Printing multiple copies in OS X

colbyd

colbyd

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I am new to this forum and this is my first post. I topic deals the printing multiple copies of a page in OS X. In OS 9 when printing multiple copies the document was sent 1 time from photoshop and then the print utility took over from there duplicating the document however many time were needed. In OS X when printing from photoshop if you print 10 copies it send the document 10 different time. This is very time consuming especially with larger files. Is there any way around this or any rumors of this problem being fixed when Tiger is released.

Thanks
Colby
 
Welcome to the forum. :)

What printer are you using? When I do multiple copies on my HP, it sends the pages once and the printer then prints out the correct number of copies.
 
I am printing to an Epson Stylus 4000, 3000 and 1280. I am using an older G4 and a Titanium Powerbook. When printing from Photoshop 7 sending 10 pages to any of these printers it actually processes 10 pages as where OS 9 it just processed it 1 time.

If I am understanding you correctly when you hit print on more than one page (5 pages for example) it just sends on page and the print utility handles the rest.

This is the same when I send pages to my HP photosmart printer.
 
If you turn off "Reverse page order" in the "Paper Handling" options and uncheck "Collated" in the "Copies & Pages" options, it should spool just once.
 
Tried that and it still spools each individaul page. In photoshop when you print there is two different progress bars. The bottom bar is what shows the multiple pages being sent. This is what is different from OS 9 and this is what takes a very long time especially when sending large print jobs.

This may be just how it is but i would like to know if there is some way to get around this without using a rip software.

Thanks
 
Yes I do have most updated version.

I think this is more of an OS thing than a photoshop issue. If its not too much trouble can you send a file approx 40mb in from photoshop to your printer(dont need to actaully print just test this theory). Try sending 10 copies and you can cancel before it actually prints. On the bottom processing bar deos it show the sending of all 10 pages or just one page.
 

Attachments

Can you try the same routine with a much smaller file? Turn off "Collating" and "Print Reverse" options, then try and print 10 copies of a, say, 100kb image out of PhotoShop. Does it do the same thing?

I'm thinking that perhaps your printer's memory isn't large enough to hold an entire 40MB image, so it has to be re-spooled for every copy you want. A smaller image that fully fits in the printer's available RAM (and any 100kb - 300kb image should for most printers) can be spooled once, and the data remains in RAM to be instantly printed again. If your printer only has 8MB of RAM, only 8MB at a time can be spooled, so images larger than that may have to be spooled more than once.

Of course, PhotoShop should still only spool once to the printer spool file, then OS X's Printer functions should send it to the printer however many times (copies) you specify. Still, it's worth a shot to make sure...
 
Tried that and yes it still sends all pages (much quicker but yes still sends all pages). The reason I am almost positve this is an OS issue is because when I send multiple pages from the G4 it takes about 4 times as long if I send the same job from the Titanium Powerbook. What I dont understand is why apple would make this change from OS 9 because it was definitely not to any advantage what so ever.

If you view the previous post with the attached images. Those images are screen shots of why I see when sending multiple files.
 
It doesn't sound like Apple's at fault here, since it's Photoshop doing the spooling, not Apple's printer software.

Have you tried contacting Adobe about this?
 
I just confirmed that is a photoshop issue. Illustrator, InDesign, Word, Dreamweaver and Apple's Preview software all print the way they are supposed as far as handling multiple copies. I guess I should turn my focus towards photoshop/Adobe now and see what I can find.
 
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