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Problem: E.g. Cups just offers options to manage colors. Unfortunately they are specific to the manufacturers model. I.e. xerox is using e.g. "XRXColor, BW", Dell "ColorModel, KGray" etc...

I am looking for a tool which offers a unified interface to the printserver to print grayscale.

ManuelSchneid3r
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    Safe to assume that any options returned by `lpoptions -l` are out? Those appear to be only printer specific, but I'm checking. – slm Sep 26 '13 at 15:37
  • Remember it should be generic. It should be scriptable. Hence I need a generic way. – ManuelSchneid3r Sep 26 '13 at 15:47
  • What are you doing with all this lpr information you've been asking us about anyway? – slm Sep 26 '13 at 15:48
  • Here's an idea I found: `lpr -o saturation=percent`. So if you want black/white you dial this down to 0, `lpr -o saturation=0`. – slm Sep 26 '13 at 15:51
  • That options isn't listed as a printer opt. and I just tried it and our printer accepted the job. LMK if that satisfies your need and I'll write it up as an answer. – slm Sep 26 '13 at 15:54
  • `lp -o saturation=0` does not work in our setting. It just prints colored ... – ManuelSchneid3r Sep 26 '13 at 18:00
  • OK, back to the drawing board then.... – slm Sep 26 '13 at 18:13

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You could print to PDF, then convert to grayscale (e.g. via ImageMagick or via GhostScript), then print again.

CUPS v1.3 had the -o saturation=percent (for non-OS-X image printing) and -o blackplot (for HP-GL/2 jobs) options, but they are no longer listed in the current version (v1.7) of the docs. However, it seems you can write a PPD driver and specify either an appropriate Resolution or ColorModel directives. But I never did that, so I can't testify if it does what you need it to do.

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