I was printing something in ubuntu 14.04, and was presented with two options:
- Print as black and white
- Print as grayscale
What could be the differences between these two options?
Difference between print as grayscale and black and white
printing
Related Solutions
This has become a popular post so I'm copying over the answer from the official HP forums rather than linking to it.
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Hi,
Unfortunately it is not possible to print using the black and white while any of the ink cartridges are empty.
Using the Black ink only possible while there is color ink as well.
While the color ink is not required for prinitng purposes, it do required for ,maintnance operations of the device.
As the device contain an internal printhead (IIC system), lack of color ink will damage the printing system shortly. Therefore the device will not be functional when there is no ink in order to avoid damaging the system.
For users who wish to print using just black ink (despite the reduced print quality), many HP printers offer options. For example, a driver colour setting (by selecting "print in greyscale with the black cartridge only" in printing preferences) specifies printing using only black ink. In addition, many IPH printers can operate in "reserve mode", which allows the user to continue to print with just the black cartridge when the colour cartridge is removed or not installed.In HP IIC systems, all supplies are required to be installed in the printer for the printer to function
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Follow these steps:
Select your Printer and then click on Printer Properties. (Right now, you can see the preview shows our sheet in color).
In Paper/Quality Tab, change the Color Setting to Black & White.
As you can see, the preview turns to Grayscale and the sheet would print out in Gray background and black font.
Best Answer
Black and white (monochrome),has only two "colors", black (ink or toner) and white (no ink or toner). It is used for things like text, where you want everything that is a printed character to be black and the background white (unprinted).
Grayscale contains shades of grey and is used for reproducing images. In photographic and similar processes, it is a continuous scale from black to white. On consumer laser and inkjet printers, the printer creates the shades using patterns of micro-dots that generally require magnification to see. These patterns are typically designed to reproduce approximately 256 discrete shades.
On a multi-function printer, say you want to photocopy some text. When you scan the page, the paper and wrinkles will have some color (not pure white), and areas of the text might be faint. If you print that in grayscale, you will get an accurate "photograph" of what the scanner saw. If you want maximum readability, you would use black and white, which would force everything darker than a certain threshold to black and everything else would be white. This will be easier to read and a better representation of how the original came out of the printer.