Documents printing too faint.

[Guest]

Here is my problem.  I have to modify a large number of engineering drawings, all of which are in pdf format.  I convert them to dwg format and edit  them in DraftSight, convert them back to pdf ( I cannot print from Draftsight) and print them.  The prints come out a rather faint grey instead of black and I can find no way of improving the printer output.  Has anyone else encountered this issue?

[Adorobat]

Hi jamesc34301549,

Please refer to the following links:

how can i get the print to darken when printing pdf files from acrobat? (Print Production)

Installed Reader version XI and now my pdf files print illegibly & faint

Thanks,

Shivam

[Dov Isaacs]

Make sure that if you are running Acrobat or Reader under Windows, you don't have the Save ink/toner option checked in the print dialog. That option could conceivably cause the symptoms you describe.

Another source of problems with output from CAD programs is that often they output exceptionally thin lines and that when printing, very narrow lines are printed that cause black to appear grey.

Of course, if you could post a sample of such a file yielding this problem, we could ascertain what is really going on!

          - Dov

[peggyy23064978]

I'm having same issue with one of my coworkers - they print a page from a manual that has a CAD drawing on it - using Acrobat Reader DC and Win10 machine - drawing is faint.  Another coworker prints same page to same printer using Acrobat DC on Win7 machine - and it prints darker and able to read CAD drawing.  Any ideas?

[Abambo · Accepted solution]

According to your description I would select the printer driver or the printing settings as the culprit. The driver is different and settings may be different.

[davidm90411842]

I'm late to the game, but dropping this off to help the next searcher.

The issue is that all the lines and text are being stored as scalable vectors and thus the lines will automatically use whatever minimum scale the output device has.  This meant larger pixels on the screen vs 1200 dpi thin lines on the printer that are almost unreadable.

In Acrobat, select Advanced and check Print as Image with 300dpi or 150dpi to raise the minimum pixel size for the vectors.

[brandiesmith]

This worked perfectly - my drivers were UTD and I hadn't previously had issues.  I'm not sure how that setting got changed (either in the last update or in how our engineering company is saving the drawings) but this resolved the issue.  Thank you!