Large print to Epson 7600 fails at 48 inches

[John Spragens]

Windows 2000 SP3
3GHz Pentium 4
2GB of RAM
Latest Epson firmware and driver from Web
100Mbps Ethernet connection to printer

I am trying to print a 22x72-inch image from Photoshop 7.0.1 to an Epson Stylus Pro 7600.

Long side of the image is 28,800 pixels, at full resolution, so is within the 30,000 limit I've seen mentioned in other threads.

I've followed the advice to disable advanced printing features in the printer properties.

Photoshop reserved memory at various settings from 50 percent all the way down to 10 percent.

Have tried image resolutions from the original of 400ppi down to 160ppi.

In the worst cases, the full image does not display in the Epson print preview.

In the best cases so far, the full image displays in the Epson print preview, but the image stops printing at 48 inches, rather than continuing to the full 72 inches.

If there are magic solutions (or acceptable workarounds) I'd like to hear them.

And in any case, can anyone explain the significance of what's shown in the Epson print preview? I have been assuming that the driver spools the image data (or as much of it as it can handle), then the print preview shows a reduced image of what's in the spool file.

If that's how it works, I'm wondering what would account for the failure to print the full image, if it has spooled to file successfully.

[YrbkMgr]

Well, print preveiw is not a spooled event. Photoshop reads your printer settings and displays how the image will look, based on your page setup including margins and paper size.

If I had to bet, I'd say that the issue lies with the printer in this way: it is likely a paper definition issue.

What paper size have you set it to? You indicate that you've turned off "advanced features", but I'm not sure what that is. You obviously need to tell it that the source is a roll.

Also, it could be a spooling issue. Some folks have better luck disabling spooling to disk - I've never done it, but that's what I have read here.

Peace,
Tony

[Patty Clarke]

John,

I was going to suggest a printer problem with paper size selection also. Double check the "duh, slapping of the forehead stuff" in the printer arena.

Patty

[John Spragens]

Nothing so simple as paper definition, for better or worse. Paper size has been defined correctly in all cases. (Paper size is set up as 2400 x 7400 to leave an inch all around. And roll paper is set.)

I'm not sure what the "advanced features" are, either. But Epson says disable that, and I've seen it mentioned here. Location is: Printer properties > Advanced tab > Enable advanced printing features checkbox. Remove the check (it's enabled by default).

Just to be clear what print preview I'm talking about ... I don't mean the little preview you see in the Photoshop print dialog box. In Printing Preferences for the 7600, Main tab, bottom of the dialog box, there's a checkbox Print Preview. I have that checked.

When I send a job to print, Photoshop sends up its little Printing message box. After things are spun out, a separate, large window opens. The title bar says EPSON Print Preview. (The Help for this window is something written by Epson.) This window displays the image as it is supposed to print on paper.

I know from one experience with a smaller image that if this print preview image is incomplete and I click the Print button to send the job on to the printer, the printed image will also be incomplete -- in the same way it was shown in the print preview.

It's this behavior that led me to assume the Epson Print Preview was showing what's in the spool file.

OTOH, you can still get this preview image even if you do not spool the job, and that undercuts my assumption.

I've tried all three variations on spooling:
- Start printing after last page is spooled
- Start printing immediately
- Print directly to the printer

I haven't been able to print this image at all with the "Print directly" setting.

Anyone have other clues?

[YrbkMgr]

Gotcha John,

In Printing Preferences for the 7600, Main tab, bottom of the dialog box,
there's a checkbox Print Preview. I have that checked.




Ahhh, I thought you meant in PS. Yeah, then you're right, it's what's been spooled.

The advanced features probably have to do with enabling borderless, etc.

I am out of ideas then, but have you tried printing anything that size from another application?

[John Spragens]

I haven't printed from a different application yet. Only Photoshop. This was my new-printer first-burst-of-enthusiasm project. (Hey, I can print BIG now!)

One of the Epson stock suggestions is to print from Illustrator. I haven't had any luck with that. Illustrator 9 has some kind (or kinds) of problem with the TIFF file. Sometimes it won't open it. Sometimes it opens it but does not display it properly (a sort of checkerboard effect of image elements and stuff that doesn't look like any part of the image).

Maybe this evening I should try FreeHand.

I have printed some things fine from Photoshop. I've been working on a series of 22 x 17 images, and they all print without complaint.

Also, a bit of detail on the failure with the 72-inch image: It's not clipped off cleanly. The behavior seems to indicate that when it hits 48 inches, data stops flowing to the printer. There's a ragged edge on the printed area -- the print head has made some of its passes over that trailing edge, but hasn't yet finished laying down all the ink. I have to turn off the printer to get it to trim the paper.

[John Spragens]

I'm hesitant to print something unneeded that's 72 inches long just as a test, but in this case, that may be the economical thing to do. (I've wasted more than 100 inches of paper already, and lots of ink on it.)

I did print the same image from files with significantly different resolutions (160ppi in one case and 400ppi in the other), and in both cases, the printout ended at exactly the same spot.

I'm not sure how to check for I/O issues.

On the disks side of things: My standard configuration on this computer uses separate partitions for Windows swap file (6GB), Photoshop swap file (10GB), printer spool (4GB). I've watched file sizes on those partitions, and in no case have I come close to filling the space. Usage on all three partitions is less than 50 percent.

As a test, I did try pointing the printer spool files to the system partition (which has multiple gigs of free space), but that made no difference in the results. At the time I did that test, I was still trying to figure out how to get the full image to spool and display in the Epson Print Preview window. I got the same partial display, whether the printer spool directory was on the system partition or on the dedicated partition.

[YrbkMgr]

Hmmm... it's a Gerkin (pickle). If Epson can't help, then as I say, you have to do a simple image and see if it's a file size related issue. At least that's what *I'd* do...

[Burton Ogden]

John,

I'm hesitant to print something unneeded that's 72 inches long just as
a test, but in this case, that may be the economical thing to do. (I've
wasted more than 100 inches of paper already, and lots of ink on it.)




I have a small Epson, but on test prints I reuse the paper. Either turn it over or I use a test image that takes very little ink, like an a simple border around an empty image. If your paper is too ink soaked to reuse, I recommend you create a simple nearly empty image of the target size that will be amenable to reuse of the paper.

There's a ragged edge on the printed area -- the print head has made some
of its passes over that trailing edge, but hasn't yet finished laying
down all the ink.




That's normal. Epson uses "MicroWeave" and "Super MicroWeave" technology to eliminate banding. You are just seeing the edge of an image that is "in work". Any given pixel line of an image is built up in several passes of the print head, so a slight misalignment of the print head will be "averaged out" in the complete image.

I recommend you create a special low ink consumption test image designed so that you can reuse the same piece of paper several times, until you get this problem "sorted out".

-- Burton --

[Mark Hiers]

Long side of the image is 28,800 pixels, at full resolution, so is within
the 30,000 limit I've seen mentioned in other threads.




You're pretty close to the limit, and there may be something going on at the printer that would push it over 30k. We've seen HP plotters fail in this range...

[Henry Skinner]

I use the 1280, Sometimes when printing a long (>44") and it doesn't complete the full length The solution that works for this printer is the banner or cut sheet checkbox under the Epson Properties>paper tabs. I believe that the counterintuitive selection that works is the cut sheet mode.

HTH

[John Spragens]

Thanks, Henry. I've determined that the roll paper setting is appropriate in my case. I have managed to get a print out with low image resolution and low printer resolution.

Couple more tests I need to try. Then I'll post more details of what I learned -- and questions that remain.

[YrbkMgr]

Cool John. I'll be reading with interest.

[John Spragens]

A few more clues, but no answer yet ...

The print spool file created when I print this image at 720dpi is 1.14GB. That's true when the original is a 160ppi image and also when the original is a 360ppi image. That 1.14GB file spools completely to the printer and I get a full image.

The spool file created when I print at 1440dpi is 2.16GB. Plenty of room for that on my old 4GB print queue partition -- way plenty of room for it on the new 20GB print queue partition.

But for some reason only 67% of the image prints in that case. I was asleep at the time, so don't know how much of the file was spooled to the printer.

In other words, there are still two possible causes -- either the print spooler isn't able to send all of a 2.16GB file to the printer ... or that 2.16GB file doesn't contain all the image. I suspect it's the former, which would seem to point the finger of blame at Windows, not at Photoshop or the Epson driver.

Wonder if there's some setting somewhere ...

[John Spragens]

Thanks for the thought. These are NTFS partitions.

[John Spragens]

By the way, in the course of watching a few key directories, I discovered that the Epson Print Preview does not generate its image from the print spool file.

At the time the preview image is displayed, the spool file exists but is zero bytes.

There are, however, some fairly large files in the Windows temp directory (in my case, C:\WINNT\Temp). Those may be the source of the preview image and maybe also of the data that is fed to the print spooler.

When a print job fails, those files in the temp directory may not be cleaned up properly. At one point I wound up with a completely full C: drive as a result.

Anyhow ... After I click Print in the Epson Print Preview, data starts flowing to the print spool file.

A few more things to investigate over the weekend. I'll check in with results when I know more.

[John Spragens]

I've confirmed with a second, smaller image -- printed at higher resoltuion -- that the print spooler stops sending information and dumps the spool file after sending about 1.4GB of data to the printer.

Sounds like some kind of Windows problem. (I'm running Windows 2000 SP4.)

Anybody know what might be causing this?

[Mac McDougald]

> dumps the spool file after sending about 1.4GB of data to the printer.

You have more than that free, in contiguous (non fragmented) disk space?

Mac

[YrbkMgr]

That's very odd since those printers are designed to handle large prints, one would expect the data to be commensurately large. If it's me, I'd try to duplicate it outside of photoshop - that is, can we get a 2 gig spooled file to print from another app?

Can you try printing to a PRN file then drop that on your printer? Can you Save As PDF and print from Acrobat?

I know it wastes paper and ink, but you're not getting anywhere now so you might as well try, IMO.

Peace,
Tony

[Henry Skinner]

I hope this does not post twice, the first time did not show up. How about changing the print settings to print straight through rather than spooling. Not an optimum solution, but this could bypass the file size limits of Windows.