This post is more of a request for confirmation versus a question. I have read many post/articles on this website and across the web on Finest Detail setting. Eric Chan's post states that the Finest Detail setting determines what ppi the printer is expecting. Jeff Schewe will say just set it on to do 720ppi. What I am looking is confirmation that the printer pipeline will resample when the inbound image does not match its Finest Detail setting(ON=720ppi / OFF=360ppi.
Hi Tony,
That's correct, and many tests like the one you did confirm it. A printing application like Qimage Ultimate will show which PPI the printer driver says it expects, and the Finest detail toggle will switch between 360 and 720 PPI. When a non-matching PPI (=output size / number of pixels) is sent to the printer driver, the driver (or on Mac OS it's delegated to the OS) will resample.
Tests also suggest that the resampling method used is something like bi-linear, which is not as good as what other software uses for resampling. In addition, if you resample 'yourself' instead of letting the printer driver pipe-line do it for you, you gain the opportunity to apply output sharpening on the final/upsampled image data. It won't be resampled again, so the result is predictable.
So the Finest Detail setting is a print driver feature that allows the print to be 360ppi or 720ppi. Any image that comes in the print pipe line that doesn't match one of these 2 resolutions will get resampled to the Finest Detail resolution selected (OFF=360, ON=720).
Yes, that sums it up.
FYI, I don't know which test image you used, but I made one (
link) that also allows to see the effects of printhead alignment and ink-diffusion caused by different output media. It's an extremely critical/sensitive test, and it's rare to get totally artifact free results, so the goal is to get it to be as good as possible.
Cheers,
Bart