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• • January 28, 2011 at 5:36 am #58540
    dvdsmith

    Participant

    Hi

    I've been asked to find out if we can set a print preset to black and white? I know we can do a composite greyscale but that option makes up the black and white from the four toner colours.

    We'd like to be able to select a true 'black toner only' print option for a large proportion of our output – obviously to save on the pennies! We'd like to set that as a preset to save time and finger joints.

    If this is possible could someone please let me know?

    Thanks

    David

  • January 31, 2011 at 2:11 am #58557
    Roland

    Member

    If you add a new printer in the OS (Mac OS or Windows) itself using the same settings (IP address, port, etc. etc.) as for your existing printer, and set its default properties to print in black & white by default, you can then create a print preset in InDesign that uses that printer by default.

  • January 31, 2011 at 3:52 am #58561
    dvdsmith

    Participant

    Thanks for the advice Roland.

    I'm not sure if we'll want to go down the route of buying a new printer for default black and white prints (we're trying to save money by setting up the black and white preset!) We were just hoping to be able to set a true black print only preset that could be selected or deselected by the drop downs to curb our colour output.

    I'll put it to the powers that be anyway – we'll probably save in the long run by buying a second printer.

    Thanks again

    David

  • January 31, 2011 at 6:45 am #58565
    Rhiannon Miller

    Member

    You don't have to buy a new printer. What Roland was talking about was not buying a new printer, but telling the computer that you have a different printer that only prints in black and white (even though you're actually pointing the computer to the same printer that you're already using). But you don't even need to do this (if you have a Mac, anyway; I don't know about Windows).

    On a Mac, when you tell it to print (from any application), you get a dialog box with options for your printer, which are set by the printer driver. Somewhere in there, usually under something like 'color' or 'quality', you'll have the option to set it to black and white. You can then save that option as a preset, which will be available as an option whenever you print (from any application) in future. If you save another preset for colour output, you can switch back and forth between them as needed when you print.

    I know these options are also available on Windows; what I don't know is whether you can save them as presets.

  • January 31, 2011 at 7:21 am #58567
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Right: If you choose grayscale from InDesign, it is only sending grayscale to your printer driver. Your printer driver is then converting that to RGB or four-color-CMYK to make it look “better.” So you need to change the printer driver setting, not InDesign.

    (I do the same thing; color toner is painfully expensive! You can buy a new color printer for almost the same cost as replacing the toner. Gr.)

  • February 1, 2011 at 9:04 am #58588
    dvdsmith

    Participant

    Thanks everyone – really appreciate your help. That all makes perfect sense (apologies for not grasping the concept earlier Roland!)

  • February 2, 2011 at 12:47 am #58600
    Roland

    Member

    No problem :)

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