Cannot print from InDesign CS3 using HP P1007

I just started to use my new HP P1007. But it seems impossible to print from InDesign CS3 on a MAC. It either just prints blank pages or the printer utility becomes inactive with no error messages. My OS is 10.4.11. And I'm using 1.0.6 (latest) driver from HP for the P1007 model if that matters.

Has anyone encountered similar problems here? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

I have a P1006 connected to my Macbook Pro (10.4.11), and I get some strange results printing from IDCS3. My solution was to make PDFs from IDCS3, then print the PDFs to the HP. These are pretty low-end printers, so I doubt they speak PostScript.

Thanks for the post Michael. That's actually what I did to solve this problem.

From what you said, can I say printing from InDesign means print using PostScript?

ID would print better to a PostScript device.

ID would print better to a PostScript device.




What makes you say that? It's not true in my experience.

What makes you say that?




In the attached scan, the page on the left was printed from a PDF that was exported from IDCS3, and the page on the right is the same page printed directly from ID. The type is Times, the one shape was drawn in ID, and the guitar was an AI file placded in ID.

Maybe I should have said that ID would print better to a PostScript device than it would to either the HP P1006 or P1007, or probably many of the low-cost printers that people have in their homes.

<http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1x7RMVJde1bvnwVrLO1bibv2Eg3yh>

Thanks for going to the trouble of scanning and posting that, Michael. I think you are right in saying that this is a printer-specific issue, probably related to the vendor's driver.

Because Adobe knows a lot about PostScript (;=>) and because they have essentially built a PostScript interpreter into InDesign and other apps, the differences in output between PostScript and non-PostScript devices have been pretty limited in my experience. This, of course, depends on the operating system and print driver mechanisms working properly, though.

As to low-cost printers, I have had absolutely no such difficulties with the two low-cost Epsons which I have used with InDesign 2, CS, CS2, and CS3. I have never used an HP, but I think you'll find there are quite a few more problems reported on this forum with HP printers (both their "clone-script" and inkjet printers) than other brands.

I am experiencing a different problem with printing successfully from InDesign CS3 to my Epson R2400 printer (obviously not postscript, but gives very good results from CS3 Photoshop).

I have an urgent deadline to meet - i must print these images for a book by tomorrow! so I would be extremely grateful if you can think of anything that I may be doing wrong. To explain: I have a custom ICC profile for the double-sided paper I am using that works fine when printed from PHotoshop. However, when using exactly the same colour management settings InDesign, (except that its 'Let InDesign manage colours' rather than 'Let Photoshop manage colours' (could be the problem?? even if settings are the same?) and of course, my custom profile, the result is as if I have not used a profile at all: the image is dark and dull - details in shadow areas are nil.

I seem to have tried everything: all working spaces are set to Adobe RGB (1998), it is an RGB printer so I am assuming that the CMYK space is not relevant here, but in any case, I have set output to 'Preserve Embedded profiles' in all cases. I have even tried printing with the image saved in CMYK in case, and the result is even more flat and dull.

Can anyone help?

Joe D.

Hi Joe,

You are not alone with this problem. Color managed printing is broken in IDCS3. See this thread:

chrismurphy, "color management, printing with InDesign CS3" #, 6 May 2008 7:03 am </webx?14@@.59b52c9b>

Your deadline solution is to export a press quality pdf from IDCS3 and print color managed from Acrobat 8 which is free of the problem.

Al