Setting up a printer

A printer driver lets you directly access printer features from applications on your computer. Having the correct driver ensures that you have access to all of the features a particular printer supports.

Adobe recommends upgrading to the latest driver for your operating system.

For more information on recommended and supported PostScript printer drivers, including installation instructions, search the section on Adobe printer drivers on the Adobe website.

Printer drivers may support features that are not included in InDesign, such as duplex printing. Support for these features varies depending on the printer driver you have. Check with your printer manufacturer for details.

If you want to specify settings for a specific printer, InDesign provides access to the printer driver through the following buttons in the InDesign Print dialog box. (When you choose to print to a PostScript file, these options are not available.)

Setup

(Windows) This button opens the Windows Print dialog box.

Page Setup

(Mac OS) This button displays the standard Mac OS Page Setup dialog box.

Printer

(Mac OS) This button displays the standard Mac OS Print dialog box.

Note: Some InDesign printing features appear in both the printer driver dialog boxes and the InDesign Print dialog box. For best results, specify the settings in the InDesign Print dialog box only. If settings overlap, InDesign tries to synchronize the settings, or to ignore the driver’s settings. Some printer driver features (for example, N‑up printing, which prints the same artwork multiple times on the same page) produce adverse printing results when used with InDesign features such as separations.

A PPD file (PostScript Printer Description file) customizes the behavior of the driver for your specific PostScript printer. It contains information about the output device, including printer-resident fonts, available media sizes and orientation, optimized screen frequencies, screen angles, resolution, and color output capabilities. It’s important to set up the correct PPD before you print. Selecting the PPD that corresponds to your PostScript printer or imagesetter populates the Print dialog box with the available settings for the output device. You can switch to a different one to suit your needs. Applications use the information in the PPD file to determine which PostScript information to send to the printer when printing a document.

For best printing results, Adobe recommends that you obtain the latest version of the PPD file for your output device from the manufacturer. Many print service providers and commercial printers have PPDs for the imagesetters they use. Be sure to store PPDs in the location specified by the operating system. For details, consult the documentation for your operating system.

 In Windows and in Mac OS, you select a PPD file in the same way you add a printer. The steps for selecting a PPD file are different for each platform. See your operating system documentation for details.