Comments on: Printing to Inkjets from Mac Can Cause Color Shifts in CS3

By: Charles Brackett

Charles Brackett — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 15:29:38 +0000

See my post on this subject at:

http://indesignsecrets.com/can-you-turn-off-color-mgmt.php#comment-486195

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:02:37 +0000

Does anyone know if this has been addressed in CS5? It drove me crazy for weeks when we switched to CS3. In CS4, we found we still needed to print as bitmap to get the color we wanted. I’m hoping that CS5 will finally address this.

Thanks!

By: Don Carroll

Don Carroll — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:25:42 +0000

Thanks for this. I’ve been looking for some time now on what the problem might be, but have always come up blank. I stumbled here from another article at indesignsecrets.com. A bit late to the parade, but better late than never….

By: Doyle

Doyle — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:42:04 +0000

It appears that after all this time that the issue of the monitor profile being introduced into the RGB printflow is now fixed with 10.6.2.

By: Zoe

Zoe — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:17:55 +0000

Unanswered questions from above:

Al: Are there any down sides to using the Print as Bitmap method?

Crus: Is printing a bitmap image in 300 or 600 dpi giving you the same quality and resolution as printing straight to 2800 dpi on a printer?? What quality changes occur when printing a bitmap image?

Could someone address these questions? Like many of you, I have been pulling my hair out over good color prints from Photoshop vs. flat, dull prints from InDesign (from the same graphic file).

Thank God for this workaround–BUT I am also wondering what the drawbacks are to using the “Print as Bitmap” option. I’ve scrutinized my prints and I could be imagining it, but I think they do look a little posterized compared with the “non-bitmap” dull prints and the print that was output by Photoshop.

So I would love to know if there are drawbacks to the “print as bitmap” option at all. Thanks for your incredibly helpful thread!

By: Viva

Viva — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:09:41 +0000

Thanks to Chris Murphy, and to this forum, for his advice: “…enable “Print as Bitmap” in the Advanced pane of the Print dialog in InDesign.” For some reason I tried a few other methods, some suggested by people here (printing a PDF from Preview, printing a PDF opened in Potoshop), before I tried Murphy’s tip, but his definitely got me closest to what I was seeing on my screen in InDesign (CS3 on a Mac w/ OS 10.4.11). Not perfect, almost there.

By: CrusCntrl

CrusCntrl — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:04:12 +0000

Replaced all my usb cables and switches before realizing this problem.
Look, if Adobe is going to charge this much money for these sophisticated programs then they should take the responsibility to notify users of these changes. This is what you get however when a company gets too big and monopolizes their field. “Absolute Power corrupts absolutely!”

Another question. Is printing a bitmap image in 300 or 600 dpi giving you the same quality and resolution as printing straight to 2800 dpi on a printer??
What quality changes occur when printing a bitmap image?
Crus

By: Todd Warnock

Todd Warnock — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:06:20 +0000

Oh my God! I have been having print error problems ever since I upgraded to CS3 and bought a Canon Pro 9000. Couldn’t print at all from InDesign or Acrobat. Was getting ‘pstopffilter’ error. Color correction issues aside, now at least I can actually print. This also led me to check the ‘print as image’ in the Acrobat print dialogue box. You made my year! This was driving me mad! Was having to convert everything to Photoshop files. Whoohoo!

By: Dominic Miles

Dominic Miles — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:06:14 +0000

This has been extremely helpful. I upgraded from CS to CS3 and the print quality using the new version ID was dark and, frankly, horrible. My printer is an Epson Photo R800. Using the bitmap option has made all the difference, coupled with a different ICC profile (I print brochures on HP 180gsm Inkjet Superior) The ICC profile I found that works best for this (although if somebody knows one that’s better I’d welcome the advice) is the catchily named Epson SPR800 EnhMtteBstPhoto R1 – downloadable from their website

By: Doyle

Doyle — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:24:23 +0000

The problem with IDCS3 is that the monitor profile is being introduced into the RGB print flow.

To test this, try using a different monitor profile and you will see that there are changes in the way the print will look.

I discovered this when I realized that a profile created for IDCS3 printed different on different computers.