Skip to main content
M
Mirskyman
Inspiring
November 17, 2020
Answered

Print to PDF on Mac resulting in black and white PDFs on Adobe Acrobat for Windows

  • November 17, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 13111 views

Hi. My question requires someone with knowledge of both Windows and macOS.

 

I'm a Mac user and, for my job, I've had to save some documents as PDFs on my Mac to send to someone at work who uses a PC running Windows 10. I also have a work Windows PC that I use for testing the PDFs.

 

On my Mac, from various applications, I've been choosing Print and then Save as PDF. The resulting PDFs are in color when I view them on my Mac in the Preview app. On a PC, they are also in color when I open them in the Edge browser. But when I open the PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Reader on the PC--which is how my colleague is viewing the files--the documents are in black and white.

 

I do have a physical black and white printer (made by Brother). I wonder if somehow the printer's driver is causing the PDF to be in black and white when I'm printing to PDF. I wonder if I had a driver for a color printer whether printing to PDF would result in a color document, but it's just a guess.

 

If anyone has an explanation of what's happening and has a solution, I'd be very grateful.

 

Thanks!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Mirskyman

    The Save as Adobe PDF is available with Acrobat Pro DC and not with the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

     

    No, it makes no sense at all. The Reader should have zero effect on applications saving PDF. But then again, the whole print and rendering subsystem of MacOS is somewhat of a mystery. 😞

     


    Yeah, it's very weird. At least now I'm able to save PDFs that appear in color in all applications without having to re-export. Thanks a lot for your help and your suggestion of installing Acrobat Reader.

     

    I'll definitely keep Acrobat Reader DC on my Mac. I think its interface is pretty clunky, which probably was one reason I removed it a few years ago. But you, and my tests tonight, have convinced me that Acrobat is better at handling PDFs than Preview.

    1 reply

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    November 17, 2020

    We have no idea what's going on with the information you provided.

     

    There is absolutely no interaction between whatever printer drivers you have installed on your system and how Acrobat or Reader display the PDF file. And this is the first time I've ever heard of a symptom like this!

     

    The only possibility that I can think of is that is that somehow the Accessibility preferences (CTRL-k) on your system have been accidently enabled causing colors to be modified or even possibly mapped to black.

     

    If you could post a PDF file that exhibits this problem on your Windows system, we can try to duplicate your symptoms and if they are repeatable, try to find a solution for you.

     

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    M
    MirskymanAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 17, 2020

    Dov, thanks for replying so soon after my post. Also, I'm honored to have a principal scientist helping me with my issue. I'm happy to provide a file for you to analyze. I created a sample PDF from Excel on my Mac and then I opened it on my Windows PC in Adobe Acrobat Reader and it's definitely in black and white in Acrobat. I also took some screenshots to show you what's happening on the PC.

     

    I didn't see a way to post the PDF directly to this reply, so I created an external link. Let me know if you have issues with it: This is the link to the sample PDF document.

     

    I have attached the screenshots below:

     

    .

    M
    MirskymanAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 17, 2020

    Dov, thanks so much for figuring out the underlying problem. I do have a black and white printer and I wonder if its driver is somehow influencing the PDF output. When I choose to print to PDF, my Mac shows a little preview in black and white with the name of the printer above.

     

    And the process of saving a file as a PDF is really only three steps. I've attached three screenshots--one for each step--below.

     

    Also, I'm running macOS 10.15.7, which was the latest version of macOS until this week, when it was superceded by Big Sur (macOS 11).

     

     


    Dov, sorry, I didn't notice you are also running Catalina on your Mac. I misread and thought you were running an earlier version of macOS. It makes me think more strongly that the Brother printer settings are somehow respomsible for my black and white output.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices