Double-Sided Printing Question

[DianeF]

I recently bought a new printer, a Brother DCP-L2550 DW. It's a monochrome multi function printer that uses airprint. I also recently upgraded my Mac Os to Sonoma 14.2.1 and upgraded all my Affinity programs to the latest versions.

Now, when I go to print with this printer, the option to print double-sided is no longer available. The only way I can do double-sided printing is to export my file to a pdf and then print it from Preview, which does allow double-sided printing.

I searched the Brother website to see whether there were upgrade printer drivers I could download , specifically for Sonoma, but there were none. The website suggested using Airprint which I believe the printer does automatically,

So, at this point, I don't know if the problem resides with the printer, the OS, or the Affinity programs. Can anyone enlighten me on this question and suggest something I can do to allow double-sided printing through the programs themselves without having to export my files as PDFs?

Thanks.

[lacerto]

8 hours ago, DianeF said:

Now, when I go to print with this printer, the option to print double-sided is no longer available.

Do you mean that the control for double sided printing does not exist, or that it does, but is grayed out and not selectable? What if you try to print from within other apps (e.g. Pages, or some other app by Apple)?

The issue is not related to OS, not at least Sonoma 14.1.2, since I have the following shown whenever printing from Affinity apps:

Sometimes availability of double-sided printing can be dependent on general printer settings, e.g. some printers might require that ability to print double-sided or from multiple trays is explicitly enabled in printer's "hardware" options, so I would check if such settings are available within operating system's Printers & Scanners settings. 

[v_kyr]

8 hours ago, DianeF said:

I recently bought a new printer, a Brother DCP-L2550 DW. It's a monochrome multi function printer that uses airprint. I also recently upgraded my Mac Os to Sonoma 14.2.1 and upgraded all my Affinity programs to the latest versions.

Now, when I go to print with this printer, the option to print double-sided is no longer available. The only way I can do double-sided printing is to export my file to a pdf and then print it from Preview, which does allow double-sided printing.

If your default Brother macOS printer driver comes along with an option to setup and make use of duplex printing, then the Affinity apps usually should also offer those settings, as they are just reusing the OS printer driver features here.

As an example for one of my Canon printers, there several available settings are hidden under submenu based panels ...

So you may want to inspect the Brother print panel in detail (especially if you also installed the Brother iPrint&Scan app) if something is maybe hidden there also under other changable/setable submenus.

Other than that show some screenshots of your Brother's printer driver panels here.

See also related from Brother ...

• https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=hk&lang=en&prod=dcpl2550dw_as&os=10080
• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brother-iprint-scan/id1193539993?mt=12
• https://support.brother.com/g/b/manualtop.aspx?c=hk&lang=en&prod=dcpl2550dw_as
• ...

[lacerto]

According to the HTML manual specific to your printer (and many other Brother printers), duplex feature should be available under the Layout options (Two-Sided), as follows (twice, first as a check box and then lower with additional options):

...but it might well be different under Sonoma.

[v_kyr]

9 minutes ago, lacerto said:

According to the HTML manual specific to your printer (and many other Brother printers), duplex feature should be available under the Layout options (Two-Sided), as follows (twice, first as a check box and then lower with additional options):

8 hours ago, DianeF said:

a Brother DCP-L2550 DW

See therefor ...

• https://support.brother.com/g/s/id/htmldoc/mfc/cv_mfcl2750dw/asoce/html/GUID-FE99E530-D964-4A0B-A534-DC086B2F4B85_43.html?c=hk&lang=en&prod=dcpl2550dw_as&broug=in

[lacerto]

As AirPrint and Sonoma are specifically mentioned, and the mentioned printer is also listed as one of the officially supported [AirPrint] printers, there might be point in consulting

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/print-documents-mh35838/mac

....which basically shows the UI shown in my first post. But perhaps there is some printer-specific that causes that the option for double-sided printing is not available.

 

[DianeF]

Thanks for all the replies to my question.

Today I was able to print double-sided from Affinity Publisher and the double-sided option was not greyed out as it was yesterday. I think what threw me was that the print dialog box in the Sonoma OS is different from the print dialog box in earlier versions. It is less clear how you choose which pages to print. As a result, I was not choosing the pages correctly and the program thought I was trying to print only a single page. As a result, it greyed out the double-sided option. But once I figured out how to specify multiple pages to print, the option became available, as shown below. I think the new print dialog box is somewhat confusing in terms of other choices as well, but I guess this is a matter of getting used to it.

[lacerto]

2 hours ago, DianeF said:

print dialog box in the Sonoma OS is different from the print dialog box in earlier versions. It is less clear how you choose which pages to print.

In a way it is possibly clearer and hopefully unifies printer interface so that it is pretty much similar to choose options for different printers in different apps. But changes of course require also new learning, and having minimalist scrollable options seemingly grayed out does not necessarily make learning easier! Also, the option for double-sided printing is not available unless you have at least 2 pages (which is of course logical but also might fool a user to think that the option is grayed out for the active printer in general).

[DianeF]

Lacerto, I think you described very neatly all the issues with the new interface. So many options are grayed out until you start to manipulate them. I think that's the most confusing part of this change.