printing with a pdf or direct from Indesign...

[wonderings]

We have a Xerox J75 that we bought about 6 months ago. In that time we have started to have some issues with colour a real muddy look, uneven colour, splotchy, etc. Today I was prepping a job that a coworker was having trouble with. I was seeing what I could do, adjust the pantone in CWS, and was going to eventually start messing with the fuser of the machine. There was a mistake in the file so I went back to the indesign file and corrected it. Rather then using her imposed file that she printed from indesign cc 2014, I made a pdf and dropped it in Command Work Station and imposed there. The colour and smoothness was a billion times better. So now I am wondering, what does Indesign do when printing direct to cause this? Why when I just drop a pdf in do I get superior and more then acceptable results?

 

[Possumgal]

I don't know if this is relevant, but in my experience, sometimes Xerox machines and InDesign don't get along. We couldn't get the booklet maker to work properly on an InDesign document on our 700, even when sending a PDF. The tech told us it was a glitch between InDesign and the machine. Luckily, we have Quark.

While our problem was not related to color, it may be another kind of InDesign hiccup.

 

[pacart]

It could be the color output settings, just like inkjet printing you can really mess up the color if it isn't set right. We do both printing direct to CWS and dropping PDF files, either way produces identical results.

 

[wonderings]

Luckily, we have Quark.

Think that might be the first time I have ever heard that lol

When printing straight from indesign I would have my output set to "Composite Leave Unchanged" so spot colours would not be converted to CMYK. Under Colour Management I have the print by default set to Profile: U.S. Web Coated SWOP v2 and under color handling, no colour management. The only choice in there is let postscript printer determine colours.

I am pushing my co worker to get into the habit of using PDF's rather then printing direct. Would be nice to know what the difference is here or if it simply is that the J75 does not like Indesign.

 

[pacart]

Here is a screen shot of what we use.

 

[BarbWPP]

You can use many of these same settings from printing, when exporting pdfs from InDesign, too. And, CWS has many options built in for color management. Somewhere things aren't meshing right.

Also, do you calibrate every day? We have 2 Docucolor 700's, not entirely the same configurations, but both get calibrated every day, just to try to keep a stable starting point.

 

[Londen]

How do you convert your PDF? Did you make any selection for "Color Conversion" when converting PDF?