Can't print in colour to any printer from any app

imacken said:

I spoke too soon. The issue is back!
Doing what you suggest, i.e. copying directly from either printer, does produce colour.

That eliminates it being a technical problem with the color cartridges. How many printers do you have localized to one device?

It is complicated to troubleshoot printing properties when more than one printer is localized to the same device because if you have one set as the default printer, the settings will be managed by Windows and somehow those settings are overriding possible printer settings for the other printers as outlined in my post #6.

You need to find out what is telling your printers to print in gray scale only. There are settings all over the place in Windows that may be altering printing properties.

imacken said:

I have 2 wireless HP printers on the network with 2 computers and various other devices. In addition, I have a local printer connected to my PC.
If I print colour from my PC to the local USB printer, everything is good. If I print to EITHER of the HP wireless printers, then only get greyscale.
If I print from my Mac or iPhone to the wireless HP printers, then colour is fine.
So, the problem is clearly with something on my PC.

Well it looks like you are narrowing it down some at least. I agree that it is PC related; however what it is, somehow eludes me at the moment. Windows can only manage the printers to a point and since you eliminated some possibilities, your conclusive reasoning does seem to point to a PC issue.

I just can't seem to put my finger on what would override the printing properties in one scenario and not the other; or maybe this has nothing to do with the settings at all and it is something really simple.

I know one thing though, you can right click on each of the printers from "Devices and Printers" and select troubleshoot to see if anything is found to be amiss.

Also, in your post #5; I don't understand why you don't have a button to click for your color versus black and white:

imacken said:

Thanks again. Post #5 was the Adobe Reader print dialogue and it does have a ‘print in greyscale’ option near the top.

Yes, I saw it here:



However, that doesn't explain why you don't have a button to tick for color. Just because that gray scale is unticked, doesn't mean color is selected every time you print; unless you hard set the option in the printers properties.

What about the "Advanced" button? What are your choices in that tab?

imacken said:

From what I recall that should have a colour/greyscale option.

Exactly! Where is your color management tab in properties? Also, I noticed in your properties (2nd picture-post #17) that those are document printing properties - you want printing properties of the printer period.

Looks like this:



After that (if you had one) you would be able to see if your monitor is listed:




HP Printers have always had these basic color management profiles, and if you don't have them, I have no idea what is going on.

imacken said:

Should there be profiles associated with the HP printers showing?

Yes, you should definitely have profiles associated with the HP printers.



This article: https://www.howtogeek.com/362534/how...in-windows-10/ shows how to install profiles if they are missing in your printer.

Scroll through the article, it can solve any Windows 10 printing problems.