Print settings are a MESS in Ventura

I had this problem on one of my Macs and I had to do the following:

Reset the printing system on your Mac to solve a problem - Apple Support

Then re-install / re-add your printer.

If it's an HP brand printer, there is a nifty HP Smart App on the Mac App Store that works wonders with installing appropriate drivers for the printer.

My specific problem was the Mac refused to print in color despite all settings and presets being correct. It started working after resetting the print system and re-installing the printer.

Not sure this is your issue, but if you have the print dialog set to Default Settings, it will ALWAYS use the default settings which are Full Color 2 sided (if you don't have a color printer ignor that first bit.) If you set the print dialog to Last Used Settings, THEN it should remember how you printed last.

Also be aware that some product vendors including Microsoft and Apple have the very nasty habit of saving the last print settings in the metadata of the document itself, further muddying the waters. Which overrides which? Who knows?

Also it's not a bad idea to enable CUPS Print Management (in a terminal cupsctl webinterface=yes) then access CUPS using localhost:631 in a web browser. There you can set the defaults of any installed printer.

I think I managed to come across a partial solution, along with the assistance of an Apple advisor yesterday.

After trying to resolve the issue by reinstalling my printers and resetting the print system many times over the past week, I realised yesterday that if you are using a '3rd party' program to print from, such as Photoshop (presumably most are using a 3rd party program), the print settings will stick UNTIL YOU SAVE YOUR FIRST PRESET. Once the first preset has been saved, such as within Photoshop, this is when all of the settings get messed up and the dialog box reverts to defaults or some other unwanted combination of settings.

After speaking to an Apple advisor yesterday for a few hours, we discovered that if you open up Text Edit (a basic Mac program already installed on the system), and you go to make your presets using the print dialog menu in here, then these will stick when you open them up in a 3rd party program. It's a bit of a round about way of doing it, but not too much of a hassle.

Presumably most people with the problem are printing from an Adobe program, so maybe it is Adobe who need to catch up with something from the latest upgrade.

Reading this thread suggests to me that there is a level of confusion as to the problems being experienced. Here is my understanding of what is being experienced.

1) Apple's AirPrint. This is Apple's attempt at a printer driver for your printer. It seems that it will be installed/activated in preference to the printer vendors own driver. Once installed the user discovers that many of the features they expect to find are missing. The solution is to delete the Air Print Driver and install the printers own driver which have to be downloaded from the vendors web site.

The remaining points apply to how printer vendors own drivers perform in Ventura.

2) When using your printers vendor supplied driver the output looks "wrong". I realise that wrong is a poor term but there it is. It is likely that the settings you have carefully made have been changed by the driver and without warning. These changes can be anything such as Media Type, Quality even black and white instead of colour. I reported in a previous post that just closing a settings dialog pane using the <Cancel> button modifies settings behind the scene. There may be other user inputs that change settings. My work around is two fold

a) I always dismiss dialog panes using the <OK> button as I believe this avoids un-commanded changes from occurring. Note I am unable to prove this works but it seems to work at least with my Canon Pro-10.

b) I print using Qimage One application which allows the required printer settings to be made within the application which it then "forces" on the printer driver. The down side is that you have to buy the application but it earns it keep by making printing more reliable

3) User presets made to save selected settings for different papers have stopped working or make the wrong settings. I suspect that this is a version of (2) above. Its possible that the wrong settings were saved or its possible that the act of saving the preset changes settings.

4) Image processing application prints using an ICC paper profile. What should happen is that when printing the application should ensure that the printer driver is not also applying colour management. At present in Ventura this does not appear to happen in many cases which results in poor quality prints . The exception that I have found is Qimage One which when you think about it is logical as they are a software house that is focused on printing alone.

So yes its a MESS.

As a professional photographer with two large format printers, the bug has been a real issue. After many hours of testing, reloading the print drivers for both printers, and checking different workflows, I found that the ONLY way to get a proper print out of Lightroom or Photoshop is to NOT create a preset using Apple’s double preset system. Making each setting manually does allow the app to control printing rather than the printer.

When selecting color “Managed by Printer” in Lightroom, it’s possible to switch between ColorSync and Epson Color Controls, and choose the proper printer profile. Going back into LR and changing the color management tab to the proper profile then grays out ColorSync, but leaves it selected, as it should, and avoids double profiling.

Currently running Ventura 13.3.1

I painfully reloaded Monterey Mac OS on my Mac Pro that I use for photo printing because Ventura completely messed up printing to my HP Designjet Z9+ and Epson Surecolor P600. I mistakenly upgraded my work MackBook Air to Ventura and continue to have nothing but trouble with printing to various laser and inkjet printers at the lab on that machine. Presets simply do not work in Ventura. Nothing remains fixed and everything resets to default with ever print job. It does not matter what application or printer is used. No settings carry over from job to job, and presets don't set or keep any print property. Why is Apple not fixing this?

For people who don't want to wipe their drive and reload Mac OS Monterey and their data, I suppose they could buy a Parallels virtual machine license and then install Monterey in the Parallels VM (It's not just for Windows). Then they could set up printing in the VM. I hope that would work, but maybe do a test trial of Parallels before committing money to it.

Been experiencing this problem now for almost a week printing from Photoshop on a Canon Pro 1000, after upgrading to the new Ventura 13.2.1. After a lot of tinkering around, wasting time, wasting ink, wasting paper, I think I have discovered that the problem only starts ONCE you start to save printing presets.

It might just be a temporary fix, but try resetting the print systems, reinstall the printer(s) you use and then set your media type/other settings etc, but DO NOT save as a preset. Fortunately I only have one set up, but just have to change the paper size for different size prints. Of course, this option may not be appropriate for anyone who changes a lot more settings from preset to preset.

It seems like it is AFTER you save your FIRST printing preset, this is the point at which all the settings seem to start overriding back to some kind of default and no matter what you do, the incorrect print finish comes out.

Still it is not good enough, and Apple has to address this. Been using the same setup now for 3 years without any problems, until this latest Ventura update has messed up my work flow, and cost me loads of money so far in ink and paper, not mention time running a business.

PS print dialogue, Color Sync issue causes double profiling

PS 24.1.1 / Ventura 13.2.1 (22D68) / Apple M1 Ultra 128 GB

In the print dialogue, under Printer Options / Color Matching the Color Sync setting is grayed out. In the following, the Default shows the radio button set to Color Sync as it should since PS will provide the ICC profile. The setting is copied to a new preset "Han Luster Sheet". When viewed, the new preset is no longer set to Color Sync, but to Epson Color Controls. This results in double profiling with colors grossly off. Since this dialog box is grayed out, it cannot be set back to Color Sync.

This is still occurring having deleted the printer in MacOS and via Epson's Uninstall, and then reinstalling.

Printer driver is Epson 12.62 (current for Ventura) for P7000. Same behavior after a complete print system reset.

As I was working with other vendors who have printing systems that operate outside of the Adobe environment, it seems there is a general failure to "remember" various preset settings (including sheet or roll paper):

...there are some bugs in the Apple print system in Ventura which can cause driver settings not to be remembered. This issue is not specific to [product name] but is a bug at the system level.

For debodina: I was able to turn off duplexing by using the settings on the panel of the printer itself (Brother HL-L2350DW). It then will respect the duplex settings in Ventura's print dialog box (I can print successfully either duplex or single-sided).

[This doesn't have anything to do with this thread's printer tray settings sticking, but hopefully will help you print checks again.]

It is fixed in the new version of macOS! Two (2) years later!

Not sure if this will work for everyone, but I was having issues with Epson WF2860 (no duplex). Went through same hoops as others to no avail. All my devices are on same network. Finally found on a Mac related site to check the printer name from a terminal session: ipp <return> came back with a name EPSONFA0ADC.local - tried adding the .local name through the Add Printer Settings dialog.

The default 'Add' window showed no printer name, but had 'Bonjour' listed under the 'Kind" column, so that was obviously not what I was after. I selected the globe icon at the top of the add printer dialog and typed in the name from ipp command. Ventura recognized it as an ipp connection protocol by default. So far so good; now I was able to get a more extensive print dialog box up, likely because it was now connecting to a legitimate device with the correct name and/or protocol, and it printed duplex once I found the duplex setting further down in the print options list (expand all of the drop downs!).

Options under the Protocol drop down included AirPrint, Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), Line Printer daemon (LPD), and HP Jetdirect socket. In my case, both AirPrint and IPP worked, with IPP giving me the more extensive list of print options. Please note that I did not save any presets to test that out.

Hope this helps someone.

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

I just submitted feedback to Apple on the unstable print preset issue. I suggest others also report their print problems with Ventura or previous Mac OS using Apples's Feedback Assistant web page https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/. Pick "printing" as your bug report topic.

I'm running a studio in Korea. I've had this problem and quickly reverted back to Monterey back in the two weeks of Ventura's release after wasting several photo papers, ink, and my time (all the while struggling, fidgeting settings, crashing the LRC in the process to print properly for my clients/in front of my clients🤦‍♂️). And AGAIN a while back, I think it was along the line of 13.2.x, hoping the issue was resolved. But nope, it was still there and had to spend my night restoring files from TimeMachine which didn't work as expected on recovery and had to connect the snapshot manually navigate to the folders and back up files from snapshots on my NAS(TBC, TimeMachine not working as expected is partially my fault storing them on my NAS. So no complaint there). I can't believe that the problem is not yet fixed on the latest version of OS. At this point, I'm deeply disappointed on Apple and all 3rd party developers for dragging this critical issue for professionals while all of them boast features/specs that are developed/designed for professionals in mind.

Ziatron, You may be able to edit this behavior in CUPS, which is the Common UNIX Printing System, part of the UNIX system underneath Mac OS. You will need to enable the CUPS web interface then go to the CUPS in a web browser, pick your printer, and edit its default properties to disable 2 sided printing. I won't post the details since Apple might get mad about that, but you can Google it.