jeff_rose3 Posted May 27, 2003 Share Posted May 27, 2003 Hello Folks, I am using Photoshop 7.0 on an XP system with 1G of ram and 1.8 MHz processor. I am using an Epson 1280 printer. Running only Photoshop this problem occurs intermittently and is quite frustrating. Problem: Printing an 8X11 picture with a file 130Meg large my printer occasionally locks up with a communication error. It prints almost exactly 2 inches of the print before it does this. It is always non recoverable so I end up recovering the paper from the printer and cancelling the job and wasting a buch of time/ink/ and money. These are the things I've done so far: * monitored system resources, does not appear to be too large of a drain on these. * reboot corrects the problem but sometimes only for one print. * I don't seem to have this problem with other files Do you have any ideas? Have you seen this problem? Thanks in Advance Jeff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven_clark Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Some people have reported it works better through the parallel port in these cases. Another potential problem is some grit on the slide that eventually stalls the carriage. Also it's possible to end up with conflicting versions of the status monitor on some occasions that screw things up. You might try killing the statsu monitor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_piper2 Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Jeff: Just out of curiosity - why do you need a 130Mg file to make an 8x11-inch print? Even a 48-bit color 300ppi image of those dimensions is only 48 Mg - and since the 1280 only uses 24-bit color data anyway, you really only need a 24Mg file. Do your files have gobs of layers in them? It might be a wonky USB or parallel cable - but I'd suspect data-handling problems if it seems to only crop up with the big files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cg Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 If your printer is connected to a USB hub try connecting it directly to your CPU. Some hubs and or cheap usb cables can cause communication errors. To speed things up you may want to resize and resample your files before sending them to the printer. good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brainbubba_motornapkins Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 I was having a lot of trouble with this trying to print larger than 4" x 6" (~10MB files) over USB, so I switched to parallel. I also had to turn off print spooling, and deselect "high speed printing" from the Epson printer dialog. Printing is much slower, but I don't get the error anymore. Whenever an error of any sort occurs, I always have to reboot both the computer and the printer to set things right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d._chan Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 How much free disk space do you have on your computer? I can't imagine what size the temporary file Photoshop creates as well as the printer spool file for the Epson. Might also defrag the drive to help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brad_hiltbrand Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 I think Andy is asking the right questions. I have also had trouble trying to print big files in small sizes without changing the resolution and making a print version of the file at 300 dpi for any given print size. Are you trying to print that image at greater than 300 dpi? You need to flatten and resize the image to pixel dimensions of 2400 X 3300. Any more information is probably wasted and may cause your computer or printer to gag on the useless extra data. In any event, print at no more than 360 dpi and see if that doesn't help. Since you say this happens with only one file, it may just be that particular file is corrupted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven_clark Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Last I checked the highest resolutions an epson printer driver could take in without flat-out dropping pixels was 720ppi. Note that if you print that you're not going to get anywhere near as much detail as you would if you printed at a much lower pixel density because the printer won't have enough dots to the full color of each pixel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brad_hiltbrand Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Steven's post reminded me to correct my sloppy use of the DPI abbreviation in my previous post. I meant to say print at 300 or 360 PPI, pixels per inch. The printer uses many dots to make each pixel which explains Steven's point about actually lowering your print quality by trying to print at a very high pixel per inch density. You are not likely to be able to see any benefit from printing files at greater than 360 PPI I work from a large master file, and make resized files at 300 PPI for different print sizes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff_rose3 Posted May 28, 2003 Author Share Posted May 28, 2003 I want to express my graditude to all that have contributed to my question. I have plenty of things to try now and will report back if I find the smoking gun that has created this problem. Jeff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
todd_quam Posted July 21, 2003 Share Posted July 21, 2003 You are probably using a USB 2.0 cable, and the Epson 1280 does not work well with a 2.0 cable. You need to switch back to a USB 1.0 cable and you will have no problems. I had the same problems you are experiencing and was told by Epson customer support that the 1280 has problems with USB 2.0. Now I never have a print problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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