Printing PDF with hidden Layers

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 9, 2021
3 replies
3366 views

I have 4 layers on my Illustrator document. I am hiding 2 of the layers for printing. I hide the layers in Illustrator in the layers tab and save as a PDF. When I open the PDF, everything looks fine. When I go to print the hidden layers magically appear. I don't inderstand why... In my attached screenshot of my laptop, you can see the document I want printed (with layers hidden) in the background and what it is trying to print. Please can someone help!

Correct answer Mylenium

Well, printing from a browser is never going to give you correct handling of these things. You need to download the file and use Acrobat/ Reader. "Dumb" PDF engines like the ones in Chrome or Firefox simply don't care for print-specific features like hiding layers or tagging obejcts as non-printable.

Mylenium

jasonryan

Participant

I came across this issue printed 20 copies before I saw that the printer prints hidden layers, nightmare

Monika Gause

Community Expert

I came across this issue printed 20 copies before I saw that the printer prints hidden layers, nightmare

By @jasonryan

Have you solved it by now?

David Beroff

Participant

See my response above; it seemed to be a reasonable solution.

David Beroff

Participant

Maybe, @Mylenium . I found out (the hard way) that the PDF rendering engine (in firmware) on some printers can also have issues with transparent layers. After trying a few other solutions, I was able to "print" the PDF to another PDF file, and then use that for the actual printing.

MyleniumCorrect answer

Legend

Well, printing from a browser is never going to give you correct handling of these things. You need to download the file and use Acrobat/ Reader. "Dumb" PDF engines like the ones in Chrome or Firefox simply don't care for print-specific features like hiding layers or tagging obejcts as non-printable.

Mylenium

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