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Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)

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  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. Introducing the new Acrobat experience
    3. What's new in Acrobat
    4. Keyboard shortcuts
    5. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. PDFs converted to web pages
    12. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    13. PDF articles
    14. Geospatial PDFs
    15. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    16. Change the default font for adding text
    17. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to PPTX
    4. Convert PDF to XLSX or XML
    5. Convert PDF to JPG
    6. Convert PDF to PNG
    7. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    8. File format options for PDF export
    9. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. Create a web form
    5. Request e-signatures in bulk
    6. Collect online payments
    7. Brand your account
    8. About certificate signatures
    9. Certificate-based signatures
    10. Validating digital signatures
    11. Adobe Approved Trust List
    12. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
    7. Cloud-based auto-tagging
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

Before you begin

We're rolling out a new, more intuitive product experience. If the screen shown here doesn’t match your product interface, select help for your current experience.

In the new experience, the tools appear on the left side of the screen.

Preview how colors overprint (Acrobat Pro)

Overprint preview provides an onscreen simulation that approximates blending and overprinting in the color-separated output. Overprinting effects can also be simulated when you output to a composite printing device. Both of these methods are useful for proofing color-separated documents.

artwork onscreen (left) and printed artwork (right)
Compare appearance of artwork onscreen (left) with printed artwork (right).

Managing color (Acrobat Pro)

When you print a color-managed RGB or CMYK document, you can specify additional color management options to keep color consistent in the output. For example, suppose the document contains a profile tailored for prepress output, but you want to proof the colors on a desktop printer. In the Color Management panel of the Advanced Print settings dialog box, you can temporarily convert the document’s colors to the color space of the desktop printer—the printer profile is used instead of the current document profile when printing. In addition, you can send color data as RGB values to printers using various RGB profiles.

About composite printing (Acrobat Pro)

When you print a color PDF, all of the colors used in the file print on one plate. This process is called composite printing. The options available in the Output panel of the Advanced Print Setup dialog box depend on the selected printer.

Artwork that will be commercially reproduced and that contains more than a single color must be printed on separate master plates, one for each color. This process is called color separation. If you’re creating color separations, you can print a color or grayscale composite proof to check your work.

Consider the following issues when printing composites:

  • Any overprinting options that you select print correctly only on a printer that supports overprinting. Since most desktop printers don’t support overprinting, you can simulate the effects of overprinting by selecting Simulate Overprinting in the Output panel of the Advanced Print Setup dialog box. Be aware that selecting Simulate Overprinting converts spot colors to process colors for printing. If you intend to use a file for final output, do not select this option.

  • When you print to a black-and-white printer, a grayscale composite version of the pages is produced (unless you select Print Color As Black in the main Print dialog box; this option prints all nonwhite color as black). If the document contains color, visually correct grays are used to simulate that color. For example, the gray that simulates a 20% tint of yellow is lighter than a 20% tint of black, since yellow is visually lighter than black.

Note:

Remember that, like monitors, color printers vary greatly in color reproduction quality; thus, proofs from your service provider are the best way to verify how the finished piece will look.

  1. Choose the hamburger   Menu (Windows), or the File menu (macOS) > Print.

  2. Specify page handling options.
  3. Choose Document And Stamps from the Comments And Forms menu to print all visible content.
  4. Click Advanced, and select Output on the left side of the dialog box.
  5. Choose a composite option from the Color menu.
  6. Specify other color and output settings, and click OK.
  7. If the document contains objects with transparency settings, select an option from the Transparency Flattening Preset menu.
  8. (PostScript printing only) In the PostScript Options panel, specify options.

About separations (Acrobat Pro)

To produce high-quality separations, it helps to be familiar with the basics of printing, including line screens, resolution, process colors, and spot colors.

If you are using a print service provider to produce separations, you’ll want to work closely with its experts before beginning each job and during the process.

To reproduce color and continuous-tone images, printers usually separate artwork into four plates—one plate for each of the cyan (C), yellow (Y), magenta (M), and black (K) portions of the image. When inked with the appropriate color and printed in register with one another, these colors combine to reproduce the original artwork. The process of dividing the image into two or more colors is called color separating, and the films from which the plates are created are called the separations.

Composite (left) and separations (right)
Composite (left) and separations (right)

Acrobat supports host-based separations and in-RIP separations. The main difference between them is where the separations are created—at the host computer (the system using Acrobat and the printer driver) or at the output device’s RIP.

For host-based separations, Acrobat creates PostScript information for each of the separations required for the document and sends that information to the output device. For in-RIP separations, the work of separating a file is performed by the RIP. This method often takes less time than creating host-based separations, but it requires a PostScript 3 output device with in-RIP separation capability. To produce in-RIP separations, you need a PPD file that supports in-RIP separations, and any PostScript 3 output device or a PostScript Level 2 device whose RIP supports in-RIP separations.

Prepare to print separations

Before you print separations, do the following:

Note:

If you use a print service provider to produce separations, you’ll want to work closely with its experts before beginning each job and throughout the process.

  1. Choose the hamburger   Menu (Windows), or the File menu (macOS) > Print, and choose a printer.

  2. Choose an option from the Comments and Forms menu.
  3. Choose print range and page handling options.
  4. Click Advanced.
  5. If you created a custom printer settings file with the appropriate separation settings, choose it from the Settings menu at the top of the Advanced Print Setup dialog box.
  6. Select Output on the left, and choose an option from the Color menu:

    • Choose Separations if the PPD doesn’t support in-RIP separations.

    • Choose In-RIP Separations if the PPD supports in-RIP separations. Trapping options appear. From the Trapping menu, choose Adobe In-RIP or Off. If you choose Adobe In-RIP, click Trap Presets and select a preset. Click OK.

  7. Specify settings for halftone screen frequency and the angle at which the selected ink’s halftone screen is rotated.
  8. If the document contains objects with transparency settings, select an option from the Transparency Flattening Preset menu.
  9. Under Ink Manager, deselect any color you don’t want to separate.

    The four process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) always appear at the top of the color plate list, followed by spot colors in alphabetical order.

  10. Click the Ink Manager button to modify ink settings for color separations.
  11. Click Marks And Bleeds on the left, and select All Marks.
  12. Click PostScript Options on the left, and select settings as needed. Click OK to close the dialog box, and then click OK again to print the separations.

Additional resources

For more information on high-end PDF printing, see:

 

Declare the presence of trapping information (Acrobat Pro)

If you are sending your PDF files to a print service provider, you can use the Document Properties dialog box to specify whether a PDF contains trapping information. This detail can help prevent the service provider from adding potentially conflicting trapping commands to the file. Trapping information can either be imported with other PostScript information from the authoring application, or it can be created in Acrobat using trapping presets supported by Adobe In-RIP Trapping.

  1. Open the PDF file, and choose File > Properties.
  2. Click the Advanced tab.
  3. Choose an option from the Trapped menu, and click OK.

    Yes

    The file contains trapping information.

    No

    The file doesn’t contain trapping information.

    Unknown

    You don’t know whether the file contains trapping information.

Saving separations as PostScript (Acrobat Pro)

Depending on the prepress software available, a service provider may be able to perform such prepress activities as trapping, imposition, separating, and OPI replacement at the output device’s RIP. Therefore, your service provider may prefer to receive a composite PostScript file of the document optimized for in-RIP separations rather than a preseparated PostScript file.

Saving the file as PostScript preserves the separation settings, the PPD information, and any color conversions you have specified in the Advanced Print Setup dialog box.

For best results when generating PostScript for reuse in a print production workflow, use the Save As command rather than the Print To File option available in the Print dialog box.

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