Printing to Window's Shared Printers from OSX (across workgoup or domain)

Took a while for me to get this process down, so hopefully the below saves you some time.

1 – Set up a printer in “Printer Setup Utility” … it probably wont work but do it anyway (there must be a printer set-up or CUPS won’t be switched on).

2 – In “directory access” (in utilities folder) configure SMB/CIFS to use your domain or workgroup. Also point it directly to your WINS server (by IP address) if at all possible.

3 – Open a web browser and navigate to CUPS admin interface:

http://localhost:631/printers

“Modify” the printer you just created.

Click through and leave everything as it is except the Device URI field – here enter address of printer in following format:

smb://username:password@domain_name/machine_name/shared_printer_name

[for this last step I reccomend setting up a very limited access account just for such cross platform printing purposes — on a workgroup or somewhere where username isn’t important just put in some dummy info (but put something in)]