When you have both PostScript files that are "Produced by poppler pdftops", view them directly with plain Ghostscript on the command line as follows: gs -r50 -g700x700 file_name.ps Press [Enter] to view the next page or [Ctrl]+[C] to quit. See "To test if the PostScript or PDF that an application had submitted to CUPS seems to be correct" at https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:How_to_Report_a_Printing_Issue What Ghostscript displays is what a real printer should print, in particular a PostScript printer should print exactly this.