It should show the 6 basic colors in the slices (red-green-blue and cyan-magenta-yellow) each transitioning from black to white. The left image shows string moire (bad quality) while the right one has almost no moire at all (good quality). The more moire you can see, the worse the print quality is. The grey circle should show 360 individual radial lines starting from the centre of the circle.

There should be a smooth continuous transition from black to white. Similarly to the rainbow, it should not display any sudden shade changes. The top image shows a barred poor quality print, the below picture shows a nice smooth transition. The smoother the transition is, the better the printer is. It runs through the whole visible light spectrum. You can see how thin lines your printer is able to print without merging them. Check the black-and-white bars printed vertically and horizontally and the checkboard patterns. Ink is not placed on the paper closer to the left edge than 4 millimeters. For example, in order to find the size of the left margin, find the first complete vertical line and check the corresponding number. This is what you need for measuring.Ĭheck the non-printable area (margin). The area where the printer cannot pint, simply will be left empty. This ensures that the A4 size PDF is attempted to print to the whole size of the paper. If you want to check your printer, not the PDF viewer, use a decent PDF viewer, like Foxit PDF Reader or Acrobat Reader. This is a sample document you can print in A4 to test your printer's capabilities, ink quality, the printable area, printing resolution, and so on.īuilt-in PDF viewers of browsers, for example, produce terrible output, even if you have a decent printer.

Printer test image pdf