Printing way too slow

[nkrt]

I am trying to print photos (4 to a page) taken from a Nikon D70. We are using a HP4550 laserjet which has been perfect for printing our photographs on CD in the past. Printing the digital photos is taking me about 23 mintues to print one page! Impossible! I do not need crisp pictures (the laserjet quality is fine). I do need them to be printed quickly, cheaply (I do not want to be replacing expensive catridges all the time), and reasonable quality. We print these photos for reports and they are just taking too long. The HP4550 laserjet has only 64 megabites of memory and can have a 128 megabite chip added to it to increase its memory. Do you think this would help in making the photos print quicker? Any help/advice etc that anyone can offer would be most appreciated!!!

[castledude]

If you like the results of your CD quality pictures for speed and quality. Then take a look at them and use them as a basis.

What resolution (X/Y dimensions) and format they are in?

Now use a program like Photoshop Elements or IrfanView to resize down the pictures out of the D70 to around that resolution.

See if that helps. If not then use an editor program to presize and combine the pictures into one picture.

It sounds like whatever program is trying to send too much data to your printer, and allowing it to do the resize. This is ineffecient since it sends a lot of data to the printer and then requires the printer to post process the image down to it's real size.

[nkrt]

The photos on CD are about 150 KB each. The digital are roughly 800 KB. I was told that I could use Nikon Capture software to resize them and this would help with the printing process. I am trying to use this but it is not helping much (not sure if I am resizing them correctly). Is this good software to be using? I am not very technical and am struggling.

[castledude]

Personally I would use irfanview ... it's free and easy to use. http://www.irfanview.com/
I am not familiar with the Nikon software (sorry).


Don't worry about the KB size as much as the X by Y resolution. You don't want to lower the JPEG compression as much as reduce the XY data being sent to the printer. This is because the printer does not take JPEGs it actually takes bitmaps so you are only losing clarity when you lower the compression.


Here are the steps I would use:
1) Get and install IrfanView
2) Use it to load one of your old pictures (from the CD)
3) Look in the bottom left of the window for the size of the picture (some thing like 640x480x24BPP) write it down or memorize it. The numbers that are important are the first number (Width) and the Second Number (Height)

4) Fill up all the pictures you want to do into a single directory.(from the Nikon)
5) Under the file menu select Batch Conversion
6) Set up a convienient Output Directory
7) Go to the Picture Directory and Add All
8) Near the bottom Click on Batch Conversion and Check on the Use Advanced Options.
9) Click on Set advanced options
10) Under advanced check the RESIZE box and fill in the Width and Height with the numbers you found in 3.
11) Check Preserve aspect ratio (proportional)
12) Optional step (Save Settings)
13) Click OK
14) (You are now back on the Batch Conversion screen) Click Start.

You should now have a whole bunch of resized pictures in your directory. Use your standard printing program to make them 4 up ...

Good luck ...

[nkrt]

Thank you SO much for your help!!!!!! I followed your instructions and managed to print the pictures quickly and they looked good. It was driving me crazy so your help was much appreciated!