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Force Printers Black & White

  • April 14, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 54 views
R
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We have all our print queues setup on Windows Servers and are using Extreme
Z-IP for the Macs.

For a number of reasons we have just created separate queues on the servers
for B&W and Color printing and only allow certain AD groups to even "see"
these Color Queues, this accomplishes exactly what we want for Windows.

As many of you may have guessed the problem we are having is that the Macs
don't care about any of this. :) In the past I have created the custom
plists for the printers and push them out…or used 10.6's new all printers
plist. The problem is that the user can always just switch to the "Standard"
preset or make their own.

Is there any way to FORCE the Mac to only print B&W aside from setting up a
cups server ?

I found a way to associate a ColorSync profile to a specific device to force
it to be B&W but I have never opened ColorSync before today and I really
haven't explored where these settings are or even if they are deployable.
Any thoughts?

Can PaperCut force these queues to be B&W?

Thanks for the input,

Ryan M. Manly
Glenbrook High Schools
? ACSP ? ACMT

    2 replies

    R
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    • rmanly
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • April 14, 2010

    The macs ignore the fact that the queue is set to B&W only. The rendering of
    the PS happens locally, I think, and even if the queue in Windows is set to
    render job on the server vs. client it still comes out color from a Mac.

    FYI what I am going to try is listing all color printers in
    ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.print.custompresets.plist like this...

    <key>PMCustomProfileDictionaryStr</key>

    <dict>

    <key>Printer01</key>

    <string>/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic Gray Profile.icc</string>

    </dict>

    <dict>

    <key>Printer02</key>

    <string>/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic Gray Profile.icc</string>

    </dict>

    And then create static groups in Casper that will remove the <dict> entry
    for the printer that they are supposed to be able to use in color.

    Ryan M. Manly
    Glenbrook High Schools
    ? ACSP ? ACMT

    R
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    • rmanly
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • April 15, 2010

    Incidentally this didn't work. There must be more to the ColorSync profile.
    I did figure out what the overarching issue was though.

    After dealing with that, I embedded the accounting codes in the custom
    presets plists and I am pushing them out to those who need them.

    Thanks to everyone for the feedback and ideas!

    Ryan M. Manly
    Glenbrook High Schools
    ? ACSP ? ACMT

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