Outputting to a printer connected to your computer is remarkably similar to creating a PDF.
Print Dialog Box
If it’s a subset of pages you wish to print, there are many ways to specify which ones. The easiest method is to highlight the pages you want to print in the Pages panel, then right-click on one of them and choose Print Pages… (or Print Spreads… if whole spreads are highlighted). To print an entire single document, choose File > Print…, or for a book, use the Book panel menu and choose Print Book…. The dialog box that appears will also allow you to specify a range of pages to print.
Be prepared to go between various sections of this dialog box to set all the options you need. You will especially have to balance the options in the General and Setup sections, but most of the dialog box will get visited before you’re done. The more complex the printing system, the more experimentation you may need to do. What follows are guidelines that will help with that experimentation.
First, and most importantly, choose the Printer. This allows InDesign to show you options specific to that device. I am embarrassed by how many times I’ve sent data to the wrong printer when more than one is available. When you choose, InDesign will interact with that printer’s driver software, and if it’s a Postscript printer (like many office laser printers), it will also read data from that printer’s PPD (Postscript Printer Description). The Setup section of the dialog box will then show supported paper sizes, for example.
The buttons at lower left (Page Setup… and Printer… on a Mac, Setup… on Windows) are means to access the printer driver software and are likely irrelevant if you take care elsewhere in this dialog box. In fact, if you choose things in the driver that contradict InDesign’s settings, trouble could erupt. With inkjet printers, however, it may be necessary to tweak or disable the driver setting to complement settings in the Color section of InDesign’s Print dialog.
General
When specifying which pages to print, you may have to supply a lot of data (like a section prefix along with page number or letter), unless you’re using Absolute page numbering. For example, if your document has two sections with prefixes “SecA” and “SecB” and they use different number styles, you may have to specify a range like “SecA:xii-SecB:27.” With Absolute numbering, you may be able to use “12-45” if page SecB:27 is the 45th page, for example. Even with Absolute numbering, you can do fancy things. To print the first 8 pages, use “-8,” or for page 15 to the last page, use “15-” with no need to specify the last page’s number. Discontiguous ranges are allowed, too, separated by commas like this: “1-6, 13, 15-18, 20-.”
Choosing to print Spreads rather than Pages is a nice way to see reader spreads. I may print a few spreads to see if I like a document’s design. When there are facing pages, printer spreads may be quite different; see “Print Booklet” (page 358). Also, if the first spread of the chosen page range is a single page (like a title page), the Preview in the lower left of the Print dialog may not show two pages. Will a spread need to be printed smaller or turned 90º to fit the chosen paper? We deal with that in the next section.
Choose how many Copies you desire. Collating slows the process considerably. Reverse Order prints the last page first, which is useful if your printer spits out prints right-side up.
Setup
Based on your printer choice, the choices for Paper Size will vary. If you need to squeeze a too-large page onto the paper in your printer, you can check Scale To Fit. Alternatively, you can Tile your page onto multiple sheets of paper (adhesive not included).
If you need to supply bleed, then you need to print on paper larger than your pages. The next section will help, too.
Marks and Bleed
If you’re printing on paper larger than your pages (or spreads), you have room for Crop Marks and other informational ornamentation.
You can set Bleed to match your document’s, or choose some other value. If you’ve put notes in a Slug area, you can include that, too.
Output
Depending on whether the printer considers itself a CMYK or RGB device, your choices here will change. Inkjet printers and some laser printers want RGB data, which they separate into values for each of their inks or toners. To them, we send Color data as Composite RGB. To devices that truly use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink or toner, we can send Composite CMYK. However, for those devices it’s usually better to create a PDF and print that. A few of you (who work in print shops) may want to see Separations, and can then view the Trapping, Flip, and Screening controls.
Graphics
If you’re printing drafts or other non-final versions, choosing Optimized Subsampling in the Send Data menu will yield decent-looking prints quickly. Proxy will be even faster, but graphics will have few legible features. For no graphics at all, but boxes marked with an X, use None. This is useful for proofreading without the distraction of imagery. For your final work, choose All.
The Fonts section is for Postscript printers only (not inkjets, for example), and the choices here can be tricky. Fonts can be stored at the printer (or drives attached to it). These are supposed to be listed in the PPD file. If you want to have a fast print, but have time to risk a choice that may fail, set Download to Subset and leave Download PPD Fonts unchecked. The first will send only those characters of a font that are used in the document. The second will not bother to send any font data for fonts listed in the PPD, as they’re resident in the printer. If you get weird substitutions or characters go missing, you can choose to Download PPD Fonts and/or Download Complete. Either or both will slow the works, but will increase reliability.
Color Management
In the Output section of the Print dialog, you usually choose one of the Composite settings (Gray, RGB, or CMYK). In the Color Management section, you pick specifically which gray, RGB, or CMYK profile should be used. This is what that whole “Color Management” chapter is about! You thought you could skip it, but maybe you shouldn’t.
Most laser and inkjet printers should probably be sent Composite RGB. In the case of an office laser printer, I’d choose sRGB as the Printer Profile and let the driver take it from there. If I chose Composite CMYK, most printers around the office would expect U.S. Web Coated (SWOP), so I’d choose that, checking the box Preserve CMYK Numbers for reasons explained elsewhere in this book—“The Useful Rigidity of CMYK” (page 301). For many inkjet printers, like the one a few feet from me, I’d choose a profile specific to it and the paper on which I’m printing.
Advanced
The key setting here is the Transparency Flattener Preset. For the best results (thus, when printing your finals) choose [High Resolution]. If your printer mistreats overlapping transparent objects or makes transparent effects (like shadows) look terrible, you can have InDesign rasterize the document by checking Print as Bitmap and choosing or typing whatever resolution you need. This essentially makes each page a big image that might be easier for the printer software to digest.
Print Booklet
Reader spreads are not printer spreads. Lets say you have a multi-page document with facing pages. In InDesign, when you look at pages 6 and 7, that’s what the reader will see, too, once the document is printed and assembled. As an experiment, carefully remove the staples from the center of thin weekly magazine. Go to some random page and examine what other pages are printed on the same piece of paper. You don’t even have to remove the staples if it makes you feel bad. The process of getting pages on the correct sheets of paper is called imposition. If you need no more than two pages per side of paper, Print Booklet can help you make your documents in a similar way.
When you choose File > Print Booklet…, your primary choices for Booklet Type are Saddle Stitch (where every sheet is folded in half and stacked, staples holding them together like the magazine described above) or Perfect Bound (in which groups of pages are bound together in signatures and the signatures are then bound together). I avoid the choices with Consecutive in the name because they do not perform as they should. With Perfect Bound, you must also specify the size of the signatures (in multiples of four, of course).
