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• • September 21, 2012 at 6:54 pm #63200
    anselmo

    Participant

    Hello To Everyone in this forum. This is my first post.

    I would like to know if someone could point me in some direction about how to print negative outputs to a printer (not to a file) from InDesign CS4. I wonder why the software does not have (or maybe I do not have found yet) a plain printing method similar to Corel Draw versions have.

    What I do is to create a new document; import an EPS file (always black and white). Then I choose to print to my printer, but to my surprise the output option for “mirror” and “negative” output are always not available (grayed out). I have to print then to a PDF, but I do not know why this confusing working mode was choosed.

    The EPS files that I import are always black and white files, generated from Gerber files (a file type used for manufacturing at 2400 DPI or higher resolution, but that does not imply CMYK, rosettes, halftones, etc. They could be printed inclusive in a dot-matrix printer).

    I think that maybe none program of the CS4 suite could print directly from the software. I am wondering why it is not possible. I had to install my last licensed Corel Draw 10 (very old now), and it has all the output options available in the print menu, not matter which kind of color management you are using. I think that the CS4 is more advanced now, but I could conceive that those output services were dropped from the software.

    Thank you for any help iin advance.

    Regards.

  • September 25, 2012 at 11:06 pm #63244
    Gert Verrept

    Member

    It took me a while, but I found something (didn't test it). In the print panel, select “setup” and go into your printer preferences (these are the printer settings, not indesign settings on how to print). I found in the “advanced” tab an option “negative output”. It can be set to “no” or “yes”. Maybe this can help. I'm working on win 7, 64bit, printer is a ricoh postscript printer.

  • September 30, 2012 at 2:18 pm #63265
    anselmo

    Participant

    Hello gert,
    Thank you for your reply and time. Yes, the way that you suggest should work, but for some reason, InDesign overrides those printer preferences. I had installed several poscript printers to try with no success.

  • September 30, 2012 at 9:49 pm #63266
    Gert Verrept

    Member

    Hi Anselmo,

    Does the printer do that all he time. If you create a “normal” file from scratch, let's say a page with a black rectangle on it, and print that one, does print as it should do? Negative and positive.

    If yes, than it's in the other file that the problem occurs. I had the same problem, Indesing not honnoring the preset anymore, but I upgraded a little later to cs5 and that “solved” the problem (I didn't search for a solution).

    If you're on a windows based system, make sure your the admin of the machine, this can cause problems too.

  • November 24, 2020 at 6:43 pm #14332883
    Civi Bernath

    Participant

    This is frustrating. I”m trying to print a negative of a book for a visual impaired child. I remember back in the days of Freehand there was a button “negative” and it was done. I don’t know if it was in the print software, or Freehand software, but I can’t believe this can’t be done easily! I did as you suggested, made a file with a black box. When I go to print, nowhere does it offer negative output. I tried selecting a ps file for the destination, using the Adobe PDF 9.0 driver. Still no such option.

    I’d really appreciate any help I can get.

    Incidentally, I’d be glad to do this from Acrobat Pro if it was possible.

  • November 25, 2020 at 6:00 pm #14332965
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I do remember the old “Negative” button in print drivers! Those were mostly for printing on film-based devices. But I don’t know of any good way to do that now… except perhaps rasterize the pdf in Photoshop and invert it. (Not a very easy or good workflow.) Maybe there are other options though!

  • December 2, 2020 at 10:41 am #14333184
    Civi Bernath

    Participant

    I tried everyone’s suggestions and nothing helped. So I figured I need to rasterize it, but it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.

    1. I exported all the pages to image. I chose tiff, and I set the resolution to 500dpi since the customer wants to enlarge the book.
    2. I ran an action in photoshop to convert to grayscale, flatten, invert and change image size to the larger page size.
    3. I ran the script in Indesign called image catalog. The page size was the default so I just enlarged the master page with the page tool, selecting scale in the liquid page rule.
    4. Exported the file to pdf

    Of course I still consider this a last resort, but it served perfectly for this visual impaired child.

  • December 2, 2020 at 12:21 pm #14333190
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Thank you for letting us know, Civi!
    I’m curious: What kind of visual disability requires a negative image?

  • December 2, 2020 at 12:23 pm #14333191
    Civi Bernath

    Participant

    I have no idea, but I did see reference to it when googling methods of creating negative images.

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