Print color PDF on monochrome laser?

PDFs print color in greyscale automatically when sent to a monochromatic print device or driver. because ANY color print job sent to ANY (decent) laser printer will get handled as shades of grey automatically... BY THE PRINTER DRIVER, NOT THE APP SENDING THE PRINT JOB.

Also the PRINT setting dialog FOR YOUR PRINTER, NOT the PDF reader are where you should be looking.

So, you either have a 100% s*it printer, or the drivers for it are s*it.

Don't blame the reader, blame the dope doing the reading.

Yeah, there must be thousands of dopes just like you per million computer literate folks.

Try printing it to a printer that is at least a few step above bottom-of-the-line.

I don't want it grayscale but everything in full black. Grayscale isn't easy to read when too light.

So why does PDFCreator have the monochrome switch then? And Cadsoft Eagle. And DesignCAD. And ...

Tried it on several brands including HP and I don't think Hewlett-Packard lacks experience in that domain.

Lemme see... you're the cheapskate who swears by Brother, are you not ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

Yep. Other than a (major) hiccup when I moved it one office down the hallway it was good to me. Blazingly fast print jobs, a sheet feeder that gets used a lot and never jammed in years, what more can I want? For under 400 bucks?

But the same Acrobat Reader problems happened with HP, Xerox and Lexmark. So ...

Funny, I get grayscale here on my hp LaserJet P2015dn.

Of course I can f... it up if I check the box, "Print Color as Black" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Sure, I can also get grayscale. But I'd like my schematics in black and white, not all shades of gray where you have to squint to be able to see what used to be light green. Any decent CAD program has a switch that does exactly that.

Where is that box? Got a HP5L here and in the advanced printing options there ain't nothin'.

You're one of those insult comedians, without being funny.

John

I misread your intent. I thought your problem was getting black in colored areas, instead of grayscale??

For schematics I use PSpice (MicroSim original) Schematics. It has a switch to "Print in Monochrome", though I don't need it, I've set all colors to black... I'm to old to like different colors for devices and wires... schematics should be black and white, on-screen AND off ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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Yep, same here. Sometimes I wonder whether SW writers at Adobe and other places actually try out their own products. A pdf document with fine lines in black, green and red is unintelligible when coming out of a regular B/W laser. Well, at least the prints were useful to re-start the wood stove. Which is still cranking, and here it is the end of April. AGW, yeah right, ROFL.

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It is current 86°F here, I think it topped out at around 91°F. Gorgeously pleasant day!

...Jim Thompson

PDF-XChange Pro or Standard will do that. Like PDFCreator, it installs as a printer. Unlike PDFCreator (and also unlike many non-Adobe pdf printers), it's not Ghostscript-based and so may play nicer when printing from Acrobat than others do.

None of the pdf printers I've tried is perfect -- web pages seem to make all of them crazy sometimes -- but this one is pretty well supported and has an active forum.

Thanks, Rich. $56 seems like a fair price. As long as the trial version lets me print so I can see that it does the job.

Acrobat Reader _used_ to do that; I know because I distinctly remember someone giving me a schematic with _yellow_ lines on it; I was able to tell Acrobat Reader to print anything with a hint of color to it as black.

I have no idea if that's dropped off of Adobe's radar screen, but perhaps one more trip through all the options may be a good idea...

This is one reason I continue to use V6 of Adobe Acrobat Professional which does have a 'print colour as black' option. I'd suspect although can't confirm that V6 of Acrobat Reader also has this option. I know V9 certainly doesn't!

All the old versions of reader are available at:

Joerg Inscribed thus:

Hi Joerg, I don't know if it helps... I have a Samsung monochrome laser printer and under Linux I have a check box "Print in Grayscale". If I uncheck that box I get just black print.

I loved the HP inketjet I used to have, was sparing on ink, great scanner and fast. It croaked after 2.5 years.

We now have another one, and her new name is Carly. Carley sucks ink, defaults to burn color ink for b/w documents, and you have to tick the select black box every time you print, because her driver reverts its status periodically to color even though you have it locked to black in the windoze printers menu.

Dont get me started on Adobe, the free replacements are getting better then their latest offering. All 80 megabytes of download of it.

I too, have fuzzy cad problems unless I use the CMY ink.

So Joerg, you are not alone.

Steve

If you're running a PostScript printer, there is an option in the Windows printer driver to print colour as black, which does exactly what the OP wants. You can also scale & mirror as well.

Many times I get a schematic (from this group or A.B.S.E) that is JPEG or GIF or PNG.

First order of business is to process it thru Paint Shop Pro, change to 2-bit, enhance the contrast, then "print" as a PDF.

...Jim Thompson

Unfortunately HP and all the others don't have that :-(