PDF Message: "ERROR: limitcheck OFFENDING COMMAND: imagemask" in Preview on Mojave 10.14.6

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PDF Message: "ERROR: limitcheck OFFENDING COMMAND: imagemask" in Preview on Mojave 10.14.6

I've found plenty of reports of this problem, most of them a year or more old, but no solution other than to change the document to something other than pdf, and/or print from something other than Preview. Not particularly ideal. Has no one figured out what is causing this? I could upgrade the OS again I suppose. Might that help? My turbotax software is telling me I need to do that by next year anyway. (As you can probably tell, I'm not really a computer geek. I get just geeky enough to get by generally speaking, and I delay doing things like updates for as long as I can.)

PDF Message: "ERROR: limitcheck OFFENDING COMMAND: imagemask"

Upgraded to Mojave 10.14 and when sending a pdf on my HP Laserjet 100 it prints the following message:

"ERROR: limitcheck

OFFENDING COMMAND: imagemask

STACK:

(r)

(Sys/Start)

After I upgraded to Mojave I printed many documents (pdfs, jpgs, etc.) and had no problem until I attempted to print out one particular 20 page doc. Nothing special about it, just an investment tax document with no graphics. It would print 2 pages and stop, with this error message overprinted in the bottom corner of the second page. Sent pages 3 to 20 and it printed 2 more pages, same error message on second page. This continued to the end of the document.

Could it possibly be related to the fact that, to try to speed up printing, I went into the Preview pulldown menu in the print window, and chose Printer Features --> color options --> Print Color as Grey and turned that on? In the past the print window for any app has generally had an easier-to-find option of using only black toner. I switched it back when I started getting the error message but it didn't change the error message problem.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Apr 25, 2021 6:29 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Misspellingsworkbest Author

Level 1

5 points

Apr 26, 2021 8:43 AM in response to steve626

I probably should have clicked "this solved my question" rather than "helpful". The file does open and print correctly from Acrobat Reader which I already have. I also tried opening it in Safari and Chrome but didn't bother to try to print from there. REMEMBERING this fix will be my only problem. I'm not sure I necessarily want to configure Acrobat as the default for all PDFs, but maybe I should just do that.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

245,483 points

Apr 25, 2021 8:05 AM in response to Misspellingsworkbest

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

https://pastebin.com/

Whew, they've changed pastebin & made it harder, but after pasting in, click Create new paste button, then Embed button, then copy the URL...

The important part of the above is...

https://pastebin.com/embed_js/KuvnghqA

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

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Answer 3

Apr 25, 2021 4:56 PM in response to BDAqua

Tried safe mode, no difference. Tried again in regular boot, no difference. But I tried a different PDF file and it printed without problems. Which doesn't surprise me because I had printed many pdf pages over the past few days. This little 77kb file seems to be the only problem child. I will not need to reprint it since it is just for this tax season (and have a digital copy plus an online copy) but it's just troublesome that i don't know when the issue will pop up again.

When I have time I will try one of the tools.

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Answer 4

Apr 25, 2021 5:06 PM in response to Misspellingsworkbest

That’s a PDF bug or PDF incompatibility.

Try printing that on another printer not from HP.

There are likely PDF pre-flight tools around to check the validity of that PDF file, too.

Look for firmware updates for the HP printer, if HP offers firmware updates for whichever model HP printer you have, too. (If you want us to look for an HP firmware update for you, you’ll need to tell us the exact model of HP printer—HP has a bazillion different printers, some of which are very similarly named, some even with the same numbers.)

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Answer 5

steve626

Level 6

11,501 points

Apr 25, 2021 8:52 PM in response to Misspellingsworkbest

Try printing it from Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is free to download and install. I have some PDFs that don't display properly with Preview but do with Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can also open PDF files in Safari, or in other browsers, with the File menu => Open File ... and try printing from there.

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Answer 6

steve626

Level 6

11,501 points

Apr 26, 2021 11:48 AM in response to Misspellingsworkbest

If it is only one file, then there is no reason to switch the default PDF program to be Adobe Acrobat. Once in a while if you encounter this, simply try Acrobat or the web browsers. Or you can make Acrobat the default, no harm in doing that either.

Acrobat has some other features that Preview does not have -- including various security options, better verified signing, various markup tools, snapshot tools, easier to insert and extract individual pages, etc. So many of us who work with PDFs frequently are used to opening some files with Acrobat as necessary. There are other good PDF programs (some are not free), for instance PDF Expert has additional features including a much better option for shrinking the size of PDF files, better than the options in Preview or Acrobat.

Bottom line -- you have multiple options, maybe for you the easiest is just to continue defaulting to Preview and if needed, open a PDF file with Acrobat instead on an exception basis.

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Answer 7

Apr 25, 2021 9:03 AM in response to Misspellingsworkbest

Is this a monstrously large PDF that might be exhausting the available RAM in your printer?

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Answer 8

Apr 25, 2021 1:27 PM in response to VikingOSX

Actually, the file is only 77KB. That actually seems suspiciously low. But it DID print, two pages at a time. With the error messages.

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PDF Message: "ERROR: limitcheck OFFENDING COMMAND: imagemask" in Preview on Mojave 10.14.6

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