Font rasterized when print from Publisher Windows 10

[Engineering_text]

Summary:

Old pdf file prints great, nice sharp font. New rewrite in Affinity publisher, same font, same printer, comes out rasterized. Not sure where I am telling Affinity to do that. Stumped. Files attached below. Problem only shows when printing.

 

Long version with more details.

The laser printer

• When I print my old pdf file from the year 2000 or so, the font is perfectly sharp even when viewed with 3.25x cheater glasses.
• When I print the new document from Affinity, essentially a rewrite of the same document, same font, the font is rasterized. 
• I'm printing both files on the same laser printer.

The OS.

• The original document was created in Windows 95.
• The new document using Windows 10. 

The software.

• The original document was created in Pagemaker 5.0 and is long gone. All I have from that is the pdf file made from Pagemaker. That is the file that prints great even when viewed with 3.25x power reading glasses from inches away.
• The current version is in Affinity. I cut and pasted the pdf text into WordPerfect. I converted the first section in Wordperfect into plain text. I imported the plain text file into Affinity and learned to never do that again. (Find and replace all those extra carriage returns after each line.) Ultimately went with select and paste into Affinity. Within Affinity I setup paragraph styles and switched all the text to new paragraph style with Cambria font.
• I've also printed from the WordPerfect file mentioned as the intermediate step between the old pdf and Affinity. The font looks perfectly sharp both in Times New Roman and in Cambria.

The font:

• The original document used Times New Roman, regular,  10 pt provided with Windows 95.
• In the new document in Affinity I am using Cambria, regular, 10 pt font provided with Windows 10. I experimented by changing the text to Times New Roman -it came out just as bad. The low quality is obvious even without reading glasses.

The resolution:

• I used 600 dpi resolution in creating the original document in the late 90's. I recall it made the book look much better, but I don't recall if it only affected the graphics, or if it affected the text also. At that time I had not heard of pdf files. I printed from PageMaker.
• In the new file with Affinity I've selected 600 DPI everywhere I can. The option comes up in at least three places. I print from within Affinity. Onscreen looks great. I can zoom in until the 10 pt font looks 6 inches high, and it's still perfectly sharp -onscreen.

I haven't created any layers, nothing placed behind the font. No artistic stuff. Just regular 10 pt font with subscripts and superscripts. 

I'm stumped. I cannot figure out why the letters are coming out rasterized. Reminds me of (good) dot matrix printer.

• I'm attaching the old pdf, which I had been trying to update using Adobe Acrobat DC -but the changes I needed to make were too extensive. I only mention that to explain why the file date is now 2020. (See page 5)
• I am also attaching the Affinity file. The rasterization appears most clearly in the subscripts. I want to work out the font problem before placing equations and illustrations. Yes, it's back to Cambria, because changing to Times New Roman didn't help. (See page 6)

Hopefully you can find what settings I have wrong, or even find where I am telling the software to rasterize without realizing it.

thanks

test_Chap14.doc HSE_Chap14_part1b.afpub

[carl123]

After printing a few test pages, they all look OK to me

Have you tried exporting to PDF and then printing the PDF document?

Use the Preset: PDF (for print)

If that PDF looks OK on screen but also prints bad, I would think it might be a printer setting/problem somewhere.

 

[Dan C]

Hi @Engineering_text,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

Can you please open the Print dialog within Affinity and provide screenshots of your settings here? Specifically, one showing the Rasterization tab settings, and another showing the Colour Management tab settings?

Secondly, I'd recommend following Carls above advice and exporting from Affinity to PDF and try printing this document - please do let us know if this yields different results  

[Engineering_text]

Thanks. Yes I have printed to pdf -no improvement. I did learn to choose "all pages" and not "all spreads" after getting little 8.5 x 11 inch spreads with facing pages!

I have attached photos of text printed from Wordperfect file and text printed from Affinity. Taken with cell phone in bad light, and tight crop to emphasize the difference. Same computer, same printer. My crops made one font look larger (I cropped so tight the focus is soft), but the fonts on paper are the same size. The point is, these fonts look great even super big with soft focus -except when I print from Affinity. I know I've got something set wrong, there would have been lots of posts about this if it was a bug in Affinity. Reviews would have been harsh.

The export screen, 3rd image below, always confuses me because it has a box for DPI but next to the box says "nothing will be rasterized". It seems there was one more spot that had box for entering DPI -but I don't recall where and not finding it now. Maybe somewhere in one of the document setup locations.

Should I be leaving those DPI fields blank? I will have some illustrations that will be raster images (none inserted yet) for which I will want the higher DPI.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Engineering_text]

Here's a better comparison I think. Pages side by side, and better light. All my software not installed yet. No good tool for rotating image. Since both files look great when you print them, at least it narrows it down to nothing in the file itself.

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Engineering_text said:

Yes I have printed to pdf

I think the suggestion was that you Export to PDF (not print) and then print the PDF using a PDF viewer. That way you have a different application doing the printing.

[firstdefence]

Try printing to file and then printing the PDF, not sure what options are available on Windows but I'm sure there is the option to print to file.

[NotMyFault]

The printer you are using is quite dated, and severely limited in RAM. It may depend on the print driver you are using. It offers PCL6, PS and more. If you use new fonts, the current driver may panic and reduce print quality to be able to finish.

I use a HP LJ2100 M from 1999 and run into issues with PS driver, so switched to PCL driver which is more reliable on modern OS.

https://support.brother.com/g/b/spec.aspx?c=de&lang=de&prod=hl5470dw_us_eu_as

And try to set “Rasterize Resolution” to 1200 if possible.

[User_783649]

Seems like a known issue — see the thread below:

And possible solution from that thread:

Quote

But I think (hope) I found the solution.

In the Document Setup -> Colour the Colour Format was on CMYK/8 and the Colour Profile was (the default) W.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2.

When I switched this to Grey/16 and Black& White the print was good. I could not imagine that it would be a problem so far, it doesn't matter in InDesign.

[Dan C]

Thanks for your screenshots and further information provided, as confirmed in the above thread this can occur when directly printing CMYK document from Affinity, depending on your Printer settings.

The following post explains this in further detail -

Please do let me know if this setting changes the results you're seeing when printing

[Engineering_text]

Solved, sort of.

Thanks for all the help. Short answer: My Brother HL-5470DW laser printer doesn't get along well with Affinity Publisher. Spent a lot of time trouble shooting with Brother post script 3 emulator, PCL3, PCL6, saving files to pdf and printing from Adobe Acrobat. Tried a host of setting changes in printer driver and in Affinity. Did use the 16 bit grey scale and E50 something settings in Affinity -no difference. Same fonts in same size look great when printed from Word perfect, or when printing pre-windows 10 files. Not going to buy a new printer just for Affinity, wouldn't know what spec to look for. 

Turns out a Xerox C60/C70 printer (Staples printing service) is able to print the Affinity documents (exported to pdf) clear and sharp. I always expected the final output to be from a professional printer -so at least I know the files I am creating with Affinity are good. I can continue to use my personal printer for draft copies. 

I've decided to stick with Affinity Publisher. It's been a learning curve and it has what I believe to be some quirks in the interface, but I am accomplishing what I set out to do and I have found most of the tools I need, if not all the tools I want.

Best of all, this community has ben a great source of support.