Printer test page

How this printer test page works

Every mark on the sheet is SVG geometry in real millimeters, sized to the paper you picked, and the page declares that paper size to your browser at print time so there is nothing left for the print pipeline to rescale. The color patches are sRGB values, not CMYK ink — cyan is #00ffff, the tint ladders are that value mixed toward paper white in ten steps, and the grayscale wedge runs 0% to 100% in eleven steps with no repeated value, because a ramp that repeats a step measures nothing. The line-resolution ladder and the text-size samples are the one place the controls deliberately do nothing: their widths (0.08 mm up to 0.4 mm) and their point sizes (4 pt up to 12 pt) are fixed, because a resolution target you can resize is not a resolution target. The "Est. ink" figure in the readout is measured, not guessed — every filled area and stroked line is accumulated as the sheet is drawn, weighted by how much ink its sRGB value implies, so the strip cannot disagree with the page.

To use it: print at 100% or "Actual size", then work down the sheet. The two reference rules near the foot are the first thing to check — one is exactly 100 mm and one exactly 4 inches, so a ruler on either of them tells you in a second whether the dialog scaled anything. In the color bars, look for a primary that has gone pale or vanished (a blocked channel) and for a tint ladder whose lightest two or three steps have collapsed into paper white. In the gray wedge, look for a color cast, and for steps at the dark end that have merged. In the resolution ladder, note the finest line your printer still renders as a line rather than a dotted grey suggestion, and remember that number the next time you set a line weight. "Margins only" is a different job: it draws frames at 3, 5, 8, 10, 13, 15 and 20 mm from the paper's own edge, and the innermost one your printer drops is the width of its mechanical dead zone.

The honest limits, and they matter more here than on any other sheet on this site. This page cannot measure what your printer actually put on the paper: a browser has no instrument on the output side, and measuring printed color means holding a colorimeter or a spectrophotometer against the sheet. So this page is not a way to manage color, check a profile, or make a proof. What it is, is a fixed reference that is identical every time it prints, which makes two things possible without any instrument at all — comparing today's print with one from before a head clean or a cartridge change, and spotting a channel or a tone range that has failed outright. Two smaller limits worth stating: the ink estimate counts filled areas and strokes, not text, because glyph coverage depends on the font your printer resolves; and everything above assumes the actual-size precondition — at anything other than 100% ("Actual size") the reference rules will not measure, and neither will the rest of the sheet.

Color printer test page

If what you came for is a color test, set the pattern control to Color only. The sheet becomes the seven primary bars — cyan, magenta, yellow and black, then red, green and blue — over the four per-channel tint ladders, scaled up to fill the page. It is the same sheet as "Full", with the gray, resolution, type and registration bands switched off, which is exactly why there is no separate color-test route here: a mode is not a page. The bars are the fastest way to see a dead or starved channel, and the ladders are where a nearly-empty cartridge shows itself first, because the light steps stop separating before the solid bar looks any different.