Grayscale Color Test Page (PDF)

Wait! I want to test colors, why is this black and white?! Well, it’s not actually a secret, that printers do use colors to create grayscale images. But you can skip right to color test page if you really really don’t care about this part.

Printers typically use a combination of colors to create shades of gray because it allows for more precise control over the final output and produces better quality prints. When using black ink alone to create shades of gray, the printer must vary the amount of ink it lays down in each dot to create the desired shade, which can result in a grainy appearance. That is usually how monochrome print looks like.

On the other hand, when using colors to create shades of gray, the printer can use a technique called half-toning, where it varies the size and spacing of the dots of each color to create the illusion of different shades of gray. This results in a smoother and more natural-looking print. Additionally, using colors can also help improve the overall color accuracy of the print, as it allows the printer to create more subtle color variations in areas that are intended to be gray.

Grayscale Color Test Page will test black and white performance on your inkjet or laserjet printer

Click download button below to get the PDF file required for this test.

How to use this test

There are several different ways to perform this grayscale printing test. First, you can print as usual, without changing any settings. There should be several options available before starting to print this color test page. You might be asked to let printer manage colors and it should be fine to do that.

“Let printer manage colors” is an option in color management settings that allows the printer to control the color output of the print job. This means that the printer driver will apply its own color conversion based on the printer’s color profile to the input data and send it to the printer as a raster image. The printer will then print the raster image using its own color management system to produce the final print output.

The printer may perform differently if you set your printer to grayscale. That should typically disallow it to use cyan magenta and yellow colors for greyscale pages.

To do that, you can tell your printer to use grayscale mode specifically. This can usually be done through the printer settings or preferences in your computer’s print dialog box. Once you have set your printer to grayscale mode, you can print the black and white test file as usual. This will ensure that the printer is only using black ink to produce the grayscale image, allowing you to evaluate its performance in accurately reproducing shades of gray.

How to evaluate this test

There are a few signs that can indicate if a grayscale printing test is failing:

Color Cast: If the grayscale image has a color cast (e.g. yellowish or bluish tint), it indicates that the printer is not printing grayscale accurately and the test has failed.

Contrast: If the grayscale image appears flat and lacks contrast, it may indicate that the printer is not reproducing a full range of gray tones. This could be due to the printer settings or the quality of the printer itself.

Banding: If you see visible lines or bands in the grayscale image, it indicates that the printer is not printing smoothly and evenly. This could be due to issues with ink levels, printer head alignment, or other technical issues.

Noise: If the grayscale image appears noisy or grainy, it may indicate that the printer is not capable of reproducing fine details in grayscale accurately.

Simply speaking, If the grayscale image looks different from what you expect or it contains any of the above issues, it is likely that the grayscale printing test has failed and you may need to adjust printer settings or seek technical support.

What’s next?

Once you’re happy with your grayscale image, you can proceed to the next test (there is a link below). Or pick another color test page from our printing test collections. On this website we offer a variety of color test pages that you can download and use for your ink printer or laser printer quality assurance tests.