Images appear darker when printed from ARCHICAD on macOS 10.14 Mojave

[Daniel Kovacs]

Affected version(s): All | Severity: workaround applicable | ID: 257660

Issue

When you publish/print a Drawing from ARCHICAD, images and image fills might end up being darker on the output than inside ARCHICAD. If you save/publish to PDF, they will be saved with the correct color.

Cause

If you save/publish Drawings as PDF from ARCHICAD, the conversion of semi-transparent images is done by ARCHICAD. But when you Print the conversion of such images is done by the Operating System. Since it uses a different conversion method, the result can end up looking different.

This only affects images with an alpha channel/transparency. The issue is present on all Operating Systems, but it became most noticeable with macOS 10.14.

Solution

If you have the chance, save your drawings/layouts to PDF, and use those for printing. If that is not an option, then use images without an alpha channel/transparency in your project, as only (semi-)transparent images are affected. We plan to fix this in an update for ARCHICAD 21 and ARCHICAD 22 soon.