Indesign Printing problems...

[Sdashiki]

Im stumped with this one. (see examples below)

Doesnt matter what file, doesnt matter from what computer, if I print certain things from InDesign CS3, I get some strange errors.

It looks to me like something to do with overlapping strokes and fills.

Ive tried exporting as a .pdf, print still has same exact problems.

This only occurs with our Color Laserjet, the BW laserjet is fine.

Only way to work it is to export as a 300ppi .jpg and print that. But, cmon, what kind of workaround is that!?

(PDF on left, print scan on right)



notice the white dot?



and the blocks of missing color?


What is this!?

 

[Blue Velvet]

Sounds like a printing problem, rather than specifically an InDesign problem.

Just to narrow down things further, have you tried opening your PDF in Illustrator and printing it from there? And when in Illustrator, if you convert the type to outlines, does it do the same thing?

Are you using the correct PPD file in the Print dialogue box whether in Acrobat or InDesign? Has the printer been correctly set-up to use the correct drivers?

Another thing: Those fonts; truetype, opentype or postscript? Does it do the same with a different font?

 

[Sdashiki]

The font there is "Tahoma".

Opening the PDF in AI gives me this:

The font Tahoma-Bold-SC700 is missing. Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.

Dont have any idea what that SC700 thing is...

The PPD box within AI/ID print dialog is greyed out.

Printing from AI, same errors.

I never had this problem until just one day it started happening. No upgrades, no new nothing, just bam one day. If I.T. did something in the dept, they never told us and are being a little slack on helping us figure this problem out.

It doesnt seem to just happen with fonts, on another project I had a drop shadow on about 30 objects. Indd and PDF looked fine. But printing it caused blocks of some shadows to be missing.

 

[alicat]

Firstly fix the font issue:

This does happen to me from time to time, so it may only be a temp fix, but it will get the job done for you.

Spotlight the font name, and install/add it back into the Font Book. If you have multiple users make sure you have it activated under the collection on your left. Double check you have it active for the PDF Collection on the left of the font book.

Problems with fills and printing.
I have come across a similar thing, especially if I have an eps file from another program like illustrator or a cad program.
Again this is a temp fix, and if anyone knows a better way please let me know.
On am still on ID CS so my directions might be a little wrong, but this has worked on the ID CS3 in our labs. Export the document as a pdf
Choose your preset preference then under compression make sure you have the box compress text and line art selected.

This should help you out 99/100 with fill issues.

Best of luck, such a moo to have something good on screen and having problems getting it out on paper.
I have had in the past problems with Pagemaker (oh the nostalgia) and Indesign when you print directly, so that I made the decision to always save as a pdf to print.

As mentioned by Blue Velvet, check the PPD on the printer. . BW might have PS and the colour one not. Had terrible problems with one job, when our machine would print drafts sweetly, and the clients own printer had major issues, had the boss spewing and me pulling my hair out until we found out that their machine was so old and not correctly setup.