7900 ,P.S 6 , Windows 7 problem which??

[cottagehunter]

I have been trying to print a large file 1.586 gb. on my epson 7900 ( size 24" x 90") and the best I can get is 50" of print before the printer just runs saying it's printing but heads don't move left it for 45 min no change. Reduced the file to 890mb (24 x50) and it took 3 tries to get it to print whole file.
What happens is the spooler runs to completion about 35% of the way into a print job then shuts  down the print watcher  but the printer lcd says printing.
I don't know whether this is a Windows problem, a printer problem or a P.S. problem.
Task manager runs at 2.4 gb of used memory with nothing open but programs running in the background, Opening P.S uses additional 570 mb. opening a 1.586 gb. file memory usage in P.S. jumps to 3 gb. closing file p.s still shows it's using 2.98 gb. memory. opening a 890 mb file usage jumps to 3.03 gb closing file it only goes down to 3.01 gb. Shutting down and restarting P.S. it opens using 562 mb. of memory . CPU usage only goes to 18% of 1 core on opening P.S.
Now the confusing part when I  am printing that 1.5 gb file memory usage jumps to 14.6 gb no CPU usage and I have set 3 disks as scratch disks totaling 1.1 tb. space and they are separate drives not where the files or the software resides.
Does anyone have suggestions as to how to overcome this problem.

Thanks
Pierre

[BrianWJH]

Not sure about the 7900 however the 7880 has a 50 foot limit from memory, printing longer might require a rip.

Memory usage from task manager is not necessarily an indicating of process activity either, there could be handles to memory blocks within a process (e.g. PS) that still have a reference and hence haven't been released.

Brian.

[Farmer]

If you switch on print preview, can you see the whole image?

What are the pixel dimensions of the file?

x86 or x64 Win 7?

[dgberg]

Pixel dimensions times nothing more then 180 to reduce your filesize unless you are already there.
My 7900 always started to choke when it got much over a 1GB file. Never found out why but it just never worked that well.
Would love to hear what you find.

[Paul2660]

I agree with Framer, what does the print preview window show?  I always check it as errors will show up there and give you a visual of it.

Other thoughts, as far as I know it the Epson driver will take you past 90", which is nowhere near the 50 foot limit. 

What OS are you running 32 bit or 64 bit?  You have mentioned about photoshop and 3GB of memory which sounds like a 32 bit OS limit.   I still make a lot of prints from good old CS3, 32 bit app, but it's running on a 64 bit win7 OS. 

Also, when things like this happen, I quickly move to LR.  The print module in LR is just much more stable and seems to get around a lot of these types of problems.   Do you have a LR install you could test from.  I realize this is expensive test at the size of your print. 

Back to the print preview, I have never had a print error if the print preview shows it correct, but on the other hand, I have had a lot of error caught by the print preview and stopped the job. 

You also may need to totally clear the spooler and delete the driver and reinstall it.  Stop the spooler from a command prompt,  go to the spooler folder in the windows main folder, delete anything in there, restart the spooler, and reboot the PC.  Spooler on windows can sometimes hold a incomplete job.  Until you totally clear it that incomplete job can still try to print and or cause other problems.   

The printer can also hold a partial job in it's main memory and cause problems, it's not like the Canon which has a hard drive, but to totally clear that you need to power off, and unplug the print.  Whenever I clear the spooler, I also power off/unplug the printer to clear it.

Paul C.

[cottagehunter]

Okay first off I will try to answer the questions I know the answers to first.
1 When the print preview is switched on I can see the whole image
2 I am operating on a x64 machine running ps cs 6, 64 bit   (sorry some may have thought I meant just ps )
3. Pixel dimensions are 32,760 x 8640   at 360 ppi.
4. I have 16 gb of RAM installed
5. I do not have lr as I have always downloaded my shoots to individual folders and backed up to 2 extrernal hd upon returning home. It was my impression when lr first arrived that it was primary strength  was  as catalog  system
6. Dan: don't understand "Pixel dimensions times nothing more then 180 to reduce your filesize" could you explain?
7. Paul: boy I thought I had some knowledge of computers but you've brought a new one to me. " You also may need to totally clear the spooler and delete the driver and reinstall it.  Stop the spooler from a command prompt,  go to the spooler folder in the windows main folder, delete anything in there, restart the spooler, and reboot the PC.  Spooler on windows can sometimes hold a incomplete job.  Until you totally clear it that incomplete job can still try to print and or cause other problems." could you give me instructions on how to do that or does this link explain http://http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Print-Spooler   
How come the task manager does not show a drop in memory usage upon closing the file?
Thanks guys for the feedback

[dgberg]

32,760 X 8640 @ 180 ppi instead of 360 is all you should need to get excellent results. I don"t know of any systems that would not choke on that file size.
360 is way overkill and just bloats your file to your 1.6 gb present size. Our business is printing big and we rarely if ever go above 180 ppi for large prints.(Mostly canvas)
Think about getting Lightroom it really is that good! For post processing and printing it just cannot be beat.

[Paul2660]

Spooler is one of those strange areas in windows. 

To stop it you will need to run these commands from an administrator enabled command prompt:

I always power off the print also before I do this.  Powering it off will clear anything still tied up on the main board.  It will hold bits and pieces of prints at times.

Net stop spooler.  This will stop the spooler.

Now go to the windows,system32,spool,printers   folder.  Delete anything in there

Go back to the command prompt,

Net start spooler  This bring the spooler back online. 

You are now ready to print again. 

LR is where I go when I need to print large as it just does a better job overall.  The print module is not that user friendly at first but after it while it starts to make sense.  PS/CS/win seem to have problems at times with big jobs. 

I also agree on the 180 dpi setting for the big prints.  The Epson driver is going to redefine it to 240 dpi anyway no matter what tool you use.  During this process on large prints sometimes things seem to get screwed up.  NOTE, it's my understanding the Epson driver is going to output at 240, but I may have that wrong.  It's been my understanding of how the Epson driver works for a while now and if you want around it you have to go to a RIP, which will by pass the Epson driver 100%.

Paul C.

[cottagehunter]

Dan and Paul: Thanks for the information. Both of you are early risers .
I printed at 360 dpi as it was a print with a compilation of 11 layer files. I wanted to keep the pictures together for mounting on a wall . I opened a new background file at 91 x24  then pasted the 10 pics into place. So rather than 1 picture at that size I have 10 pictures 16 x 12 + 1 10 x 12.
I will look into LR for printing (another program to learn thank god its winter).

Pierre

[Ken Doo]

Another quick check for really large/long prints:

Inside the driver settings, turn off (un-check) "Finest Detail" found under the Print Quality Options. 

For Windows users, Qimage does a great job as a printer utility---and printing large prints.

ken

[BrianWJH]

 
How come the task manager does not show a drop in memory usage upon closing the file?

Sorry about the 50" versus 50' I read it in a rush, regarding Task Manager as I said above either PS or Windows print queue/spooler could still have references to the memory used to print the file and not until the application releases the memory (which could be by killing the task or explicitly by the application) or the reference is garbage collected does the memory get returned to the memory pool.

Brian.

[davidh202]

Another quick check for really large/long prints:

Inside the driver settings, turn off (un-check) "Finest Detail" found under the Print Quality Options. 

For Windows users, Qimage does a great job as a printer utility---and printing large prints.

ken

I second using Qimage Ult.Irun my 9890 and 7900 printing from it (do not use it for PP at all).  makes printing a breeze once you get the hang of the programs UI  plenty of help on the forum,  fast response to email of problems,  and great tutorials
you can get a trial download to test    http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/trial.htm

[cottagehunter]

Thanks to all the responders for their input

Pierre

[mcbroomf]

+2 on Qimage.  I print files at ~1GB periodically with no issues, and up to 60"