Illustrator CS3 printing to pdf as grayscale only

Hi,
I'm pulling my hair out over this one. I'm simply trying to print from Illustrator CS3 to Acrobat 8. It will print colour designs fine, as long as they contain no images. But if I try to print a design with a psd in it, or load a psd into illustrator to print, the whole thing comes out in black and white.
I've just upgraded to Windows 7 64bit but have switched to XP compatability mode for Illustrator, still no luck. I'm not sure Win7 is the issue though as I've had this problem before, in 32bit XP, but can't remember how I resolved it. All the updates are installed.
thanks for any help in advance! Kurt.

Ok the Output pane of the print dialogue pointed me in the right direction. I'd got it working for straight psds with yet another go at updating; but in additions, somehow a Pantone colour was the print output mix in addition to the other 4. I've loaded some completely different client work and it now works fine, so I just need to purge that Pantone and it should all be good.
Thanks very much for the help!

Similar Messages

Illustrator CS3 Prints Grayscale to Roland Versa Works Rip

Ok something must be set-up wrong in Illustrator CS3. When I go to print a color graphic to the Roland VersaWorks software Rip it turn the color graphic into a grayscale image. This happens whether its a .ai file or .eps file. But if I take the same .eps file and add it to the queue under file add to queue in the Versaworks Software RIP it shows up in color. I'm on a Windows XP operating system. The operating system is pretty current and the rip software is up to date.
Maybe its a preference issue does anybody know how to delete your preferences in Windows?
Need help badly

I did change it to display and print colors as rich black in appearance of black in Illustrators preferences.
But that should have nothing to do with it. There has be some other answer for this. What section are u talking about.

Illustrator CS3 - Print - Output - Wont allow me to select Separations

Hi there
I'm silkscreening for the first time. The prepping process should be really simple right? Separate colour layers, using Illustrator, then print each layer onto transparency sheets. Well I'm about to loose my mind.
The image is CMYK, its a single spot colour (I think) which is red and the outlines are black. Printer is a Canon ix6500.
I can't seem to separate the colours in Illustrator CS3?! Why?! When selecting Print > Output > Mode > it won't allow me to select Colour Separations.
I've tried to overcome this by selecting Printer > Adobe Postscript and PPD > Canon ix6500 series. This allows me to select Colour Separations, but then it won't print, it only saves it as a PDF, and prints it as is.
PLEASE HELP!!! Any advice would be appreciated!! I'm going out of my mind here!!

I'm silkscreening for the first time. The prepping process should be really simple right?
It is. But you're misunderstanding the whole principle of color separation.
Separate colour layers...
No. Forget Layers. Layers has nothing to do with color separations. Think of Layers as nothing but an organizational tool for the stack of objects in your file. Color separation is the generation of a separate print for each ink that will be printed.
...then print each layer onto transparency sheets.
No. The image for each ink is printed on its own sheet.
The image is CMYK...
For clarity, don't call it an image. That makes it difficult to figure out what you're talking about. This is Illustrator; an object-based layout program. Your design can contain any number and combination of raster images, vector paths, and text objects. The word "image" in the context of a program like Illustrator always suggests a raster image object. If you're referring to a raster image object contained in the file, call it that: a raster image. If you're talking about your whole artwork, call it the design or the document. Don't call it "the image".
...its a single spot colour (I think)
That's self-contradictory. Nothing can be CMYK and at the same time a single spot color.
Here's a simple key to understanding color separation: Don't think in terms of "colors." Think entirely in terms of inks. In your immediate context, how many inks are going to be used to print with individual silkscreens?
By definition, a CMYK color is built up by overlaying a combination of up to four specific inks: Process Cyan, Process Magenta, Process Yellow, and Process Black. (Note the word "process" here, refering to "four-color process.")
By definition, a spot color is a Swatch (in Illustrator) which represents a single ink.
So "spot color" and "process color" are antithetical. "CMYK" is germane to process color, not spot color. Although process color can be done by silkscreen printing, spot color is more common, and I'm assuming that's what you are targeting.
So it's simple, when you think like this:
Ask yourself: How many inks are going to be allowed to print this design? (Two: a black ink and a red ink.)
Therefore, create that many (2) Swatches in Illustrator. Make sure they are defined as Spot Color Swatches. Use only those two Swatches in your entire design.
You can name those two Spot Color Swatches anyway you want. It doesn't matter. There is a common misconception that Spot Color Swatches must be named like (or even selected from) Swatches in the Pantone Swatch Library. Not so. Regardless of how you name them, each color separation is going to print to its own separation "plate" and the actual image on that "plate" (or film, or vellum) is going to be black. This is true in both process and spot color. In spot color work, each Spot Color Swatch--again, regardless of how you name it-- is going to be printed to its own "plate" and the image on that plate will be black. The name of the Spot Color Swatches, therefore, is nothing more than a convention by which to convey to the printing house what inks you intend to be used for each separation "plate." Obvously, it makes the most sense to name your Spot Color Swatches according to the names of the actual silkscreen inks that will be used (ex: "Nazdar Fire Red"), if you know them. If not, simply naming them "SpotRed" and "SpotBlack" will be fine.
Which brings me to a point of common confusion with which I think you are struggling: Exactly parallel to the matter of merely naming your Spot Color Swatches is the matter of merely coloring your Spot Color Swatches for on-screen display. There is a common misconception that Spot Color Swatches must be selected from some pre-existing Swatch Library (ex: Panone). Again, not so. So long as you define a Swatch as Spot Color, you can use any "color mixer" to specify any color you want for how it is displayed on-screen. You can color your Spot Color Swatch using either the RGB color sliders, or the CMYK sliders. Again, it does not matter one whit. Using the CMYK sliders to color your Spot Color Swatches does not make it "a CMYK color" (i.e.; a process color). So long as the Swatch is designated a Spot Color Swatch it's still defining a spot color (a single ink) and will print to only one separation "plate". Obviously, it makes the most sense to try to color your Spot Color Swatches to approximate how the actual corresponding ink will look in print. But the truth is, it doesn't matter. You could, for example, use CMYK sliders to color your Spot Color Swatch named "Nazdar Fire Red" so that it looks lime green on screen. If you did, the separation plate would still be labeled "Nazdar Fire Red", and it would still have a black image on it, and the color in the final printed result would simply be a matter of what physical ink the printer loaded his silkscreen with.
Again, to summarize that: Using CMYK sliders to color a Spot Color Swatch does not make it "a CMYK color" in terms of color separation. That is, it does not make it a process color. As long as the Swatch is defined as a Spot Color Swatch, it will print to only one color separation plate.
Finally, Layers: Don't worry at all about which Swatch is used on which Layer. You can have a thousand red fills and/or strokes, and a thousand black fills and/or strokes applied to a kazillion different objects, and those objects can be arranged in any stacking order on any number of Layers, or all on one Layer. It doesn't matter. If you've only defined two Spot Color Swatches, and you've only used those two Swatches in your design, then when you print the design to color separations, you will still only get two separations: one for SpotRed, one for SpotBlack (or whatever you named your Spot Color Swatches).
Printer is a Canon ix6500.
The question regarding your desktop printer is always: Is it a PostScript printer? That is, does it contain a (firmware) PostScript interpreter, or does its driver contain a (software) PostScript interpreter? If not, it can't print color separations. If this is your problem, there is a workaround, and a particularly popular one in screen printing, sign making, and other industries: You can "print" to a PDF "virtual printer" (i.e.; software which pretends to be a printer). If you have Acrobat (that's Acrobat, not Reader) installed, and if you are on Windows, you probably have a virtual printer named Adobe PDF installed. If so, you can select that as your "printer" and "print" color separations to it. If you've built your design correctly the resulting PDF will have one page for each ink. (The image on each page will be black.) You can then print those PDF pages to your non-PostScript printer. (This workflow is quite common in small screen printing shops.)
JET

Illustrator CS3: perfectly fine pdf gets destroyed when placing in Illustrator

Hi!
I am new to Illustrator, but I just dont get the problem. A perfectly looking pdf comes out looking all wrong when it is placed in Illustrator.
This is how the diagram looks in pdf. Perfectly scalable.
This is how it looks after beeing imported in Illustrator.
Everything else that was imported form the pdf looks fine. Only this diagramm gets destroyed!
Why does this happen?

How was the PDF created? Printed, Exported? Some other method?
If nothing else helps, you could do the following: it looks like the problems are only in drop shadows and text. You could delete both from the Power Point file, export, save or print the PDF. Then import into Illustrator and recreate shadows and text there.
I don't think you could transfer the complete graohic from PP to Illy as vector anyway. So rather get away with as much as you can and then complete it.

Illustrator CS3 printing to random printer under 10.5.4

Hello,
I recently upgraded to 10.5.4 and now, when I print from Adobe Illustrator CS3 (latest update), it prints to a random printer on my network. This doesn't happen EVERY time, but about every OTHER time. I select my printer (a B&W Xerox) and it prints fine. I then re-print to the same printer, but it goes to another printer on the network (a colour Xerox). This has been happening all day and I've made SURE I'm on the right printer.
I don't know if it's happening from other applications (as I'm only working in Illustrator and doing MANY prints from it right now)?
Has anyone else experience this?
I assume this is just another of the many bugs in CS3 apps as a result of 10.5.x ZERO QC this time around, IMHO.
Regards,
Kristin.

The dock!?? Strange, but makes sense. I'll give that a try -- thank you!
As for random printers... I was running the latest PPC 10.4.x about a month and a half ago with CS3 (13.x) and had occasional problems. (The software here is kept up to date in a timely way.) But since then, we've upgraded to Intel Macs now with 10.5.7, currently running CS 13.0.2, and we see the problem more & more often. I can't be sure if it's happening more because of updated software, or if more is being printed -- I probably go into the Print menu about 100 times a day so it's not easy to keep a mental tally, plus I never thought to jot it down. That and it's difficult to track all the variables... is the dock on... was the file originally created in CS2 or AI8... etc.
Anyway, thanks for your help & dock suggestion! If you or any others have any more ideas, I'll be stalking this forum thread, hoping Adobe (or Apple?) whips out some kind of patch or something!
(Since CS4 is out, would Adobe even bother with updates anymore? We can't upgrade to CS4 until dozens of our counterparts upgrade too, and their equipment isn't CS4-friendly!)

From PSD to Illustrator to PRINT READY PDF getting blurry

Hello Experts,
I got a problem about converting my illustrator file to print ready pdf's. Basically i did my design in Illustrator but some of the graphic elements in my design are in PSD format, i just imported it to illustrator using place command and even embedded it to the main illustrator file, I got not problem with the resolution 'coz i set it to 300dpi CYMK. But the problem occurs when i print it to PDF because those images from psd file i imported are getting blurry, no matter how i set the settings to its maximum i still got those result over and over again. If anyone got a solution to this problem it might a good help to anyone not only me who is experiencing this problem.
Thanks,
erick

Thanks Mylenium, i finally figured it out now how to tweak those blurry stuff. First i tried to set the bicubic downsampling to its maximum pixels per inch and secondly i set the bicubic downsampling off, both settings just works fine. Thanks again. This is a great help.

Illustrator CS3 printing problem

When I print something on illustrator there is always blocks which have a brighter colour on the work and it doesn't seem to be random. I have an inkjet printer, has anyone got any ideas?

Olithe,
To print (reasonably) correctly from Illy you should have a PostScript printer (driver, or at least an emulation of one). Some (older) versions simply refuse to print non PostScript.
You may Save As/Print to PDF and take it from there; You can see whether there are issues on screen.

Printer dialogue box hangs when printing from Illustrator cs3

OK... I'm not sure if this is Illustrator related or mac related, but it only happens from Illustrator. In our office we have an iMac (white,flat) running Tiger (OSX 10.4.11). Whenever we try to print from Illustrator CS3 the preint goes through to the printer immediately and prints, but the actual Illustrator spooling bar/printer dialogue box remains. The only way is to wait for about half an hour for the bar to finish or force quit the application and restart (even though it does not show as "not responding" in the Force Quit window.
Now I've tried reinstalling Illustrator. I've run disk warrior. Tried the fsck command on startup. our technical outsources tell us it might be a memory problem, but I'm not tsure as this only happens in Illustrator and no other programs.... any ideas?

I can vouch for the dock hiding solution solving the problem. It worked on three Intel Macs we were having problems with. Here are some links to articles about it:
http://techierambles.blogspot.com/2008/10/illustrator-cs3-printing-issue-status.html
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc419c4
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-87456.html

How can I set Firefox to print to PDF, the only otions I have are (1) My Canon printer, (2) Fax or (3) Microsoft XPS document writer. There is no option for PDF

A couple of weeks ago, from the file menu, in my print options was to print a web page to PDF, that facility is no longer there. does anyone know how can I set Firefox to print to PDF.
The only options I have are (1) My Canon printer, (2) Fax or (3) Microsoft XPS document writer. There is no option for PDF

Firefox generally displays the printers in Windows' Printers folder (Start orb > Devices and Printers). If it is missing one of the printers listed there, could you indicate which one it is, for example, Adobe Distiller, PrimoPDF, CutePDF Writer, etc.?
If you previously had an add-on which added print-to-PDF functionality just to Firefox, perhaps it got disabled. You could check here:
orange Firefox button ''or'' classic Tools menu > Add-ons > Extensions
Also, are you really running Firefox 8.0.1? That version from last November is no longer secure and has been superseded by Firefox 11. If you browse the web widely, you should update for your security.

Printing problems (PDF files-HP Color Laserjet 1518ni: return the printer?

Hi everyone, I recently switched platforms and became a Mac user and had to buy a new
printer because my old HP deskjet is not compatible with my computer. So, I bought an HP
Color Laser printer, supposedly Mac compatible, but every time I try to print a PDF file it only
prints the first page. And then stops printing. I spent hours with the HP customer service, reinstalled
the driver, changed configurations, but it still does the same thing. The customer service representative could not solve the problem. I was wondering if there is any one else who had a similar issue with printing? Is it Mac OS X 10.5.5 that causes the problem? I am about to return the laser printer; it would be so helpful if I got some feedback. If it is a printer issue, then, which printer would you folks recommend that is not too expensive but efficient (I use the printer a lot and need an efficient one) and a printing speed of around 12-20ppm that actually does work with the Mac?
Thanks in advance!
Asli

Asli Igsiz wrote:
Thank you for calling my attention to the Adobe issue. I did try and print a PDF file with Preview and it worked! How was the issue solved with Adobe 7? Maybe Adobe pro7 also similar bug issues; is it to Adobe that I should be reporting this or to Apple?
Thanks again.
It's definitely an Adobe problem. The only solution I ever saw was either to print from Preview or to use later versions of Adobe Reader 8 or any version of Reader 9. I asked Adobe support what the problem was. I never got a reply.
You should know that Preview (and any other application which reads PDFs using Apple's PDF engine) has a problem with displaying Times Roman Italic, and only Times Roman Italic when launched under OS X 10.5.5. All other fonts appear to work normally; at least I haven't found one which has a problem, including other Times Roman font faces, including Times Roman Bold Italic. Preview seems to print properly, but the on-screen display has problems. The same files display properly with apps which don't use Apple's PDF engine, and also with apps which use Apple's PDF engine under versions of the OS earlier than 10.5.5, going back to at least 9.2.1. Apple is aware of the problem.
There seems to be at least two problems with the main PDF engines for OS X, Apple's and Adobe's.

Printing a PDF & computer locks up

When I print a word doc use "Adobe PDF" as my printer, my computer locks up. I have to use ctrl alt del, open task manager & close Word. Before a Windows update, I could print to an Adobe PDF & the file would be saved to the folder of my choice. Are there any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

Workaround:
Since you have the ability to "print to PDF" I can only assume that you're using Acrobat and NOT Reader to do so, because Reader doesn't have that capability.
Save the doc file with Word, and open Acrobat. Click File>Create>PDF from file and select the doc to create it from.
That's a pain, I know, but it beats a locked up PC.

Snow Leopard prints pdf in other colors than the Illustrator CS3 design

2 days ago I installed Snow Leopard. Yesterday I tried to print an Adobe Illustrator CS3 document that I made into a PDF. My logo which is gradient aqua and yellow prints grey, black and red. It appears fine on the screen and prints fine as an AI document. I emailed the document to my husband as a PDF and he also just installed Snow Leopard. The email pdf shows the proper colors but it prints in the same weird grey, black, red for him as well. All our old documents from years back which have my logo print in this wrong color combo. I spoke to Apple today and I printed a random Safari photo doc ( a zedonk, zebra donkey, check her out)! saved as a PDF in the proper color combo. We installed a graphics update for Illustrator but no resolution. It appears the problem might be the pdf file sent through Snow Leopard can't read the colors. Help!

Try printing the PDF with Adobe Reader
<http://get.adobe.com/reader/?promoid=BUIGO>

I can't print to PDF from Illustrator CS3

I have been using CS3 for a while now, but the last two jobs I have attempted to print to PDF with have failed. I get the message, "Can't Print the Illustration" and then the following error message:
%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[Page: 1]%%
%%[ Error: invalidrestore; OffendingCommand: restore ]%%
Stack:
-save-
%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
Can anyone PLEASE HELP!!!

There's either an offending object or a corrupt font.
You can try these:
1. first make a copy of the file.
2. Select All/Convert text to outlines and make PDF. Does that work?
3. If not, start a new file. Copy and paste each item individually to the new file and try to make a pdf each time. You will soon work out the offending item.

Illustrator cs3 won't print to pdf

i'm running cs3 on 64-bit vista. i can't get file to print to pdf. as suggested on other forums; I tried changing default printer to pdf, xps doc writer and my regular canon printer. I've even tried disabling automatic spooling but then all my printers disappear. does anybody have any suggestions/ solutions to this problem?
thanks in advance
j

What version of Acrobat? Only Acrobat 9 is 64bit enabled and will provide this feature.
Mylenium

Problem Saving PDF with Opacity Masks in Illustrator CS3

I'm having trouble exporting an Illlustrator CS3 file to PDF. I have two layers in the the .ai file that have opacity masks applied. When I save the file as a PDF, the two layers with opacity masks seem to disappear (or they are flattened down to white/100% transparency.) They do not show on screen nor when printing. I've tried opening the saved PDF in Illustrator to investigate, and the layers are still there, but with no opacity mask. Where am I going wrong? I've tried a new file with a simple shape and a simple opacity mask, and it exports fine to PDF. So something is wrong with my file set up, but I can't pinpoint what! I have also tried exporting to various versions of PDF, and nothing works. Help!
Screen cap from Illustrator:
Screen cap of PDF:
Correct (Illustrator) with subtle starburst effect:
Wrong (Acrobat PDf), no starburst!
Thanks for looking!

Not sure what's going on in your file, but it's definately having a problem with the Steaks layer. Trying to release the clipping mask and ungrouping all the layers is having a problem so it might have something to do with the way the streaks layer was built.
Using your file I replaced the streaks layer and put a starburst that's clipped to the icon shape. I've attached two files. One is for Illustrator CC so you can retain the gradient fill on the stroke which is only available in newer versions of Illustrator. The other has the starburst I created expanded so that you can open the file and retain the startburst look.
CC
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37256756/Go-IconCC.ai
CS3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37256756/Go-IconCS3.ai

Illustrator CS3 printing to pdf as grayscale only

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for