Saturday, October 02, 2004
| Setting up your printer for color
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| Q. My printer is set up so that it always prints in black and white. I remember establishing that setting, but I don't remember how it was done. How can I set the printer so it prints in color?
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| A. There are two ways to do this. If you often use color, you can set up the printer so it prints color by default. Or, if you primarily use black and white, you can have it print in color for individual jobs.
Let's look first at the default. In Windows XP, that is set by clicking Start>>Printers and Faxes. That will open a list of printers, and possibly other programs, such as fax software. Right-click the printer and click Printing Preferences. In the Printing Preferences window, select the Paper/Quality tab. Change the color setting from Black & White to Color. Click Apply>>OK. That changes the default to color printing. Now, each time you print a document that contains color, it will print in color. You may not want to do that. Color ink is expensive. When you print a Web page, for instance, you could print color ads. You probably wouldn't want to spend your ink budget on that. If the default is set to Black & White, you won't make that mistake. So here's the other way to get color. Leave the default as Black & White. When you have a page you want to print in color, click File>>Print. On the Print window, click preferences. That takes you to the same Printing Preferences window. Once again, click the Paper/Quality tab. Click Color. Click OK and Print. You'll get your color printing, but only for that job. Your default will remain Black & White. In Windows 2000, click Start>>Settings>>Printers. Right-click the printer and click Printing Preferences. In Windows 98 and ME, also start with Start>>Settings>>Printers. Right-click the printer and click Properties. My setting was on a window provided by Hewlett-Packard. The black and white setting was called Grayscale. |
