I am having problems with printing some PDF documents on a 2014 MacBook Pro running macOS 10.14.3.
Most PDF documents print fine (from Preview), and I'm happy with the quality.
Examples are these two:
However, I'm having issues with a specific paper.
In Adobe Reader and Preview, the quality looks good, and the letters are very sharp.
But something different happens when I print:
Firstly, from Preview:
Now from Adobe Reader:
This is annoying.
Why is it doing this? Presumably there's a problem with the pdf. But what could it be, and how can I fix it? The pdf looks fine in Preview and Adobe!
For reference, this is the paper I am trying to print.
Best Answer
I have observed this problem before: seemingly solid-tone 100%K text or other vector image in a PDF gets printed out with a 'dotted' pattern.
The problem is caused by color definitions in the PDF file, which get rasterised into 'half-tone'. So you end up with an object that is 100% Black, but comprised of dots, rather than solid tone.
The solution is to make sure that Color Matching is switch to "In Printer" and NOT to "ColorSync". This for Preview and other Apple apps. In Acrobat, use "No Color Management".
I printed sample pages from your exemplar PDF, and they were fine. The PDF is non-optimal, admittedly, as there is Transparency and mixed CMYK and RGB objects.