Why does color scans turn out black and white on the Officejet Pro 8500A Plus

[ctalford]

My scanner just started scanning color photos in to black and white. The grayscale is off.

[stix4]

Hello Ctalford,

Thanks for the post.  With this one, if you run a simple copy from the glass/control panel, does it still deliver a B/W version?  If so, I would suspect the ink system.  If not, I would be looking at a possible driver issue.  Ensure that the printer (OJ Pro 8500 plus) is selected when you begin your scanning.  Also, you can scan via a different method to further narrow down the issue.  I've included a couple of links below that will give you some other scanning options and some things to check in the printer settings.  Good Luck!

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02456650

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02728195

[ShlomiL]

Hello Ctalford,

Additionally, If you use the device front panel to scan a PDF file, please follow the steps below:

The default scan workflow configured to scan documents as Black and White. Make sure to change the scan settings to scan documents with color:

If you use Mac OS X 10.7, make sure to install the following update first, otherwise skip to the next step:

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/COL41827/mp-101648-1/HP_Scan_for_Mac_OS_X_10.7_Update.dmg

1. Open the HP Utility and select your device.
2. From Scan Settings open the "Scan to Computer".
3. Click the Scan Tasks tab.
4. Select the affected shortcut and click on Edit... (or just double-click the shortcut).
5. In the section of Scan from an HP Device click on the blue triangle to enlarge the menu.
6. From the enlarged menu now open the drop-down menu next to Mode
7. Now select the Color option and then click on OK to save the changes. The next scanned document using this workflow will appear in color.

Regards,
Shlomi