And which one is correct?

This is someplace in your export settings, but we have nowhere near enough to help with the information you've given us. What version of ID? Latest patch? What OS?

What colors are you using? CMYK? Spot? RGB? Waht's the transparency blend space set to?

What PDF export settings are you using? What settings when you print to PDF?

So, when it prints from ID the color is correct, but printing the exported PDF it is not?

What do you have set in the ID prefs for Appearance of Black?

What version of Acrobat? Is it also set to use the North America General Purpose 2 color settings?

I'm kind of stumped, and can't think of anything off the top of my head. GIven all that you've said I would expect different results from the three presets. Are you willing to share this file?

OK, I've got your file, exported to PDF/X-1a, Press Quality, and High Quality Print, and to Smallest File Size, just for fun. Printed the first page of all 4.

None of the prints here (from a Xerox 7800) show any abberations in color. On the Smallest File Size the gray is printing marginally darker, but that's not a surprise since it was converted to RGB during export and is now printing in four colors instead of a K-only screen.

The only thing I can conclude from this is there is a problem in either Acrobat or your print driver on your end, but if you want to send me the PDF that you exported, I'll try printing that, too, just to be sure.

Up until this morning the file had only been saved in version 7.5.0. Did you try again after the 7.5.3 update was applied?

Now some non-related production questions. How is this going to get printed for final output? It's set up as process and two spot colors. Spot colors are going to be simulated on a digital print, and on a press CMYK + 2 spots is going to be more expensive than CMYK + 1 spot. It might even be more expensive than three spots (more on that in a moment). If you are going on press with four colors, I would consider converting the  Dark Blue to process (it should print OK at the size you have the type (and is going to get converted in digital, no matter what) and use a spot gray for your other type so it prints crisply (no help, though, if it's digital). If you convert the Cornflower to process as well you can reduce the number of plates and still use the spot gray for type, or move to just four colors and leave your type at 70% k if you like.

The other option worth considering on press would be to convert that RGB image to a Duotone or Tritone using your spot blues and a spot gray. If you do that you can print with three spot inks only for the very best quality on all of your type, but it will definitley incur extra charges for press washing and may turn out to be more expensive than the other options despite requiring only three plates. You'd need to discuss that with the printer.

james_dean1986 wrote:

 

I think there was a PDF in that Zip file I sent you, which I had exported.

Indeed there was. My bad. It prints perfectly here, too.

Sounds like the driver is having a problem with ligatures. Your doc won't look as good, but try truning off ligatures in ID and export a new PDF and see if that one will print.

>I then rebuilt my system font cache. Still no luck. (Deleted FNTCACHE.DAT)

Not a good thing. You should only delete Adobefnt??.lst files and only when the ?? is two digits.