Illustrator sometimes prints to the wrong printer.

[Chris G]

I use Illustrator (CS5) for printing out film separations for the screen printing business I work for.  I have 2 printers that I print from multiple times a day.  One is an Epson Stylus Pro 9890 (for film positives) and the other is a HP Laserjet printer (normal everyday printing).  Sometimes when I have the Epson selected as the printer in the print dialog, it will send the information to the HP instead.  It's never the other way around.  And it's random.  Is there a solution to this?

[Mike_Gondek]

Have actually never ever seen that happen, (except for human error) but do believe you. Any strange characters in the names of the printers like / or : ?  Did you install the correct  print drivers for this undisclosed OS you are on? If you are using cs5 make sure your OS is compatiable Older versions of Adobe Illustrator system requirements

Try making a preset.

What is your setting here:

You have not really given us much to go on, so without some screenmshots of your settings, can't offer much more help on this.

[Chris G]

Here are my printer settings.  It does have the HP set as default.  So I guess I need to change that?

Also, I can't use presets because every job is unique, except the ones that print to the HP.  So whenever I print to the Epson it's a Custom preset each time.

I am on a MAC as well.

[Mike_Gondek]

Yes since you are going to the HP when you do not want to, I would try last printer used. Something likje a crash, 3rd party software, or mayeb an OS that is too new for CS5 is wiping out what you chose and going to defaultr printer

Understood about every job being unique. Set one up for the HP, get used to using and you may find you really like them them.

For the EPSON you can try setting up a few like film positive, film negatives, and then change the settings manually for possibly paper size or the variable the changes often. For me the preset can be faster than drilling down to some nested deep menus, or help with the did I change that setting or not I don't remember.

I see you are sharing one printer and not the other. If you do not wish to share either then remove that.

Mac OS 10.6.8 should be good for CS5, the .8 was a good update that introduced network stability and more. Not sure if Adobe intentionally says 10.6 is best for CS5 or if they missed updating that after the .8 patch. Just don't go newer as that can cause the issue you have.

[Chris G]

Thanks, I'll try switching the default printer to use last printer and see how that goes.  I would test it out but it only does this randomly, and I can press print a second time with the same exact settings and it will go to the correct printer.

Thanks for taking your time to help me out!

[Mike_Gondek]

My pleasure to help. Let us know after some time has passed if the situation still exists or has gotten better and we can look at other options.