Printing Booklet printing color and fonts incorrectly in 19.2

[Proclivis]

I was able to use Print Booklet twice for saddle stiched books, then after the update to 19.2 my prints are strange with a solarization effect on images, and fonts are now black outlined with white inside rather than solid black. I opened an older file and got the same result. I almost wondered if something was printing it as a negative. When I look at the text summary before printing, I see under Output: Negative: N/A

I am using an IMAGEprograf PRO-1000, and using its print tool, I can print an indesign exported PDF and get solid letters. I spent two hours on the phone with Canon proving that the printer and driver are fine.

I looked around for any properties that might relate, for the doc, the text, but found nothing that might change when opening an old file with the new version. Within indesign text looks correct, just like the pdf.

There is no way I know of to export a Booklet to PDF and print it, or even as individual pages, so there is no way around the problem. I am simply stuck.

Does anybody know of some property or setting that might be inverting the print, or have similar problems?

I attached a iPhone image of the print.

[Proclivis]

Adding a screen shot of indesign itself to compare with the printed one.

[Proclivis]

It seems like what has changed is the interaction between the InDesign print settings and the printer driver settings. When you use the printer driver settings, you do get the big warning, but previously I would use them anyway and set the ICC profile and Black And White, the rear tray, etc. And I got good prints. Now that causes problems. If I don't set the printer driver settings, I can't indicate Black And White, and images are slighly toned. I have never gotten good black and white without this setting, which probably forces the use of the non-color inks and is more accurate.

So this sucks, because I can't get good color without the printer driver settings, but they cause an inversion when used. Even if I don't change anything other than the Black and White and ICC. Just touching the settings causes a problem.

I suspect that a MAC OS update is what triggered the change in behavior.

[Willi Adelberger]

What file type are the used images?

Why are you doing the imposition yourself? Let the printer do it from single pages. Print booklet is based on postscript. Postscript does neither know color management nor does it support transparency. Specially if you use EPS files it will cause problems. But EPS should not be used in InDesign anyway. 

[Proclivis]

The images are tiff, output from Capture One or Photoshop.

I have a fully calibrated workflow and a Canon PROGRAF PRO-1000, and I print myself, and hand stitch, because I am an artist. I want complete control.

I figured out that I an export to pdf and Acrobat has a booklet feature, and it had similar problems, an inversion of the image, but the some text filled, some outlined.

Both the InDesign Print Booklet and Acrobat Booklet function let you color manage, so without understnding the underlying file type used, I assumed it worked in the obvious way. It used to.

Now, after more thought, I can reason a bit more. The Canon driver will let you chose an ICC and then manage the color, rather than letting the printer manage color, and there is a Black and White checkbox, and best I can tell, it uses the ICC for tone, but limits to black ink. Most people I talk to say a black and white printed in color mode has subtle colors in it, which I have seen. It is the need for using this checkbox that leads to overriding the driver setting and getting poor results in InDesign and Acrobat.

In the print settings for InDesign and Acrobat are monochrome choices, and this disables the ICC. This would eliminate the need for the driver checkbox, and without using the ICC, any tone adjustments in it are not applied. Of course the image editing uses the ICC, so the image will be brightened and contrasted to account for for the dynamic range of the paper.

I do not know how much this matters. I do have an ICC viewing tool, so I can look at the curves to see if it is only dealing with color or both color and tone. I also don't know what the printer does. For all I know, it could use the color information and ignore the tone information which is only used during editing.

Finally, I can simply test the monochrome mode and see how it looks. I would hope it tells the printer to only use black ink. If it does not, it will not help.

: Print booklet is based on postscript. Postscript does neither know color management nor does it support transparency.

This is useful to know, but it maks me wonder what happens when the InDesign print settings choose an ICC profile. Perhaps Canon can accept the profile from the app through the driver in addition to a ps file and apply it.

I don't use EPS files. I use PDF for reviewers, and directly print with Print Booklet.

I do get the sense that InDesign is probably used by people using third party printers and no artists hand making books. I just came from Ps, Lr, C1 as a photographer and figured InDesign would be a easier way to print chapbooks because I can use a calibrated process and fine art paper, such as here, Red River Premium Matte. 

At least if we can figure it out, other photographers can follow what works.

Thanks for the help. I will test the monochrome mode and get back.

[Jeffrey_Smith]

Through the print settings, have you tried printing full color without forcing the printer to print black ink only?

[Proclivis]

Yes, I get the same results with a slight color shift.

[rob day]

Hi @Proclivis , Does it happen if you Print the page rather than imposing using Print Booklet? What format is the placed file and was it saved from Photoshop? If the image was never edited in Photoshop, try opening it, Save As a .PSD, replace the link, and see if that is a fix.

[Proclivis]

I have not tried print page. The linked images are tiff. The text is not. So if PSD fixed the images, the text would still be inverted.

I tried another experiment, which is to use the monochrome, which means print Booklet | Print Setings | Output | Color: Composite Gray + Text As Black. This disables the ICC profile.

The result is functionally correct, meaning no inversions, but a color shifted black, as one would get when the driver settings done select Monochrome Image. The result is not acceptable.

This implies that InDesign does not ask the printer to use its black inks exclusivly.

This lead right back to the fact that to touch the printer driver settings to fix it makes inverted images and text. Acrobat seems to have all the same behaviors, so making a PDF to print does not help.

Whatever broke this, OS update, InDesign update, InDesign is now totally useless in practice after a very large investment on my part. In my opinion, if Adobe is no going to mesh well with the print driver, it needs to own all its functions and have a way to tell the printer to only use black inks. Epsom would probably have the same or similar issues.

[Proclivis]

I was able to export PDF, then use Create Booklet 2 to make and print a Booklet. Because it simply uses the print driver and its settings, there are no conflicts and no problems.

[rob day]

Problems with TIFFs inverting have come up before, see if a Save As .PSD is a fix.