Canon printer errors from Mac OS X (10.6 and 10.7)

Occasionally when printing to our Canon iR C3080 from Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) we get the following error:

Cannot continue printing because an error occurred. To continue printing, select [Raster Mode] in [Quality]-[Quality Settings]-[Graphics Mode].: 15920

Google wasn't immediately helpful, so I pieced a few things together and wanted to write them down so I can remember how I fixed it if/when it happens again.

First, We're running the canon UFRII v2.21 drivers from the canon website, so start there if you're not running the specific drivers. Next, you must have admin privileges on your Mac to make the changes I'm about to describe.

Start by going to the CUPS home page: http://localhost:631/

From here you can find out all kinds of interesting things that the system preferences app hides from you. From there, we need to go to the Printers Page. Click the Printers tab on the top of the web page. (http://localhost:631/printers/). In this screen we click on the canon iR printer we need to fix.

In my case it's canon.streamsage.com. In the page that follows there is a drop down for "Administration". In that menu we need to select "Set Default Options". On that page we need to set the "General" options by clicking the General link.

We need to scroll down a bit on this page to find the "Graphics" option the original error complained about.

And set that to Raster Mode. You have to scroll to the bottom of the list of options and click the "Set Default Options" button. It should then prompt you for the admin password. Enter it and you're all set.