Adobe newbie - help!

Your printer almost certainly cannot print white, so any white areas on your page are areas that do not, and never contained, toner. A black object completely covered with a white object will print as plank and use no toner or ink.

Digital printing tends not to print all layers as separate elements, but as already discussed, the layers in the document can be configured to output or export in various ways.

A very simple point, though: printers don't print white, so if your "boxes and trackers" are largely white or a very pale tint — as I would assume they are, for writing purposes — there would be far less toner on those areas, regardless of what's under them on other layers.

In any case, a full-page image with little or no white or highlights is going to use a LOT of toner. In general, you want to keep color density down, across the page and pages, for things you're going to print on a home/office printer. Cartridges that will last 5,000 text pages will go dry in a few hundred full-image pages.

I think your options are to redesign the layout for less toner usage, take the job to a commercial printer for better/net-cheaper production, or just accept that your toner costs are going to eat into your profits.

Is your floral image reproduced as full-color or black-and-white? What are you using for your laser printer? What kinds of volume are we talking about for producing your planner, both total run and on-demand? Any special binding or finishing? Have you got room for storing a larger run than you immediately need?

Sharing answers to these questions will help us help you find the best solution for producing your planners efficiently and economically.

Hope this helps,

Randy

Th

Bring it to a professioal printer. It will look better, is cheaper and color calculation is not your's.

If you want to see how your document is getting separated out into the various inks you may want to explore the Separations Preview panel.

Window > Output > Separations Preview

Set the View option to Separations and click on the individual inks. You can activate multiple inks by clicking on the eyeball icons.

Could you please post a screen shot that includes your Layers panel?