Speed up print spooling time?

[Darin Boville]

What will speed up the time it takes from when I hit "Print" to the time it starts actually printing? I'm talking about bigger than normal files--350 megabytes, say. Would adding an SSD drive for the spooling help in some way? Running an old Mac but with Lion to an Epson 3800....

--Darin

[Light Guru]

The time it takes to actually start printing I believe is a factor of the printer how much memory the printer has and how fast that printer memory is.

[Darin Boville]

Oh, it gets worse (then better). Backing up.....around 7:00 pm I decided to make a few quickie prints on different papers with a few different settings, something just to get some closure on paper choice and such for a project I hope to start printing next week. I had some old scans--not great but good enough for this purpose.

Then it was taking forever just to print. I mean twenty minutes to spool. Tried all sorts of things. No luck. Finally I realized I probably hadn't updated my print drivers in ages, and I was running Lion. Well, of course Epson changed everything around with the new driver. All sorts of non-intuative, poorly interfaced changes. Confessing as hell, and I'm on the Internet playing Mr. Computer-fix-it-man trying to get it all sorted out. Round about 11:30, after working on it non-stop, I think I have it basically working again.

I mean, well, why not. I'm a big believer that all real photographers like to fuck around with software all night rather than doing real work. In the computer age photographers aren't just their own lab, they're their own lab machine technicians, and they're own technical research support team to prop up the technician.

It's turtles all the way down, I'm afraid.

--Darin

[Jim Andrada]

Hmmm - Sounds like the typical Windows experience. Has the Mac finally "caught up" with Windows? Or would " descended to the lowest common denominator" of user experience be a better description? (Said with tongue planted firmly in cheek as we use both Mac and Windows systems and have always felt there ain't much difference)

[Brian Ellis]

Hmm. I guess I have an atypical Windows experience because it only takes a couple minutes for me to make a print in the 11x14 range, maybe 5 or 6 minutes for a 16x22 inch print, with my 3800. Those are guesses, it's never been long enough for me to give much thought to it but I think those times are pretty close. It's certainly nothing like 20 minutes.

I'm not a computer/printer expert but if it's taking 20 minutes just to spool I'd think there's something wrong somewhere, most likely with the age of your computer.

[Jim Andrada]

Sorry - I didn't meant the printing time was a typical Windows experience because I get 17 x 22 size prints spooled in a few minutes as well - I was more on the problems of new releases, new drivers new application versions etc. etc.

[Darin Boville]

Oh, it's spooling o.k. now that I updated the driver. I think *that* problem, in hindsight, was because my iTunes library had grown faster than I realized and my disk space was getting low (but, hey, no point in the software mentioning that little problem). Grrrrr.

--Darin

[Bill Burk]

I thought the story was going to end that you got the print time down to nothing...

Are you using, have you considered, a third-party RIP like QTR?

A trick I used to use when preparing files for printing on old equipment was... Figure out the actual resolution that the printer actually uses and downsample the file to exactly that, for the target print size.

Can you print to file, then later drag the file to printer?

[Light Guru]

One this that should definitely help out is don't print from a file that big. Create a new file just for printing. In photoshop set the canvass size to the size of your print and for a print you shouldn't need a dpi over 300 then save a a jpeg. This will give you a much smaller file that can be handled much easier by the printer.

Here is a good little article.
http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html

[Preston]

Here's the procedure I use...

1. Duplicate your master file.
2. Save the file under a new name
3. Flatten the file
4. Convert the file to 8 bit
5. Embed the color profile you want to use
6. Resize the file to the dimensions you want and to the printer's native resolution
7. Create a copy of the background layer; Layer>Layer via copy
8. With this layer active, sharpen as needed.
9. Flatten the file
10. Save the file
11. Send it to the printer.

It actually takes less time to do these steps, than to say them. I save my print files as either PSD's or TIFF's. My print resolution is 360 dpi for my Epson R2400.
An example file I printed today is a flattened 8 bit PSD file of about 100MB for a 12x15 print--very manageable.

--P