DAMTP Printing System - Transparencies, Foils, Overhead Projector (OHP)

Summary

To print on trasparencies (ohps) you need to tell the printer to select the right type of media. This used to be very simple - for all our printers the type Transparency was all that was needed, but our more recent printers now insist on using different names.

Sadly if you ask for a media type which is not on the list that the printer recognises it will be ignored and the document printed on Plain paper.

Graphical apps

Most of the graphical applications (firefox, openoffice etc) offer some mechanism to select the media type - usually from a list obtained for the printer. If this is the case it should only offer valid types.

In some applications e.g. OpenOffice, you may have to manually disable duplex and/or select Manual-feed before it will offer the transparency media types.

If you need to type in a media-type then you need to ensure that you pick the right one - as desribed below.

Selecting the right media type

Each printer has a list of media types that it will allow, and we can query it for any printer by running

lpoptions -p printername -l | grep MediaType

Our older printers generally want Transparency, but the newer ones use a couple of different strings, e.g. the HP-CP3525 printers want ColorLaserTransparency and the HP-P4015 printers want MonoTransparency instead.

Here is some output from running lpoptions with the transparency media types highlighted in bold.

The g2 printer:

$ lpoptions -p g2 -l| grep MediaType
MediaType/Media Type: None *Plain Preprinted Letterhead Transparency
 Prepunched Labels Bond Recycled Color Rough Card_Stock Envelope

The g1 printer:

$ lpoptions -p g1 -l| grep MediaType
MediaType/Media Type: Unspecified *Plain Light6074 Bond Recycled
 Card_Stock176220 MonoTransparency Labels Letterhead Envelope
 Preprinted Prepunched Colored Rough

The g0c printer:

$ lpoptions -p g0c -l| grep MediaType
MediaType/Media Type: Unspecified *Plain HPColorLaserMatte105
 CardGlossy176220 ExtraHeavyGlossy131175 HPPremiumChoiceMatte120
 HPColorLaserBrochureMatte160 HPSuperiorLaserMatte160 HPCoverMatte200g
 HPMattePhoto200 HPPresentationSoftGloss120 HPProfessionalSoftGloss120
 HPPresentationGlossy130g HPProfessionalLaserGlossy130g
 HPColorLaserBrochureGlossy160 HPSuperiorLaserGlossy160
 HPCLaserPhotoGlossy220 Light6074 MidWeight96110 Heavy111130
 ExtraHeavy131175 Cardstock176220 MidWTGlossy96110 HeavyGlossy111130
 ColorLaserTransparency Labels Letterhead Envelope Preprinted
 Prepunched Colored Bond Recycled Rough HPToughPaper OpaqueFilm

In conclusion

Printing on transparencies is much less common than it used to be (since for presentations laptops and projectors are used more often). If it turns out that people find it hard to work out the right string we will provide a simpler way to extract the right string for a particular printer.