Actually, there really is not a way of telling Acrobat to totally ignore color management when printing in the general case. No printer, whether PostScript or not, has the ability to print with all the colorants that may be specified in a PDF file. And then you have operating system considerations; except for PostScript printers which have drivers with a passthrough feature, Windows printer drivers, for example, require that all content be sent to the driver as RGB data. Any CMYK or LAB data (or for that matter data that isn't ICC sRGB RGB) must be converted to sRGB. This entails color management. Even for PostScript printing which supports both CMYK and RGB, there are issues such as transparency flattening which requires color mangement in the flattening process. Prior to Acrobat 9, Acrobat (and Reader) defaulted to Printer Color Management which caused unexpected color anomalies when printing content that had live transparency (color mismatches in areas adjacent to transparency-flattened areas and depended (for PostScript printing) on PostScript CIE color management which was not ICC color management. For non-PostScript printing, the Same as Source (No Color Management) option was effectively what you got if you specified Printer Color Management. In any case, the Same as Source (No Color Management) also caused color anomalies associated with flattening.
The bottom line is that the only solution we found that worked reliably was defaulting and using the Adobe Color Management feature for printing.
That having been said, there are other issues at work. Many if not most printer manufacturers have their own secret sauce color modes and conversions either in the driver, the printer itself, or both. For PostScript printers, you are usually best off turning off all such driver and printer panel options. For non-PostScript printers, it varies from printer to printer and alas, there is no simple answer to “getting it right” unconditionally for all printer manufacturers and models.
- Dov
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