Bug 464141

Summary:	Okular is always printing in grayscale for HP Colorjet printers
Product:	[Applications] okular	Reporter:	Dustin Siebert <dsiebert>
Component:	printing	Assignee:	Okular developers <okular-devel>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal
Priority:	NOR
Version:	21.12.3
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Dustin Siebert 2023-01-11 11:15:31 UTC

SUMMARY
***
I can confirm this issue:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/x2dhs8/okular_prints_in_black_and_white_unless_i_check/

For me even the workaround with "Force rasterization" is not working. Okular is forcing the print settings to grayscale even the global setting is set to color mode. It's a bug between Okular and the HP Postscript driver v3010.107 (built-in driver for Kubuntu 22.04 and latest version in hplip). For the drivers Foomatic/Postscript and PCL3 the issue disappears, but the drivers are not offering all possible printer settings. For other programs HP Postscript driver v3010.107 is working fine.

***


STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Use HP Postscript driver like 3010.107 for HP color Laserjet 5550
2. Print a colored page in Okular

OBSERVED RESULT
Printer is printing in grayscale

EXPECTED RESULT
Printer should print in color mode

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS: Kubuntu 22.04 LTS

I hope, you can provide us a fix for 21.12.3 since this bug is really annoying in a productive KDE environment.

Comment 1 Dustin Siebert 2023-01-12 12:54:54 UTC

Problem persists for the snap version of Okular 22.08.2.

Comment 2 Dustin Siebert 2023-01-18 09:56:09 UTC

The issue is actually related to this bug in CUPS: https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups/issues/421

The bug appears if the snap version of CUPS is installed (for me it was a hidden installation because Chromium forced the Snap version during the upgrade, what i didn't see).

Steps to fix:

1. Remove Snap version via: snap remove cups
2. Edit /etc/cups/printers.conf and change the line

Option print-color-mode monochrome

to

Option print-color-mode color

After a reboot the option is persistent instead of switching again to monochrome, what was caused by the faulty Snap version of CUPS. Now, the printer prints in color mode as expected for jobs by Okular.