If you find an inkjet one, you probably will have an additional loss of sharpness if the printer is using CMY inks besides the black. 600 DPI is normal, try to find a 1200DPI one. Try to find a black-only laser printer at the highest resolution you can find. You will have dots of tonner around the line which will give you a slight smudgy edge. If the images are printed on a laser-toner or ink-jet printer, I would not risk using a 1-bit raster image, and only use a vector file. But if it is well printed I think they will work well enough to do some comparation tests. The lines will be a bit wider so the white spaces are a bit narrower. If the print is lithography and printed as line art, starting with the vector file or the 1 bit image, I am guessing it will lose around half the original resolution on the thin lines due to dot gain. If the image is not photographically printed the image will degrade, depending on the output system. You should not use a normal 24-bit or grayscale image. The files must be, either in vector format or at the exact same resolution of the printer, 2400 or 3200 DPI at 1 bit. This is not expensive, but you need to find someone that can print it.

Probably you can ask if a prepress bureau can either print directly on photographic paper, or print a negative on film and then make a transfer. What needs to be taken into account is the resolution of the file and the resolution of the output, besides the interpolation method used on them.Ī real test chart is printed on high-resolution photographic systems, which gives crisp lines, up to 2400-3200 DPI. For a resolution-only chart, aka Black and white

I am not sure if you could commercially use the patterns of the test chart, but if you understand the idea behind them you can prepare some of your own. If you only want some target to compare, I guess you will be fine with some generic products. If your workflow needs to be standardized, use some tools for the standardization. It is a bit expensive though, so you can find some other camera test chart options on Amazon, or perhaps find some second-hand on eBay.īut as you want to use them in a showroom. Please google 'ISO test charts', or 'test charts targets' To my knowledge that one is ISO-12233 'Digital Resolution Still Camera Test Chart'.

Printer ink test image