Expert: Amy - 7/24/2004

Question
Dear Amy:

I use an iMac 450, OS 9.2.1, Illustrator 9.02, Hewlett Packard 812C Deskjet printer.

You solved my problem before so I am back.  I am doing some graphic work in Illustrator and I am finding that when I go to print my printer takes a very long time to print one page.  Sometimes it takes 5 minutes just to print out one page that is only large letters with a colored border.  Nothing really complicated.  How can I speed the output out?

Thanks

Ron

Answer
Hi again, Ron.

If it's the application's processing time (seems to take a long time to even start printing) you might want to
set a lower output resolution for the document.

To do that, choose File > Document Setup, and then choose Printing and Export in the little pop up menu that currently says Artboard. Enter 800 for the resolution. You could even try 600.

Then choose Transparency from that pop up menu and drag the Flatness Quality/Speed slider to the middle or to the left of the middle.

Then there's the little Bitmap Printing box that you see at the bottom of the Print dialog box after selecting File>Print. I have an HP 5650 and I do NOT check that box, even though you'd think that it should be checked with all non-postscript printers.  With my former printer (an Epson) I *did* check that box. Apparently, the driver for the 5650 can handle the rasterization of the vector data all by itself.  That's what I'm assuming since it works beautifully.

Which brings me to another point.  Upgrade your printer driver if you can.  Go to the HP site and see if one's available. Never hurts.

But if it's the actual printing process that's taking a long time (barrel slides across paper, long pause, barrel slides across paper again), you'll need to adjust the printer's settings in Printer Properties.  Turn off all the extra features like Automatic color adjustment, red-eye, auto-sharpness, vivid colors, etc.  In my 5650's driver controls, this is found in the properties under Paper/Quality. And you can usually choose from HP's different quality modes somewhere in your print properties, too.  Best/Normal/Draft, etc.  I use one called Fast/Normal because plain old Normal is painfully slow.

Incidentally, assuming you're spooling to a print monitor, there is also the possiblity that you're operating with a system that isn't able to give enough memory to the printing process. My 5650 has a low-memory mode checkbox in the printer properties, too. And if you *are* using Desktop Print Monitor, try alloting a bit more memory to that application, too, I think you still do that by highlighting the application icon and doing a Get Info. (Cmnd-I).  It's been a while since I've used a Mac, so I can't tell you off hand how much memory it needs.

Anyway, play around with all these controls and see if you can't gain some speed.

-Amy