InDesign CS3 -> PDF = fuzzy font, and random bold

[_Andrea_Matthews_]

Hello,

When I print straight from InDesign CS3, Garamond font looks fine. When I export to PDF, then print from Acrobat Professional 8, version 8.1.2, the Garamond font is not as crisp-looking. Also, when I print the PDF from Acrobat, there are a 2 or 3 lines of Garamond text (seemingly randomly dispersed among the rest of the text, although they're the same lines every time) that actually look like they're bold, even though they're not, in the original.

The fonts seem to be embedded. I am printing to a Ricoh Aficio MP C2500 PCL6 printer in both cases. I am running Windows XP Professional (Version 5.1) Service Pack 2.

This happens when I print in color. When I print in black and white, everything looks pretty crisp from Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Thanks so much for your help.

[_Jay_Burlage_]

Monitor - Perfect
B&W laserjet - Perfect
Ricoh Ricoh Aficio MP C2500 - Problems

Okay here is the fun (not) stuff! This image is a perfect example.. what your looking at here is two different pages side by side printed out of Illustrator to the MP C2500 on identical paper with identical print settings next to each other. Both text boxes have identical settings. Note the crazy cmyk dot spray 'halo'... Drives me nuts! Has anyone ever seen this??

www.lzarch.com/ricoh-problem.jpg

That's not rasterization... that's some sort of RIP error IMHO.

For your further entertainment here is a PDF:

www.lzarch.com/Interim-Second.pdf

And here is the linework printed directly off that PDF:

www.lzarch.com/ricoh-linework.jpg

[Jongware]

I can't help noticing that the right hand image looks as if there's a slight tint of gray, instead of 100% black. Probably unrelated to your problem, though. And I can see yellow dots all over both sheets (might be my eyesight giving up).

It looks like (a) the printer gets a CMYK ("rich") black instead of only K, and (b) it needs re-alignment :-)

Does the same happens when you print
i anything
else, from another program? (But using the same printer driver.) That would rule out InDesign or Acrobat errors.

And does the colour speckling occur when you print colour as well (as opposed to just black text, rich or otherwise)?

[Peter Spier]

I wonder if changing the appearance of black settings would help. I suspect you've got this set for output all blacks as rich black.

If you have the Postscript option, I'd also try using that driver.

Peter

[Joel Cherney]

I've seen similar issues on our Ricoh, and I was never able to resolve the issue. I just sent it out to a print shop, rather than try to fight with the Ricoh, to which I have very limited access, and no rights to install the PS drivers on the print server. My symptoms were somewhat different, but close enough to make me execute a triple-take upon reading this thread.

If I recall correctly, I was able to generate this effect both by printing directly from ID as well as from ID-generated PDFs. Black was always 100%K. The effect was only seen on text. Transparency seemed to increase the likelihood of the distortion, but I didn't have the time/toner/inclination to ascertain this for certain.

Identical text set in Word (or Publisher, feh) was perfect. I also found that it was more likely in AI than in ID or PDF. It was always perfect onscreen - I never saw a trace of distortion at 800%.

Just a hunch, but I feel like jongware might be right - I never experienced any line-art distortion, and your macro-lens work makes it look like alignment problems to my eye, which is admittedly not expert in such matters. However, the text distortion looks exactly like what I saw; I'll see if I can't dig up one of the old proofs and scan it in for comparison purposes.

[_Jay_Burlage_]

>It looks like (a) the printer gets a CMYK ("rich") black instead of only K<br /><br />Any Idea how to set this?<br /><br />>If you have the Postscript option<br /><br />As far as I know I don't... There are two available drivers and only one works consistently: A)PCL 6 B)RPCS<buggy<br /><br />>Identical text set in Word (or Publisher, feh) was perfect. I also found that it was more likely in AI than in ID or PDF. It was always perfect onscreen<br /><br />Yep exactly! Thank you for chiming in. I at least feel better to know that I'm not alone with this strange effect...

[Peter Spier]

If you are using the PCL driver, I think the device is considered to be RGB, so the appearance of black preference should be effective in telling ID whether to send true black or rich black. Have you tried setting it to output all blacks accurately?

I don't know anything more about the printer than what I read on the web yesterday, but it looked to me like there were two versions, on with, one without built-in Postscript. You say you have two drivers. Is one of them the Postscript version, or just a different PCL version?

[_Alonso_]

I have a similar problem, I have just sent a document to print. It looked fine in the pdf and on the cromalin proofs, but when it went through the Rip to plate and printed 3000 copies, the text(where it was over an image) seemed to have rasterised to a low quality making it darker than the other text and have jagged edges but only where it was over a watermark image? the even stranger thing is that the text that is in colour over the image did not do this it was fine, only the black text? The printer is saying it is my fault and its a fault with indesign, and the client has rejected the job. Please can someone help and tell me wethere this is my fault or not.
Thanks
Alonso

[SimonWarner]

Whenever a printer cannot print what was on the proof I approved, I say
it is his fault. If the output from his press did not match the proof,
why did he keep printing. Isn't that what a proof is for.

[Peter Spier]

Alonso,

Your problem sounds like a transparency flattening problem, which could be happening at either your end, or the printer's, depending on the workflow.

Did you deliver PDF or Native files for printing? If PDF, what settings did you use?

One way to reduce the risk of this sort of thing is to properly prepare your file. Keeping text above transparency in the stacking order will help, as will eliminating the use of transparency altogether when possible. I see a lot of new users, and some experienced ones, too, using transparency when they should be using tints, and as a shortcut for things like watermark images which can be made in Photoshop.

While technically there is nothing wrong with using transparency in this way, unless you need the interaction between the colors of two objects that transparency introduces, you are adding an unnecessary risk that the printer either will not know how or have the equipment able to handle the job correctly.

I agree with Simon, though. If the job didn't match the proof they should have stopped and called you. At that point it's time to figure out what happened and find a solution.

Peter

[_Marc_Bogemans_]

Hello Andrea,

We have the same problem on Ricoh MPC 2500.
Did you already find a solution?

If so, would you like to share it?

Thanx.

Marc Bogemans.

[_lucy_owens_]

We've been going crazy with this same thing... sometimes it prints random fuzzy text directly from InDesign. Sometimes when I save it as a pdf first, there are fuzzy lines, plus it seems to lose overall quality.

I was thinking it was a problem with indesign and the copier not working together right. We have a Canon Imagerunner 5885

I have spent MANY MANY hours trying to fix this.
between indesign, pdf settings and the copier settings there are literally 100's of variations of settings to try.

[_lucy_owens_]

Another weird thing... On this one brochure I've been trying to get PERFECT... when I deleted 2 of the words in each of the lines of fuzzy text, it printed ok.

We shouldn't have to go thru and delete random words just to make our documents print ok!!

[_lucy_owens_]

I solved the problem (at least with printing on our copier)
I noticed the only 'fuzzy' lines had 'f' words in them...
like flesh, fulfill, field... etc.
When I capitalized the f words, there was no fuzzy text.

I called adobe a couple of times and the last time I called after discovering that it was only the "f" words... he said 'that sounds like ligatures'

So under the character tab, ligature is checked by default...
i unchecked it, and so far (knock on wood) everything is printing just fine.

[_Som_Thing_]

I have had this same problem. Certain sections of type print heavier or apper bolded when they are not actually bold type.

For Acrobat I just fixed the problem. Printing on the same printer (HP9500 Colour LaserJet) from the Mac is OK. From the PC random bolded type. From another PC to a different printer was fine. So it is the printer DRIVER. SO I went to the HP web site and looked for an updated driver. What I found was two kinds of drivers. PCL and PS (post script). I was using the PCL5 driver. I downloaded the post script driver and installed it as a new printer. Problem solved. All the type prints nice and crisp and clean. Much better than the PCL5 driver made it, even when it wasn't randomly bolding type.

Makes sense since everything is post script, a PS driver would work best.

On a side note: Illustrator - Set the printing/export output to vector maximum, not raster. This keeps illustrator from combining areas into images and miing vecotr and rastered objects. Most annoying

[_Charles_T__Mills_]

The random bolding problem is caused due to Acrobat not handling
ligatures correctly. Ligatures are special characters created
automatically for letters like "f" in relationship with other letters.
The problem must be fixed in InDesign by turning off "Ligatures." To
do this select all the text in a text box, select the "Character" tab,
and then select the character options menu in the upper right hand
corner of the dialog box (small triangle and three lines). In this
menu uncheck the check mark next to "Ligatures."

You must repeat these steps for all text boxes. Save the file and then
re-export a new PDF. This will fix the problem. Of course you can't
use ligature characters...but that will be something Adobve will need
to fix in Reader.

[Dov Isaacs]

Adobe knows of no such problem in Acrobat that you describe as Acrobat not handling ligatures correctly. Where did you get such misinformation?

Acrobat and Reader render whatever characters are in the PDF file with either the font embedded in the PDF file by the software generating the PDF file or if the font is not embedded, using a host version of such a font if the user's system has that same font (i.e. the same name). Lacking either an embedded version of the font or the font being installed on the system of the user with Acrobat or Reader accessing the PDF file, an Acrobat substitution font is used.

Problems with display of ligature characters can only occur as follows:

(1) Exporting PDF from InDesign, the designated font was protected and thus was not embedded. (You would have received a warning from InDesign when doing such an export operation!) In this case, when the resultant document is opened by Acrobat or Reader, an attempt is made to find the umembedded font on the user's system. If not found, a substitution font is used by Acrobat or Reader. If the substitution font does not contain the desire ligatures, you could get either square box (.notdef), a bullet, or a space character in place of the desired ligature. The same problem would occur if you used an exotic symbol or ornament character in a font. Note that the symptoms occur in the case of the unembedded font if Acrobat or Reader uses a font with the same name that differs in character set from the font composed with in InDesign; thus if you compose with a Helvetica, Times, Garamond, Arial, Palatino, etc. font and due to lack of font embedding, you display with a different version, character set mismatches will cause same symptoms to occur.

(2) Producing a PDF via distillation of PostScript, you specified "no embedding" or the font could not be found by the Distiller. The same symptoms will occur as in (1) above.

Otherwise, we are not aware of any situation (i.e., a bug associated with improper embedding or display) in either InDesign or Acrobat that would cause ligatures to not work for display in Acrobat. We are aware of some printers/RIPs that do not use Adobe-licensed PDF or PostScript that override either PDF-embedded or PostScript-embedded fonts with "printer resident" versions of same with matching names, but different character sets and metrics, that would cause these symptoms when printing.

- Dov

[shootsLX]

@Charles_T._Mills

Thank you that worked a charm.

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

>The random bolding problem is caused due to Acrobat not handling
ligatures correctly.

I've not heard of any such problem and I've never had any issue with ligatures myself. It should not be necessary to turn off ligatures to obtain correct PDFs. Just ensure that fonts are set to "download complete" or "download subset" and that "download PPD fonts" is checked.

[Peter Spier]

Looking back through this thread, ligatures were identified as a problem several posts back, but I believe only in relation to the specific printing scenario, i.e. on the Ricoh.

Peter

[Phil_Diggle]

I understand this thread is well over a year old now, but I have had this problem for ages and ages!!

Suddenly had a brain wave, and amazingly enough, it worked.

I have a Ricoh MPC 2500 which prints black text fuzzy on a full colour run. Has always done this from PDF's but never from a Word document - which leads me to think it's a Postscript fault in the driver.

Whilst I personally don't use InDesign for my work, a colleague of mine does. I use CorelDRAW and he uses InDesign, and when exporting the same document through both programs to PDF the fuzzy black print appears. We have changed numerous settings, talked to engineers and colleagues at different companies. One suggestion was to export as PDF X/1a which caters for Colour Blind issues. This did not solve the problem.

Upon inspection with magnifying glass it was clear to see that the dots around the text were indeed made of the C,M and Y colours. So, I decided to confuse the printer and set my black from 0,0,0,100 to 100,100,100,100. Low and behold, export to PDF and print - the text printed crystal clear. Have tried this for both CorelDRAW and InDesign - and the problem rectified.

Not quite sure what would cause this - but a little bit of confusion goes a long way!!

Thanks,

Phil

[Peter Spier]

If you are getting 4-color black text, it's near certain that you are introducing a color profile conversion during the export process. Either leave colors unchanged (which should work fine for a laser printer), use the correct profile as the working space, or use convert to profile (preserve numbers) and the problem should disappear. Printing in 400% Toner isgoing to make for very fragile text that may flake off if it doesn't fuse properly.

[Guest]

Try to see in your indesign document on the wired page, have you ever link any big PSD picture file?

Because I have the same issue with you.

And checking a long time, finally I found on the problem page, I have two big PSD picture linked, and when I export PDF from indesign,

that two page of text will look bold in PDF even it looks good in indesign.

Hope it will help you.

[osu4lolli]

We found this week that our culprit for this issue was that in some of the text we had used "register" instead of "black" in the color pallet. They both look the same, right? Not so. Some printers don't know how to print the "register" so they print in CMY instead of K. If you print in BW only it looks fine. Double check text to make sure it is black and it should work.

We had success with other printers/printing in different formats as suggested above, but it never solved the root issue. Try the text color above and you should be good to go.