LaserPro Mercury failing on 1 bit images

[James Terry]

I have recently began exploring sending 1 bit images to the laser machine. Following tutorials and whatnot for converting photos down, I get what I want for the image and have made sure that it is simply white and black.

The jobs fail where the machine simply etches a box as if it were all black.

I know that my machine fails with CMYK, so I force everything to RGB. I dont think that is the issue here. I have sent the image as no color and black, I have tried printing through the driver as B&W (which will dither) or Manual Color Fill (which will color map).

The image works if I print it in color or grayscale using B&W mode in the driver, but the second I try to send 1 bit, it fails.

Is this my machine complaining that I am not sending RGB or grayscale? Do I need to convert the 1bit dot patterned image back to grayscale or perhaps even to vector? I am trying to find the magic that allows me to control the dithering process and the driver does nothing. So I think the print driver needs to be in Manual Color Fill mode for that to work right and I'm not sure what that does to a grayscale monochrome image.

I suspect I need to go waste some more wood and find out.

[Dan Hintz]

Are you positive the "white" in your image is 255/255/255? If it's even 1 value less than 255 across the board, the 1-bit algorithm may decide it's the same as black (because it's not white), therefore everything turns out black. This little SNAFU can happen at any stage of the process, and since I don't know what programs you're using or what your drivers do, this is only a suggestion on what to look for.

A possible workaround would be to do your final processing down to a 1-bit image, but then upsample back to an 8-bit "color" image... he data is large enough to hold a color image, but your only colors are black and white. That way you can send it as color, but the machine is operating on a (pseudo) 1-bit image.

[Rodne Gold]

If you are using Corel , turn off all colour management.