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Old 11-15-2013, 02:07 AM   #11
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen View Post
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.

Last edited by templar; 11-15-2013 at 02:10 AM. Reason: typo
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Old 11-15-2013, 12:43 PM   #12
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

FWIW...

I just did a test printing with my copy of DF5.


File created by QuarkXPress 7.31
and Acrobat Distiller 6.0.1 for Macintosh

File created 2008-Nov-25 21:07:43

File modified 2008-Nov-26 08:05:32


I used Foxit Reader 6.1.1.1013 to print p5 in greyscale and color. The main text came out a little rough but dark with no variation between greyscale and color. The color text came out light grey in greyscale and light orange in color. Both were hard to read. The roughness of the text can be attributed to my printer defaulting to "fast normal" as an ink-saving measure.


On a whim, I printed p5 again, but instead of telling Foxit Reader to print in greyscale, I bypassed Foxit Reader and told my printer to print in greyscale. I further told it to print using black ink only, and I set it to print at "normal" instead of "fast normal." This time, I got the "greyed out" effect.


I'm guessing that professional print services use printer settings on print runs rather than "whatever software we're using to open the document" settings so this is probably a problem that needs to be fixed in the document.

And I don't doubt that whatever the problem is, if it is within SJG's power to resolve it, it will eventually be resolved because SJG is just that good.

I have extremely high confidence in SJG's customer service.
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Old 11-15-2013, 01:27 PM   #13
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

Okay; three things:

1) Since we haven't had direct evidence of this quirk, we're fumbling in the dark a smidge at trying to fix it. templar, can you (or anyone else who can directly attest to this bug) log into your e23 library and download just Power-Ups 2: Perks? (That's the only one we've fixed so far.) Please report back if that's resolved the issue; if it has, we'll get to work on fixing the others you had an issue with, except...

2) ... we don't have all the files readily available. (Some of those layout projects predate Nikki and me, so we don't have them handy.) That doesn't mean we can't patch those, but it'll take some time for us to track down files in Austin.

3) templar, the issue we think we addressed in Power-Ups 2 doesn't seem to exist in Power-Ups 1. Can you confirm that you're still having the issue with that file, and that you're downloaded the most recent version (with a color cover and B&W interiors)?
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Old 11-15-2013, 06:39 PM   #14
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

Hey Steven,

Yes, PU2 is fine, although the blue Prerequisite text max cause some issues when printed. PU1 is fine as well. My apologies, I did not download the revised file. Whoever did the black cover book versions cleaned up all the text. This includes DF1-4.



I want to thank you so much for looking into this!

Last edited by templar; 11-15-2013 at 07:13 PM. Reason: adding ns...
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Old 11-16-2013, 01:02 PM   #15
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

Thought I'd drop in and mention that I got my latest Lulu order, and I did notice this problem with the text in GURPS Action 1 & 2 (but not 3). The text is definitely a lot lighter than other PDFs, though it's not like it's unreadable. The first two volumes, notably, also use color interior for borders and boxes, while Action 3 is purely black & white.
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Old 11-18-2013, 08:47 AM   #16
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

Just as an update (for those watching from the sidelines)... there are actually two different issues here.

First, there's the issue that some PDFs were exported with color that -- instead of being 100% black -- are some amalgam of color inks. It seems some printers -- especially in the POD world -- have an issue with that. This is something somewhat straightforward for Nikki and I to fix here.

The other issue that -- at some point a few years ago -- we switched from color interiors on e23 to black-and-white. (This is because we weren't really using color, for the most part.) That's not something we can fix easily; it requires more approval from the Powers That Be, since it's changing the fundamental nature of the document. There's not much we can do at this point about changing those documents (outside of ensuring their text is 100% black, per above), so places were color is used (mostly in examples) might still be a bit more problematic.

In other words, the first issue is mostly a "bug" we can fix; the second is a "feature" that requires more work to untangle what might need doing.
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Old 11-18-2013, 12:24 PM   #17
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

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Originally Posted by Steven Marsh View Post
The other issue that -- at some point a few years ago -- we switched from color interiors on e23 to black-and-white. (This is because we weren't really using color, for the most part.) That's not something we can fix easily; it requires more approval from the Powers That Be, since it's changing the fundamental nature of the document. There's not much we can do at this point about changing those documents (outside of ensuring their text is 100% black, per above), so places were color is used (mostly in examples) might still be a bit more problematic.
Please note that the color interiors are not really causing a major issue, at least for me. The major link is that the use of color interiors dates back to the same timeframe as the color text, so if a PDF has color interiors it most likely has color text as well.

The color interiors mostly come out in greyscale just fine (in fact, the Pyramid issues printed quite nicely in the PoD volumes I had made). The only place where I see an issue is where color was (obviously) used for some of the text or where there is a color background in a box behind text - in these instances the text looks washed out, and may in fact be caused at least partly by issue #1 that you mentioned (the text itself, while it looks black, may in fact be a combination of colors).
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Last edited by ericbsmith; 11-18-2013 at 12:29 PM.
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Old 11-19-2013, 12:34 PM   #18
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
Please note that the color interiors are not really causing a major issue, at least for me. The major link is that the use of color interiors dates back to the same timeframe as the color text, so if a PDF has color interiors it most likely has color text as well.

The color interiors mostly come out in greyscale just fine (in fact, the Pyramid issues printed quite nicely in the PoD volumes I had made). The only place where I see an issue is where color was (obviously) used for some of the text or where there is a color background in a box behind text - in these instances the text looks washed out, and may in fact be caused at least partly by issue #1 that you mentioned (the text itself, while it looks black, may in fact be a combination of colors).
It's the CMYK Fonts. The two reasons they make the text lighter are because:
1) They aren't 100% black.
2) the black text is being lightened further due to "screening". Basically it is reading that the other colors should exist and is trying to compensate for them, which causes a faded out, grainier look.

As Eric said, you can still see the text but it is noticeable lighter, and also slightly pixilated, from the screening process. It is definitely harder to read in darker lighting.

I have figured out a fix involving Acrobat Pro and Pitstop Pro Plus that allows you to globally change the color of all fonts in a document. Pitstop is expensive ($800), but there is a 30 day free trial, and it doesn't take that long to convert each PDF.
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Old 11-19-2013, 02:07 PM   #19
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

FYI, in many versions of Adobe Reader there's a print option labeled, "Print colors as black." That might fix this across the board. (It tends to destroy any artwork, but there are drawbacks to everything . . .)
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Old 11-20-2013, 04:50 PM   #20
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Default Re: Printing Earlier GURPS PDF Issues

Note that we're talking about several things here, one of them being sending the files out to a PoD service (specifically, both templar and I had some books printed through Lulu). Personally I have a nice color laser printer, and these PDFs print fine on my printer without doing any finicky settings or manual conversions. However we can't control what a PoD service does to print out the books, and the issue does show with Lulu.

Honestly, if I had realize this was going to be an issue with Lulu I'd have just printed the PDFs out in grayscale through a PDF Printer Driver (like CutePDF or Bullzip) before uploading the files to Lulu.
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Last edited by ericbsmith; 11-20-2013 at 04:54 PM.
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