Problems printing large files from Photoshop to Epson 9600

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

Pierre, the laptop has 160MB on it. On my desktop/workstation, the physical RAM is actually installed to 4GB. I use 2GB for OS and the remaining 1.6GB (.4GB for PCI devices?) for a ramdisk.

I have been experimenting and reduced my Photoshop memory down to 14% (or about 248MB) of 1777MB available. I had previously set the memory for photoshop anywhere between 50% to 95% and had problems with large files with these settings.

After having success with the laptop, I theorized that the OS was lacking memory for the spooler, thus causing a possible "out of memory" situation when the spooler did a getmem call. After reducing PS's demand on the available memory and leaving more for the OS, I have been able to print larger files without PS blowing up on me.

I am continuing this testing, since it is not entirely clear to me why a spooler memory call would cause Photoshop to crash. Any comments on this Chris?

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

Chris et al, I have started a support issue with Epson and I am waiting to hear back from them regarding the large print job problems we are having.

Further testing seems to point to an out-of-memory problem not being handled by the print driver. Since I typically don't have Photoshop open when I print from QIMAGE, I am going to do further testing to see if I can recreate this problem in QIMAGE while starving the OS of memory by having Photoshop open.

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

Well, no luck with Epson Support. Epson wrote back that it is a Microsoft issue and that I have to take it up with them.

That pretty much does it. I guess it is time to start calling each company's Public Relations Department to see if they can push things in the right direction.

This finger pointing does not help anyone, and I am not getting paid to troubleshoot Adobe's, Epson's, nor Microsoft's products.

More importantly, for those of us who actually want to get some work done, instead of follow this insane thread for the rest of their life, I did more testing and may have found *my* solution. Since Adobe cannot seem to give us better guidelines on troubleshooting and fine-tuning CS, I don't assume for one moment that my solution will help anyone else other than myself...sorry.

I found that by REDUCING the amount of memory that Photoshop uses, I can print larger files. Apparently, the OS or the print driver chokes when printing large files when Photoshop has reserved more than 70% of the *physical RAM* available.

On my machine, Photoshop indicated there was approximately 1777MB of available memory. I setup Photoshop to use 75% of the available memory - possibly since v4. Thus, I may have been having this problem in v4, v6 (skipped v5), and v7, as well as in CS (v8). I set this reservation high, since I assumed that the OS was supposed to be able to use VIRTUAL MEMORY of 5GB or more that I had setup on various SCSI drives should it need more memory. After reducing Photoshop's reservation to 15%, larger print jobs ran without a glitch...so far.

Is this the solution I've been waiting for? Maybe.

Since Adobe has this thing with handling its own memory, ala Macintosh programming style, it will have to be seen whether dropping the reservation down to 15% speeds up Photoshop at the same time it allows me to print larger files, or slows things down to the point of forcing me back to v7.

Opinions and "I told you so"s are welcomed...

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

No one application can use more than 2 Gig of RAM total. Unfortunately the printer driver appears to live in the same memory space as the application (which it shouldn't).

Photoshop's memory management has nothing to do with the Macintosh - I don't know where you got that crap.

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

Chris,
The cr.. was gotten from Photoshop's memory reservation requirement. I don't know of any other Windows-based programs that require you to reserve memory for the application. Does Microsoft Office require you to reserve 100MB for MSWord and another 100MB for Excel? How about Lotus programs? Symantec? McAfee? Quickbooks Pro?

I can't think of any...Seems like you have to do this in the Mac world though.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Patrick - you aren't reserving memory, you're just setting an upper limit so Photoshop won't cause problems for other applications (and some ill-behaved drivers and plugins).

No, it has nothing to do with the Macintosh.
And you don't have to do anything like that in Mac OS X, but Photoshop still has a memory limit slider just like on Windows.

(once again: "just because you don't understand something doesn't make it a bug")

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

Microsoft Office require you to reserve 100MB for MSWord and another 100MB
for Excel? How about Lotus programs? Symantec? McAfee? Quickbooks Pro?

do any of those programs regularly work on multi-hundred megabyte files? hint: no.

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

Dave and Chris,
The two of you are a little too wrapped up in defending Adobe Photoshop. Maybe you're trying to make everyone else feel *inadequate* by intimidating them into submission with your barbs...

Won't work.

Dave - Yes, I do use Microsoft Word, Excel, and Access with large files (even larger than a couple hundred megabytes). Just because you don't doesn't mean no one else does.

Chris - So Mac OS-X has gotten rid of the memory reservations... Seems that Adobe might do the same and leave memory management to the OS - per design. I try to be fair and ask if there is something that can be done about the *problem*. But, if I did say *bug*, it's not technically incorrect to call it that...maybe not Adobe's bug, but a problem that users of Adobe Photoshop encounter while using a program called Adobe Photoshop...did I mention that the problem occurs while using Adobe Photoshop?

Get back to the problem at hand. Adobe Photoshop abnormally ends (ABENDS) when printing a large file using the Epson driver in Microsoft Windows 2000 (and XP?) - under certain conditions.

To resolve the *problem*, one of these companies needs to stop pointing their finger at someone else and start fixing the problem - regardless of who's problem it is. At the very least, the Photoshop division of Adobe could open the issue with Microsoft and Epson. I'm sure that would be better than me opening the issue and getting the run-around.

Additionally, Adobe needs to document their memory reservation/restriction settings so that we can understand why it's there and how to use it wisely. I can't see why the user has to hunt through these flame war forums to find an answer that should have been documented many versions ago.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Patrick - how many times do I have to say: the memory limit slider has NOTHING to do with the Macintosh and is very much necessary on all modern OSes. It cannot be left to the OS because the OS can't deal with that much memory, nor does it know anything about images or how they are going to be processed -- leaving it to the OS would cause problems for other applications, slow things to a crawl, and never let you edit anything that might ever require more than 2 Gig of total storage (RAM and disk).

Your core problem with printing can only be fixed by the company that caused the problem - and that company has to be Epson (from basic logic we've already covered). Microsoft and Adobe can't do anything about it. We have discussed the issue with Epson, but they have not responded with any fixes. There is nothing more that we can do.

And your manual documents the memory setting preference - there isn't much more we can say without documenting each and every problem we encounter with third party software and every release of the OSes.

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

"Your core problem with printing can only be fixed by the company that caused the problem - and that company has to be Epson (from basic logic we've already covered). Microsoft and Adobe can't do anything about it. We have discussed the issue with Epson, but they have not responded with any fixes. There is nothing more that we can do."

Chris - I'll take this up with Epson's Public Relations.

Thanks for the assistance (really!).

[mudc...@adobeforums.com]

What project are you working on that is over 250megs? Maybe the printer's buffer will not allow such large filesizes. Check the printer manual.

[Patrick...@adobeforums.com]

Update: 4/1/2004

Epson has surprised me! After contacting Public Relations about this problem and explaining the issue to them, I was told a fix was in the works! Later that same day, I received a patch via email from the Japan office. I installed the patch and have had no problems setting Photoshop memory "restrictions" to 99% and printing 1GB sized files!

Of course, it's April 1st, and I just had to throw that up!

In actuality, I have had great success after having set Photoshop's memory restrictions down to around 25%. I am losing that paranoia of seeing Photoshop crash everytime I print something.

When I finally do hear back from Epson, I will post their reply.

cheers!