Greyscale printer test pages are used to test black and white printers or black ink cartridges in colour printers. What elements does a printer’s greyscale test page contain?

Alignment wheels to demonstrate that the print cartridges are properly aligned.

Text blocks to test if a printer can produce precise, clear, properly aligned text across a range of font sizes.

Radial colour gradients to test if a printer can produce sustained and smooth areas of each colour it produces.

Parallel rainbow colour bars to demonstrate a printer can produce colours in proper alignment without them bleeding into each other.

A colour intensities graph that shows if a printer can produce different levels of strength of each colour it prints, from pale shades up to the darkest shades of that colour.They typically contain the following elements: Printer colour test pages should be used to test colour printers. What elements does a printer colour test page contain? This means your printer has communication or system issues, but not printing problems. Other communication or system problems: If your printer produces a perfect test page but isn’t printing other documents, it shows it isn’t receiving or processing the files you sent to it properly.Inconsistent ink flow issues: If a test page has areas of defective colour or variable line strength, it shows a cartridge isn’t releasing ink properly and is faulty.A misaligned cartridge: If ink cartridges aren’t sitting properly or don’t move smoothly across a page during printing, images on a printer test page will come out skewed when compared to the digital image.

If a printhead becomes blocked with dried ink it can lead to faint, spotty or streaky areas on a print test page. Blocked printheads: Printheads transfer ink to a printed page.Printer issues that can be detected with colour printer test pagesĪ printer colour test page can reveal if your printer has: Effective test pages give a clear indication of how well your printer is performing whilst using the minimum amount of ink or toner possible to print the test page. They usually contain a graded image, with dark to light tones for black and white printing plus graded colour bands for colour printing. Test pages can sometimes contain text and images, to demonstrate their effectiveness at producing both. You simply print the page and then review it, allowing you to assess how well your printer produced the page and performed on each test. Think of them as a page that contains a series of tasks for your printer. Printer test pages are single pages that are used to check that a printer is functioning properly. To help you use printer colour test pages effectively, here we explain what they are, the problems they can reveal and how to print a colour printer test page. You should print a test page when you first set up a printer to calibrate its performance, but also when a printer hasn’t been used for a while. They allow you to easily judge how well your printer produces colour, clear images and crisp text. Printer colour test pages are a simple and effective way to assess your printer’s performance.

Color print test image