One side of double-sided copy comes out lighter than other.

[J***@adobeforums.com]

I've had a persistent problem: I've designed a document and when I print it out, one side is lighter than the other, i.e. an area with solid black looks fine on one side, but on the other side, it's not a solid black. It also does this on a four-page document, one side on each page will be lighter than the other. Any suggestions? I can e-mail the document to someone so they can take a look at it.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

It's probably your printer. You may need to tell it the second side is a second side, as it were. Sending a page through a printer is going to alter the moisture content, at the least, and may, depending on the printer, add oil, which will affect how ink is absorbed or toner adheres, and on laser printers the second side usually needs to run slower through the fuser.

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Is this a duplex printer? I have no experience of duplex printers but I would have thought that if it's meant to print
both sides (and Peter and I are both assuming that "sides" means front/back, not left/right) the effects of printing
side A on the printing of side B would have been taken into account.

If it's not a duplex printer, but is a laser and you are just turning the paper over and printing on the back, you run
the risk of picking up the toner you've just fused on the previous side and spreading it all over the rollers,
eventually contaminating everything you put through it. Been there. Done that :-(

k

[J***@adobeforums.com]

Yes, sides means front/back. The odd thing is, I've had this problem at two different print shops- Staples and the local university print shop. I didn't know if there was something wrong in InDesign, if there is a certain setting it needs to be printed on or if that's just the way it goes.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

I don't know anything about your local Staples or your university print shop, but if they're staffed by the same level of skilled workers we have here I'm not surprised if the quality is less than perfect.

Peter

[P***@adobeforums.com]

I should add that there is nothing inherent in either InDesign or two-sided printing that would cause this. I just had a proof done this afternoon at my printer for a book and the quality of the pages is identical both sides, as it always has been on my in-house equipment.

[N***@adobeforums.com]

Or this is possibly the dreaded transparency bug, and it's merely coincidental that it's on duplex page sets.

Do the pages print normally if you print them all on separate sheets of paper? Or do some pages still print lighter?

[G***@adobeforums.com]

The front and the back side of paper have different
qualities. That's so even for excellent toner printer
paper.
Printing duplex, the second pass works on already
heated paper.
Color management is valid for the front side.
For design reports it was necessary that facing pages
use the same side of the paper for subtle images which go
across the gutter, otherwise the discrepancy was obvious.
The problem was solved by sorting the pages in Acrobat
manually.
a) Use better paper.
b) Eventually sort (which is equivalent to turning
each second paper sheet in advance to printing).

Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

[N***@adobeforums.com]

I'm not sure it's a paper/printer issue unless the paper is really unsuitable or the printer really low-end. I print duplex all the time with no discernible imaging issues. I'd think that any reasonably good paper in a reasonably good duplexing printer (i.e., one that knows it's duplexing and adjusts the imaging appropriately) would produce consistent a/b pages - maybe not press-quality, but nothing the average eye would notice.

I suspect another problem area, like transparency and flattening.

[G***@adobeforums.com]

Nitro,

believe me, I'm using two calibrated duplex printers
OKI 9600 and rather good toner printer paper Neusiedler
ColorCopy 120g/m2 or 160g/m2:
Differences for the mentioned design report were visible
for facing pages. They were hardly visible if the pages
were shown separated.
Of course a subtle effect. But that should be much worse
for ordinary copier paper.
How can a duplex printer adjust images ? The printer is
normally calibrated by printing the target on the front
side.
A correction would require a second calibration in duplex
mode by printing the target on the back side AND (later)
automatic switching between the two ICC output profiles.

Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

[P***@adobeforums.com]

How can a duplex printer adjust images ? The printer is normally calibrated
by printing the target on the front side.




The printer does, usually, have some internal controls, however, to adjust speed and fuser temperature, as well as overall darkness controls, which can be used to compensate for things like heavy or light stock, coated or uncoated, and first or second side. The side-to-side match achieved this way may not be as accurate as flipping every other page and running without duplex, but ought to be within the "acceptable" range, in the same way that a book printed on a litho press may have slightly different ink densities both through a page run and from flat to flat.

I continue to suspect the machine/operator combination. If running more than a few copies of any duplex job it's almost certain to be faster (and time is money in a service bureau) to do them by printing one side at a time and flipping the stack instead of letting the machine flip each page, and that leaves the opportunity for an unskilled operator to fail to tell the machine that it is now printing side 2.

Peter

[N***@adobeforums.com]

Yes, I'm running an HP5550 and it definitely adjusts its operation for varying stock and for duplexing. I get very consistent results even over dozens of pages at a time.

I'm sure that the picky pros among us will find differences between the imaging on each side of duplex sheets, but the average user will never see a thing. These printers, as advanced as they are, aren't meant to compete with industrial output systems. They're meant to make picky office managers happy. :)

The OP is either running a very substandard printer - one that has duplexing machinery but no imaging adjustment capability - or has another problem affecting his output. Peter may have nailed it by implying that the duplexing is being done manually, which would confuse the machine about the paper condition and imaging requirements on the second, drier, harder surface.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Remember that the OP said he was having this done at Staples and Best Buy, companies that make their reputation on the pricing of the service, not the quality.

Peter