Mac devices printing: ONLY prints in color. Help!

[krisameto]

We've got a small amount of Macs and use JAMF Pro to manage them.

It seems that our Macs users have an issue where their prints are only printing in Color. Doesn't matter where they print from (which application), which device (happens on at least 3 different Macs), or to which printer.

The printer in the main Mac office is the same make/model as elsewhere in the building. I'm told the issue may have started prior to this make/model anyhow, so it's not likely related to the printer itself.

The same printers don't have any such issue when printing from our Windows PCs or Chromebooks.

I'm not overly familiar with Mac management (due to the tiny portion of our environment they consist of) so I've had help with getting JamfPro setup to do things like deploy this printer to them.

We've confirmed there's no apparent setting on the Mac that is helping - you can switch the print to "B&W" and it'll still come out in color. It shows B&W in the print preview.

So..I'm at a loss as to where such a setting would be configured (or what the settings would be).

I'm not seeing any reference to printer-specific settings within JAMF. (Nothing that says "only allow color" or "don't allow color" etc)

It appears to be pushed as a CUPS device, with an SMB URI. All of that seems to be working - they CAN print and the printer is installed.

We have started using Papercut with our fleet recently, but it's my understanding that the issue was around prior to papercut being implemented.

What could I have done wrong to not allow B&W printing??

[mainelysteve]

Are you changing the color/grayscale(b&w) setting through the printer options section of the system print dialog box? For instance when printing to a Konica Minolta color queue the option is under Printer Options > Quality > Color Mode (Auto, Full, Gray Scale). Be careful of app specific print dialog boxes such as Google Chrome, Adobe Acrobat, etc. as they have a tendency to sometimes go by the beat of their own drum.

Using the built in Printer installation function of Jamf Pro or a configuration profile won't allow you to do much besides name the queue, provide the uri, and install the driver. You'll need to change the other cups based settings using lpoptions or rely on your end users to change the previously mentioned setting and save a printer preset. The Files and Processes payload of a policy can be used here or it can be done with a shell script. 

[correct-horse]

Available printing options are highly reliant on the type of print driver you're using and that's gonna be a rabbit hole for you to chase down.

If you're using Papercut you might have the best mileage checking out their support docs to see what the recommend specifically for the types of printers you're using, so much of this stuff is reliant on printer brand, available driver type, and what sort of print servers you're using.

Best of luck, seriously, printers are a nightmare 🙃