Custom Brother PJ Printer Settings designed by (me) Paul Talbot.
The Brother PJ Stencil printer range has revolutionised the way digital artists make tattoo stencils. In recent years the tattoo industry has adopted iPad and tablets for creating hand-drawn artwork that can then be printed directly to the PJ, Setting the standard for tattoo stencil creation.
They’re all designed to simplify the task of dialling in your PJ. Forget the setup hassle and start making perfect stencils today.
These files (once installed) reset all your Brother PJ Printer Settings and adjust only the ones that effect the process of making stencils for Tattooing. Just set it and forget about it.
IT’S NOT A STENCIL PRINTER
Just like just about every technological advancement in tattooing the Brother PJ Stencil Printer wasn’t designed to be a stencil machine. In about 2009, I needed to be able to print directly from my mac to a thermal printer and I was looking for a solid solution. I found the Brother PJ printer on the web and ordered one. As it turns out, I was the first tattooist to ever connect these two technologies together. The rest – as they say – is history. You’re Welcome 😉
BRAIN AIDED TATTOO STENCILS
The Brother PJ Stencil printer isn’t designed for the job we use it for. There is a learning curve to this piece of hardware and you’ll need to engage your brain when using it. Not just blindly stumble along mashing buttons and throwing tantrums when ‘it’ doesn’t work. With our brains engaged and our big boy pants on lets proceed.
The Brother PJ Stencil printer isn’t designed for the job we use it for. There is a learning curve to this piece of hardware and you’ll need to engage your brain when using it. Not just blindly stumble along mashing buttons and throwing tantrums when ‘it’ doesn’t work. With our brains engaged and our big boy pants on lets proceed.
COMBINE WITH A 12V POWER SUPPLY
For the best results I recommend using a 3rd part power supply. Stencil paper is much lighter than the fax paper that your Brother was originally designed to print onto so combine these with my recommended 12v 2 amp adapter (that you can buy here). Then you’ll have a bulletproof setup that won’t eat paper or jam up. All without losing the 300 x 300 dpi quality that these amazing – game changing – devices offer.
You can adjust your print setting on the fly on every machine but the way you do this depends on which model you have.
- PJ723 – USB only
- PJ763 – USB or bluetooth via Print & Scan
- PJ773 – USB or wifi via Print & Scan
INSTALLATION
- Decompress the downloaded .ZIP archive
- Connect your machine to a PC or a Mac Via USB.
- Open the Brother Printer Setting Tool
- Click ‘Import’ and navigate to your downloads folder. (See image below)
- Import the Mac .plist file or WIN .dat file
- Follow the onscreen prompts
- You’re done. Happy Stencilling!
INSTALLATION FAILED MESSAGE
- In certain circumstances the import will fail. I’m not a programmer and honestly I’m not sure why it sometimes won’t work.
- If you experience this simply open the .PDF file included in the download and manually input them. It only takes a minute and you’ll only have to do it once.
PJ Setup & Usage TIPS
PRINT SETTINGS EXPLAINED
I’m going to use the 723 for my examples as the setting can easily be accessed from your graphic softwares print dialog box. All these settings work in exactly the same way from machine to machine.
I’m going to use the 723 for my examples as the setting can easily be accessed from your graphic softwares print dialog box. All these settings work in exactly the same way from machine to machine.
BASIC TAB
For the purpose of tattooing there’s really no relevant settings in the basic tab so we’ll just skip it and go to the advanced tab.
For the purpose of tattooing there’s really no relevant settings in the basic tab so we’ll just skip it and go to the advanced tab.
ADVANCED TAB
The advanced tab is where we might want to make some changes to get the best stencil.
The advanced tab is where we might want to make some changes to get the best stencil.
DENSITY
For old school tattoos suit used the old thermo-fax think of density as heat. The higher the number the hotter the PJ will print. 0 is coldest 10 is hottest.
For old school tattoos suit used the old thermo-fax think of density as heat. The higher the number the hotter the PJ will print. 0 is coldest 10 is hottest.
PRINT SPEED
Print Speed is the one that confuses a lot of people. Mostly because they don’t understand what effect that has on the printing. We send an image to the PJ and a printhead inside the machine heats up and transfers that heat to the stencil paper. The faster the speed the less time the paper will spend going across the print head. The faster you print it the lighter the stencil, the slower you print see the darker the stencil. The difference between really fast and really slow isn’t exactly massive but it does help if you get a slightly problematic stencil.
Print Speed is the one that confuses a lot of people. Mostly because they don’t understand what effect that has on the printing. We send an image to the PJ and a printhead inside the machine heats up and transfers that heat to the stencil paper. The faster the speed the less time the paper will spend going across the print head. The faster you print it the lighter the stencil, the slower you print see the darker the stencil. The difference between really fast and really slow isn’t exactly massive but it does help if you get a slightly problematic stencil.
HALFTONE
The next three options are the the ones that make a big difference to your tattoo stencils. They basically tell the printer how to handle the image it has to print and what to do with ‘grey’ information.
The next three options are the the ones that make a big difference to your tattoo stencils. They basically tell the printer how to handle the image it has to print and what to do with ‘grey’ information.
LOGO & TEXT
This first option is the one I use all the time. ‘Logo and text’ tells the printer to print black and ignore grey. Think photocopier. The printer looks at the image and goes ‘if it’s black I’ll print it. If it’s grey I won’t print anything at all.
This first option is the one I use all the time. ‘Logo and text’ tells the printer to print black and ignore grey. Think photocopier. The printer looks at the image and goes ‘if it’s black I’ll print it. If it’s grey I won’t print anything at all.
DITHER
Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomise quantisation error preventing large-scale patterns such as colour banding in images. Basically what all that technobabble means is that the printer is going to take the image that you send it and apply an algorithm to the black and grey values. Turning into something that looks like the image. That’s not going to be any good as a tattoo stencil.
Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomise quantisation error preventing large-scale patterns such as colour banding in images. Basically what all that technobabble means is that the printer is going to take the image that you send it and apply an algorithm to the black and grey values. Turning into something that looks like the image. That’s not going to be any good as a tattoo stencil.
ERROR DIFFUSION
Error Diffusion is a type of half toning in which the quantisation residual is distributed to neighbouring pixels that have not yet been processed. This essentially means that the printer will apply a different algorithm to the black and grey values for a smoother looking printed image. Fine for faxes but not for stencils.
Error Diffusion is a type of half toning in which the quantisation residual is distributed to neighbouring pixels that have not yet been processed. This essentially means that the printer will apply a different algorithm to the black and grey values for a smoother looking printed image. Fine for faxes but not for stencils.
IMAGES ARE NOT STENCILS
You might be thinking “that’s what I was told the PJ could do when I bought it and that’s why I bought it. Because you can just print any image straight from Google, chuck it on the skin and five minutes later be tattooing?” “It’s supposed to be a huge timesaver”.
You might be thinking “that’s what I was told the PJ could do when I bought it and that’s why I bought it. Because you can just print any image straight from Google, chuck it on the skin and five minutes later be tattooing?” “It’s supposed to be a huge timesaver”.
GREAT STENCILS SAVE TIME
It may seem like it at first but a quick stencil isn’t actually a timesaver. Anytime that you ‘save’ by printing an image directly from Google will be lost is the stencil becomes unreadable during the tattoo session. It’s almost impossible for any current stencil fluid to ‘hold’ a image on the skin for hours without it blurring and wiping away.
It may seem like it at first but a quick stencil isn’t actually a timesaver. Anytime that you ‘save’ by printing an image directly from Google will be lost is the stencil becomes unreadable during the tattoo session. It’s almost impossible for any current stencil fluid to ‘hold’ a image on the skin for hours without it blurring and wiping away.
Disappearing stencils make the tattooing process enormously stressful. Let’s be honest, tattooing is stressful enough so why give yourself any more stress? I advise avoiding this workflow in favour of using your favourite graphics software to make a ‘proper’ stencil. Yes, it will take a little longer but it will save you time long term and you’ll get huge gains in the finished quality of your tattoos.
