Printing color on Canon iRC4080i

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Printing color on Canon iRC4080i

I just joined a company where I need to print fliers in color from my mac. I have OSX 10.5.8. The printer is a Canon iRC4080i, and I was given the mac printer driver that goes with it. I print through the network - my computer sees the printer, and I can print easily in black and white. But I cannot get it to print color at all.

The office manager says I should have settings where I can choose black and white or color. All I see is "color matching", and then it takes me to "automatic".

The printer driver manual says the printer should be able to automatically tell if I want to print color or black and white, and do so accordingly. But it doesn't really matter what I do, it won't print in color.

Even though the printer driver came with the computer manual, and it says I should be able to print osx 10.4 or later, I'm wondering if the driver needs to be updated. When I click on the print and fax in the system preferences, it says I am using a generic postscript printer for the ir c4080_D printer, driver version 1.0.

Any suggestions on how to get it to print in color? It's getting imperative that I get this solved soon.

Thanks!
Brenda

15" Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Feb 16, 2011 2:10 AM

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Answer 1

PAHU

Level 6

16,723 points

Feb 16, 2011 2:28 AM in response to bmitchellrem

Hello and welcome to Apple Discussions.

The Generic Postscript printer driver will print in colour providing the iR C4080 is not set to black & white as a default. You don't get a setting in this driver to change this. If the printer can print in colour then it will. But in your case the copier may not allow this as many administrators change the colour setting on the copier from Auto to B&W to reduce running costs.

So there are a couple of solutions available.

1. Change the colour setting on the copier to Auto. This will be located in Printer Settings > Color Mode

2. Install the [Canon PPD's|http://support-au.canon.com.au/contents/AU/EN/0100267504.html] or the [Canon PS driver|http://support-au.canon.com.au/contents/AU/EN/0100248302.html]. With either of these drivers installed you will be able to select your colour preference and override the colour setting above, in case the office manager doesn't want this setting changed.

One thing to note about 2. The Canon PS driver does not support AppleTalk and based on the information you have supplied I can see that you are using AppleTalk to connect to the C4080. So if you want to (or have to) use AppleTalk then you will need to use the Canon PPDs. To use the Canon PS driver you must use IP > LPD for the protocol.

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Answer 2

bmitchellrem Author

Level 1

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Feb 16, 2011 4:31 AM in response to PAHU

Thank you for your help. The printer is not set to B&W since everyone in the company has to print in color. I uninstalled the printer driver 3.2 version that came with the printer, and installed the PPS version that you suggested. The print dialog box did not change. I didn't have any different options for color printing than I had with the other driver version. And it still just printed in B&W, even though on my print preview it looks color and all options I could find pointed to that it should be printing color.
Not sure of what to do next. I've spent hours on this...

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Answer 3

PAHU

Level 6

16,723 points

Feb 16, 2011 4:37 PM in response to bmitchellrem

bmitchellrem wrote:
The printer is not set to B&W since everyone in the company has to print in color.

As I mentioned above, with the correct Canon printer driver installed you will override the default colour setting in the copier. The Generic PS driver on OS X cannot override this default and will print as per this setting. This explains why others in the company are printing in colour and why you would not be.

I uninstalled the printer driver 3.2 version that came with the printer, and installed the PPS version that you suggested.

The v3.2 driver was one of the drivers I mentioned. There was no need to uninstall this driver as it would have worked. With the v3.2 driver being used the colour setting is located under the Quality menu > Color Mode.

The print dialog box did not change. I didn't have any different options for color printing than I had with the other driver version. And it still just printed in B&W, even though on my print preview it looks color and all options I could find pointed to that it should be printing color.

When using the PPD for the C4080, the colour setting is located in Printer Features > Color 1 > Color Mode. The default setting is Printers Default. So if the copier is set to b&w as a default then the document will print in b&W. So open this Color Mode menu and select Color. You will see the other option is Black and White.

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Answer 4

bmitchellrem Author

Level 1

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Mar 7, 2011 6:38 AM in response to PAHU

After several weeks and many hours wasted and stumping the Apple people here in Estonia, I finally just brought my Mac mini to work, and reinstalled the printer drivers you mentioned here on my mini. It was also OSx10.5.8 Leopard software, same as my laptop, but for some reason it WORKS on the mini! Must have been something in my laptop settings that nobody could find that caused it not to work. But I'm happily printing in color from my mini! Thank you for your help!

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