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I've seen at least one or two other threads on this, but no solutions. Acrobat is drastically altering colors when printing a PDF. Are there setting in the print dialogue box to fix this? I've printed the image from Photoshop, and converted it to PDF and printed from Preview, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. In every instance the colors came out fine. But when I print it from Acrobat on a mac or a PC the yellow comes out very green shaded, the other colors are also different but not as noticeably so. Thoughts?
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
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Acrobat is not altering colours, but incorrect colour management may do. If you print from applications that simply ignore colour management, they will print device colours which may change from device to device.
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So, is there a way to tell Acrobat to ignore color management as well when communicating with the printer?
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What exact colour management settings are you using now, when you print from Acrobat?
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Well, I had no idea so I went into the print dialogue box to figure that out, and I found the solution. Click "Advanced" and then select "Same As Source (No Color Management)" next to Color Handling.
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Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this! I have been trying to print patterns I bought for a project (light blue boxes with red "X"s in them) and Adobe kept printing them as purple which made it just near impossible to see the red. I tried everything and your suggestion to select "Same As Source" fixed the issue for me. So, THANKS! Thanks so much!
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Note that in the general case, the Same as Source (No Color Management) option is really problematic. If it actually works for you, it is indicative of either (1) problematic printer drivers or configuration of same or (2) an overall workflow in which color management procedures are either not followed or inconsistent.
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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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Thanks Dov. The core issue here was achieving consistency in the printed document regardless which application the file was printed from, because people in the office may open and print it from a variety of applications. So the true issue is not whether or not any color management occurred, but whether there was consistency in how the colors were managed. Selecting the "Same as Source" option accomplished this.
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Just be aware that in the general case, Save as Source is inconsistent and may not work at all, yielding various nasty artifacts in your printed output.
- Dov