Printing .pdf Preview vs Adobe Reader

Question

Printing .pdf Preview vs Adobe Reader

Running 10.7.2 and InDesign CS5.5 I created a newsletter and exported it to .pdf. On the screen, the document looks almost identical when viewed in Adobe Reader 10.1.1 (Adobe X) and Preview 5.5.1. However when I print the document (I have to send 3 hard copies to some non-email folks), the quality of the print is noticeably worse in the Preview-printed doc than the Adobe-doc. In the Preview version, the colors are less bright and the text is not as sharp. However from Preview I can print double-sided no problem. In Reader, it asks me to use my printer settings which are set to 2-sided but it doesn't print that way. I've looked for preferences in both programs to adjust color and printing and find nothing. Why would the same document print so noticeably different? My printer is a Brother MFC-9840-CDW color laser.

Sorry if I've overlooked an obvious answer and thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jan 4, 2012 5:22 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 4, 2012 5:34 PM in response to Yvonne O Bowers

Have you check the printer options in Preview compared to Adobe? Look at the print quality in the printer menu for each.

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Answer 2

Jan 4, 2012 9:03 PM in response to Glenn Leblanc

Yes, as I said above I checked the preferences (printer options) in both. Adobe prints beautifully except doesn't recognize the double-sided option even though I checked it. Preview relies on the printer setup and nothing I can find in preferences (except scale, etc.) allows adjustment of print quality.

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Answer 3

Jan 5, 2012 4:52 AM in response to Yvonne O Bowers

Your printer menu should have an option for quality. Every printer I had was able to do that in addition to layout, paper size, etc. My printer is only black and white, but a color printer should have options for color quality.

This is a Preview document to print:

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Answer 4

Jan 5, 2012 7:32 AM in response to Yvonne O Bowers

Have you considered trying Skim? It's free but moreover for me it does an excellent job.

Just a suggestion, not helping you out of your problem.

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Answer 5

Jan 5, 2012 1:35 PM in response to Glenn Leblanc

I do have preferences for quality but as I said (with the current printer settings) Adobe prints beautiful and Preview doesn't. That leads me to believe it's not the printer itself but the respective programs.

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Answer 6

Jan 5, 2012 1:41 PM in response to stefboreel

As a test I downloaded Skim and printed the document in questions. The print quality was best than Preview but not as good as Adobe Reader. It did print double-sided without a problem. Thanks for the tip!

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Answer 7

Jan 5, 2012 2:13 PM in response to Yvonne O Bowers

It may not be the printer. Just making suggestions.

Just to test, I printed a test document from Adobe with 2 sided option and it worked fine. Quality of both exactly the same, however I do not have color option to test color vividness.

Just to be sure, in Adobe, when you get into the Adobe print menu, did you select printer tab at the bottom of the window and select those options there?

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Answer 8

Jan 5, 2012 3:47 PM in response to Glenn Leblanc

Thank you, Glenn, you helped me solve the Adobe print problem. Yes, I had clicked "printer" at the bottom of the window and clicked yes to go to the printer options. In that window, the Preset was two-sided and the two-sided option was checked. I guess that was counter-intuitive (and not particularly clear) but I changed the Preset to "default" which unchecked the two-sided box. Then I rechecked the two-sided box leaving the Preset at default and voila - it printed double-sided. I guess it didn't like the double-positive.

So the question of why Preview prints differently than Adobe is still there but now moot, since I can print double-sided from Adobe.

Thanks again!

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Answer 9

Jan 5, 2012 5:14 PM in response to Yvonne O Bowers

Well, at least we solved something.

I don't know why Preview would print different except for the quality options in the print menu. As I said, quality was the same for both my documents except I can't tell about the color since I have no color printer.

In Preview, print quality and color quality are controlled throught the printer menu. Adobe does seem to do it's own color management for printing. There is an option in the advanced tab to let the printer determine the color which is not checked on mine. Also a few minor selections there, but I don't know what it would have for color printers. That would be the only difference in the color printing that I can see. What you might try is to select the option in adobe to let the printer menu determine the color and see if that prints the same as Preview if you want to explore it more.

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Answer 10

Jan 5, 2012 10:12 PM in response to Glenn Leblanc

I think the example above is Adobe, not Preview, but in Preview in the print dialog box, there is a pulldown menu with Preview as the default. I selected Color Matching instead and there a default selection ColorSync. I checked In Printer instead and the resulting printed document looked as good as the Adobe one so it seems the problem is entirely solved. Thanks again!!!

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Answer 11

Jan 6, 2012 5:29 AM in response to Yvonne O Bowers

The example was Adobe. Last sentence: "What you might try is to select the option in adobe to let the printer menu determine the color and see if that prints the same as Preview if you want to explore it more."

Was a test to see if would print like Preview by using the printer settings to determine colors.

In my example, the default is unchecked for the printer to determine the colors. If yours is unchecked, then it would appear that the colorsync profile is different between Adobe and Preview.

Anyway, glad to see you got that worked out.

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