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Why does printing in Photoshop CS4 suck?

5K views 31 replies 16 participants last post by  jsf 
#1 ·
Hey guys, haven't been here in a while.

Since corporate America has taken over every inch of every search engine promoting their products (Looking at you Adobe), I'm hoping I can get some help here.

Does anyone have any tips on printing text from PS CS4? It's the same old jagged crap I've been fighting with for a year now.

I had PS 8 years ago and it printed text just fine. I've tried rasterizing, tried smart object. I can place it in Illustrator but live trace mangles everything and I spend hours dragging anchor points around. If PS CS4 can't print worth a crap then why even put the option in the file menu?

Patch? Color Pallet? Telekinesis?

Any advice would be extremely appreciated.
 
#4 ·
Hey guys, haven't been here in a while.

Since corporate America has taken over every inch of every search engine promoting their products (Looking at you Adobe), I'm hoping I can get some help here.

Does anyone have any tips on printing text from PS CS4? It's the same old jagged crap I've been fighting with for a year now.

I had PS 8 years ago and it printed text just fine. I've tried rasterizing, tried smart object. I can place it in Illustrator but live trace mangles everything and I spend hours dragging anchor points around. If PS CS4 can't print worth a crap then why even put the option in the file menu?

Patch? Color Pallet? Telekinesis?

Any advice would be extremely appreciated.
Time to learn Corel :)
 
#7 ·
I have cs4 and text prints out just fine for me.
Are you creating the text?
Is the text in its original text layer format? This means it's in vector format.
The image/design ur working on should always be at 300 dpi.
Find out the image size of the originating document where ur getting ur text from. If its less than 300 dpi, it will show jaggies.
Lastly the only other problem I see might b the communication between the program driver and the printer which is unlikely.
U mentioned live trace so I am assuming your dealing with client flattened text file which is a .jpg. They are almost never at 300 dpi and the best way is to re-type in a font similar.
 
#8 ·
You are having problems specifically with text?

There are a number of things that could be causing you problems:

Resolution: The default canvas settings are 72 dpi. You need 150 dpi minimum for most text sizes, and you should set your resolution to match your printer up to 1200 dpi.

Font Size and/or Format: Are you using the correct font? You should be using a Bold font and not just applying the bold style to a font.... Helvetica Bold, for example, instead of applying a Bold Style to Helvetica Medium. It will look fine on screen but will not print well if you need a quality output.

Do not enlarge your print if you can help it. A 100 dpi image/text enlarged 200% is effectively 50 dpi on the output.

Conversely a 100 dpi output at 50% is effectively 200 dpi.

See if any of that helps your output.
 
#10 ·
When you type your text. In the drop down box where you can choose: sharp or smooth or strong or crisp choose none. If you choose something other than none you are adding font smoothness or adding "anti-alias" this feathers the edge of fonts and will not give you crisp edges.
 
#12 ·
Thanks for the response guys. I appreciate both the helpful and insulting. :)

Didn't mean to be crass, posted that after getting off the phone with Mumbai India. Wanted to charge me $39 which, I refused, then put me on hold for 30 minutes. Came back and told me to rasterize the image.

Thanks!

I asked "Ted" if he's ever used CS4 before, and he said "No". I was very nice, I feel sorry for these guys. "Here's something you've never seen, now give tech support".

Long time Adobe fan, but I'm leaning towards Corel now. Especially, after seeing their add-on that chokes the base. That's awesome.

I attached the image. I use Spot process which has to be a tif with black background. I'm out of paper, so I'm using a crap load of film for trouble shooting.

It's a flat image now, but even when it wasn't it printed the same.

Can someone just invert this for me and let me know if it prints like crap?

Thanks guys, you rock.
 

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#13 ·
not trying to be insulting but you come across saying you've used ps8 for years (when was that released ...'95?) but have no idea why you can't print from ps cs4.

the image you posted looks fine to me and i didn't even open it in ps. what's the problem? if you get art from a client it can't be at a low rez and expect it to print at a higher image size w/o pixelating. demand high rez art file or charge for redoing it.

obviously you aren't doing the work yourself if you are relying on livetrace in illy to do the work for you. that design in illy would take you 3 minutes to do exactly like the original once you found out the font and kerned type and drew 2 triangles. a vector program like illustrator is what that design is made for.

don't diss the program if you don't know how to use it.
 
#16 ·
Rance,

Were you trying to Print a Layer or a Channel? For some reason, back from CS3 you can't print Channels. The program dies. However you can print layers.

I've search the boards, google and adobe and can't figure out why. I wouldn't waste my time with India. Had too many issues with other programs they support. Thanks Linksys (Cisco).

Not sure if this is the case, but would like to find out if this is what you're talking about.
 
#18 ·
Rance,

Were you trying to Print a Layer or a Channel? For some reason, back from CS3 you can't print Channels. The program dies. However you can print layers.
I think you must be talking about the fact that Adobe removed the halftoning option from the print dialog in Photoshop? CS4 was the last version that had the halftone options. CS3 is the best version of Photoshop ever. CS4 was fine. There's never been a time when you simply could not print from channels. I've been doing it for about 20 years on both Mac and PC. I'm still doing it with CS6.

And of course, as everyone is saying, there's no problem printing perfect quality from Photoshop. It's simply resolution dependent. You can print from Photoshop at a quality which is not distinguishable from vector to the naked eye.
 
#19 ·
Actually, text typed in photoshop is not vectorized. It renders itself to the resolution of whatever your canvas is. Assuming it's not rasterized, if you increase the resolution of your canvas, the text will update itself accordingly. As stated by others in this thread, if you try to print 72 DPI on paper or similar mediums, it'll probably be jagged.

I can get away with printing 72 on shirts with a Brother GT-541 but that's only because the ink has a natural wicking characteristic anyway that tends to mask minor aliasing anyway. Don't print with less than 150 DPI if you're providing a product to a client and that should solve the problem.
 
#20 ·
Text in Photoshop is indeed vector, as long as it's live text. You have the option to rasterize it in the layers drop down. Once you rasterize it, then you can no longer manipulate it without effecting quality. While it's still live text you can manipulate it and twist and turn, enlarge, rotate, etc with no loss of quality, just like in Illustrator.

However, if you print live text at 72 dpi it will have the same poor quality as anything else at 72 dpi. The vector aspect of Photoshop text is only useful while it's still in Photoshop. Before printing, you need to change the resolution to a suitable quality. The best way to work is of course to always work at the correct size and resolution and to try to not have to enlarge art.
 
#21 ·
Text in Photoshop is indeed vector, as long as it's live text. You have the option to rasterize it in the layers drop down. Once you rasterize it, then you can no longer manipulate it without effecting quality. While it's still live text you can manipulate it and twist and turn, enlarge, rotate, etc with no loss of quality, just like in Illustrator.

However, if you print live text at 72 dpi it will have the same poor quality as anything else at 72 dpi. The vector aspect of Photoshop text is only useful while it's still in Photoshop. Before printing, you need to change the resolution to a suitable quality. The best way to work is of course to always work at the correct size and resolution and to try to not have to enlarge art.
Actually, no. Text is not true vector in while it's in Photoshop. Photoshop is (primarily) a raster program. You can type something and start to zoom into it to see that it's composed of pixels and not lines. Since we're discussing printing directly from Photoshop, that's a relevant difference to distinguish. Now, granted if you typed live text, saved it as an EPS, and then imported the file as curves into Corel or AI then it'll be converted to vector but that's an additional step that's not part of the equation for this discussion.
 
#27 ·
Remember page curl? It was in PS7. Click.. Awesome....
In CS4 it's this huge pile of **** that you have to google and then follow 6 different steps. SERIOUSLY?

Weak man. Sad.

Adobe has lost it. Tech support in India. They spit out version after version and people keep buying the hype.

PLEASE STOP.

I need to resurrect my old school AMD with a cracked version of Photoshop 7.

No more Adobe for me. I spent a grand. That's $1,000.
PS, IL, Flash.

That's one thousand dollars folks.

If you're going to cut corners and spit a bunch of **** out every year for the monkeys to eat up, then all I have to say is, "I will never buy another Adobe product", and I will take as many people with me as I can.

Can anyone recommend a good Corel for PC?
Done with Adobe.
 
#30 ·
Yeah, unfortunately, if you have serious raster work to be done, there's no other game in town besides Photoshop. As the years go by I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with Adobe and the newer versions are buggier than the previous. There definitely seems to be something wrong with Adobe these days. But I've tried every other raster program and Photoshop really just has no competition.
 
#31 · (Edited)
It's money Stone.

I use to enjoy just creating stuff in PS. Now they just put out as much product as they can, sell as much hype to the masses as they can. And let India deal with the problems.

I use Mac and PC.
Adobe's not the only game in town. That's how you lose customers Adobe. That's how you lose business. Don't get me wrong. Illy CS4 and Flash CS4 work as advertised.

Printing is PS CS4 blows. And, they would rather take your money with a new version, than risk the cost of a patch.

At least that's my opinion anyway.
I spent a grand (1G) on Adobe. Done with ya fellas, lost a customer.

Once again, thanks guys for the feedback. Got some good info I had forgotten about. :tipthank:

Could someone point me to the "What's your set up thread?"

Rance
 
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