How to Create a Black & White (or Color) Printer Profile

Many of today's printers default to printing in color.  Even if a single pixel is printed in color on an otherwise all black-and-white page, that page is treated as a color print.  Those color pages will cost between 4 - 8 times as much as a black and white page.

Some printers allow default settings to be changed from the printer itself, while others require you, the user, to make that change on your computer.  If the latter is your case, and you have a Mac, here's how to create a Black & White (or Color) profile.  In this case we're using a Ricoh M407; the location of the settings referenced in steps 2 and 3 below may be different from one printer to another.  Steps 4-6 will be the same irrespective of printer model.

1. Open an application like Word, Adobe Acrobat Pro, etc, and go to File -> Print
2. In the print dialogue, you will be greeted with multiple drop-downs; they will vary between printer models.  In this case, the dropdown is mid-screen and you will select "Printer Features".
3. Next you can choose whether to print in color or black & white.  Let's say you choose black & White.
4. At the top of the Printer dialogue window is a "Presets" section.  Click on it and choose "Save Current Settings as Preset"
5. Give your preset a name, like B&W Printing.  Select the "All printers" radio button, then press OK.
6. Now, whenever you print a file, you can select the B&W Printing setting.  The computer will remember this setting for all future jobs, so if you want to create a Color printing profile, follow steps 1-5, choosing color instead of black & white in step 3.

That's it.  You've now created a Black & White printing profile.