Printing chokes the network

[Randy Person]

I'm working in PPT 2002, SP3, on a Win2k platform. I had 4 jpg images right
from the small digital camera, and wanted two pictures per page. I used
Photo Album to dump them into a small PPT show, and deleted the default title
slide. Four quick slides = 3.3MB file. Printed handouts, 2 per page, fit
paper, to a shared HP color laserjet 5500dtn. Several minutes later, I
checked the settings to find it was pumping through a 72MB file - mine!

What happened to expand the file size over 20x for a simple print command?
I know about optimizing image sizes, which I do for large shows, but this was
just a quick way to get a couple hard copies for the file. Our network will
print 3MB files in a few seconds under normal (Word, Excel, Paint Shop, etc.)
conditions. Is there anything I can do about this? My IM staff says "don't
print from PowerPoint, use PaintShop instead."

Thanks

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Randy,

I'd change the 'resolution' on the printer driver, before sending the job to
the printer.

e.g
file > print > printer properties > look for things like
quality/resolution.... turn it down to something like 150dpi. or even 75dpi


Chances are powerpoint is sending the full resolution image to the printer
(from some digital cameras even 'small' ones, it can be an 8megapixel image.

x2 per page... that's a lot of data to send to the printer at 600/1200 dpi

cheers
TAJ Simmons
Microsoft Powerpoint MVP

http://www.awesomebackgrounds.com
awesome - powerpoint templates,
powerpoint backgrounds, free samples, ppt tutorials...

 

[Austin Myers]

Randy,

Are you sending the file to the printer as a Postscript job? If so it will
make HUGE print files. Much better to use the HP PLC 5 driver!



Austin Myers
AT&W Technologies

Creators of PFCPro, PFCMedia, and PFCExpress
www.playsforcertain.com

 

[Randy Person]

Thanks, all. Here's some followup that may help others. I tried Taj's
suggestion first. Understand at the office I run what software I'm given,
and have only a little control over such things as printer drivers. I do,
however, have several choices of printer.

I tried my default black and white laser printer. It had two settings,
"best quality," which is 600 dpi, and a check box for 300 dpi. At 300, the
images were as fast as simple text - right there immediately. Even at best
quality, it took only a couple seconds longer. So one suggestion might be,
if you want hard copy, consider if black and white will work. BTW, there is
visible difference between the 300 and 600 dpi prints.

I have no control over the color printer. There is a "custom" button, but I
can choose from 600 dpi - or else! No other options.

To address Austin's comment, I'm just using the PowerPoint print dialog box,
so I don't know if that invokes Postscript or not. I'm certainly not doing
it on purpose. As before, the print command to the color printer turns the
3.4MB file into 76.2.

Next I tried the PPT "compress" utility, selecting the "print/200 dpi"
setting. That reduced the PPT file size to about 1.9MB, which squirted into
the print queue at 19.1. Still huge, but only 25% of the uncompressed one.
That's some progress.

When I have a little more time, I may follow up more. A couple interesting
things would be 1)What was the camera and what were it's settings (I didn't
take the images) and 2)What will be the effect of optimizing the images and
loading them individually rather than using the Photo Album utility?

Thanks for all the tips.