More scanner-and-printer shenanigans

[Newc]

Found out 4GB of RAM and a Dual Core CPU is no match for a 1200DPI image that's 18"x36"

Seriously, WTF is with XP in that no matter how big of a pagefile you have (500GB), and no matter how much ram you have (4GB), if you want to do anything besides "read and compose emails", you get out-of-memory errors.

Just how much memory should I use - 30TB RAM? Would Windows then let me do what the fuck I want to do?



Anyway, on to the pics:



Had to bump this one down to 600DPI before Winblows would even let me rotate it, much less print it. It's 18"x36" printed on HP PhotoSatin paper (roll) from an HP Designjet90r.

I scanned the images from a Guitar Legends issue. Can't find a date on the book, but I think it was from last year?

Anyhoo, these were originally really small - like 3" high - so the graininess really stands out on a couple of them.






This pic was also in that book. It's the current Jackson ad pic, but in color, and without the Jackson branding, except where it counts




But as before, you can see the graininess:




That one's 18"x24". Still looks nice on the wall, even with the imperfection.


This was originally set for 1200DPI, but Winblows crashed during the Print Setup dialog and sent it to my "email and stuff" printer. I reloaded it and selected the Designjet90 as my default printer, then it crashed again before I could center the image in the Print Layout, but it printed anyway. The border on one side is slightly wider than on the other, and there's more border on the bottom than on top.

Thanks Microsloth

[Strangletooth]

Mac...

[Newc]

Yeah, looks like I'm gonna have to seriously consider overpaying for an Apple product


Here's on for Sully:




Remember Faces? That mag rocked in the 80s. They had all the good stuff that Hit Parader and Cream wish they had. While the others were trying to be "serious" magazines full of articles and gear reviews and such, Faces brought us what we wanted - tons of pics with no words!


Sadly, because this was originally a 3-page foldout, and because it's been kept folded and packed away for the last 10 years or more, the creases couldn't be Cloned out.
As well, there's some sort of spotting going on with the lower 3rd - probably ink flaking off.

Still, I can't believe how vivid the big one is compared to the original, and I thought the original was perfect!






I scanned a ton of other stuff - lots of Rhoads pics and 4-page posters (the one with his black LPC done in a photo studio, a huge B&W one from Guitar with the Concorde on stage, one in the recording studio with the Sandoval, etc).

[Newc]

Here's a few of the stuff I've scanned so far:

A pic I took in 1992 during a huge snowfall. I was using a cheap-o Yashica 35mm and didn't expect anything great from it, but this one came out great IMO. Makes a great poster as well




Love this one of Alex Skolnic:



It was originally a 3-pager - you could see his right arm and the headstock - but the creases would've totally ruined it. Plus, I think it'd drain my Red cartridge


And this one of Lynch would drain the Green:




Nice one of Rhoads:




'nuff said:



Ultimate Rhoads pic:


Page in the Day:



Triple Treat for Sully:










Haven't printed these out yet. I think I'm almost out of paper. 150 feet goes by pretty quick for some reason

[Dred]

Think you could mail a few? We're talking cash here

[Newc]

My arm can be twisted, I guess?

[Spivonious]

18"x36" at 1200dpi? You might want to move to a 64-bit OS, as an application on XP can only address 2GB without some hacking.

[Newc]

What I gotta hack? I'll do it if I gotta

[Spivonious]

Just to let you know, while this gives address space to applications, it takes it away from the OS itself, so you might end up having other problems.

Open up the boot.ini file and look for a line like this one:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Add "/3GB" (without the quotes) to the end of the line.

Reboot.

[Newc]

I have no boot.ini.

XP Pro SP3 has no effing boot.ini.

Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

[sully]

wow man, some of those pix take me back! those randy shots are great (as are the sixx ones and i'm with ya on faces!). i have to say though, that the snow pic you posted is super cool!

sully

[Spivonious]

I have no boot.ini.

XP Pro SP3 has no effing boot.ini.

Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

Yes you do. It's probably just hidden. Just hit Windows-R and type in "C:\boot.ini".

[dg]

Newc, I don't know if higher resolution for your blown up image is going to solve the problem. The place where you need mega resolution is when you scan your small image, but even then there's only so big you can go if you're starting at 3". By the time you get it to 36", it's mostly interpolated pixels. At 1200 dpi, you'll get an extremely finely rendered grainy image. Most online poster services call 300 dpi high quality at that size. Are you using Photoshop? Are you using the bicubic smoother setting when you resample? Are you upsizing in small increments with a ton of passes, or in big jumps? Even if you do all that, sometimes the starting size is just too small.

[Newc]

I'm using PaintShopPro 9. The scanner is set for 850DPI for color and 1200DPI for greyscale, otherwise it crashes.

Once the image is loaded, I resize once according to the intended print size, keeping the DPI intact. 18" wide at 1200 dots per inch should print a lot better than 18" wide at 300 dots per inch. I also select the Bicubic method of resizing.

However, that's where Windows chokes. I get "not enough memory" errors. With a 500GB pagefile (half of a 1TB drive!) and 3GB of RAM (thought it was 4, but that's in my laptop ).


The scanner (Canon D1250U) is rated for 1200x2400DPI. Something happened along the way and I can't get the old driver I used before (on my old XP Home system) to load in XP Pro. That driver/interface had a feature where you could scan multiple sections of a given image at the full 1200DPI setting for each one.

However, processors and ram being what it was at the time, the system would overload and crash.

Now that I've got a computer that can handle the load, the current driver will only load on Vista, not XP, because it requires a file to be copied to the System32 folder, which Windope won't allow. Since it won't copy it, it won't write it into the Twain path. I can paste it there, but I need to manually carve the path info somewhere.

But, the Vista driver is admittedly buggy, and therefore will not let me scan anything over 850 DPI except greyscale and 2/3 page items like the "Jackson ad" pic above. I do realize that blowing up a 4-color offset press image printed on magazine stock is not going to be the same - or even close to - having the original print.
The Tribute shot scanned at 1200DPI set as Greyscale in the Twain driver, but you can see what look like concentric rings from the printing process.

However, I do expect that when I pay for a scanner that is advertised by the manufacturer to do 1200x2400DPI - and it is not footnoted with an * stating "under certain conditions" - I do expect it to scan without crashing at 1200x2400DPI.
As well, how long has Microsoft been in this business? Don't they know by now that people do things on their computers besides print little emails and shitty polaroids of their kids?

Doesn't XP PROFESSIONAL target PROFESSIONALS who want a reliable OS to do things like operate PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL peripherals according to the manufacturer's specifications?

If it can't handle my rinky-dink equipment, how would I even begin to trust this OS to run professional-grade imaging hardware?

[hippietim]

Newc your problem with RAM is not going to be fixed on a 32-bit OS.

Do the arithimetic. You are scanning at 1200 DPI.

Your image is 18" wide so each row is:
18 * 1200 = 21,600 pixels

Your image is 36" wide so each colum is:
36 * 1200 = 43,200 pixels

So the total number of pixels is:
933,120,000

Depending on the software, each pixel is going to require at least 3 bytes to do true color so:

933,120,000 * 3 = 2,799,360,000

That's nearly 3GB required for the raw image.

So either the scanning software is going to require nearly 3GB of contiguously addressable memory or it's going to have to support buffering the operation through the disk. There is nothing any OS can do to change that.

You will encounter the same issues trying to print it, display it, etc. Even if it is compressed to a JPG, it has to be expanded to render it to the printer or screen. To print it, a well written printer driver can buffer that through the file system but there are a lot of poorly written printer drivers out there.

By default, Windows XP allows for 2GB of address space for applications. You can set the 3GB switch but it's still probably not going to work because unless the scanning software is written to not require nearly 3GB of contiguously addressable memory it just isn't going to work.

If you move to a 64-bit OS and add more RAM you should be able to pull this off.