Printing Patterns

[stitchingmama]

I usually print everything in gray-scale including patterns. I'm way too cheap to pay for coloured ink. But today I was fixing a pattern and when I printed it I printed in colour by mistake. What a happy accident! I've been doing projects with 12 or less colours so I haven't need to print in colour but what an improvement. The next project I'm doing will have 40 or more colours so I'm going to print it in colour. I'm impressed with my cheap printer and kg stitch; the colours match what I'm seeing on my laptop almost perfectly.

Do you print your patterns in black and white or in colour? Or maybe you save the environment by looking at them on a computer/tablet (too drying on the eyes for me)?

[Pyper]

big patterns i print in colour, i find it much easier than memorising all the symbols. Small patterrns I stitch from a screen or copy into a gridbook I have if I need it to be transportable.

[RMDC]

I usually print in black and white, symbols only. I make sure to change all the symbols from their default to dots and lines so I don't waste ink on big blobby symbols. The papercrafter in me values ink above gold.

[funkymonkey]

Unless I know I'll be stitching away from home, I look at the screen. I enlarge the PDF to like 8x so there's no strain at all. If there's an annoying page turn right between what I'm working on, I open two copies of the PDF side by side so even that works better than paper for me.

[Yurtle]

I always print and print in colour. I can't work from a screen. I guess I don't have the proper set-up at home for that and I would probably lose my place a lot easier. Working just from symbols without colour can be very straining on my eyes so I've always been in the habit of printing in colour, probably because that's how bought patterns and kits came.

[Eliste]

I'm too environmentally conscious to print unless it's absolutely necessary. I can't make myself waste the paper!

That said, on my last cross stitch project, I had to print it out to figure out what was left. Printed in black and white and spent ages highlighting what was still outstanding, which was the only way I could deal with the tons and tons of green. Would never have worked if I printed in color as so much was just different shades of green. Plus I doubt the highlighting would have worked well over color.

[Ally]

If I thought my printer could handle it I'd print mine out, but no! I work from the screen. I'd like to print them out but it's not really practical for me to do so unless it was on someone elses printer!