Issue when Printing in Mojave Preview App with Third Party Driver

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Level 5

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Issue when Printing in Mojave Preview App with Third Party Driver

Whenever I try printing from the Preview App I am unable to select any option under the "Printer Features" drop down menu (as shown below) and have it "Stick", this is for the Canon MG7150 Printer/Scanner third party driver which has recently been added to Canon's web site as Mojave compatible.

Whatever is selected from this area, it still seems to print as though it's on Plain Paper at very low Quality.

If I ignore "Printer Features" altogether and just select from "Presets" for Paper Type and from "Paper Size" for Size and/or Borderless all works fine (although I loose the ability to customise "Quality" as it defaults to "Normal".

Has anyone else noticed this "unusual" behaviour regarding Third Party Print Drivers/Preview App.

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013), macOS Mojave (10.14), 500Gb SSD 3.1 i7

Posted on Oct 9, 2018 1:50 AM

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Answer 1

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huw1000

Level 1

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Nov 20, 2018 8:43 AM in response to SiHancox

Just to add to this I'm having the exact same issue with a Brother MFC-J6510DW printer since upgrading to Mojave.

What I've noticed is that Preview shows the printer options the same as the screenshots above, which are ignored when the print is confirmed, but other applications such as Word and Acrobat Reader have the print options displayed as they were previously in High Sierra (as shown below), and they function as they should.

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Answer 2

SiHancox Author

Level 5

4,953 points

Dec 17, 2018 5:26 AM in response to SiHancox

Just an update regarding the Printing issue with Mojave Preview App and Third Party Driver, I believe the problem actually revolves around the "Quality" setting under the new "Printer Features" section, specifically the selection of the top print quality (Super Fine).

If left unchanged from the default (ie. Normal (Fine)) all is ok, likewise selecting "Fine" appears to work as well, but if the setting is changed to "Super Fine" the system appears to default back to Draft mode (ie. very poor quality).

So, on my system if I ignore the top quality setting in the Preview App all appears to work as expected - this doesn't happen under other Apps because as huw1000 has rightly pointed out they still use the old style "Print Options" which gives a slightly reduced selection.

The above is for Pixelmator and as can be seen the "Quality" options are reduced when compared with that under the Preview App, only extending up to "High" which I presume is the equivalent of the Preview App's "Fine".

Anyhow, hope Apple sort this out and for anyone else seeing similar issue the above may help.

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Answer 3

SiHancox Author

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4,953 points

Nov 20, 2018 7:07 AM in response to huw1000

Thanks for your confirmation, like you I have only noticed this behaviour with Preview, if I print from say Pixelmator I also see the alternative print options (as per your second image) and that allows changes with no issue.

At least I now know it’s not just my iMac (or Preview) going wonky, I currently have my printer settings pointing at Apple’s supplied driver rather than Canon’s and have no issue with any selections under Preview, unfortunately in doing this I don’t get the “full” flexibility that using the Canon supplied driver would offer.

Canon haven’t updated their driver yet but it’s still marked as Mojave compatible so that makes me believe they consider this an Apple issue, especially since it works ok with other apps, suppose I/we will have to wait to see if Apple fix in future updates.

Thanks again for you time.

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