Printed text/logo is made out of small dots

[Dottedprinttext]

Hello all,

I am making simple engraving text and logos with Illustrator and after the recent update of the program in October every laser printed graphics is made out of small dots. These dots are not seen on the PC screen. I print the graphics via "Save as PDF". I tried changing the PPI to 300 or higher without success. Before the update laser printed graphics were all OK. All of my graphics are only CMYK 100%black, without colors. Even if I open old saved PDF's with the same graphics and print them now they are made out of dots.

I am no expert with this program, so please advise what can be done.

Thank you.

[Monika Gause]

So your artwork is pure vector graphic, no pixels? No raster based effects?

When saving the PDF, no color conversion? No conversion between different CMYK profiles?

When you open the PDF in Acrobat there's still pure 100 K?

The laser plotter driver doesn't do any color conversion or enhancements?

Can you perhaps show a photo?

[Dottedprinttext]

I do not use any effects or something like that, I only insert text areas and logos from our customers (I think they are vectors). When I open the saved PDF I can zoom in all the way and there are no dots seen. The laser printer (it is nothing fancy, just office laser) shouldn't do any color conversion, at least when I check the settings before printing.

The picture is added.

[Monika Gause]

As I assumed, this looks like there is color conversion taking place. The logos might be in RGB color space or they might be a different CMYK color profile and then color management changes taht. You need to check the color in the file to make sure it's 100K and then make sure that no color conversions happen when you export the PDF and then make sure that the printer doesn't have any color enhancement in place in its driver.

[Dottedprinttext]

As I can not find a solution to this problem, would it be possible if you check the .AI file that I created to see what could be wrong? I've been looking for the solution for two days, can not get it printed without dots.

[Monika Gause]

In that case please upload the PDF file somewhere and post a link here.

[Dottedprinttext]

Here you go:

https://docdro.id/yGstTYs

If you need .AI file I can send that as well.

Thank you again.

[Monika Gause]

Whatever that caused, but there is muddy black in your PDF, not 100K. If there is 100K in the AI file, then you need to check the color management settings when creating the PDF. They should not convert colors. Please learn about color management.

[Ton Frederiks]

Your file opens as an RGB file in Illustrator, conversion will happen when printed.

[Test Screen Name]

These dots do not look as if they are in the PDF (I looked only at the photo). They look entirely normal, this is what is called "halftoning". It's how high end printers show colours/greys other than 100%. Small white regular dots mean the numbers are not 100% black. So everything is normal, except, as you say, you felt everything should be 100%. This is the area to focus, not  the dots. (To double check whether this is the effect, deliberately make something at 80% and print it to your printer; you should see a similar pattern of dots, but bigger dots).

[Dottedprinttext]

Hello,

we have solved the problem, I played around with Adobe RGB conversion and switched all the colors to RGB 100% black. Guess CMYK 100% black is not the same when exporting to PDF... Anyway I suspect the latest Illustrator update messed up previous program settings when it worked just fine.

Thank you again.

Tomi

[Monika Gause]

You get better results with RGB black? Can't believe that.

[Dottedprinttext]

I am no expert on this area, but I can't believe it either. I set the document color to RGB and all colors to 0,0,0. It comes out of the printer without the dots .