More scanner-and-printer shenanigans

[dg]

Newc, I'm not going to try to tell you what to do, but you might just want to try resizing in small increments with a bunch of passes (just set up an action with your parameters, like 110%, and repeat) and try a lower output resolution at least once just to see if it gives a good print result without crashing. Most of the tutorials recommend something like 10% increments to keep the image quality high when you blow up.

[Spivonious]

Does anyone know if PaintShopPro is large address aware? If it's not then even moving to 64-bit Vista won't help because didn't MS keep that 2GB limit in for compatibilty?

[hippietim]

Oh wait, you want to do 2400 DPI vertically. My math is wrong then. 18" x 36" at 1200 x 2400 at 3 bytes per pixel will require 5,598,720,000 bytes.

No 32-bit OS is going to be able to allocate this much RAM regardless of your page file size.

Making your page file 500GB won't help for a 32-bit operating system. In fact, it's pretty pointless. A 32-bit CPU cannot access more than 4GB of RAM without doing segmented RAM and nobody does that anymore. It's a nightmare to develop with. No recent OS from Apple, Linux, Unix, or Microsoft does this. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the only OS that supported segmented memory models in the last 20 years was 16-bit Windows.

So you go into this with an absolute limit of 4GB of memory that is addressable in total per application. By default, Windows gives each application 2GB of address space - the rest of the address space is reserved for the OS, kernel memory, drivers, etc. You can set the 3GB switch to allow a larger addressable space for applications.

Within that 2GB or 3GB, you have to allocate memory for the application code itself and anything that the application utilizes.

Unless the guys that wrote the scanning software are particularly ambitious, then it is most likely going to require the memory to be contiguously addressable - that means that all of the memory for the scanned image is in one chunk with no gaps or holes.

Here's the problem. It's up to the application and the various components that they load to determine where the code gets loaded into the application memory (address space). So the .EXE and/or one of it's DLLs can be loaded right smack in the middle of the 2 or 3GB of the application address space making it phsyically impossible to come up with several gigs of contiguous memory for the image you want to scan.

As for not being able to copy something into the System32 folder on Vista, launch your setup program as an adminstrator. But Vista isn't going to help you here unless it's a 64-bit version.

[hippietim]

Also Newc, if you move to a 64-bit OS you will need 64-bit software because 32-bit software running on a 64-bit OS is still limited to accessing 32-bit's worth of memory.

[hippietim]

Does anyone know if PaintShopPro is large address aware? If it's not then even moving to 64-bit Vista won't help because didn't MS keep that 2GB limit in for compatibilty?

Giving the app 3GB isn't going to allow for scanning a color image 18" x 36" at 1200 x 2400 for a naiively implemented application.

That's going to require a well written app or a 64-bit app.

[Hellbat]

Try printing a portion of an image at 1200dpi and print the same portion of the image at the same size and 300 dpi. Mount them on the wall. Take two steps away from the wall where they are mounted. If you can see a difference you are deluding yourself.

[hippietim]

The problem with setting the 3GB switch is that there are a lot of programs out there assume a 2GB limit and play games with the "unused" bit and just blow up on a 3GB system.

[Strangletooth]

It's been several years since I did anything with large graphic files such as this, so I don't recall the details, but there's a reason the majority of graphic developers (for web and print) use Mac's. I use Windows on a normal basis throughout our company, including servers across the board, and it does fine for "normal graphic use" but when it comes to this stuff, I rely completely on a Mac and I've never had a problem that I recall. And this is going back 15yrs or so.

I don't think you'll be able to obtain success with the current environment and Tim laid out the details as to why not pretty well. If I were you and you were going to do this sort of thing on a somewhat normal basis, I'd invest in a Mac. I've seen them "loaded up" for about $1500-$2200 on eGay lately. Plus they'll double "nicely" for recording!

[sully]

Newc, I hear ya on wanting to print off a large image, but have you tried scanning at 300 dpi and printing it off? I've not printed anything over 11x14, but you should get a decent image at 300.

Sully

[sully]

....ooops, and if anyone's seriously interested in Macs, now's a great time to get one, as they just unveiled the new iMacs today, and for a fair amount less money. Or you can do what I did and get a previous gen in the refurb store and save a hell of a lot of money.

Sully

[Strangletooth]

....ooops, and if anyone's seriously interested in Macs, now's a great time to get one, as they just unveiled the new iMacs today, and for a fair amount less money. Or you can do what I did and get a previous gen in the refurb store and save a hell of a lot of money.

Sully

Yes, there are some great deals in the refurb'd store and great support as well! I've had to contact them a few times in the last 6 or so months and quick, painless phone support, was a treat to say the least! Oh and I could actually understand them to...

[hippietim]

As another data point, a good friend of the family does this sort of thing regluarly with photos, video, scanning, etc. It's all high-end editing and production and publication. He runs the full high-end Adobe Enterprise suite and a bunch of other high-end apps in this space. He recently switched to a PC because his $10k Apple rig failed for him on a consistent basis. He was losing massive amounts of time keeping the Apple system running.

[rjohnstone]

It's been several years since I did anything with large graphic files such as this, so I don't recall the details, but there's a reason the majority of graphic developers (for web and print) use Mac's. I use Windows on a normal basis throughout our company, including servers across the board, and it does fine for "normal graphic use" but when it comes to this stuff, I rely completely on a Mac and I've never had a problem that I recall. And this is going back 15yrs or so.

I don't think you'll be able to obtain success with the current environment and Tim laid out the details as to why not pretty well. If I were you and you were going to do this sort of thing on a somewhat normal basis, I'd invest in a Mac. I've seen them "loaded up" for about $1500-$2200 on eGay lately. Plus they'll double "nicely" for recording!

Pat, Modern Macs are built using the same hardware as PC's.
They are just as limited by CPU architecture and memory addressing abilities as any PC.
The myth that Macs are better than PCs for graphics is old and false.
The myth was created by the simple fact the early on, software developers only made their graphics applications for the Mac platform.
That is not the case any longer.
We'll use Adobe Photoshop as an example since it is the defacto standard app for creating, editing and manipulating graphics images.
It has been available for both Mac and PC for nearly 10 years and the performance from both platforms is identical.
Back on the PPC platform, it did perform somewhat better than it's PC counterpart, but that was largely due to the graphics cards.
Today, PCs and Macs share that same hardware platform right down to the graphics cards and memory modules.
Any performance difference is so negligible that it doesn't justify the Mac premium in the cost difference.

[Strangletooth]

Pat, Modern Macs are built using the same hardware as PC's.
They are just as limited by CPU architecture and memory addressing abilities as any PC.
The myth that Macs are better than PCs for graphics is old and false.
The myth was created by the simple fact the early on, software developers only made their graphics applications for the Mac platform.
That is not the case any longer.
We'll use Adobe Photoshop as an example since it is the defacto standard app for creating, editing and manipulating graphics images.
It has been available for both Mac and PC for nearly 10 years and the performance from both platforms is identical.
Back on the PPC platform, it did perform somewhat better than it's PC counterpart, but that was largely due to the graphics cards.
Today, PCs and Macs share that same hardware platform right down to the graphics cards and memory modules.
Any performance difference is so negligible that it doesn't justify the Mac premium in the cost difference.

I agree with the component issue and I've actually swapped components between the two, but the Mac and Unix core processes and utilize resources A LOT better than a PC does. Sorry, but it's true. Even the simple things such as Outlook and basic programs, a Mac is a lot more efficient than a PC with processing. If I open a several GB pst file on both systems, the mac is significantly faster.

Trust me guys, I'm a PC guy at heart, no doubt, and 90% or more of what I do every day is on a PC and it's made me a ton of money over the last 12yrs, but I got to call em like I see em. I'd put my "old" G5 against most comparable PC's out there, identical configs, the Mac outperforms the PC across the board. Now how much faster, probably not much, but i've had far less issues with a Mac than PC. Now if you want to talk 64bit, that's a different story and I'm not hip on it enough to speak about it.

There was a time before I bought my first Mac, I went to CDW in Chicago, and told the guy to "sell" me a Mac, he couldn't do it. I wanted to see in black and white how it would out perform a PC, and it wouldn't. So nedless to say, I didn't buy one for a while but was very happy once I did.

[Newc]

Do Macs still use RISC processors? I read once (some years ago) that the slowest RISC processor is faster than the fastest IBM-style (Intel, etc) chip.


Thanks for the info everyone Where the hell was this information in all those billions of Googles I did?