Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I do print usually fine art photography so often the file sizes are quite massive. (~4Gb)

1.
Few days ago I've tried to print 3~4 meter size print with Epson surecolor 8000/Roll paper, but it stopped process after 1.6m long.(Well, it stopped print and spitted the length left over, it seemed somehow data partially didn't reach to the printer well). I had to split an image into two parts. And I had an issue exactly same with PS before. So I wonder if this is file size(+memory) issue or QU's limitation of printing size.

Specially this case was eight of individual images arranged in one-page setting, each of them about 100cm(W) x 45cm(L). As the individual file wasn't that big compare to other situation, and somehow I expected QU works smoother than PS, I didn't expected this failure.

In case needed, I checked my setting on QU(analyze current setting+shift). It says start 2145MB/Addl:1031MB/NOW2145MB. If this causes an issue, is there way to increase these numbers? I'd like to know how can I set for unusually long-continuous prints. (ex: 100 cm x 600cm.. or longer)

2.
I am still a novice with QU, but before I used to print with PS. PS was fine but it required a lot of waiting(I guess processing the image) time to start printing. When I printed 1.5-2GB size file I had to wait up to 1 hour until printer starts. As I understood QU is not exactly RIP but somehow amazingly managing its existing drivers, I was wondering there would be different printing time or printing process.(For instance, RIP program usually directly starts printing beginning parts of the image while partially contents are still in processing.) It would be helpful if there is anyone has some experience with these large prints.

If you have a very large image, Photoshop will try to dump the entire image at once to the driver which can overwhelm the driver.  Qimage sends the print data in smaller chunks rather than all at once so you usually run into size problems with Photoshop before you see size problems in Qimage.  That said, if your original images are larger than about 1GB, you should break them into 1GB portions.  For example, if you have a 3GB image, you can break that into three 1GB images and print them in "Compact" placement mode in Qimage so that the three chunks are adjacent (no gap between the pieces).  Then in the driver, select "Roll Paper (Banner)" so that the printer doesn't try to cut pages or put spaces between each page.

Regards,
Mike

Thank you very much Mike. I'll try to do as you said during the next week! And according to your explanation, Qimage's initial time to start printing might be shorter than PS at least big size files. Good to know as well, thank you.

Best regards,