Using Bluebeam To Print Adobe Produced PDF's

If you have a PDF that was produced using Adobe In-Design or Illustrator, there is a special way to send those documents to the printer/copier from Bluebeam. Granted, there may be things that we can do differently in In-design and/or Illustrator in the future, but for now there is a problem. My first suggestion is to use Adobe Reader to print Adobe created products, but if you would like to use Bluebeam as your main means of printing PDFs to the printer the rest of this article is for you. The reason why documents tend to get "stuck" can lead to a long boring conversation, so I will get to the point.

To print PDFs made with In-Design and/or Illustrator:
1. While in the print dialog box in Bluebeam, click on the "Advanced" button in the lower left corner.

From TBG Two Minute Training

2. While in the Advanced Printing dialog, find the "Printer Engine" option and choose "Image" in the drop down menu.
3. Click "OK", and this will be the default once a document is printed using this setting.
Note: This will also convert colors (my guess is RGB to CMYK) for printing and will affect how those colors appear when printed.

From TBG Two Minute Training

Some other printing issues with Bluebeam.
1. Documents created with In-Design and Illustrator that have gradients or fills, will either leave them out or will print parts of the gradient or fill. Choosing "Image" will not solve this problem.

2. When printing documents with Bluebeam that you have added any type of content to, you will need to choose the "Document & Markups" setting. Choosing "Document Only" will only print the original PDF document and "Markups Only" will only print the markups.

From TBG Two Minute Training

3. Documents made with Bluebeam 8.5 cannot be viewed with Adobe Reader 6.0. So please advise your clients and consultants accordingly if they are having issues opening and reading your PDF. 

To be fair, Bluebeam is a great product and it is not always this programs fault for things getting "stuck" in the printer. There are a myriad of issues that can cause these types of problems, but these are just some known issues that you should be aware of so that it does not affect your printing time.