HP 5500 Laserjet slow when printing pictures

[konikilla]

Hi Guys,

I have a HP 5500 that is taking 3 minutes to print anything with a picture. I have replaced the Jet Direct and loaded it up with as much RAM as it will take, but it still takes 3 minutes for a photograph. It doesn't matter where the photgraph comes from or if it's a 1 meg or a 3 meg photo. I also doesn't matter what apllication I am using either. If I print something without a picture or even with some some basic graphics I've made up (some coloured squares etc). It prints out instantly. Even if I send 200 sets it spits them out straight away. Any Ideas gratefully received!!!!!.

Alan.

[CKHP]

Uninstall the current driver completely and re-install, or better yet, try switching to a Post-Script or PCL driver - whatever one you're not currently using. PS drivers tend to work better with pics. If no luck with that, possibly try cold reset, then firmware update.

[OMD-227]

Even though the picture/photo is 1 or 3mb, the actual spooled size of the document is usually much bigger. When you print, open the print spool window & check the actual size of the processed print job. It could possibly be as high as 5 or 10x higher than the original. This is normal, but can be changed when using either a different version of the print driver (eg use PCL5 instead of PCL6 etc etc) or look at the print driver settings for things like RET, which will always process the job as a higher resolution than what the picture actually is. This will obviously make the spool size quite large.
PCL5 is often a better driver as this is a better choice for B/W only machines. What you are experiencing sounds completely normal. Regular text/images print straight way, while high res pics take a long time. Its not exactly a fast processing print board on those boxes either.

prntrfixr will give a clearer response than me.