One PC many Printers

pxl8

pxl8

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Andy Jones
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I asked about this recently and was given a pointer but unfortunately the s/w I found doesn't seem to work.

I need a bit of s/w that will allow printing from LR to be shared across 3 printers, some kind of virtual load balanced print spooling.

www.printdistributor.com is the one that I looked at before but I'm told it just spits out errors.

This Sunday I'm shooting a 9.5m race and every runner gets a free print on the day as part of their entry fee. We'll be shooting around 300 runners in the space of 45mins and need to get the prints out as quickly as possible. The printing is being handled by the race organsiers and last year it was a disaster with delays of nearly an hour from the photo to the print.

Last year we simply took a few shots and swapped cards, the card was then copied to a laptop and stuck in one of the printers. The card reader on the laptop was slow and on the printers even slower. 10 images on a card took nearly 30 mins to be printed all told.

This year I suggested I shoot tethered with LR running on another machine and auto importing from a "watched folder" on the network. These can then be added to a print queue which is shared amongst the printers. Epson are sponsor and supplied 3 of their portable photo printers, paper and ink.

I passed all the info on to the guy sorting the printing. I've just had an email from him saying the print distributor s/w doesn't work and one of the printers has packed up. He's had weeks to test everything, the numpty.

I've half a mind to pull out, last year was bad enough and because they didn't organise any marhsalls to direct runners to the photography area combined we only did 140 odd photos, this year with marshalls and more runners if it goes back to swapping cards (which is what they've suggested) it will be fubar and of course the runners will associate the delay with the photographer not the race.

Anyone got a magic solution for printing 300 6x4" prints inside an hour, on site with no budget?
 
300 photos on 3 epson printers in an hour is pushing it :eek:

Thats 100 shots per printer, 40s per print, 40*100 / 60 = 67 minutes never mind changing paper packs :shrug:


*depending on printer ;)
 
Tell me about it, the printer spec says 30sec per print but that's best case in low quality. If you read the files from a card in high quality it's nearer 80sec :(

edit - I've just heard the final number of entries is 350 :eek:
 
Uneducated_Rick said:
Take a pen and pencil and draw some instead of printing them?

Take an 'assistant' and blame it all of him/her?
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Sketching might be an option :lol:

Blaming the assistant won't be - he'll be out shooting the runners during the race, the weather might be cold but he'll be all the warmer for being away from the chaos ;)

Anyone know how Windows copes with printing to multiple printers? I'm thinking as a last resort just lose the printing s/w and just batch prints to different printers within LR. Sounds possible but why do I think Windows will fall down if it tries to print more than thing at a time :thinking:
 
Or... pre-print photos of a runners torso with a blank race bib and then just write the numbers in using a pen... sorted :thumbs:
 
My laptop (over 5 years old) can cope with printing word/pdfs on my normal printer and photos through my selphy at the same time but it does struggle switching between the different applications!
 
Looks like you are gonna have to take addresses and send them their pic..!!!

Good luck.. Dont forget to tell us how many smacks you get or abusive confrontations you experience for not being able to produce their pic.. LOL
 
Could you perhaps persuade the organisers to change the format so that every entrant gets a photo posted to them rather than have all the inevitable chaos that you've experienced on previous occasions? Just a thought :shrug:
 
VinnyB said:
Looks like you are gonna have to take addresses and send them their pic..!!!

Good luck.. Dont forget to tell us how many smacks you get or abusive confrontations you experience for not being able to produce their pic.. LOL
Click to expand...

Fortunately the printing area is away from me and that's where the angry mob will be based... I might set up a stall selling bits of wood with nails in though, I could probably make a killing from the mob making a killing :lol:
 
Grendel said:
Could you perhaps persuade the organisers to change the format so that every entrant gets a photo posted to them rather than have all the inevitable chaos that you've experienced on previous occasions? Just a thought :shrug:
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Discounted due to costs, would be around 45p a runner :(
 
Hmmm.. maybe not, it seems eprintdriver just prints the same doc on many printers rather than sharing the load across them :(
 
Sorry, hands back cookie and beer:(
 
Beer and cookie being returned plus a chip butty for good measure :thumbs:
 
The only way I can think of doing this is to have separate computers driving each printer. The printer generally only takes the print job in discreet sections and doesn't free up the computer until it has received the whole job. From experience this seems to be about half way through the print job.

If you have different printers, you may be able to send multiple jobs to individual printers by selecting a different printer for each job and letting the normal queue sort things out. Not tried it myself but it may work. However I don't think it'll make things that much quicker.

I've seen some software that does roughly what you want but tends to be running Photo kiosks connected to Noritsu type photo printers, and you can bet it isn't cheap, and probably wont work with ink jet printers anyway

But this isn't the answer you're looking for I expect
 
I'm still awaiting news that it works but the event software Psifox found seems to do the trick. You set up a folder and attach one or more printers to the folder. Any images that appear in the folder are automatically printed, if you've assigned more than one printer then each printer is selected in turn. It sounds ideal as the user needn't do anything other than keep an eye on the printers and pause their use when paper/ink needs replacing.

For $30 the budget can just about meet it, especially as I managed to blag free printing of the backdrop sponsor boards (2xA0 mounted on foam board) today ;)
 
Just as an extra thought, it may help to change your performance settings to adjust the processor to prioritise Background Services as I'm presuming the print spooler operates as a background service. This may help speed up the processing of files to the printers but not 100% sure, may be worth a test considering the volume of traffic you'll be sending?
 
Assuming you're running Windows, perhaps the following might work?

If I've read this correctly, you want to have a single PC running Lightroom and printing to multiple printers.

Have three printers connected to the PC and you should be able to print to each one in turn, just by changing the printer setup to select each one in turn.

You'd need to test it first to see if it works. But, it's a simple (potential) solution that might get you out of a hole...

Cheers


Mark
 
Thanks Mark, it's something I asked about in post #5 as it was a last resort but I wondered how Windows would cope with multiple print jobs running at the same time.

Then in post #17 Psifox linked to an app that seems to do it all by watching the folder and automatically starts printing using multiple printers as soon as an image arrives :thumbs:
 
But it doen't get round the fact that you need more printers to meet the timescales.......
 
Epson are being asked for more, if it happens all well and good. If not at least the printers will be going full pelt the whole time and the delay shouldn't be more than a few mins for each runner, much better than nearly the hour it could be :eek:
 
Can you not just bung the cards directly into the printers and print?
 
pxl8 said:
Last year we simply took a few shots and swapped cards, the card was then copied to a laptop and stuck in one of the printers. The card reader on the laptop was slow and on the printers even slower. 10 images on a card took nearly 30 mins to be printed all told.
Click to expand...

admirable said:
Can you not just bung the cards directly into the printers and print?
Click to expand...

Er no, for the reasons stated :(
 
sorry, my fault for speed reading!
 
Glad it seems to have been sorted.

Can I eat said cookie and butty washed down with beer now?:)
 
Still not heard but I suspect any reason it doesn't work will be the numpty user rather than the solution so enjoy your treats ;)
 
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