Mac G5/9800 printer problem

[Bill Cooper]

Have a Mac G5 ( not intel OS) and an Epson 9800. Want to use Epson canvas 44'' for prints. Prints sized 32 X 22 print without a problem. But if I want a larger print, say 41 X 61", the printer will not print. The computer tries to send the information to the printer but eventually gives up and everything goes back to default. No image, and the computer abandons the instruction to print the image. I have a 14' USB connection cord and changed it to a 6' extension cord but the result is the same. Tried a 1394 firewire cord but the result is the same. What can cause this? Not enough memory? Thanks in advance for your thoughts. Bill

[Farmer]

What program are you printing from, what resolution are you printing at, and what is the pixel size of the image?

[Bill Cooper]

I am printing from PS CS3. The resolution of the image is 360. The pixel size is 14760 X 22076 (1.82 GB).My computer is a Mac G5 10.4 OS, Duel 2.7 Ghz, Power PC with 2.5 GB DDR SDRAM memory. I am printing on an Epson 9800.

[Zachary]

I am printing from PS CS3. The resolution of the image is 360.

Try the file at 180. On canvas it will be indistinguishable from the higher resolution file.
(Print a section of it at 360 and the same section at 180 and you'll see.)

[Bill Cooper]

Try the file at 180. On canvas it will be indistinguishable from the higher resolution file.
(Print a section of it at 360 and the same section at 180 and you'll see.)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198728\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I reduced the resolution to 170 and it is printing the image. Thanks, but why can't I print an image this size at a resolution of 360? I don't understand.

[Zachary]

I reduced the resolution to 170 and it is printing the image. Thanks, but why can't I print an image this size at a resolution of 360? I don't understand.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198808\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Someone else can probably elaborate more on the technical reason, but at almost 2 gigs, the file is just too darn large.  

[Farmer]

There's no real reason it should fail unless you've ticked "finest detail" in the driver, in which case the driver is filling a 720 matrix instead of 360 and so that because a very large file over 32767 pixels effective which Photoshop doesn't deal with very well for printing.

Did you actually have to drop to 170 (ie 180 didn't work)?

My guess (and I'm not a Mac guy for the most part, so I'm light on the specifics here) is some sort of virtual memory issue/general resources.  Do you have plenty of free hard drive space both for the OS and for the PS scratch disk?

[Farmer]

Oh, PPC.  So that's running as 32bit, right? (Some Mac guy please correct me if I'm wrong :-) - so it could also be 32bit memory fragmentation (ie there's not a single piece of memory large enough to deal with the data.  This was always more an issue under Windows, though, so again need a Mac guru to comment if it was / is an issue for OS X on PPC Macs.

The only real fix for that is to reboot and only open what you need to undertake the print.

[dkeyes]

Try the file at 180. On canvas it will be indistinguishable from the higher resolution file.
(Print a section of it at 360 and the same section at 180 and you'll see.)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198728\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've also found that 270 (300max) is fine for images that size on glossy paper. 360 was overkill for me.

Bill, Your file size looks like you must be printing at 16bit, that could be your problem as well.

[Bill Cooper]

Oh, PPC.  So that's running as 32bit, right? (Some Mac guy please correct me if I'm wrong :-) - so it could also be 32bit memory fragmentation (ie there's not a single piece of memory large enough to deal with the data.  This was always more an issue under Windows, though, so again need a Mac guru to comment if it was / is an issue for OS X on PPC Macs.

The only real fix for that is to reboot and only open what you need to undertake the print.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198880\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I am printing my images at 200 resolution with no problem. I have not tried a higher resolution because the images look very good at that resolution. Not sure why I can't print at 360 resolution. My images are processed in PS and printed at 16 bit. Anyway, the images look good at 200, not sure if they would look any better at 360.

[Bill Cooper]

I've also found that 270 (300max) is fine for images that size on glossy paper. 360 was overkill for me.

Bill, Your file size looks like you must be printing at 16bit, that could be your problem as well.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198921\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Is 16 bit a problem for large images? I can print my images at 24 x 30 size at 16 bit and 360 resolution with no problem. I have just started printing on 44" rolls of canvas printing 1.8 GB size images and thats when the problem started. I didn't know that 16 bit can create a problem with larger size images.

[Farmer]

16bit shouldn't be an issue in and of itself.  It increases the original file size, but the rasterised data won't be much different in terms of volume.

The issue would more be a system limitation - as I said, things like HDD space for scratch files and virtual memory and possibly 32bit memory fragmentation as it's a 32bit processor.

[langier]

Hi Bill,

I just ran a bunch of big canvases on my G5 dual and 9800 combo. 40x72 on the 42 inch stock. I had no problems and each of the large prints ran close to an hour to print at 1440x1440. I print directly from Photoshop CS3.

I found out a long time a ago, even on photo paper, 8 bit, 180 ppi is plenty unless you nit-pick with a loup. Canvas you can get away with as little as 100 ppi, I'm told, but I haven't had to try that yet.

Shrink your files and save yourself the time and file size.

[dkeyes]

16 bit isn't the problem, it's that it creates a file twice as big as you probably need. As far as I know, the Epson's don't use 16bit, the driver converts image to 8bit before printing. I work at 16bit until all image manipulation is done then make an 8bit version in PS for printing on my z3100. I'm on a G5 single processor with 2.5mb ram and am still able to make prints from 1g files (40x50").

If you have a handy external drive with nothing on it, you could allocate that in PS as a scratch disc to help with memory issues. I just looked into ram, I think you can get 2gb for around $80 at One World Computing.

[Farmer]

Many of the Epson's now have 16bit drivers available for Mac as beta downloads.

[neoprinter]

Bill, Epson printers only use 8 bit.  If you give your printer a 16 bit file, it converts it to 8 bit.  This confuses some people, as they think they're printing 16 bit files, but they're not.

G5s are 64 bit processors, as are Intel Core2Duos, although that has nothing to do with your difficulties.  That only means you can have lots of RAM, but Photoshop apps are 8 bit only (as of now).  There's a size limitation in Photoshop itself, and that seems to be what you're bumping up against.

I agree that 360 dpi is a waste for canvas, which can't display that kind of detail.  In fact, you would need glossy paper for that to be useful, though 300 dpi is quite fine for exhibitiion prints.  If you print at no more than 250 dpi/8 bit on canvas you'll be fine.

Robert Liles
Pushdot Studio
http://www.pushdotstudio.com/index.php

[Bill Cooper]

Bill, Epson printers only use 8 bit.  If you give your printer a 16 bit file, it converts it to 8 bit.  This confuses some people, as they think they're printing 16 bit files, but they're not.

G5s are 64 bit processors, as are Intel Core2Duos, although that has nothing to do with your difficulties.  That only means you can have lots of RAM, but Photoshop apps are 8 bit only (as of now).  There's a size limitation in Photoshop itself, and that seems to be what you're bumping up against.

I agree that 360 dpi is a waste for canvas, which can't display that kind of detail.  In fact, you would need glossy paper for that to be useful, though 300 dpi is quite fine for exhibitiion prints.  If you print at no more than 250 dpi/8 bit on canvas you'll be fine.

Robert Liles
Pushdot Studio
http://www.pushdotstudio.com/index.php
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200033\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

[Bill Cooper]

Thanks everyone for all the comments and suggestions. When printing on canvas now I have reduced my images to 8 bit and reduced the resolution from 360 to somewhere between 270 and 300 depending on the image. However the problem still occurs every now and then when I print large images say in the range of 39" x 61". Sometimes the printer will print and sometimes it will not print. I wanted to close out this thread by telling you that I found a work-around when the printer will not print: 1) shut the printer off, 2) disconnect the USB cable to the printer, 3) turn the computer off, 4) turn the computer on, 5) reconnect the USB cord to the printer, and 5) turn the printer on. For whatever reason it works . The computer and printer are talking again and I can print the large images.