Detect if a printer supports high-quality grayscale (UIPrintInfoOutputType.PhotoGrayscale)

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Created Jun ’15

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With AirPrint it's possible to choose the following output types by setting the outputType property of UIPrintInfo to the relevant UIPrintInfoOutputType:

General
Photo
Grayscale
PhotoGrayscale

At the 2014 WWDC talk on AirPrint ("Adopting AirPrint", session 718), PhotoGrayscale was described as follows:

[...] some printers have a high-quality grayscale mode. Some have gray inks and can print a photo in grayscale really, really nicely. [...] choose this if you want your photo to come out in a really high-end grayscale way.

The problem is that if you print with this output mode on an average consumer inkjet printer you will get a grayscale print that uses the color ink cartridges–basically the same as if you made the image black and white and then printed in the color photo mode. The result is never great, and if your aim is to try to save your color inks then I imagine you will be very disappointed.

It would be helpful to detect if a printer actually supports PhotoGrayscale (i.e. has gray inks, and thus can actually perform high-quality grayscale printing and not merely simulate it), but I don't see such information in the API. Am I missing a way to detect this?

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Answer 1

RLKingSoftware OP

Jun ’15

You can't detect what the printer supports, you can only ask for it. If it exists, it will be used

if it doesn't exist, the printer will use whatever capability it does have to produce the results

requested. I believe the speaker on that session was in error on one point anyway. To the

best of my knowledge, no printer has grey ink. Greyscale is accomplished by printing black

with greater or lower density in a given location.

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