I copied an existing colorscheme to ~/.vim/colors/print.vim, and changed all the lines like this: highlight Normal ctermbg=DarkGrey ctermfg=White guifg=White guibg=grey20 to this: highlight clear Normal Then I set the syntax groups how I wanted them to be printed on the printer: highlight Comment term=italic cterm=italic gui=italic highlight Constant term=bold cterm=bold gui=bold ...etc... I then defined the following command and function in my vimrc: After this is complete, you can do (use uppercase 'H'): :Hardcopy > /tmp/out.ps or just :Hardcopy