Maximum pixel dimensions of a print with LR3 or CS5?

[JohnHeerema]

Does anyone know what the maximum pixel dimension is for a print made from either Photoshop CS5 (x64) or Lightroom 3 (x64), using the Epson drivers?

Under Photoshop CS4 for Mac, there was a limit of 30,000 pixels. I do not know if this limit still exists in CS5, and have not been able to find any documentation which specifies a maximum pixel dimension for CS5 x64.

My experiments with LR3 suggest that the maximum pixel dimension is smaller than 30,000 pixels, but I do not know what the number is.

I'm interested in the answers for both Mac and Windows (I usually print from Mac OS, but an also print from Windows).

I do not know whether the limit is ultimately a function of Photoshop / Lightroom, or the Epson driver, as any element in the print chain can impose a limit (and generally not in a friendly way).

Has anyone printed something successfully which had more than 30,000 pixels in the longest dimension, using the native drivers? I appreciate that there are solutions which do not have a 30,000 or so pixel limit (Imageprint, QImage, etc).

[John.Murray]

Application Limits:

CS5 - 300,000 x 300,000  http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html
LR3 - 64,000 x 64, 000 http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/3.0/Using/WS42D207D7-B290-4baa-A896-AB71965BF24B.html

[JohnHeerema]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

The limits you mentioned are the maximum pixel dimensions of a document.
Unfortunately, the pixel dimensions of what you can actually print are smaller. Or at least they are in LR3.

So I'm interested to hear from people who have actually printed something with a pixel dimension greater than 32535 pels in the longest dimension.

[Farmer]

CS5 will print 300,000 x 300,000, at least.  That's the limit to which it was tested (actually, CS4 removed the old limitation).

LR3 I'm not sure - I wasn't aware that it had the limit that CS3 and earlier had.

[JohnHeerema]

Thanks for your reply.

Do you know if this has been tested with a current generation large-format Epson printer?
I'd be delighted to be able to print more than 30,000 pixels on a side (but I can't quite see myself
getting up to 30,000 pixels!).

I did some testing with CS4, and found that 30,000 pixels was the maxmum dimension when printing to an Epson 9900 (although I was not able to control all aspects of that test, so there may have been a factor I wasn't aware of).
.
In a recent set of tests with Lightroom 3, I found that a print with 28,000 pixels in the long dimension would not print.

The CS4 behavioiur might well have been a limitation in the Epson driver - I don't know.

Does anyone have a personal experience of successfully printing something to an Epson printer with more than 30 K pixels on a side?

[John Hollenberg]

Actually, the LR3 limit on file size is 64,000 pixels per side, but total file size is limited to 512 megapixels.  So, a 30,000 X 20,000 pixel image (600 megapixels) would not be supported.  The limit is listed in the link posted above.

[Farmer]

My testing was done on Epson 11880 and Epson 9900.

You may have other limitations based on drivers, OS, 32/64bit, memory, scratch size and other factors.

[JohnHeerema]

Thanks - that's really helpful!

May I ask which OS you were using for your tests?

[JohnHeerema]

Actually, the LR3 limit on file size is 64,000 pixels per side, but total file size is limited to 512 megapixels.  So, a 30,000 X 20,000 pixel image (600 megapixels) would not be supported.  The limit is listed in the link posted above.

I've just opened a file in Lightroom 3 which is 1.5 Gb in size (a flattened version of a much larger file), without any problems ... except of course that it won't print!

So the 512 mPixel limit you referred has to be the total number of 16-bit RGB pels / pixels, rather than the number of bytes in the file

[Farmer]

Sorry, John, I should have given you more info up front.

I tested under various and trying to remember now, but pretty sure it was Vista 64, XP 32 and OS X of some flavour but can't remember what level it was at back then.

You could certainly test yourself by downloading a trial version.

[JohnHeerema]

Thanks - I actually have all of the CS5 software and LR3 - it's just that a big print that fails is going to use something like a hundred dollars worth of media and ink, so I'd hoped to see if anyone else had got past that 30,000 pixels boundary before doing more testing (my first unsuccessful attempt was with LR3, and it wasted a bunch of media). 

Now that I've read that it's possible, I'll run some more tests. Maybe not with my most expensive paper though!

[deanwork]

One way of doing a test would be to use a plain paper, anything will do, at fastest speed and low res . You don't have to waste ink. You could simply run a white rectangle stroked with a black border and run that through. Don't run good paper loaded with detail for a test like that.

[JohnHeerema]

Good idea!
Although it might have to be high-res, to get enough pixels in.

[dgberg]

Actually, the LR3 limit on file size is 64,000 pixels per side, but total file size is limited to 512 megapixels.  So, a 30,000 X 20,000 pixel image (600 megapixels) would not be supported.  The limit is listed in the link posted above.

I have 2 very large panos here in the gallery that were printed through Lightroom. Both of these were between 700 mp and 1 GB.
The larger one was 40" X 97" printed on Epson 9900 through Mac OS 10.5. The smaller one shown printing in the picture is about 36 x 95.
Other then 40 minutes to spool to the printer it worked the first time. Both stitched panos of about 24 images,very large files.
Both above that 600mp limit. So now you have me thinking. May go back later today and look at my notes on these.

[John Hollenberg]

I have 2 very large panos here in the gallery that were printed through Lightroom. Both of these were between 700 mp and 1 GB.
The larger one was 40" X 97" printed on Epson 9900 through Mac OS 10.5. The smaller one shown printing in the picture is about 36 x 95.
Other then 40 minutes to spool to the printer it worked the first time. Both stitched panos of about 24 images,very large files.
Both above that 600mp limit. So now you have me thinking. May go back later today and look at my notes on these.

My understanding is that the limit is on what you can import into LR.  Make sure you are looking at pixel dimensions, not file size, as I see you have mixed units above.  One GB is a file size, not a number of pixels.  Perhaps you meant one gigapixel.

[JohnHeerema]

Hey - nice picture!
I seem to remember that this is the one that pushed you into buying the 9900.

The biggest picture that I almost printed in Lightroom 3 was a pano of 80 stitched images. Flattened to one layer, and imported into Lightroom, it was 18,000 by 8,000 pixels (the file size of the flattened version is about 1.5 Gb). When I tried to print it with Lightroom upresing to 480 dpi, Lightroom chugged and thought for a while, using lots of memory and CPU cycles, but never fired up the print driver. When I tried it with Lightroom  upresing to 360 dpi, it printed a completely blank canvas.

At that point, I gave up, sharpened in Photoshop, and printed it. Although I usually like to upres to 360 ppi or so, I found that Fractals (now Resize) didn't improve the microdetail, so I just printed at 180 dpi, and to my eye, it was OK (this was on canvas, which I can't seem to get the same kind of detail on as with a good paper).

My unsuccessful Photoshop attempt was a pano which was 32760 pixels in the long dimension. This was before I owned the 9900, so I didn't do the print myself. The person who did the print couldn't get it to work until I downsampled it to a bit under 30,000 pixels in the long dimension. Even with downsampling, the print was 320 dpi, and looked great (this was on paper, rather than on canvas). This was with CS4, and "Farmer" kindly advised me earlier in this thread that CS5 x64 should be able to handle a file with this pixel dimension.

[dgberg]

My understanding is that the limit is on what you can import into LR.  Make sure you are looking at pixel dimensions, not file size, as I see you have mixed units above.  One GB is a file size, not a number of pixels.  Perhaps you meant one gigapixel.

Yes I did confuse the 2 ,thanks for pointing that out.
Too date I still have had no large panos that would not print in Lightroom. I'm at 180 ppi on all these big ones.

[JohnHeerema]

...I'm at 180 ppi on all these big ones.

Thanks Dan - I'll stick with 180 ppi for canvas, and print anything really big from Photoshop.