Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

[templar]

Hi Everyone,


I am having some issues printing some of the earlier GURPS PDFS. I am trying to get several of them done at a POD printer but when being printed in Grayscale the text comes out very light. After opening the files in Acrobat, I noticed that the text isn't solid black, it has % of all 4 CMYK colors (Later PDFS do not exhibit this). Viewing the files with Output Preview, and removing the CMY Plates show about what the image will print like on my printer at home (set to grayscale, black only), or on a POD press. I was wondering if anyone else had similar issues, and what they did to correct it for print?

As a note; here are some of the files I have been having issues with
Dungeon Fantasy 5
Lands out of Time (I needed to embed the fonts in that one as well)
Power Ups 1-2

[PK]

I moved this to the e23 forum, where it's more likely to be seen by the e23 and support staff.

Note that we do prefer technical issues to be emailed to e23@sjgames.com.

[templar]

Originally Posted by PK

I moved this to the e23 forum, where it's more likely to be seen by the e23 and support staff.

Note that we do prefer technical issues to be emailed to e23@sjgames.com.

I'm sorry. It was more of a shout out as I know other people have printed their PDFs before and I suspected a solution was already found.

Also some of my older PDFs have been updated (DF1-4), but others alas have not. I was trying to get them to the printer this weekend so any fix would be most appreciated ;-)

[SCAR]

I've got printed copies of DF5, PU1 & PU2, done on a standard laser printer and they all seen just fine. Certainly DF5 looks to be as dark as DF1 to DF4.

[ericbsmith]

In my Dungeon Fantasy Omnibus I had printed at Lulu I had no issues with DF5. I don't see any difference between DF5 and the other DF books.

[templar]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

In my Dungeon Fantasy Omnibus I had printed at Lulu I had no issues with DF5. I don't see any difference between DF5 and the other DF books.

I can post images from my copy. It also happens when I print it on my home computer as well. And again it only happens on the older PDFs. I even downloaded the most recent versions of all of the PDFs, it seems that all of the non-updated ones share this issue.

The only difference I can see between the earlier and the later ones is the text not being pure black.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by SCAR

I've got printed copies of DF5, PU1 & PU2, done on a standard laser printer and they all seen just fine. Certainly DF5 looks to be as dark as DF1 to DF4.

I'm pretty sure the OP's problem is with scanned PDFs, from the 3rd Edition era. At least I know that the original PDF of GURPs China was a scan, with no OCR, and so was a huge file and may well have been difficult to print.

edit: Okay, apparently it's very recent PDFs, which does sound very strange.

[templar]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'm pretty sure the OP's problem is with scanned PDFs, from the 3rd Edition era. At least I know that the original PDF of GURPs China was a scan, with no OCR, and so was a huge file and may well have been difficult to print.

edit: Okay, apparently it's very recent PDFs, which does sound very strange.

Just to clarify, it's the earlier 4th edition PDFs before mid 2008. To test my problem, open one of those (for example DF5) in Adobe Acrobat and go to print Production>Output Preview and scroll over text. You will see that the text is made up of a variety of CMY colors (Cyan/Magenta/Yellow), in addition to the standard Black. Compare that to a newer PDF and you will see that the newer ones are 100% Black (or K). Some older PDFs have been corrected. I re-downloaded the original DF 1-4 (black cover ones), and they are fine, but the earlier ones are not. This means that all of the DF titles but 5 should print fine, if your are downloading the most recent copies from E23.

Some-but not all printers will have problems outputting this accurately. For example, when I set my printer to print black-only the text comes out as a faded gray. My printer is an 8600 Officejet Pro.

I am guessing that at some point SJG either upgraded their software, or changed layout designers, who changed the master template because every newer PDF prints fine.

As for Lulu, Eric's copies came out fine, but mine came out faded. Mine were created at a printer in Connecticut (with the exception of my softcover book that was printed in Rochester NY). Lulu subcontracts their jobs out to PODs across the country so there can be a lot of variety in quality depending on where it was printed.