I am a long-time user of Acrobat and am currently using Adobe Acrobat Pro 23.001.20174.0. I need to print plans (blueprints) daily. On a plan set, what is colored gray is existing, and what is black is new. (You can see what a problem this can be) Anyway, as an example, I have a plan page to print that looks like this:
All the background needs to be gray and just several items need to be black. No matter what kind of options I can find to choose, or even what printer I choose, it always prints like this:
(Unless, of course I print it in Foxit - which prints it perfectly without tweaking at all.) I have used Acrobat Pro for many years and really hate to change but does anyone have any ideas what might be the problem with Adobe not picking up the difference between the grays and blacks and printing them properly?
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Replies
Can you upload a sample pdf? I suspect the gray areas are made up of small lines or vector patterns and your printer is enlarging them in order to ensure they print, much like the Acrobat page display preference "Enhance thin lines". Try printing the pdf as an image (possibly under advanced print settings) or exporting the pdf as an image. If you are still having problems, try flattening a copy of your pdf and convert the strokes (lines) to outlines- Tools> Print Production> Flattener Preview. The reason Foxit is printing it correctly may be because it considers all vector elements as an image?
The pdf is RGB, the thin gray lines are .24 pt and 219 RGB, the black lines are .6 pt or larger and 0 RGB. When reduced to fit on a 17x11 sheet the thin lines become .086 pt. Your pdf is printing fine on my printer without intervention, so I don't have a fix for you other than to try printing as an image, you may need to print as color (not grayscale) in order to see this option under advanced settings.
Have you tried the measure tool in Acrobat?
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