How to Set up Print As Image Registry Default.

Question

This is a response to the archived post at:
martin hrubes, "How to customize printing by registry - print as image" #, 6 Nov 2007 2:28 am
I was trying to find out how to set the "Print As Image" advanced setting to be enabled by default. Here is what I discovered through trial and error.
1. The setting is stored per user and per printer. (i.e. it has to be set for each printer for each user.)
2. The registry setting is stored in the following key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\8.0\General\cPrintAsImage]
3. In this key, each printer has a separate binary value named s0, s1, s2, etc. The number increments by 1 for each printer added. If you open the value data, you will see it contains the name of the printer encoded in hex. (ex. hex coded for \\Server\Printer1)
My recomendation is to open a pdf file in reader, go to File -> Print ->Select Desired Printer -> Click "Advanced" Options -> Enable "Print As Image" -> Click OK - Click OK again. Repeat for each printer you want to
change.
**NOTE** If you don't click OK both times (i.e. cancel the print dialog), the change will not be saved. You have to actually print something to the printer. If you don't want to print something, make sure the printer is offline or not accessible (unplug the network, usb, parallel, serial cable) first. Once the printer has been changed, it will keep the setting until to you change it.
After you have set-up all of the desired printers, open RegEdit and navigate to the above key. Right click on it, and export it. Note the file name and location you are saving to. Close RegEdit. "Edit" (Right Click) the file just exported ("Opening" the file will just import it back into the registry.). Once opened, highlight and copy the registry key and all of the registry values. Paste the key and values at the end of the file. In one of the keys change "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\" to "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\". Save and exit the file.
When imported this file will enable the "Print As Image" setting for the currently logged in user plus add the setting to the default users profile so any new users to the machine will have it enabled by default also. However, it will not add it to any other user profiles that already exist on the computer. To do this, either use a login script for domain computers or add the reg file to the "All Users Startup" folder.
It would be nice to have a setting in the deployment custimazation wizard to handle this, but for now we're stuck with enabling it the hard way.

Answer 1

Yes Spyla, please see this link http://www.404techsupport.com/2008/09/09/make-adobe-reader-and-adobe-acrobat-use-print-as- image-setting-by-default-2/comment-page-1/#comment-3112.
Allan, many thanks for your post, it certainly helped point me in the right direction.  what I found though is that you do not need to tick the print as image box at any point during the setting up of this.  All you need to do is add the registry key for whichever version of Adobe you are using for this to work.  So basically. what you are saying for each instance of Adobe is regardless of whether or not the print as image is selected, the registry key is saying always print as image for the printer as specified by the hex code. I have found that for network printers, you have to include the full path i.e. \\<servername>\<printername> e.g \\testserver\printer1 and convert all of that to hex. With later versions (9 up over), they have allowed for the string name of the printer so that it is just plain text which also makes life easier.
What I do is apply this registry entry via Group Policy on a per room basis so that we only ever need to add one printer to the list.  you could do this globally by adding all printers sequentially using s0, s1, s2 or t0, t1, t2 etc depending on which version you are using.  The screenshot shows the registry key for 1 printer for Adobe Reader 8.
The value data is the binary code for the actual full printer name
This works a treat.
Hope this helps
Thanks