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Printing artwork and composites


    You can choose from a set of standard printing options in Adobe Illustrator for any type of artwork you print. These printing options appear in the Print Setup > Properties dialog box (Windows) or Page Setup (Mac OS) dialog box. You can then print the artwork using the Print dialog box.

    If you are making color separations, you can print a color or grayscale composite proof to check your work. A composite image can help you to design and proof your artwork before printing final (and costly) separations. When Illustrator prints a composite, it prints all of the colors used in the file on one plate.

    Any overprinting options that you have selected in the document will print correctly on a composite, unless you have chosen the Ignore Overprinting in Composite Output option in the Print dialog box. You should also remember that, as with color monitors, color printers vary greatly in color reproduction quality; thus, composites from a color printer never substitute for proofs made by the print shop.

To select printing options:

  1. Choose File > Print Setup (Windows) or File > Page Setup (Mac OS).
  2. Do one of the following:
    • In Windows, click Properties.
    • In Mac OS, select Page Attributes or PostScript Options from the pop-up menu.
  3. Do one of the following:
    • In Windows, select the options you want in the Properties dialog box, and click OK.
    • In Mac OS, select the options you want from the selected pop-up menu, and click OK.

To print a file:

  1. Choose File > Print.
  2. The number of pages that Illustrator prints is determined by the View options selected in the Artboard panel of the Document Setup dialog box. If the Single Full Page option in the Document Setup dialog box is selected, a single page prints. If any other View option is selected, for example, the Tile Full Pages option, you can specify a page or a range of pages to print by entering beginning and ending page numbers in the From and To text boxes.

  3. Indicate which pages you want printed.
  4. Choose from the following options in the Print dialog box (Windows) or choose Adobe Illustrator 10 from the pop-up menu (Mac OS) and set the advanced printing options:
    • PostScript. If your printer driver and printer support PostScript Level 2 or LanguageLevel 3, you can select one of these options. These options enable you to optimize printing of mesh objects or other complex artwork. (See Printing mesh objects.)
    • Output. Select Composite to print a single composite color image or Separate to print a separation. The Separate option only becomes available after you have set the separation options in the Separation Setup dialog box.
    • Data. This option for printing bitmap images to PostScript printers is available only in Mac OS. Select Binary to decrease the amount of data and therefore to speed up the printing of bitmap images, or ASCII to make the data usable on a wider variety of printers and networks.
    • Bitmap Printing. This option for non-PostScript printers is available only in Windows. Select Bitmap Printing when printing documents that contain complex objects (such as objects with smooth shading or gradients) on a low-resolution printer. The image is sent to the printer as a bitmap image; although the print speed may be diminished, the possibility of error messages is reduced.
    • Ignore Overprinting in Composite Output. This option specifies that any Overprint Fill or Overprint Stroke settings you have set in the Attribute palette do not appear on the composite. With this option selected, overprinting in composites occurs as in Adobe Illustrator 8 or earlier. Deselecting this option results in simulating the appearance of printing to separations.
    • Force Fonts to Download. This option temporarily downloads fonts from the computer to the printer.

    Note: If double-byte fonts print diagonally and do not show the correct typeface, the fonts are not stored on your printer. Forcing the fonts to download allows you to print them (with reduced print quality). For better print quality, install the fonts on the printer.

  5. Click OK (Windows) or Print (Mac OS).
  6. By default, Adobe Illustrator prints all visible layers. To print an individual layer, see Making artwork nonprintable.

    Important: Adobe Illustrator does not support PDF Writer format; if you attempt to print to PDF Writer you may experience delays or errors in printing.