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Technical Information Bulletin

Tips for Printing Digital Pictures

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Contents

List of Printing Tips

Printing pictures requires a large amount of hard drive space. Printing pictures also uses a significant amount of Random Access Memory (RAM). Work directly with the support area of your printer manufacturer to determine exactly how much hard drive and RAM space is needed for your particular print jobs.

The following is a list of tips to help optimize your printing capabilities.

  • Clear as much space as possible from your C: drive. Even if your software program is installed on a different hard drive, spooling to the printer takes place on your C: drive. Deleting .tmp files from the Temp folder in the WINDOWS directory is a good place to start.

  • Free up as much of the system resources as possible by closing all background applications. See How to Close Down Background Applications.

  • Periodically, defragment and error check your hard drive. This is always good maintenance and enhances the functionality of other programs as well. See your WINDOWS owner's manual for a step-by-step procedure.

  • Reduce the size of the print job. For example, if you are requesting 4 pages of 16 images on a page, reduce the request to 1 page of 16 images. If the result of one page is good, but the system does not respond well to a 4 page request, you probably have a system resource problem.

  • Check your printer driver. Contact your printer manufacturer to optimize your printer driver settings for large print jobs. You may also need to reduce the Dots-Per-Inch (DPI) setting. If, after reducing the DPI setting, you have success printing, you either have a hard drive constraint or a memory constraint. Also, make certain you have the latest printer drivers. Contact your printer manufacturer through their Web site or through directions given in your printer owner's manual.

  • Reduce the graphic acceleration. To do so, click My Computer > Properties > Performance > Graphics. Set the graphics acceleration to None and restart your computer.

  • If all else fails, try printing directly to the printer. This results in your printer taking all of your system's resources for the entire amount of time that it takes to print the job. If you choose this type of printing, you will not be able to perform any other function on your system until the requested print job is finished.


To turn off spooling and print directly to the printer:

  1. From the Windows Start menu, click: Settings > Printer.

  2. Select the desired printer.

  3. Click: File > Properties > Details > Spool Settings.

  4. Select the Print Directly to Printer radio button.

  5. Click OK.

  6. Re-enter your application and send your print to the printer.

To reset printing so it goes through the spooler:

  1. Click: Settings > Printer.

  2. Select the desired printer.

  3. Click: File > Properties > Details > Spool Settings.

  4. Select the Reset Defaults radio button.

    This spools the print jobs so the program finishes printing faster. The "Start printing after first page is spooled." radio button is also selected as a part of resetting the defaults.

  5. Click OK.

    This resets your printer so that spooling takes place and the printer can perform other functions on the system while a print job is taking place.

For additional printing tips see The Digital Learning Center at http://webs.kodak.com/US/en/digital/dlc/book1/chapter4/index.shtml.

Kodak is a trademark of Eastman Kodak Company.
Technical Information Bulletins provide information of limited or specific application. Responsibility for judging the applicability of the information for a specific use rests with the end user.
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