Epson 9900 spits out blank canvas when printing large pano with LR3

[JohnHeerema]

I've just encountered some interesting behavior when printing a large pano using an Epson 9900.

What happens, is that when I print from Lightroom 3, the printer thinks for a while, then rolls out 100 inches of 44" wide canvas, and cuts the perfectly blank canvas off (the pano size was 44" x 100", at 360 dpi).

I am guessing that this is because the pixel dimension in the long direction is greater than 32535 pixels. Can anyone confirm - I have not been able to see a max pixel dimension in the Lightroom specs, but I remember going over 32000 pixels being a problem with CS4.

Also, does anyone know if there is a maximum pixel dimension when printing to an Epson 9900 with Photoshop CS5 (Mac)?

Of course, this also brings up the question of why I keep seeing the same dumb software bugs in Epson's products year after year after year.

Back when I got an Epson 2200, if there was any kind of a glitch on a long print, the printer would eject the entire length of blank paper, and cut it off. This annoyed me a great deal, particularly since it would have been very, very easy to add half a dozen lines of code to the Epson driver to detect this condition, and ask the user if they really wanted the printer to wreck several feet of paper. It's getting on to a decade later, and Epson still hasn't managed to squeeze those half a dozen lines of code into their driver. And I'm still annoyed to see the printer cut off a hundred dollars worth of perfectly good canvas, because the driver was too badly written to check for an error condition in the print.

As a side note, automatic roll cutting is now on my list of the Epson "features" that have turned out to be useless in this printer - like ANC, which all sane users seem to leave turned firmly off.

[JohnHeerema]

I tried reducing the maximum pixel dimension to 29,850 pixels - I get the same result.

Interestingly, when I tried loading my cut off canvas piece, the printer decided to cut 5" off the start, even though the cutter option was turned off - presumably because it detected media, but didn't find the start of media, so it just decided that it would run the cutter.

[davidh202]

John,
Sorry I cannot help with your paper feed problem but it's too bad you cannot take advantage of printing through Qimage since your on a Mac.

The reason I am replying is to give you a heads up on the auto cutting of Canvas.
It is a  no no .This was the first piece of advice I got from my salesperson at Pro Imaging Supplies when I told her I was intending on doing Canvas Wraps. Epson even says so in the manual.
Auto Cutting canvas will dull your cutter head fast at the expense of a $150 replacement cost.Otherwise the cutter should last quite a long time. Also no more wasted canvas

[JohnHeerema]

Thanks David,

I did see Epson's warning about cutting canvas, but thought that I could live with occasional cutter replacements, since I'm not sure I can cut straight enough with a pair of scissors.

Beyond the issue of cutter life, I'm starting to really swear at Epson's firmware programmers, for the apparent absence of boundary software testing at Epson.

I finally got this image to print, by printing from Photoshop CS5. I turned auto cutting off.

At the end of the job, the printer displayed a paper skew error message. No buttons on the printer would clear the message, except for the paper release button. Probably someone at Epson thought that this was logical. So I did that, and the message cleared. Next, I pressed the paper cut button, following the minimal advice in the user's guide. So, what do you suppose the printer did? It promptly cut four inches off the end of my 44" x 100" print, making it useless....

Now, before doing that, I did attempt to find something useful in Epson's documentation - like a mark on the printer indicating where the cut would occur. Naturally, there was no such entry in the manual - just the note that at the end of the job, to press the cut button to have the media cut.

Maybe Epson really can't do any better than this - maybe Epson's driver developers are the "B-team", and all the really talented developers go into things like dithering algorithms. Maybe Epson doesn't care about software/firmware quality, and won't budget for testing. Maybe the bad software is deliberately designed to increase consumable sales - after all, my Epson 3800 just unnecessarily switched inks without permission.  What I do know, is that my Epson ownership experience is less than stellar today.

[davidh202]

Ouch, I feel your pain!
Believe me, it's not just Epsons software,seems like the developers of lots of computer and electronic related products live in their own virtual reality
world and expect the rest of us outworlders to conform to their way of thinking   

[ghaynes754]

John  Couple of suggestions which you may have already tried or checked.  Firmware version on the printer.  Driver Version on your Mac.  Call Epson tech support?  I haven't had this type of problem but don't print from CS5.  I'm using Imageprint.  Did you have the problem with CS4?

[JohnHeerema]

Thanks for your suggestion. Yes, the firmware, drivers, and OS are all the latest version.

I think that I have problem run into a size limitation with Lightroom 3. I know that some of the forum regulars do their large-format printing with Lightroom, and wonder if anyone knows what the size limits are.

[Peter McLennan]

I did see Epson's warning about cutting canvas, but thought that I could live with occasional cutter replacements, since I'm not sure I can cut straight enough with a pair of scissors.

With the cutter turned off, I rough cut the canvas output from my 4800 with scissors, then fine trim the canvas with a utility knife.