: Optimal
HP Officejet Pro 8600 Tintenstrahl/inkjet (de)
- Papiertyp: HP Papier hochweiss (wichtig)
- Qualitätseinstellungen (Benutzerdefiniert):
  - In Graustufen drucken: Nur schwarze Tinte
  - Ausgabequalität: Optimal
  - Text schwarz drucken: Aktivieren

Konica Minolta

bizhub C300i
- Success: PDF produced by Inkscape 1.0, using 1200 DPI fill patterns from tttool. Important: Use the printer's web-interface for printing (printing the same PDF via Acrobat Reader on Win10 was not successful).

Kyocera

Kyocera 4551ci
- Success: using gimp, (600 dpi)
- bei Bildbearbeitung im Druckersetup "Text schwarz drucken" und "Grautöne mit schwarzen Toner drucken" anhaken

Lexmark

Lexmark CX410dn
- Success: aus Photoshop CS 1200dpi
Lexmark MS415dn
- Success: printing pdf (oid-table) with 600 dpi

Ricoh

Ricoh Afiko MP C4502
- Success:
  - OID mit tttool --dpi 1200 --pixel-size 2 --code-dim 100 oid-code
  - GIMP 2.8 A5 1200dpi
    - druck direkt über GIMP
  - Druckqualität Standrd: Auflösung 600 x 600 dpi
  - Druckqualität Erweit.: Allen Text schwarz drucken
Rico Aficio MP 8001 RPCS
- Success with ttmp32gme with 1200 dpi and pixel-size 3
  - 1200 dpi
  - high quality
  - dithering: picture
  - antialiasing: picture
  - "print all text black" activated

Samsung

Samsung CLP-670 Series PS
- Success: using gimp, even printing colours and the patterns in one go.
Samsung SCX-4500
- Success: using ttaudio
Samsung M2020 - Xpress 2026W
- Success:
  - Qualität: Hohe Auflösung
  - Schriftart/Text: Maximal und Haken bei "Gesamten Text schwarz drucken"
  - Kantenhervorhebung: Aktiviert
  - Papierart: Archiv --> Da dies recht dunkel wird, lege ich via Photoshop immer eine weiße Ebene über den Code
  - Habe ein farbiges Bild mit meinem Tintenstrahldrucker (Brother DCP-585CW - Der kann die Kodierung übrigens nicht drucken) gedruckt.
  - Das Ergebnis hat überzeugt: Selbst in recht dunklen Bereichen hat der Stift (der neue mit Player) einwandfrei funktioniert.
  - Druckeinstellungen gibt es hier als Download: http://tiptoi.as-webstyling.de/download.php
- Success2 (OS X):
  - Codegenerierung: oid-code [OIDnr] --dpi 1200 --code-dim [Breitemm]x[Höhemm] --pixel-size 3
  - Qualität: Hohe Auflösung, Toner-Sparbetrieb: AUS, Kantenhervorhebung: Maximal
  - Stufen: Helligkeit:50, Kontrast:50 (beliebig)
  - Papier: Normalpapier (beliebig)
  - Außerdem drehe ich den Code in der Indesign-Bildbox um 13°, weil so ein leichtes Moiré verhindert wird.
  - Die Codes werden etwa so dunkel gedruckt, wie ein 30%iges herkömmliches Raster
Samsung ML 1640
- Success:
  - Qualität: Beste
  - Schriftart/Text: Haken bei "Gesamten Text schwarz drucken" (optional)
  - Toner-Sparbetrieb: Aus
  - Helligkeit: Dunkel
  - Farbbilder kamen aus einem Epson Expression Home XP-445(kann die OID nicht drucken). Normalpapier und Photopapier als Grundlage und danach die OID über den ML 1640 gedruckt. Farbbilder habe ich nicht weiter bearbeitet. Selbst in dunklen Bereichen hat es gut funktioniert mit dem neuen Stift mit Player.
- No Success:
  - mit "Samsung Universal Print Driver"
Samsung Xpress SL-M2835DW
- Success
  - Ravensburger 00700 (tiptoi v2)
  - macOS 10.12.6, using ttmp32gme v 0.22 , printing with Firefox 58.0 (Chromium 62.03 did not work)
  - tttool --dpi 1200 --pixel-size 3 --code-dim 24 oid-code 2065
  - Driver:
    - M283x Series Print Driver for Mac OS V1.03.00
    - Easy Printer Manager V1.03.38
  - Quality settings (Easy Printer Manager):
    - Eco mode = Off
    - Resolution = Standard
    - Clear Text = Minimum
    - Print density = 0
Samsung CLX-3180
- Success:
  - Printed with GIMP for Windows
  - Driver: Samsung CLX-3180 Series Class Driver (Windows)
  - Worked for 600DPI and 1200DPI
  - Color-Settings: Black & White
Samsung Xpress M2885FW
- Success:
  - Printed pdf file created by tttoool from Xreader (Linux)
  - Driver: Samsung M288x Series (Linux)
  - Edge Enhancement: Off
  - Toner Save: Off
  - Quality: High Resolution
  - Page Scaling: None
  - Other settings may also work (not tested yet)
Samsung ML-2525W
- Success on Linux with ttmp32gme and Chrome - printing works flawlessly with 1200dpi, directly from the browser.
- The driver shipped with Ubuntu 20.04 does not seem to print with 1200x1200dpi (at least it does not report it); there is a Linux driver on the Samsung website that support printing with 1200dpi.
- Printing from Gimp does not seem to work. So far I only had success by exporting from Gimp to a PDF, opening the PDF in Google Chrome, and printing from there. In Chrome, the option "Print as image" in the print dialog has to be disabled (which is the default setting).

Sharp

Sharp MX-3610N
- Success on windows 7 prof with original Sharp Network driver

Xerox

Xerox WorkCentre (7xxx model)
- Success with High Quality Print Setting (assume it's 1200 dpi)
- Very well recognised by the pen
- Pattern is "visible" with naked eye
Xerox WorkCentre 6515
- Success:
  - High quality setting
  - PDF did not work (output scaled)
  - PS uploaded to printer via browser worked
  - Patterns well recognised by the pen