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I wanted to thank everyone who replied to me offlist about the lack of
colour in my PDF docs. I reinstalled the Distiller ppd as my printer
and I now get colour! For anyone who may be interested, here is a list
of the responses I received.
Dave Brown wrote:
You have two problems here...
1) A PCL driver (a language developed by HP) will not create postscript.
Therefore it can not be distilled.
2) If you use the HP PS driver, you still will NOT get legitimate
postscript. The HP 4000 Series printers are level 2 postscript
*emulation* only.
The ONLY way to get legitimate postscript for distilling according to
Adobe is to use their driver.
When installing, don't use the 'Generic' printer. Instead click 'browse'
to locate the Distiller ppd. Assuming you have Acrobat installed, the
ppd file should be located somewhere like C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat
4.0\Distillr\Xtras\Adist4.ppd.
If you have Adobe Framemaker installed, you may also have a copy at
C:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker6.0\ppds\Adist4.ppd.
Select 'FILE' as the port.
Note: You don't need to have a physical PS or colour printer.
Beth wrote:
I don't think you'll be able to use the 4050 driver to create a color
print job because it is not a color printer. You can print it using the
Acrobat Distiller, then distill the resultant .prn if that is your
preferred method (the Distiller can be set up to generate in color or
bw). I tested this and it worked fine.
However, to create a PDF from a word doc I just use the button on the
Word toolbar for "convert to PDF" or the option from the Acrobat menu of
the Word menu bar. This generates the file in color as well, without
having to use a two-step process. I will hazard a guess that the
"convert" function actually uses the distiller as well.
Bill Burns wrote:
You need to use a PS driver, not a PCL driver. They're two different
print
output formats. The AdobePS driver is fine. The person who said the
generic
driver wouldn't work was, I think, under the impression that you were
using
generic PS emulation driver. That's not the case. It's just a generic
PPD
used for precisely what you're doing. I would download the AdobePS
driver
from Adobe's web site and install that. It's the best one to use for
creating PDFs. You can download it from
As for why you're losing the color, keep in mind that the HP LJ 4050 is
a
monochrome printer. It prints color as grayscale anyway, so that PPD
won't
help you. I've also found that the PJL commands the HP PS drivers use to
switch the printer from PCL to PS often cause problems with distilling.
Once again, thanks everyone!
Tracey
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