text-shadow and box-shadow while printing (Chrome)

hogancool picture hogancool · Dec 20, 2012 · Viewed 14k times · Source

I'm making some printable calendar website using HTML, CSS and JS.

Unfortunately I cannot use CSS property called text-shadow, because shadow behind text prints as solid black text without any blur or transparency.

Same problem occurs when I'm trying to use box-shadow for any div - shadow prints like solid black color with no transparency.

I'm using Chrome with style html {-webkit-print-color-adjust: exact;} to ensure all background colors will be printed.

Any workaround? I would prefer not to use any background image.

Edit: I don't want to hide shadows, it's very easy of course. I want to have shadows printed correctly.

Answer

Dave picture Dave · Jan 15, 2014

I realise this is an old question, but just to note that it is possible to make shadows print correctly in Chrome. You need to set both -webkit-print-color-adjust and a filter, as found in this bug thread: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=174583

.thing {
    -webkit-print-color-adjust:exact;
    -webkit-filter:opacity(1);
}

(I prefer to set opacity rather than blur as used in the bug, simply because it seems likely to cause fewer problems).

Note that this will limit the resolution of the print (filter makes it send a rasterised version), so text might become harder to read. If you really want to work around that, I'd suggest duplicating the div (one for the shadow, with the filter hack and transparent text, and another for the text with no shadow)