printing panorama agony: epson 2100, Mac

[chasg]

Hi All,

This is an old problem, but I just purchased a CIS and so am revisiting it. This has been troubling me for a _very_ long time, and I'm hoping that someone here is wise enough to help me solve this agonising (for me) problem.

I have an Epson 2100 (2200 in North America) which I purchased specifically to use roll paper and print long panoramas. I bought this printer soon after it came out, by the way.

I prepared a pano (in Photoshop CS1) that was 14196x3549 pixels at 273 dpi which measures out at 52"x13" (the roll paper I have is 13" wide, and I wanted to have the max possible sized print). I created a custom paper size which fit the pano.

I used my typical colour settings: I set Photoshop to determine the colours, and used the appropriate Epson printer profile (and then set "no color adjustment" in the Epson driver).

The problems came when I tried to actually print the image. What would come out of the printer would be only portions of the image printed on the the full custom paper size (for example, if memory serves, the image would start far down the paper, and would be shifted up 15cm or so). This is not a cropping issue, the image was shifted hugely on the paper (fyi: the very same image, printed at 20% of the original size, printed with no problems).

I used up two sets of carts and metres of paper trying to get this to work. Lots of calls to Epson tech support, and I finally got a tech to state that there was a limit to how long of a print the Epson drivers would produce (I seem to remember that it's 44"). I tried a few more solutions, but finally gave up in extreme frustration.

I've since read, here and many other places, that the 2100 on a Mac using Photoshop CS2 (which I am now using) _should_ be able to print over 44". I even spoke to an Epson tech at a recent photo conference (Focus on Imaging, here in the UK) who reiterated that there should be no problem.

I was all ready to get back into trying again when a friend who had recently bought a used Epson 4000 wrote me to ask about this strange behaviour he was getting when trying to print long panos...same problem I had been having (at least he saved me from even more hours of extreme frustration).

Panoramas have long been a passion of mine. I bracket shots using a pano head, I then tone map them and stitch them together. I've been stitching panos since I was a beta-tester for the original QTVR software from Apple, looong ago! I am desperate to start printing these, I sure hope somebody here can help me out!

Chas

[mats]

Hi!
I have just had the same problem with a epson 4000.
The limitation seems to be with the operating system and I have not found a way around it so any ideas would be great!
I can print longer than 44" using quadtone rip, but that does not help me with colour...
Imageprint should be able to print long panoramas as well but requires an investment.
Have searched the net but not found a viable work around.
With the 4000 at least it seams that printing from a pc does not have the same limitation...
Now where did I hide that old pentium?

Mats

[Steve West]

You might want to check out printing with Qimage Pro.  It may be able to break the paper length limit.  They have a forum on yahoo I think.  I print 60"+ panos with Qimage on my r1800.  I'm not sure if I am breaking any paper length limits with this printer or not using Qimage.  I recall that Qimage's banner mode can print out multiple pages continuously on roll paper.  I've never used that mode since I just select roll settings.

When people see a 13 x 60" pano, it gets their attention!  I can only imagine the impact on people for prints 60 x 60 !!

Steve W

[p.tinson]

On MAC's there is a page length limit of either aprox 44 inch or 90 inch depending on the driver.
The way to overcome this and print long images is to use an application that supports tileing such as Illustrator.
Another way is to try the pageproofer EX trial version available for download from www.epson.co.uk it is in the support/drivers and downloads for the new K3 ink printers (Photo 2400, Pro4800, Pro 7800 and Pro 9800), this has an inbuilt tileing for banners based on standard paper sizes and with the new K3 drivers sets the driver up automatically for you. With the older printer drivers you will have to make sure that you are using the banner driver and that the save roll paper option is checked in the roll paper setup.
Peter

[John Mason]

I had the same problem on the 2200 and it also happens on the 1800.

Here are a couple of things that worked for me.

I print pano's using Qimage.  I found that whan an image cut off or was shifted - or this week - printed nothing but ejected the paper - that if you turn on the print preview, you will see the same effect that actually happens on the paper.

In Qimage I found that with the Epson driver I will get anamolies if the final print image size exceeds 250mb.  On my panos, that's easy to do.  What I had to do was to drop the level of interpolation to get the final print image size to be under 250mb then the driver works ok.

This is very frustrating especially since I'm shooting panos with the 1dsmkii now and it's very easy to exceed 250mb now.  I hate to lose potential detail because of a limited driver.

I don't believe this is an operating system or qimage issue but an epson driver issue with some undocmented maximum file size problem.

Since you are getting similar problems with the Mac it would seem to be a limit within both versions of the epson driver rather than any type of operating system issue.

At least you should be able to confirm if using the epson print preview function will save you wasting ink and paper if the job is too big for the driver.

[filip baraka]

few months ago I switched to mac, few days ago i switched to epson 2200 from canon i9950
and i absolutly hate printing with epson drivers.
I still havent printed on roll but for my current printing issues now and for peace of mind only solution would be to invest in ImagePrint which unfortunately cost almost more than printer itself

oh, has somebody actually runned epson easy print? i have it installed but cant find where is it (not in app folders)
epson online manual is for os9