I have a character sheet I've put together for but I've had some weird printing issues.

When I'm in Photoshop 7.01 working on the document I print off drafts for testing. The gradients in the background are clearly visible on screen and when printed directly from Photoshop.

Now if I export a PDF or PCX and print from Acrobat 9.0 or ACDsee respectively the gradients (and everything else) seems more washed out. I've tried all kinds of printer settings in the software and printer drivers. Seems to me if it was a problem with the printer settings or driver config it would also print funny from directly from Photoshop.

Looking at any of the files, on screen, they look fine.

Please advise.

PSD File: http://microlited20.googlegroups.com/we ... 4X6-2IalYA

PDF File: http://microlited20.googlegroups.com/we ... 4X6-2IalYA

PCX File: http://microlited20.googlegroups.com/we ... 4X6-2IalYA

Thanks for the tips on the Color Mode. You're right; I was working in RGB and thus printing from RGB translated to CMYK... hopefully that's where it's getting lost in translation.

I tried switching Color Mode to Greyscale in Photoshop, exported a PDF, and it printed the same.

I'll try the CMYK Color Mode and let you know how that turns out.

Thanks!

I would have hoped that a grayscale file would have helped. It was going to be my next suggestion.
So it could be something else making the problems although CMYK will give you a richer gray colour...

I do hope that it works for you.

Set Color Mode to CMYK and exported another PDF. Printed it out from Acrobate Reader 9 and it looked a little better but the gradients are still too light; washed out.

Opened that very same PDF in Photoshop 7.0.1 and it looks perfect; just like I want it.

Seems to me the big difference is printing from Photoshop vs Acrobat Reader vs ACDSee.



chironex: The problem isn't the interpritation from RGB to CMYK. If I print from Photoshop it looks just the way I want (yes, the gray colors are a little different due to the way a monitor mixes Red, Green, and Blue to make the color vs how a printer uses Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black to mix colors but it's very very close as far as color goes (I'm actually printing on a black/white laser jet)) The poblem is if I print from Photoshop the image looks fine but if I print from anything else the gradients are too feint / light / washed out.

You may be on to something with color profiles. Photoshop could be assigning the working document color profile to the PDF even though it has it's own embedded color profile. I haven't checked the settings to see if it's automatically over riding embedded color profiles for the working profile or not.