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Author Topic: Printing from LR-Preparing print job takes too long-- kills process  (Read 3136 times)

sfblue

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Hi, I don't run into this very often but occasionally when I print several very large files or print contact sheets of many files, the "preparing print job" process in Lightroom takes so long that somewhere the printing process essentially times out.  I don't mean that the printer goes to sleep annd can also keep the printmonitor status page up on my monitor.  But after the task is completed, instead of being shipped to the printer, it just dies on the vine.

I've had this happen with both my canon ipf8400 and my epson 7900 in the past.  I am also not running the world's fastest mac by any stretch.  Still, it only happens for very large jobs.

Any suggestions on how/why this happens?  Is there a direct solution?  Or is there an indirect solution like saving the print job as a single file or saving it to my canon 8400 which has hard drive?

Thanks.
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walter.sk

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Re: Printing from LR-Preparing print job takes too long-- kills process
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2013, 04:45:42 pm »

I'm just talking off the top of my head, but maybe there is some option in your printer drivers that effect how the que is spooled to the printer, so that you could start printing as soon as the first file is sent completely.  I don't know if there is anything in LR that can control that.

An alternative, if you have Parallels or the other Windows emulator, you could us Qimage to print from, which as far as I know, could avoid the problem.
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bill t.

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Re: Printing from LR-Preparing print job takes too long-- kills process
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2013, 10:09:35 pm »

To keep it short, you may need more ram.  Maybe your system is being forced to use disc caching instead of ram while prepping those large files, with can slow things down by a factor of several hundred sometimes.  It may not solve whatever is causing the timeout at the system level, but maybe it can speed your system up to the point where the timeout never happens. It may also be possible to allow certain processes extra timeout space, but I don't know how to do that on a Mac.
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Mike Guilbault

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Re: Printing from LR-Preparing print job takes too long-- kills process
« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2013, 10:24:21 pm »

I'm suspecting a RAM issue.  That seems to be the only time I ever had a problem with my Macs.  An upgrade in RAM usually solved the problem.  I'm now running with 20GBs.
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Mike Guilbault

sfblue

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Re: Printing from LR-Preparing print job takes too long-- kills process
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2013, 11:32:57 am »

Thanks guys.  Yeah, I definitely need a mac upgrade-- currently max'ed out on ram but my mac is several years old.  In theory, the Mac Pro towers are coming out this spring and I've been trying to hold out . . .  But from the lack of other people experiencing this, I think you are right and I just need to get a faster mac. 

I don't know where the process actually times out-- because the printer is not asleep and I can keep the printmonitor dialogue box up on my screen.  But . . . I'm talking about exceptionally long times to prepare prints for printing-- on those big contact sheets-- sometimes it takes a half hour plus.   
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Jim Kasson

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Re: Printing from LR-Preparing print job takes too long-- kills process
« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2013, 11:47:56 am »

This has been an intermittent problem for twenty years, with many different operating systems. The OSs fix their print spoolers, swap disk algorithms, etc, but then we just print bigger files 'til we break it again. More RAM will probably help, but I think you said you'd need a new computer to put more RAM in. In the meantime, I suggest you lower the resolution of the files you're sending to the print driver. Halving the pixels/inch will usually make the spool file a quarter the size (but not always -- it depends on the print driver).

It happens on big machines, too. A few months ago, a print job consisting of one 40x60 print hung on a 48GB machine. I found out that I'd left the LR resampling at 720 ppi from a previous job, Setting it to 360 fixed things.

Jim
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