Monochrome TIFF Printer Drivers

The Monochrome TIFF printer driver is designed for developers and end users to build faxing, document imaging, e-commerce, archiving, or raster image capturing applications by converting any printable file into a supported image format. The Monochrome driver is based entirely on Black Ice Printer Driver technology which has been in use since 1989, and is not based on Microsoft Mini-driver technology.

Free TIFF Printer Driver Resource ToolKit is shipped with every Monochrome TIFF printer driver purchased, to easily integrate the printer driver into the developed application.

Black Ice TIFF Printer Drivers for Windows XP/2000/NT

Supported operating systems (terminal services MUST NOT be present):

• Windows XP Home and Professional

• Windows 2000 Professional

• Windows 2000 Server

• Windows 2000 Advanced Server

• Windows NT 4.0

Black Ice TIFF Printer Drivers for Windows 2003, Citrix and Terminal Servers

Supported operating systems (terminal services MUST be present):

• Windows 2003 Standard Edition

• Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition

• Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition

• Windows 2003 Web Edition

• Windows 2000 Server (terminal services MUST be present)

• Windows 2000 Advanced Server (terminal services MUST be present)

• Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server

• Citrix Metaframe 1.8 for Terminal Servers

• Citrix Metaframe XP for Terminal Servers

Black Ice TIFF Printer Drivers for Windows ME/98/95

• Windows Millennium

• Windows 98

• Windows 95

The Monochrome TIFF printer driver features are grouped into the following main parts

• Device Settings

• File Formats

• Filename Generation

• Start Application

• Watermark

• Embedded Annotation

• Profile Manager

• Bates Numbering

Each of the above feature groups' settings can be changed from the Monochrome TIFF printer driver's Printing Preferences dialog.

The Device Settings

Paper Size

The Monochrome TIFF printer driver supports a total of 84 different paper sizes.

• 45 standard paper (page) sizes are supported

• 36 Advanced paper sizes are supported, including the A0 Engineering paper size

• 3 Black Ice paper sizes, such as User-selectable variable (custom) paper size specified in inches or millimeters, fax paper size and variable paper size in pixels

• Users can add new paper sizes, customize existing paper sizes, and remove unwanted paper sizes

Force Fax Resolution

Select this option to force the Monochrome TIFF printer driver to generate faxable images, regardless of the settings of the printing application. Faxable images must have 204x98 or 204x196 DPI resolution and must have a 1728 pixel width. The Black Ice Printer will generate the output image with the required parameters, therefore no further modification of the image will be necessary in order to fax the image.

Page Orientation

Besides the traditional Portrait and Landscape orientations, Black Ice Monochrome TIFF printers support the "Rotate landscape image to portrait" option too. This feature is very handy when landscape oriented documents need to be faxed.

By using this option, the document will be printed using the landscape orientation and then the image will be rotated to portrait orientation and is ready to be faxed.

Graphic resolutions

The Black Ice Monochrome TIFF Printer Drivers support for the following resolutions:

• 100 x 100 DPI

• 200 x 200 DPI

• 204 x 98 DPI - the Standard FAX mode (Draft)

• 204 x 196 DPI - the Fine FAX mode (Low)

• 300 x 300 DPI

• 600 x 600 DPI

• Custom resolution - up to 3000x3000 DPI

The custom resolution can be set to any value ( horizontal and vertical ) up to 3000 x 3000 DPI and not less then 50 x 50 DPI

File Formats Settings

Use these settings to specify the output file format for the Monochrome TIFF printer driver to generate. The printed documents will be converted to images which will be stored in the selected format

File Format

Printed documents can be converted into the following formats:

• TIFF CCITT Group 3 1D compression

• TIFF CCITT Group 3 2D compression

• TIFF CCITT Group 4 compression

• TIFF Uncompressed

• PCX Image Format

• PNG Image Format

• Microsoft DIB (Bitmap)

• Intel DCX Image Format

• US Government CALS I and II

• Unheadered CCITT G3 1D compression

• Unheadered CCITT G4 compression

• Unheadered CCITT G3 2D compression

• Dialogic TIFF

• NMS TIFF

• Brooktrout TIFF

• GIF image format

• HTML with GIF

• HTML with PNG

• HTML with Bitmap

• ASCII Text File

Create file in memory

By using this option all images will be created in memory. An application can receive the image created in the memory by the printer driver using the printer driver's messaging interface.

Multipage file support

The Black Ice Monochrome TIFF printer driver can convert multipage documents in one of two ways: by generating one separate image file for each page, or by generating one single multipage TIFF or DCX file. Using the multipage file support, all pages from the source document will be stored in the same image file.

Write text file - Generate text output

If the source document contains text information, the Monochrome TIFF printer driver can extract and save the text from the document in a separate text file in addition to creating the image file(s).

Save position and style - for text output

This powerful feature allows exact reconstruction of a document. When this option is selected, the exact position of the text and the font information from the source document will be saved in a text file.

Mail Merge

The mail merge feature is available in the Monochrome TIFF printer driver, call for details.

Photo Quality (Dithering)

In order to convert color documents into monochrome (black and white) images, several dithering methods are available and can be used. The Monochrome TIFF printer driver support seven different dithering methods.

• Disable Photo Quality (default dithering, good for text documents)

• Jarvis-Judice-Ninke

• Floyd-Steinberg

• Sharp

• Smooth

• Stucki

• Threshold

The size and appearance of the generated image will vary depending on which dithering method is used.

Filename Generation Settings

The Filename generation settings allow the name of the generated images to be specified. The Black Ice Monochrome TIFF printer driver supports seven different filename generation methods:

• Use the prefix and extension

• Prefix and extension from the registry

• Prefix and extension from the INI file

• Exact filename

• Exact filename from the registry

• Exact filename from the INI file

• Use the document name

These filename generation methods provide huge flexibility to the application which integrates the printer driver.

• Use the prefix and extension: the output filename will be generated from random characters. The first three characters will be the characters specified in the ‘Filename Prefix’ edit box and random numbers will be added.

• Prefix and extension from the registry: The file name prefix and the extension will be read from the specified registry key.

• Prefix and extension from the INI file: In this case the filename and the prefix will be read from the specified INI file. The driver will search in the INI file for a printer name section. Use the “File Name Prefix” key for the file prefix and the “File Name extension” key for the extension.

• Exact filename: The printed file will be generated with the exact name as specified in the ‘Enter the filename’ edit box.

• Exact filename from the registry: The filename will be read from the specified registry key.

• Exact filename from the INI file: In this case the filename will be read from the specified INI file.

• Use the document name: The driver will use the document name which the application passes to the driver when generating the name of the output image.

Output Directory

The Monochrome TIFF printer driver will generate the image file(s) in the specified folder. This folder can be on the local hard drive, can be a mapped network drive, or it can be a folder on another computer.

Group File Options

For every print job (printed document) the Monochrome TIFF printer driver creates a "group file". The group file contains information about the generated image, including the name of the document, the full path and file name for each page, the image format, color depth, paper size, orientation, and printing status.

Delete the group file after printing - The Monochrome TIFF printer driver will automatically delete the group file at the end of the printing. Applications can still use the information from the group file during printing.
Disable group file generation - If it is not needed, the group file generation can be turned off.

Start Application Settings

One of the features of the Black Ice Monochrome TIFF printer drivers is that the printer driver can start an application before or after printing. If the application is started before the printing starts, the applications can wait for the messages sent by the printer driver. When the application is started after the printing has finished, a custom application can read the command line parameters of the generated group file, which will contain all of the necessary information about the generated images.

The order of the parameters passed to the started application can be changed, and unnecessary parameters can be removed from the parameter list.

Watermark Settings

Add a watermark image to every printed document using the Print Watermark feature of the Black Ice Monochrome TIFF printer drivers. The selected image (your company logo, signature, etc.) will show up automatically on the generated images.

• Watermark image file: If needed, two different watermark images can be specified for portrait and landscape orientation images.

• Position: The watermark can be placed on the document using four options:

  • Stretched to fit the document

  • Stretched to the document's width

  • Centered on the document

  • Tile

• Brightness: controls the visibility of the watermark image on the original document.

The watermark is always in the background, so the document's text and images are clearly visible.

Embedded Annotation Settings

It is possible to define a custom annotation text that will be placed on every printed page. The annotation text can also contain the current date and/or the time. The format of the date and time, the position of the annotation text on the page, and the font used to print the annotation can be fully customized.  The Black Ice printer drivers can also add user specific annotations such as the printing user name, computer name, IP Address, etc. which can be specified using predefined fields and environment variables.

Profile Manager

A printer driver profile stores every printer setting at a given moment. This means that one can have separate profiles for different applications and switching from one application to another means that another printer driver profile should be loaded. Users do not have to know what settings the application requires and they do not have to make printer settings changes manually. They simply select another profile from the profile list and the printer driver will make all the necessary changes automatically.

Bates Numbering

Advanced features and technologies

Black Ice color printer drivers support several features and technologies that no other printer driver vendor supports. In order to make use of these technologies, there are several applications included in the Resource Toolkit that demonstrate these features.

The following list enumerates these Black Ice specific technologies. Please click on the links below to get more information about these features.

• Redirect printing

• Auto-print

• Batch Converter

• Real time printer driver hook

• Form reconstruction