How to Remove Color and Grayscale Bars from Acrobat Printouts
Question details
The user needs to turn off color bars and grayscale bars that are automatically printing on their PDF documents.
- Product
- Adobe Acrobat
- Device & OS
- macOS
- Scenario
- Printing a PDF document and wanting a clean output without commercial printer calibration marks.
- Observed behavior
- Documents are printing with color bars and grayscale bars visible on the pages.
Verify that your printer is turned on and properly connected to your Mac, and open the specific PDF file you want to print cleanly in Adobe Acrobat.
Disable Printer Marks in Acrobat Advanced Print Settings
Access the Advanced Print Setup in Adobe Acrobat to uncheck the specific printer marks causing the color bars to appear on your physical documents.
Color bars, grayscale bars, and registration marks are primarily used by commercial print shops to verify color alignment and ink density. For standard home or office printing, these marks are unnecessary and can be turned off in the software's advanced print settings.
With your document open in Acrobat on macOS, click on 'File' in the top menu bar and select 'Print', or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + P.
In the Print dialog box, locate and click the 'Advanced' button to open the Advanced Print Setup window.
Look at the left-hand panel of the Advanced Print Setup window and select the 'Marks and Bleeds' category.
Under the Marks section, find the checkbox labeled 'Color Bars' and click to clear it. Ensure any other unwanted marks (such as Trim Marks or Registration Marks) are also unchecked, then click 'OK' and proceed to print.
Print PDFs Cleanly and Effortlessly using WPS PDF
If you want to skip complicated advanced printing menus, WPS PDF offers a streamlined and intuitive printing experience. It defaults to clean, mark-free printing, ensuring your documents look exactly as expected while saving ink and paper.
- 1. Open the PDF in WPS Office: Launch WPS Office and open your PDF document using the built-in WPS PDF tool.
- 2. Access the Print Menu: Click on 'Menu' and select 'Print', or simply use the shortcut Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on Mac).
- 3. Adjust Basic Settings: Select your printer, specify the page range, and choose your preferred paper size directly from the clear, user-friendly interface.
- 4. Print Your Document: Click the 'Print' button to output your document exactly as it appears on the screen, completely free of unwanted bleed or color bar settings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do color bars appear on my printed PDF?
Color bars and grayscale bars are calibration marks used by commercial printers to check color density and consistency across the page. They usually appear if the 'Marks and Bleeds' settings were accidentally enabled in your PDF software's advanced print menu.
Can I permanently remove color bars from the PDF file itself?
If the color bars only appear when printing, changing the print settings will solve the problem. However, if the color bars were permanently embedded into the page content during the PDF creation process, you will need to use a PDF editor's crop tool to trim the document margins.
Will turning off printer marks affect the quality of my print?
No, turning off printer marks like color bars, bleeds, and trim marks has no impact on the resolution or quality of your printout. It simply removes the extra reference graphics from the outer margins of your paper.
