Epson 9900 - Maximum Print Length

[asislen]

I am trying to print a 96"x40" pano from Photoshop CC using a MacPro running El Capitan.  I went through my normal print workflow, but the printer ran 102" (the paper length I input) of paper through the printer, made the cut, but printed nothing!  I am getting mixed advice.  I called Epson and they said that running Photoshop CC the maximum print length without a RIP was approximately 90".  Others are telling me they have no problem printing this large.  I would greatly appreciate any advice!
Alan

[Paul2660]

Printing long from CC can create such issues. I moved to LR for printing and found it to be a much more stable platform.   I have made 120" and 96" prints many times via the LR print engine.

I am curious did your print preview window show the print? Or was it blank? 

Paul C

[asislen]

Thanks, Paul.  I now always print from LR, except when the file is too large to import into LR.  In this case, the file, even flattened is over 2gb.  Unless there is something I'm missing, I can't bring the image into LR.  Because I was trying to print from a Mac, I don't believe there is a print preview.

[dgberg]

It is supposed to take the 2GB but can choke on anything much over 1GB. (Depending on your system)
You probably uprezed to 360 to get a file size of 2GB. At 180 you should have a file size of 712mb, 240 would be 1.2GB.
We do quite a few panos here and take everything only to 180. (All canvas)
Then in Lightroom we check off either 240 or 300 PPI, never higher. (Doing it this way does not permanently raise the file size above 180)
Looks great and no more cut off sheets either.

[Garnick]

Thanks, Paul.  I now always print from LR, except when the file is too large to import into LR.  In this case, the file, even flattened is over 2gb.  Unless there is something I'm missing, I can't bring the image into LR.  Because I was trying to print from a Mac, I don't believe there is a print preview.

Unless PS CC is substantially different from previous versions of PS, there is always a Print Preview window within the print dialog.  When you open the print dialog, do you not see your image in the large window on the left side of that dialog.  If not there is something seriously amiss and it has nothing to do with Mac vs PC.  The Print Preview window has always been part of the print dialog, although in the last PS CS6 update the colour and density part of the preview was/is totally useless.  Nothing to do with print length of course. 

Gary

[Wayne Fox]

Thanks, Paul.  I now always print from LR, except when the file is too large to import into LR.  In this case, the file, even flattened is over 2gb.  Unless there is something I'm missing, I can't bring the image into LR.  Because I was trying to print from a Mac, I don't believe there is a print preview.

Save the image as a .tif file, not a .psd. This allows a 4 gig file, and Lr handles them just fine.

if you uprez from Photoshop to a full 360 dpi, you might find the quality direct from your file without any uprezzing from LR applying the appropriate output sharpening will be very good.  I've printed several 96"x44" panos this way, and was pleasantly surprised at now well they turned out.  Sure I might have been able to get a very slightly better print if I had uprezzed and done my own output sharpening in PS, but side by side the difference would have been pretty small.

[JRSmit]

Save as tif, psd is limted to 2GB. Also printing from LR using  360ppi setting in print dialog should not give problems, at least under Windows. I have no experience with Mac.
I normally print at 720 ppi and fine details on, of course the spool size can go very big, well over 4GB, with no problems. (at least with the Surecolor SC-P9000 , as the driver is 16-bit)
Make sure the image does not get rotated when placed on the " paper sheet" in LR. I experienced some serious image degradation, even with prints of 40x60cm size.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I would greatly appreciate any advice!

Hi Alan,

If any advice is allowed, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, a Windows program called Qimage Ultimate, running under 'Parallels' on a Mac OS, should have no problem printing to whatever limit the printer driver has, and then some (like printing multiple pages edge to edge).

It also uses the normal resolution finished image as input, and can automatically enlarge the image by using very good interpolation algorithms to the maximum your media setting in the driver will allow, and add a user adjustable amount of halo-free output sharpening.

I've been using Qimage for some 15 years now, and I've yet to see a single program beat its output quality, on any printer., and at an incredibly affordable price.

Cheers,
Bart

[asislen]

Bart,
Thanks VERY much.  I used Qimage 15 years ago, but stopped using it when Lightroom emerged.  Well, I purchased Qimage Ultimate yesterday and that's what I'll be hopefully using.  However, in the Qimage view screen, I'm getting an "Image Read Error" for my 2.9gb and 1.5 gb TIFs.  I emailed Mike Chaney and am waiting for a response whether the size is the issue, since Qimage can handle TIFs.  Is there any trick to the Photoshop save settings for TIFs?
Alan

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Bart,
Thanks VERY much.  I used Qimage 15 years ago, but stopped using it when Lightroom emerged.  Well, I purchased Qimage Ultimate yesterday and that's what I'll be hopefully using.

Hi Alan,

Great, a lot has changed over those 15 years, but it's all for the better. The Deep Focus Sharpening (DFS) is amazingly effective, and new interpolation algorithms have been added. The Hybrid SE (Studio Edition) interpolation is basically artifact free, so can be used when the need to enlarge is more ambitious than the file size/detail warrants, and 'Fusion' only adds a little bit of a halo because it tries very hard to maximize detail with smooth non-jagged edges.

However, in the Qimage view screen, I'm getting an "Image Read Error" for my 2.9gb and 1.5 gb TIFs.  I emailed Mike Chaney and am waiting for a response whether the size is the issue, since Qimage can handle TIFs.  Is there any trick to the Photoshop save settings for TIFs?

It'll be interesting to hear Mike's response, but it may also have to do with TIFF limitations on certain Operating Systems. TIFF can use address offsets to the various file Tags that exceed the 2 or 4 GB (or 32767x32767 pixel size) capabilities of the specific TIFF library. Qimage uses the latest SDKs from Adobe  (for PSDs anyway, so I suppose for TIFF as well) so they should be compatible with current OSes. BigTIFF is not an official standard yet.

As far as Qimage is concerned, output requirements for TIFF input are pretty straightforward, you can feed QU either 16-bit/ch (but that may get unnecessarily big with large pixel dimensions), or 8-b/ch data. Most Print pipelines are 8-b/ch anyway, and QU can optionally apply dithering to the output so that gradients are printed smoother. Also, there is no need to upsample the output file prior to sending it to QU, since QU will probably do a better job of that anyway. So original file/pixel size, 8-b/ch is plenty for stunning output. Of course, it is also not helpful for filesize to send layered files (although QU should read them if compatibility mode was used to save them), since only the composite will be printed.

Maybe by clicking Help|Analyze current settings, Qimage can report something it detected and can be improved? If you click that same help function, but while simultaneously pressing the shift key!, it will tell you the largest chunk of contiguous memory that's currently available to the OS, in case that is causing issues. Maybe this post helps, where Mike points out the need for using the compatibility switch for layered files.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. After some reading in older threads on Mike's Tech Corner, reducing the number of available cores that are used for Multithreading of images will reduce the number of large files that are simultaneously loaded for thumbnail creation. This reduces the chance of hitting the OS memory limits when very large source files are involved. Settings can be adjusted under "Edit|Preferences|Multithreading|Image Processing Threads".

[Paul2660]

Just curious is the file size so large because it is 16bit? 

I would drop it down to 8 bit as the printer driver will anyway at least in a windows environment.

As for the larger tif sizes make sure it's not saving with an alpha channel.  CC should have some save options you can select from.

Paul C

[BobShaw]

...  at the risk of sounding like a broken record ...
I've been using Qimage for some 15 years now, and I've yet to see a single program beat its output quality, on any printer., and at an incredibly affordable price.

Along the same vein, this section seems to be full of people having problems printing from image editing programmes.
That makes as much sense to me as editing from a print programme.
I use Mirage Print and would never go back to printing from editing apps. Whatever it costs, you repay the investment on a print programme in time, ink and paper very quickly.

[JRSmit]

Just curious is the file size so large because it is 16bit? 

I would drop it down to 8 bit as the printer driver will anyway at least in a windows environment.

As for the larger tif sizes make sure it's not saving with an alpha channel.  CC should have some save options you can select from.

Paul C

Apparently the Epson driver for surecolor-p is 16bit. LR-CC honors that. PS-CC not for some reason.

[JohnHeerema]

I've encountered this issue, and traced it to a file size limitation in CUPS - the common unix printing system, which, at least as of Yosemite, was limited to the signed 32 bit addressing limitation of 2 Gb.
It's really annoying if you've set the printer to cut.

I've worked around this by reducing bit depth and/or resolution.

This has nothing to do with Photoshop or Lightroom's ability to handle large files - it's purely the size of the print spool file, which you can check by interrogating CUPS (requires some command-line work).

I've been hoping that one of the OS releases will eliminate this bottleneck, but as far as I know, there is no 64-bit implementation of CUPS.