MacOS – OS X 10.11 El Capitan Preview’s print preview different from print result

macospdfpreviewprinting

I've noticed something strange with printing PDFs via Preview on OS X 10.11 El Capitan. I've been printing PDF slides at 6 slides a page and they have always turned out like Figure 1.

After the upgrade to OSX 10.11, with the exact same print settings, they turn out like Figure 2 instead. I am printing with OSX's Preview, and the odd thing in OSX 10.11 is that the actual printout (Figure 2) looks entirely different from the print preview. (Figure 1)

I have tried printing my PDF on another machine running on 10.10.5 with the same set of print settings and it turned out like Figure 1, leading me to believe that 10.11 changed something.

It is too early to tell if it's really 10.11's fault, so I would like to see if anyone has encountered this rather odd and obscure bug.

Below are the attached print previews (it's a little small but I've labelled the slides with their slide numbers)

How the print preview in OSX 10.11 looks like, and how it is printed in OSX 10.10
Figure 1. How the print preview in OSX 10.10 and 10.11 looks like, and how it is actually printed in OSX 10.10

How printing in OSX 10.11 turned out INSTEAD
Figure 2. How the actual printout in OSX 10.11 turned out instead (this is a photoshopped image of the actual printout because I didn't have a scanner to scan my picture in. But be rest assured this is how it looks like in real life)

Best Answer

Not sure if this is the only way to go about doing things, but I have solved this problem by resetting my printers, and then adding them back.

I suspect deleting the printer and adding that specific printer back should solve the problem as well, but this has yet to be tested, so don't take my word for it.