InDesign 16.1 is not retaining previously used printer in a document.

[1meanian1]

We print to many printers and after printing and saving a document, it doesn't retain the current printer. It will default to the printer previously used by the last InDesign document you used. Previous versions always retain the last printer used in that particular document. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[Mike Witherell]

You might try first to trash/reset preferences and see if the problem resolves.

[Derek Cross]

Are you printing from a PDF, you could set up presets for each?

[1meanian1]

No, from InDesign. I have set up presets for each printer, they just don't stick after I print.

[Derek Cross]

Try printing from a PDF.

[1meanian1]

My problem is printing from InDesign, nothing else.

[Derek Cross]

It's recommended that you print from a PDF rather than from InDesign, but it's your choice, of course.

[1meanian1]

I'm printing to a rip for direct to plate, we do not have the option of printing from a pdf. Why would they recommend that? And who exactly "recommends" it?

[Steve Werner]

I agree with Derek.

It's widely agreed among print professionals that the print engine in Acrobat or Reader is more powerful (and is kept more up-to-date) than that for InDesign. This has been true for as long as InDesign has been out.

As a trainer of print professionals since InDesign first came out (1999), I have always recommended it. And if someone is having problems when printing directly, printing from PDF is almost always the solution.

[1meanian1]

It's NOT a choice. Our rip needs to be "printed to". The whole system was set up through ECRM for direct to plate printing. All I would like is for InDesign to actually remember where it printed to last (just like it used to before this upgrade) so we don't have to reselect all of the print presets every time we print something (which is all day long).

[Steve Werner]

@1meanian1,

Dov is Adobe's Principal Scientist and is Adobe's top authority in the print publishing field. I can say that I've learned more about the fine points of print publishing technology from him than from any other person over the past couple decades.

[Dov Isaacs]

There really are two issues being discussed in this thread.

The first brought up by @1meanian1 relates to “remembering” which printer a particular InDesign document was printed to, even after “saving” the InDesign document.

For what it is worth, I just tried this on both Windows and MacOS with InDesign 16.1 alternating editing between two documents (full open, edit, print, save as, close cycles) where each of the two documents was directed to a different printer. In all cases, the last printer printed to was “remembered” in the document. I cannot replicate the behaviour that was described. The question then is did you save or save as. These are different operations. Perhaps simply doing a save as opposed to a save as doesn't update the printer information. @1meanian1 should ascertain which of these is being used and let us know whether the behaviour occurs with save or save as or both. In general, better workflow practice is to use save as since it writes out the full InDesign document as opposed to only changes – and is thus much “safer” to use. (Yes, after over 50 years in the business you learn that being a bit paranoid is good!) Perhaps @Mike Witherell's advice in terms of trashing/resetting preferences will solve this issue, but my instinct tells me not!

In terms of the response from @Derek Cross and @Steve Werner and on behalf of Adobe, I will concur that the industry-preferred workflow is to export PDF/X-4 from InDesign and if you need to print to a device, print to that device from Acrobat Pro. (The same is true for Illustrator. Save as PDF/X-4 and then print from Acrobat Pro!) Why? Besides the PDF export giving you an opportunity to actually see on screen what will print, the print features of Acrobat Pro (and even Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Standard) are significantly more robust and reliable than those of InDesign (or Illustrator).

If one “must” print to the ECRM-based device, it should make a bit of difference to the device whether you are printing from one application or another. Use the better application for printing from. 

I will assume for the time being that the ECRM-based plate maker is PostScript-based. The device doesn't know from which program the PostScript comes from, but the fact is that the PostScript from the Acrobat products is far superior to that of the other applications.

If this device is actually a PDF RIP, you should be submitting the job to it, not printing to it although with the correct driver, Acrobat can pass through PDF to genuine PDF RIPs as a print stream.

If this device is neither PostScript nor PDF, the argument to print from the Acrobat products is even more compelling based on the controls that you have available for printing from the Acrobat products.

In summary, you are best off making believe that InDesign doesn't have a print function at all. Generate PDF/X-4 and print from the Acrobat products. And in terms of who exactly “recommends” it, c'est moi!

PS:  The irony here is that except for some internal politics, there was once a plan to rip out the print component of both InDesign and Illustrator (and possibly Photoshop) many years back and replace same with a silent generation of PDF with the option to provide a preview and presenting an Acrobat print menu for the actual printing! Shhhh! That's a little secret!

[1meanian1]

Thank you for your in depth response. I truly appreciate the explanations as to why NOT to use InDesign to print from.

I am part of a 3 person prepress department for an envelope company. We do very little design work, nothing creative unless we’re provided unusable artwork (rgb, non-separating documents or in archaic programs) then we get to have a little fun and recreate or “find” a logo online somewhere. So we are printing to our various plate making devices through InDesign. With the exception of our flexo plates which we burn a print ready PDF and send it to the Kodak Prinergy system.

So basically, all day long, we are creating envelopes in InDesign. Making sure they separate into cmyk, burning a print ready pdf, placing that pdf back into pre-setup InDesign templates designed to make plates for multiple different jet printers (4cp, 3”, 6” or Akiyama). In these templates we import the pdf and it either gets stepped so it’s 2 up, or whatever configuration it needs to be for the plate that it’s being printed to. All of the setups were set up by the ECRM techs when we started direct to plate 6 years ago. I clearly do not know (or get paid enough, frankly) how to change the process into a more streamlined flow, lol.

The tone of my last response to Derek was not meant the way it reads. I appreciate his input and I apologize if it sounded like I didn’t.

Diane