Postscript Passthrough and Slow Print Times

[TheOwl]

Ok, so I have a curly one here.

I have a C450 which the customer has been complaining about really slow print speeds when sending documents to their C450. The firmware has been updated to the latest and the drivers have been updated as well, but still no effect.

I get called in to figure out exactly what is going on so I print the document from the customers Mac running OSX 10.6 and see the problem first hand. When I send normal Word documents or anything similar, printing is back to an acceptable time. I narrowed it down to the fact that the customer was using Encapsulated Postscript in their InDesign files and this was causing the issue.

I then tried printing the same document from a PC as well, but exactly the same issue. To eliminate the network, I plugged the network cable from the machine directly into my Mac and PC, but again the same problem. Even when I converted the InDesign file to a PDF, the problem still exists.

What I did next was on the PC, was to turn off Postscript Passthrough in the Advanced features of the driver and send again. This has fixed the issue from a PC side, but I need to know if there is a similar setting that can be changed from the Mac print system.

I have had a hunt around and can't find anything, but I am sure that there would be something similar to the PC setting. If anyone knows, could they please let me know?

For everyones information, this isn't as much of an issue with the newer Konica Minoltas as they understand Encapsulated Postscript alot better than the older machines.

Thanks in advance.

[KenB]

This appears to be a very common problem.

Kindly check out the following link: Adobe Forums: CS4 InDesign slow. Spinning beachball...

In a proverbial nutshell, you want to convert the EPS files to PSD (Photoshop Document) files.

You may also want to turn off the Preflight feature in InDesign as this will also speed things up.

[TheOwl]

Thanks for that one Ken. I will give this a try and see how we go.

[Tonerbomb]

Here's another weird gotcha. On Fiery posatscript printing, If you check use PDF Xobjects your print time will quadruple or worse..... That one hurt!

[TheOwl]

Sorry, but I should have mentioned that the C450 in question is running the standard controller and not the Fiery.

[RyanPacific]

I'm not sure about the particular driver you are using but in the past I have used PPD file in Mac and all of the options didn't come through on the Mac's driver interface. So what I did is manually edit the PPD file. All the options are usually in the .PPD line by line in "true/false" format. It's worth a shot.

[TheOwl]

Postscipt Passthrough seems to be a PC only option and the only time I am getting issues is with complex InDesign files which are using Encapsulated PostScript (EPS).

From testing, the newer machines handle EPS alot better than the older devices, but disabling PostScript Passthrough with the same file on a PC seems to fix the issue. For now, it seems that disabling the PreFlight feature has helped, but I am still interested in knowing if there is a PostScript Passthrough feature available with in the Mac print systems.