So how do you get through to someone that just doesn’t get it?

[dgberg]

I ran across his call for help on another wide format printing thread.

This is his thread..
Printing through Versa works on a Roland XC540

Anyone have a fix for this? Trying to have Versaworks tile this enormous image for a wall mural that’s 12’ tall and around 45’ long. File isn’t THAT big it’s like 16mb but all I can figure is Versaworks doesn’t know what to do with something this big maybe? This is the largest print I’ve ever tried to push through. It’s just printing solid stripes of color instead of the image.

I’d break it up but it’s one big photo and I really want it to tile for me with the overlaps.

Any help is appreciated.

So I explain to him that he is never going to  print a 540 sq.ft. Print with a 16mb jpeg and he doesn’t get it. A business owner with a $15k 54” solvent printer and he is getting confrontational with me. I did all the math for him and all he can say is it does not have to be perfect. He has started to print one of the tiles and says he cannot figure out why it is printing mushy gray dots.  He finally just says he will figure it out himself. 540 sq. Ft. Good luck.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

 

[digitaldog]

The degree of print misunderstandings abound, even here:
https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=136760.msg1194660#msg1194660

Original prints are 300dpi.  So scan at 300 dpi, or 600 at the most.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

It'll be alright if you stand a very very long away from it…

Just saying.

[dgberg]

I took the 16mb file enlarged it to 12’ x 45’ at 130ppi and the file size went to 9.1 GB.
With no uprezzing he would be printing closer to 5dpi. Just a guess, I did not do the math on that one.

[Lessbones]

It sounds like a Versaworks limitation, or else he literally has no space left on his drive.  It doesn't matter how big the INPUT file is-- the ripped file is going to be at whatever resolution he's using to print (since it actually has to set a 1 or a 0 for every pixel of the printer resolution per channel), so if that were, say, 720x720, it's going to make a 720dpi output file with however many channels he has in his machine.  So if it's creating 1-bit per channel, assuming CMYK, that would be ~4.6GB.  This accounts for 4 bitmaps created at whatever halftoning method the rip is using, which are the data fed directly into the printer.

If he's got Lc, and Lm, you can add another 2.34gb on to that.  Then 1.17gb per channel for any other channels he might have set up (R,G,B,O, etc.).  If it's a variable-dot setup (2bit-per-channel) then those sizes will be doubled.  So i think it's safe to say his EQ is choking on this file.  If you NEED to talk to him more, tell him to reduce the print mode resolution to it's lowest and see if it'll go then (usually that would be somewhere around 360x360dpi).

[dgberg]

Learned something today.

[RaffiCoffee]

I have created about a dozen billboards in my time, and the specification for them are very low resolution. I think the largest I did was 100fet, and the file was around a single megabyte. As mentioned, it is the distance one views it from. Billboards are at least seen from many feet away. The printer should print it if it allows for that page setup of a file to support. I have ZERO experience with that printer, but I know my HP says it can print 100feet, vs another printer spec claims differently, as written in the software in media it supports.