Several Difficulties Printing Text on a Colour Laser

[Guy Burns]

I have very carefully set up a test document in Indesign to be printed on a Xerox 7750. The images were from Photoshop, the text was typed in Indesign in two TrueType fonts: Times New Roman & Helvetica, text colour 100%K. Indesign's CMYK Color Setting was US Web Coated SWOP, and I had already assigned that profile to the images in Photoshop.

At the Xerox shop they had a PC connected to the 7750 via a network (I think) and they handed me an Ethernet plug and I plugged it into my iBook. I know nothing about networks. Less than a minute later my iBook recognised the printer, the tech typed in a few big numbers, and away we went -- to fairyland.

Q1: When I opened the Indesign document... well, I couldn't open it. There was an error message along the lines of "You have not got enough permissions. Go to Get Info and try to lock the file first..."

Yes, it suggested I LOCK the file. I did that but still no go. When I disconnected the Ethernet cable and rebooted, the document opened as usual. Somehow this problem was overcome when I reconnected to the network but I've forgotten how. It happened several times.

Why did this error message appear?

Q2: Before printing, I ticked "Download PPD fonts", but I did not tick "Text as Black" (a word here and there was in colour). The first problem was that a message appeared saying that fonts could not be found and asked me to substitute others. Was this because I was on a network? The TrueType fonts are definitely on my iBook.

Q3: Text from the colour laser looked like it has been screened at 150 lpi in colour. Which part of the chain caused this problem: TrueType fonts? The print settings in Indesign? The network? The Printer? I find it difficult to understand why black text would come out as anything other than black text. But there it is on the page: coloured images that look like text.

Q4: Why hasn't InDesign (or the network programs or the printer) been implemented so that they all say to each other, on behalf of the text: "Hey, that's text. Don't touch! Print that as text"? Is that a difficult thing to do?

[Mike Witherell]

Q1: You should have ADMINISTRATOR level permissions. Have you run a disk utility *Repair Permissions* lately? What OS version are you?

Q2: Yes you should download PPD fonts. No, you shouldn't switch on Text as Black. What fonts couldn't it find? Have you used a font manager? Have you used font doctor to check for corrupt fonts on your system? Have you run Font Finagler (a free download) to reset confused font lists on your Mac? Couldn't hurt. The network is not the issue.

Q3: Change your InDesign document to speak RGB when printing to the XEROX digital printer. Edit > Transparency Blend Space > RGB will help it send the appropriate color number model to that printer. Also, in the print dialog box, make sure you are printing to the Xerox as the destination color space. (You did install the printer driver fully, right?) The TT fonts should be fine, and generally are not the source of troubles--especially of a color nature.

Q4: Why hasn't the software operator / graphic artist been highly trained in all this incredibly deep software? Is that a difficult thing to do? Oh yes.

Hope this helps,

Mike Witherell in Washington D.C.