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White Text Not Printing From CS4?


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Hello,

I am trying to help a neighbor with a birthday invitation in CS4. For some reason, when we print the image, the text color is missing. We are trying to print the image on pink paper. The text layers are a silver color. No matter what color we change the text layers to, it won't print them in the chosen color. It just shows up as the pink paper. I have attached a screen shot.

Could anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong?
 

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ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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Hello,

I am trying to help a neighbor with a birthday invitation in CS4. For some reason, when we print the image, the text color is missing. We are trying to print the image on pink paper. The text layers are a silver color. No matter what color we change the text layers to, it won't print them in the chosen color. It just shows up as the pink paper. I have attached a screen shot.

Could anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong?

Your problem is that with desktop printers white ink doesn't exist. To get white it simply uses the paper color. Subsequently you will see NOTHING on PINK paper. Change the ink color to something besides white and it will print,
 

MrToM

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Is your printer set to print in colour?

When you choose your options make sure 'Black and White' is NOT set for the output.
Doing so will only use Black where the image is black and nothing where the image is anything else.

Regards.
MrTom.

PS...
I see Larry is standing in for Sam and posting 30 seconds before me....good work Larry, Sam has taught you well!.
:rofl:

Good point too about printing nothing...I kind of meant that myself but you said it much better than me.

If the OP still wants Pink as the background they will have to print on WHITE paper and make their background Pink instead.
The white text would then work as it would be the paper colour and not actually printed.
 
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ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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It prints the black silhouette, but not the yellow. I thought it may be the ink cartridge, but I printed out a rainbow from photoshop and it printed fine.
 

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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It prints the black silhouette, but not the yellow. I thought it may be the ink cartridge, but I printed out a rainbow from photoshop and it printed fine.

Try another color as an experiment. You may be out of ink, have a line clogged etc. What brand and model is the printer and how long has it been since it was used?
 

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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Also, MrTom makes a good point. Is the print driver set to print grayscale only? Printing just the black makes me think it might be.
 
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No, printer driver not set to grayscale. I just printed 50- 5x7 4 year old birthday invitations (for same neighbor), on white paper and they printed great. I just tried to print the rainbow invitation on the pink paper and it looks terrible, however, you can discern the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple colors. This is the craziest thing!
 

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Printer is a Kodak Hero 4.2. It is three months old. Color ink cartridge is new. Half way through printing the rainbow/unicorn invitations I had to change cartridge. The rest printed fine.
 

MrToM

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...This is the craziest thing!...
Well, not really if you know how printing works.

As ALB68 and myself have pointed out, printers are for printing on white paper.
They use a process called 'Subtractive' colour mixing whereby different colours are produced by 'mixing' translucent inks to 'filter' or 'subtract' colour from the white paper to leave just the colour required.

Any other coloured paper means these inks 'filter' colour from something which is NOT white, therefore the resultant colour is completely different.

As I've pointed out, if you MUST have white text on a Pink background you'll have to change your background, in PS, to Pink and print on white paper.

This is extremely wasteful of ink though as you'd be covering almost the entire surface of the paper with ink just for a few lines of white text.

If I were you I'd ditch the 'Pink' paper and maybe just have the text in Pink instead.....and print on white paper.
Not only will this be quicker but it will use far less ink too.

It may not be what you want but its an alternative that will work.

If your settings are as you've described then there is no reason why this shouldn't work.

Regards.
MrTom.
 
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ALB68

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Try printing it on white paper as MrTom has suggested. Tell us what happens.

Also, you might try flattening the image in PS too.
 
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I changed the background color to pink and printed it on white paper. It's not what we wanted, but it will have to work!

Thank you both for assisting me! I do greatly appreciate your time!
 

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