Printing PDFs

[owenstreetpress]

Does anyone have experience printing out Paizo PDFs, specifically APs? I'm going to be running Reign of Winter and, well, finding volume 67 in print is next to impossible (for a reasonably price anyway) so I bought the PDF and I want to print it out. I was wondering if anybody had any pointers on how to do that without using so much toner. For one, I'm printing in B&W and, and while I'm leaning toward two pages to a sheet to save some space (and I'm only printing the adventure itself for now), if I could reduce the amount of toner put on the page (my printer's fuser can be finicky) that would be great.

I prefer physical products for the table but, alas, that's not in the cards here, so if anybody who makes extensive use of the PDFs has any pointers, they'd be more than welcome!

[Smallfoot]

owenstreetpress wrote:

[Printing an AP chapter] For one, I'm printing in B&W and, and while I'm leaning toward two pages to a sheet to save some space (and I'm only printing the adventure itself for now), if I could reduce the amount of toner put on the page (my printer's fuser can be finicky) that would be great.

Don't know if it's an option for you, but this might be worth taking to a local print shop. Office Depot charges $0.11/page for B&W.

[Azothath]

I use a inkjet printer, 20lb paper, print double sided flip on long edge on draft. You can print in greyscale only (full on black only will use more black ink). HP OJPro8625 to be exact. So check your printer settings/properties!

Linux and Windows work differently. Printer drivers for windows are just better with more options and feedack. I know as I use both with my main machine a Linux Mint box. Yes, and it highly amusing/frustrating that HP makes both drivers for my machine and doesn't understand how to do a compile.

It is cheaper to buy a printer and print it yourself than use a printer after/around the 200pg count. Try Big Box store(Sam's Club, Costco, Best Buy on sale) if you need it now. Otherwise internet shopping is more frugal.

Some businesses allow you to use their equipment after hours. So see if that's an option at work. They could just charge you, still could be worth asking.

Friends... especially friends that work at printers.

on laser printers know which side of your paper your printer prints on (mark a couple of pages and print on them). Set your settings/preferences (Draft, Greyscale).
Print one side (odds or evens). Rifle the print out stack (removing static electricity). Turn over and put in paper feed tray. Print other side.
The printing process uses static electricity/high voltage potentials to get the toner onto the page. The fuser is just a heat treatment to partially melt/fuse the toner(which contains a plastic bonding agent, sometimes it's separate) to itself and onto the base material.

[owenstreetpress]

Thanks for the advice. Azothath, are you familiar with Acrobat for CS6? Because I can't find any options for "draft" anywhere.

[Jib916]

owenstreetpress wrote:

Thanks for the advice. Azothath, are you familiar with Acrobat for CS6? Because I can't find any options for "draft" anywhere.

These options are in your Printers Drivers, not Acrobat. To access hit the Properties button (When you go to Print) select your printer, and you should see your options from there.

[owenstreetpress]

looks like maybe my printer just doesn't have such an option. I've been all through the options for the printer and there's nothing useful. Guess I'll just have to deal with it. I've got plenty of toner (I think, the printer can't actually communicate how much toner it has any more).

Thanks for the help everybody!

[Azothath]

Cs6 - Adobe's Creative Suite?
While this should give you a lot of control, it may be best to open the pdf with a simpler (more modern) application. PDFs have changed over the last 6 years and so the reader has to keep pace with the coding changes in the document/format. So your software may be the actual hitch. You'll see the issue if the pdf is created with a modern engine and someone with an old engine tries to read it.

make sure you have all the updates are current printer driver installed.

there are various readers for pdfs. (Adobe, Nitro, pdfmod, pdf reader, ...)
as Jib916 said it's part of the printer driver, sometimes interfaces don't communicate that information.
so - look for a little box/button on the print screen that says "properties" or "printer options". It'll take some looking about and playing with the settings.

For total control, print the pdf to a file like an svg. open the svg in a graphics program and then adjust the saturation, contrast, gamut etc.
The easy way is to just put a screen over the image. Put a white sheet over the page at 70% transparency to knock all the colors down.

[ngc7293]

Alternatively Google your model of printer.
For example HP Deskjet draft mode
I did a search and some people in some forums posted images to show where the draft mode was. But it really depends on your printer.

[bitter lily]

Printing the Paizo pdf's does get fussy, because the files are protected. I don't know if that's an issue with "draft" mode or not.

I've ended up copying pdf text into Word. This has the huge advantage over buying a paper book in that I can actually put the monster stats in next to the encounter -- not just the reference to the Bestiary entry -- and make my own tweaks to the adventure. It has the huge disadvantage that I end up printing a whole lot more pages this way! LOL!

Still, if you want teeny, tiny text, this might be the best way to go.

[owenstreetpress]

I ended up printing the adventure portion out 2 pages to a sheet (which I used to do with journal articles back in grad school) so I have it at the table and have ample space for notes. Going forward though, I'll probably look for a newer copy of Acrobat and chase down some of the other things folks have suggested.

Thanks all!