Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: gotanikon on October 30, 2013, 07:39:23 am
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Hello, first post, long time reader.
A friend of mine does cartoons, he asked me to make a print on the Epson 4900 which came to almost 15 metres long. I have never printed nearly this large but figured it must be possible. Not surprisingly we came across a few issues.
1. a 700Mb file of high resolution won't open in lightroom, there is a 10000 or so pixel limit.
2. I tried printing from photoshop but was having issues with nothing happening at all when I pressed 'print'.
3. We split the image up into several smaller ones and were able to stack them alongside each other in lightroom on a 15m long custom sheet size. It was working, cheers all round, then after several metres it just stopped without warning and I had to feed back several metres of sheet.
4. Then it got late.
5. I've done a little research, this epson site seemed to offer some suggestions.
http://www.epson.co.uk/gb/en/viewcon/corporatesite/store/products/mainunits/faq/8416/3243
The options seem to be using a different program that does 'banner' printing, or using a RIP (not too sure how this works yet, sounds a little complicated). Does anyone know the length or resolution limits in the epson driver? Can anyone suggest a workflow with easily available tools/software?
Thanks in advance! John.
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I'm not sure about the 4900, but on the 7900/9900/9890 the Epson driver is limited somewhere around 90" if I recall.....
Qimage is what you want to use, which apparently looks to be on sale right now for ~$69. It was a bargain already at its regular price. See, www.ddisoftware.com
ken
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I'm not sure about the 4900, but on the 7900/9900/9890 the Epson driver is limited somewhere around 90" if I recall.....
Qimage is what you want to use, which apparently looks to be on sale right now for ~$69. It was a bargain already at its regular price. See, www.ddisoftware.com
ken
+1 on Qimage
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I'm not sure about the 4900, but on the 7900/9900/9890 the Epson driver is limited somewhere around 90" if I recall.....
Qimage is what you want to use, which apparently looks to be on sale right now for ~$69. It was a bargain already at its regular price. See, www.ddisoftware.com
ken
Doesn't Qimage use the Epson driver that would have a 90" limit? You might look into PrintFab which I think uses it's own driver and might be able to print longer than 90". Looks like the limit is 43.21 x 1500.00cm / 17.01 x 590.55". Right now the beta version for PCs is free until the end of the year.
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I'm uncertain, but Qimage may break up the long print into several 90" banners, printing them seamlessly one after another. Suggest you post your Qimage questions here, http://www.ddisoftware.com/tech/ .
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I've printed in excess of 18 feet in length using Qimage.... It's a great printer utility.
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Qimage uses the driver for color management and basic operations only. It can override the length limitations set in place by Epson's driver.
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Qimage uses the driver for color management and basic operations only. It can override the length limitations set in place by Epson's driver.
This may be true of some Epson printers, but I doubt it. QImage is not a RIP, it has to use the driver to print. It is cerrtainly not true of the Epson 3880. There is no way around the 95 cm (~37.4 inch) max length of the 3880 with QImage.
Brian A
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This may be true of some Epson printers, but I doubt it. QImage is not a RIP, it has to use the driver to print. It is cerrtainly not true of the Epson 3880. There is no way around the 95 cm (~37.4 inch) max length of the 3880 with QImage.
Brian A
Need roll paper feeder :-)
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Read your post and remembered reading this blog a while back. There is a tip at the bottom that may help you?
http://www.adammonk.com/epson-9900-printer-in-action/#more-787 (http://www.adammonk.com/epson-9900-printer-in-action/#more-787)
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I printed up to 102" on my 9900 from Lightroom with no problem.
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Need roll paper feeder :-)
I have one. I just havn't yet tried to exceed its max length limitation, whatever that is. But QImage isn't a RIP, and certainly uses the driver for more than "color management and basic operations only'.
Brian A
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You might be interested in Keith Cooper’s experiences when printing a 14 metre canvas. A different printer, but similar experiences. He eventually had to drop the resolution down to 108 ppi to get it to print:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/14m_pano_print.html
The printing part is about half way down the article.
Brian A
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As Brian suggests, a lot of it is to do with the rastered image size and processing it.
On Epson LFPs, under Windows, go into the Printer Preferences and chose the Utility Tab and then Speed and Progress. You can tick a box for "coarse rendering" which will reduce the resolution of the rastered image which will help. Obviously you do limit the resolution that you send to the printer doing this but for very large prints it's usually fine.
This used to be useful prior to CS3 which had a pixel length limit that used to get tripped pretty easily on large prints, but it's still useful today with very large prints. You'll also want plenty of spool space on a fast drive.
A real RIP gets around all this because it doesn't use the driver.
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I have one. I just havn't yet tried to exceed its max length limitation, whatever that is. But QImage isn't a RIP, and certainly uses the driver for more than "color management and basic operations only'.
Brian A
I agree.....best way to find out is to post on the Qimage ultimate forum and ask....you should. Get a quick, accurate answer.....or send a note to Qimage help support.
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You might be interested in Keith Cooper’s experiences when printing a 14 metre canvas. A different printer, but similar experiences. He eventually had to drop the resolution down to 108 ppi to get it to print:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/14m_pano_print.html
The printing part is about half way down the article.
Brian A
Keith does not use Qimage. Qimage solves the OS spoiler limitations.
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If the 4900 driver has a banner mode then Qimage Ultimate will go very long. See the Learn by Example 6a instructions in the Qimage manual. If you also want to feed the image with a high resolution then it is possible to cut the image in pieces over its length and have it stitched by Qimage in the print run. There has been some message exchanges on that subject at the Qimage list.
--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
July 2013, 500+ inkjet media white spectral plots.
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Brian
I saw a post somewhere else about a guy printing greater than 37 inches on a 3880 using PrintFab (hate it when my Playbook corrects my spelling/ intent). Was I correct in seeing your name in the same thread? In anycase is anyone familiar with this?
Martin
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Brian
I saw a post somewhere else about a guy printing greater than 37 inches on a 3880 using Printable. Was I correct in seeing your name in the same thread? In anycase is anyone familiar with this?
Yes, that was using the PrintFab RIP, which was (and still may be) in beta and was free till I think the end of the year. I have a 44" roll feed printer as well as the 3880, so I haven't bothered trying Print Fab.
Brian A
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Not sure how we are getting hung up on the 3880, when the OP queried about the 4900....where the 4900 has roll capability and the 3880 only has sheet.
With Qimage, As long as you select roll paper (banner), there will be no gap between pages, if you check the 4900 'save paper at end' box, so you can set the length to anything you like. For example, if you wanted to print a 10' pano, you could set the length to Epson driver print size to 20 inches and the Qimage print size to 10' and then answer "Yes" when asked if it is OK to print more than one page when you set the size of the print you are adding to the page. Then when you get past 20 inches, if everything looks good (no gap), you'll know that all the (20 inch) pages will work fine. That way you'll know it is working after 20 inches are printed rather than having to print 10 feet.
PS....some info from 2006....and mostly still applicable
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/february-2006-wide-load-tips-for-printing-large/
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Actually the title of the thread is "printing really really long" and the op's specific interest is in the 4900 but that does not restrict the question of other printers as often there is a cross over of ideas and solutions.
Martin
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Thanks for the tips guys, I have a few things to look into, including Qimage, printfab, other alternatives for banner printing, and reducing resolution.
I should also mention something that I thought was irrelevant before. The sheet we had available only had a 1" roll hole (printer needs 2 or 3" roll hole size to mount to roll feeder), so we fed it through the sheet feeder and did not use the roll feed, yes it was a little akward. Next time we will have more appropriate roll paper available.
I will have another go in a few days time when the new paper turns up and post the solution providing it all works. In the meantime please send through any more ideas!
Thanks, John.
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Thanks for the tips guys, I have a few things to look into, including Qimage, printfab, other alternatives for banner printing, and reducing resolution...
It may be worth noting, since no one has mentioned it so far (and you haven't mentioned what OS you are running), but QIamge is Windows only. If you are on a Mac, you would have to be running a Windows virtual machine, Parallels, etc.
Brian A
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Check Mirage Print http://mirage.dinax.de/. They claim to ovverride the length limitation.
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Interestingly, according to this article, the printer has a maximum image length of 32767 pixels. So 7.5 feet at 360 ppi, or 10 feet at 300 ppi. So only about 55 ppi for a 15 metre print.
http://www.epson-store.de/gb/en/viewcon/corporatesite/site/224/products/mainunits/faq/8416/3249
So for a high quality print, it is either the tiling of QImage or the expense of a RIP.
Brian A
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THE CONCLUSION..... IT HAS WORKED, IT WAS DONE IN LIGHTROOM.
Despite the advise here, I was unable to get a print with Qimage, maybe I needed to spend more time with it. I have written the whole story here:
It started a bit like this like this "You know that large printer of yours, do you reckon it will print a large cartoon, like really large?". "Sure, why not" I say, "it's got a roll function". We were up to midnight that night with no luck from the Epson 4900.
Before I get too much further, you'll want to know more about the print. It is a long cartoon with pixel dimensions of 2,550 x 94,488, or approximately 17 inches wide x 52 feet (16 metres) long, at 150dpi. At the moment, you can also view it here in 20 sections. http://www.nicartoons.com/ottimeline/?id=1
Firstly I'll start with what did not work. If you only want to know what did work, skip this section.
The paper came from office works that afternoon, it was the only place open, but they didn't have 17" roll paper, every size but 17". The closest was a 15" brown craft paper, usually I wrap packages with it. It's very thin, and the core size is only 1 inch, the Epson needs 2 or 3 inch, so we figured it could be sheet fed.
Mistake number 1. This paper is very thin so feeding it into the sheet feeder was very difficult, and needed to be pushed in with a thicker piece. 2. When it did feed through it tended to get caught up inside the printer causing a very worrying paper jam at one stage (it got caught up by curling up inside and not coming out the correct slot). 3. Trying to hand hold a roll of paper and control the exiting paper at the same time, not so easy.
Learning: Do not try to hand feed a large roll. Do not try to print with very thin paper.
Next. The software issues.
Printing from photoshop.
First attempt was to print from photoshop. We set up a custom paper size of about 15" by 45 feet or so, which was large enough to print the whole image. Hit print. Wait. Nothing. Try again, nope. I can't say what happened but it just would not print in photoshop. Lets try some other software.
Printing from Lightroom.
First hickup, lightroom will only import files smaller than 65,000px, so after realising this we decided to chop the image up into 10 separate files, this was done back in photoshop within a few minutes. Images imported, go to print module. In lightroom we tried a similar method to photoshop, used a page size of about 15" x 45feet, but this time set the page layout so that each image was aligned under the other, giving the impression of a continuous image. This is done with the margins, cell spacing and cell size options. It was looking good, hit print, got a print preview and it started. Cheers all round, we were happy.... for a couple of metres. After a short while the print just stopped. It was about midnight. Time to give up. This limitation was most likely imposed by the print driver. The epson driver is limited to 32,767 px, which is 91 inches long (2.31 metres) at 360dpi.
Printing from Qimage.
This was a new day, and we had new paper, proper roll paper 17" wide and loaded in the Epson 4900 roll feeder. I really thought this would work. Prior to attempting this, I had installed the demo version of Qimage, and had exactly zero experience with the program. So thinking it would work it's magic, I set a large paper size, roll paper, correct alignment, hit print. We see the message "processing", it's taking a while, lets go have dinner. Half an hour later "processing". So I can't say what went wrong here, but I had another idea.
What did work!
Lightroom attempt number two.
So, if you can only print 32,000 pixels on a page, what about printing multiple pages onto roll paper, but with no gaps in between? It worked. So we imported the multiple sections of image as separate images. Head to the print module and create a paper size of 17" wide by 54" long. This is long enough for the image to fill the page when extended to the top and bottom edges. By setting lightroom to zero spacing, zero margins, and a cell spacing height of 54" the image stretched from top to bottom.
The printer was then set to roll paper (borderless), plain paper, black (ink).
It was looking OK. Hold breath and HIT PRINT.
There was a good reason to tick the print preview box, it showed 10 separate images, each one printing right to the edge. The printer spooled up, and off it went, about 10 minutes later we were looking at a 15 metre long cartoon, happy days!
Despite the size, this print surprisingly only used 3.5ml of ink, it was set to black which may have helped, and being a cartoon most of the picture is white.
One warning though, before printing a large colour panorama photo on expensive paper with this method, I would want to check very precisely if there are any visible lines at the page borders, As we printed it all looked seamless, except perhaps for one single, very fine white line / gap. It was almost indistinguishable and did not matter for a cartoon, but we didn't spend the time to work out what caused this, on an expensive print I would test the method a bit more prior to printing.
I attached a picture of Nick, happy with the result.
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With an imge that size Qimage will take a long time to process. If you wait long enough it will say "Finished processing" and after another long wait it will start printing. If your hardware is a bit light, it will stop processing and give an "Insufficient memory" message.
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Excellent job figuring this out. I too have struggled with long panos. Now I have my solution.
One question, how did you determine that you only used 3.5ml of ink? Is this a function available on the 4900?
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The ink usage is under Menu > Printer status > Job history, you can scroll through the previous 10 jobs.
My hardware should not be too limited, it's a recent 6 core processor with 32GB ram. After waiting so long for 'processing' to finish and with no status indicator, I wasn't prepared to wait more. Qimage should add a status indicator to the processing bar.
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Qimage Ultimate supports more CPU cores. Processing depends much on the printer settings, higher qualities ask for 720 PPI input on an Epson. If you add maximum quality of interpolation for that + smart sharpening then Qimage makes a huge print file, usually far more than other applications do in that case. That gives the image quality it is praised for but that quality may not not be necessary for the line print you had to do. There is a Poster setting in the extrapolation choices for that quality.
If you loaded images that are at the other side of the resolution spectrum, say an 800 PPI resolution at the print size where only 360 PPI is asked by the driver then the Qimage Anti-aliasing algorithm usually takes too much processing time. Again it delivers good images but you probably do not need that. Shift the Anti-aliasing filter to low instead of medium that is the default. I have complained about that speed drop but Mike is an image quality fanatic and says he uses the best AA algorithms and the slider should make the compromises.
--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
July 2013, 500+ inkjet media white spectral plots.
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The ink usage is under Menu > Printer status > Job history, you can scroll through the previous 10 jobs.
My hardware should not be too limited, it's a recent 6 core processor with 32GB ram. After waiting so long for 'processing' to finish and with no status indicator, I wasn't prepared to wait more. Qimage should add a status indicator to the processing bar.
Actually, there is a status indicator showing the images that are being processed for printing by Qimage. Look for it towards the bottom right of your screen. The status bar moves along showing the percentage of the printer queue that has been processed.
Also, check your preferences settings for Qimage Ultimate. Under preferences, you can designate if processing should enable single or multi-core processing under "hyperprocessing."
Qimage may not have the best interface, but imho the alternative (printing without Qimage) is abysmal. Qimage makes printing easy, organizing icc profiles and printer settings---not to mention making large prints beyond the limitation set by the Epson driver.
ken
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I've had success making a long panoramic print straight from Photoshop on our 4900. The original file was about 1800 by 105000 pixels, 1.1 gigabytes (an entire roll of 35mm exposed in a Globuscope and then scanned in sections). I managed to make a 10 by 440 inch print straight from Photoshop. I had to rotate the canvas so the image was vertical before printing, but it went through without errors. Just gave me a warning that the image might wander over such a long length. It did take quite a long time to print, but not too long to spool up...
Attached is an image of it tacked up.