Need help with printing large photos (CS2)

richtersl

I have Photoshop CS2 and when I print 12 x 18 or 11 x 14 sized photos it takes a good 20 minutes for Photoshop to spool the darn thing to the printer. Needless to say this is pretty aggravating. :hack What makes it even more frustrating is that sometimes it never even makes it to the printer. It just spools for 20 minutes and that's it. Anything smaller than 11 x 14 prints fine.

I thought I'd try printing a large photo through Windows XP to rule out a printer problem. The photo printed fine through XP. Virutally no waiting. :whew

This led me to believe that the problem resided in PhotoShop, probably a caching issue or scratch disk issue but I've not been able to find anything helpful on Adobe's site nor through Google on what can be entered in there besides the default values.

Has anyone else experienced this? I'd rather use Photoshop over Windows XP for printing my photos.

Sam

Hi Linda,

I have no idea what is going wrong, but can assure you this is not normal for PS2 or PS3.

Does it only happen with these two sizes?

It might help if you could provide more details for the computer gurus who, hopefully will be wondering by.

Computer specs, OS, printer, method, steps to print, etc.

Good luck,

Sam

jdryan3

Sam wrote:

It might help if you could provide more details for the computer gurus who, hopefully will be wondering by.

Computer specs, OS, printer, method, steps to print, etc.

Yes, this would help. I used to print on 13x19 on a HP CP1700 using Win XP, CS2, 1GB RAM (yep 1). And that printer was on a small print server.

On the same setup and printing to an older printer it would give me funky lines where the printer was trying to catch up. But you don't have to spool the entire file to the printer at once. Just as long as the printer isn't 'waiting' for data (which give you those lines).

richtersl

OK since you're asking, here are the details on my hardware:

• Compaq Presario V4000 Notebook
• Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2
• 1 Gig Ram, 80 Gig HD
• Paging file size is 1524 MB
• Printer in question is an HP Photosmart Pro B8350

And on Photoshop:

• Photoshop version is 9.0.2
• Photoshop scratch disks - First: startup; Second: c:\
• Photoshop Cache levels: 6
• Photoshop Memory Usage - Available RAM: 899MB; Max used by Photoshop: 60%

The sluggishness appears to only be with photos larger than 11x14. Photos that are 8x10 and smaller print fine -- no delays.

Larger photos print fine through Windows. If this were a printer or system issue then I'd also have problems printing through Windows. This is what leads me to believe that there is a Photoshop setting I need to change to get it to stop complaining about larger prints.

Sam

I keep hoping someone with real computer knowledge will lend a hand, but since they haven't here is what I see.

I think it probably is a combination of issues. You don't have a lot of RAM, note books are normally a little slower, and I don't know how much free space you have on your C drive. I think PS recommends the scratch disk be on a drive with the most free space. My scratch disk in on my D drive.

I think maybe the larger files break the camels back so to speak, and the larger file size is enough to send it to disk swapping / scratch disk limbo.

Perhaps look at how much free space you have on your C drive, and how fragmented it is.

Sam

richtersl

I have 24 gig free and the issue happens even after defragging my hard drive. :cry I defrag my hard disk on a routine basis.

Sam

Linda,

Well if it's just you and me, your in deep $%^%^, because I just about exhausted my computer knowledge.

My next approach, at home, ( I don't recommend this to others) would be to press lots of button, cuss, change settings, cuss, reinstall software, cuss, drink myself into a coma, then call an expert the next day.

Sam

jfriend

Some things to try

richtersl wrote:

OK since you're asking, here are the details on my hardware:

• Compaq Presario V4000 Notebook
• Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2
• 1 Gig Ram, 80 Gig HD
• Paging file size is 1524 MB
• Printer in question is an HP Photosmart Pro B8350

And on Photoshop:

• Photoshop version is 9.0.2
• Photoshop scratch disks - First: startup; Second: c:\
• Photoshop Cache levels: 6
• Photoshop Memory Usage - Available RAM: 899MB; Max used by Photoshop: 60%

The sluggishness appears to only be with photos larger than 11x14. Photos that are 8x10 and smaller print fine -- no delays.

Larger photos print fine through Windows. If this were a printer or system issue then I'd also have problems printing through Windows. This is what leads me to believe that there is a Photoshop setting I need to change to get it to stop complaining about larger prints.

It's hard for any of us to "know" what's really happening, but I tend to suspect the same thing Sam does. You only have 540MB available for Photoshop (899 * 60%). That likely means you're you're disk swapping in Photoshop and you may even be hitting the OS paging file too. All that disk swapping can make something take 100 times longer than it would have if you had enough RAM.

Here are some things you could try to see if this is the right direction:

• Shut down all other apps before printing
• Let Photoshop have as much as 75% of your memory
• Get rid of as many things as you can that are running "in the background". Check your OS task list in Windows Task Manager to see which tasks are using any meaningful amount of memory.
• Increase the size of your OS paging file to at least 2GB
• Purge the undo stack, the history stack and the clipboard before printing to clear that memory (Edit/Purge/All).
• Close any other documents you have in Photoshop
• Look in your print driver settings to see if there are different resolutions to print at. Sometimes, the default is a super high resolution but sometimes it doesn't actually look any better than one notch down from that.
• If all else fails, shut down Photoshop, restart Windows, start Photoshop up fresh, load your compeleted document and try printing from there with no editing in that session so that Windows and Photoshop and the document are consuming the smallest amount of memory possible
• Make sure you haven't resized your document to a resolution higher than is needed by the printer

Of course, the easier solution would be to get another GB of memory, but sometimes that's not very easy in a laptop.

BinaryFx

Something that may or may not help for the OP, but I find Acrobat to be a good print solution for the large format HP5500 at my day job.

Photoshop images are saved as Photoshop PDF files with ZIP compression, no colour conversion and the ICC profile tagged to the file. As Adobe Acrobat Reader is freely available, it works as a great colour managed print source to the profiled printer (one has the benefits of a colour aware printing application without having to have Photoshop installed at the computer driving the RIP).

Depending on the OS, printer and other factors - one can print in the foreground or spool the data behind the scenes.

As for long print times, you may have to find a trade off between resolution and print quality, as the amount of pixels one throws at the printer driver or RIP is often one of the major factors in processing time.

Good luck!


Stephen Marsh
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

richtersl

Sam wrote:

Linda,

Well if it's just you and me, your in deep $%^%^, because I just about exhausted my computer knowledge.

My next approach, at home, ( I don't recommend this to others) would be to press lots of button, cuss, change settings, cuss, reinstall software, cuss, drink myself into a coma, then call an expert the next day.

Sam

HAHAHAHAHAHA! I've tried the cussing and drinking part. The only problem is that after the hangover, large photos still print slowly. And now you have a headache in addition to the aggravation.

Seriously, DGgrin is a great source for technical help. I should have come here first rather than attempting to scour the web.

richtersl

jfriend wrote:

It's hard for any of us to "know" what's really happening, but I tend to suspect the same thing Sam does. You only have 540MB available for Photoshop (899 * 60%). That likely means you're you're disk swapping in Photoshop and you may even be hitting the OS paging file too. All that disk swapping can make something take 100 times longer than it would have if you had enough RAM.

Here are some things you could try to see if this is the right direction:

• Shut down all other apps before printing
• Let Photoshop have as much as 75% of your memory
• Get rid of as many things as you can that are running "in the background". Check your OS task list in Windows Task Manager to see which tasks are using any meaningful amount of memory.
• Increase the size of your OS paging file to at least 2GB
• Purge the undo stack, the history stack and the clipboard before printing to clear that memory (Edit/Purge/All).
• Close any other documents you have in Photoshop
• Look in your print driver settings to see if there are different resolutions to print at. Sometimes, the default is a super high resolution but sometimes it doesn't actually look any better than one notch down from that.
• If all else fails, shut down Photoshop, restart Windows, start Photoshop up fresh, load your compeleted document and try printing from there with no editing in that session so that Windows and Photoshop and the document are consuming the smallest amount of memory possible
• Make sure you haven't resized your document to a resolution higher than is needed by the printer

Of course, the easier solution would be to get another GB of memory, but sometimes that's not very easy in a laptop.

This is exactly the type of information I was seeking. Before I went to bed last night I bumped the allocated memory from 60% to 65% to see if it would make a difference. I sent an 11 x 14 to the printer, went upstairs to get something and the photo was printing by the time I returned, so this was a good sign because less than 5 minutes had elapsed.

I'll see what happens when I bump it to 75%!

I didn't know about the purging. I'm going to give that a try as well.

There definitely had been a lot of disk swapping going on because my HD light would be going crazy during the process.

Upgrading my memory probably would not be a bad idea.

richtersl

BinaryFx wrote:

Something that may or may not help for the OP, but I find Acrobat to be a good print solution for the large format HP5500 at my day job.

Photoshop images are saved as Photoshop PDF files with ZIP compression, no colour conversion and the ICC profile tagged to the file. As Adobe Acrobat Reader is freely available, it works as a great colour managed print source to the profiled printer (one has the benefits of a colour aware printing application without having to have Photoshop installed at the computer driving the RIP).

Depending on the OS, printer and other factors - one can print in the foreground or spool the data behind the scenes.

As for long print times, you may have to find a trade off between resolution and print quality, as the amount of pixels one throws at the printer driver or RIP is often one of the major factors in processing time.

Good luck!


Stephen Marsh
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

Hmmm...I wasn't aware that folks also used Acrobat for this! Thanks!!!