Printing very light compared to Acrobat Reader

[awayman]

Hi,

It was brought to my attention today that when I print blue prints (we are a manufacturing shop) from XChange-Viewer they are not near as dark and crisp as when our Engineering department prints them from Adobe Acrobat.
So the ones that I print are much harder to read than Adobe's print outs.
I have printed the same document from my computer (Windows XP) to the same printer (HP LaserJet 8150 with a PCL driver) using Acrobat Reader v 8.1 and XChange Viewer 2.0 Build 57 and indeed confirm their findings. I made sure that XChange Viewer was printing at 600 DPI for images and Gradiant Fills and didn't notice any difference.
Any ideas what I could do? The shop is revolting against ITs decision to use XChange Viewer because the print outs are not as nice and I want to pacify them because XChange Viewer is WAY nicer than Acrobat for what we do in our business.

Thanks!

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi awayman,

do you have a sample we can see? Please be sure to zip up any files posted here or the forum software will strip it from your post.

[awayman]

Here is a sample; sorry to take so long. I scanned in color the two different pages and then copied certain parts from it to show you the difference, as I can't post the complete file here because of confidentiality concerns.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

thanks for that awayman,

this certainly does illustrate the difference in the printing quality. We are going to need to look at the PDF however. Is it possible for you to send us a PDF that displays this issue but that is not confidential? Perhaps a dummy blueprint or similar? Alternatively if you want to send it by email to support@pdf-xchange.com we will honour the confidentiality of the document.

Also know that we are working on changes to how our Viewer prints to PCL and these will be available in PDF-X Viewer 2011 scheduled for release early in the new year.

hth

[awayman]

Thank you. I just emailed a file to you. Let us know what you think.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Thanks awayman,

got the file. It prints beautifully here on both PCL and non PCL printers. I'll ask the team to look into it. I suspect it relates to the drivers for your HP 8150 and how our Viewer is interacting with it.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

hi Alan,

a Support Request Ticket has been raised to track the investigation of this. It is for internal use only and a reference to RT#611: Printing very light compared to Acrobat Reader in any correspondence will expedite an answer. We are investigating this matter. Would you like to be notified of updates here on the forum or by email?

regards

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi Alan,

the issue here has been identified and will be fixed in the new version of the Viewer due for release early in the new year.

hth

[awayman]

Hi,

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I have finally been able to take some time to run a few tests and it is indeed the way XChange prints to PCL Drivers. I was using the PCL 5e driver and found that HP had a PCL 6 driver available, so I tried it with no improvement. But after installing the PS driver it printed beautifully, but the PCL driver was much more user friendly. Anyway, the PS driver will hold us over until version 3

Thanks for your careful attention to this matter!

[awayman]

Ok, one more question. Maybe you will want me to start a new thread, but the question stems from the PCL driver support

Your print dialog has a preview window on the right side which I love, and it shows the dimensions of the paper and how it will look, the pages, etc. Anyway, my question is if it is able to notice when I go and change the paper size in the properties of the printer to 11x17, is there a way we can select the paper size and maybe even type right from your printer dialog? Then I wouldn't care so much about the PCL driver, because it is easier to change the paper size in the PCL driver than in the PS driver.

Thanks!

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi awayman,

you should be able to set the paper size by hitting the Properties button.

[awayman]

Right, which is how I do it, but the PS driver for our printer makes me go through several clicks after clicking "properties" to get it done, where I dream of having it accessible right from your printer dialog (read: only 2 clicks...)

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

HI Alan,

I can certainly put it to the team. One potential issue I see is the 'real estate' on the dialogue box is already at a premium, also as you pointed out the different drivers will have different options in here and that might be difficult to accommodate.

Regardless - I'll put the idea to the dev team.

regards