Since upgrading to X4 I've been having issues with print jobs becoming very slow.  For example, I made a simple text design with a gradient fill. I added a drop shadow.  The design was on a 8.5X11 page.  I went to print and the file size says it's 12MB and after I sent it to the printer, it sat for hours before even starting to print, and then eventually stalled out, not completing the job.  Never had this issue with X3.

Thanks, 

Hey Scott!

What kind of printer are you using? In the CorelDRAW print dialog is there a Postscript tab there?

T. 

Sorta sounds like your printer driver and Windows print spooler are what is slowing you down. (I am assumming that the printer is connected directly to the PC that you used for Draw.) Do you have the latest print dirver installed?

 Hi guys.  I'm using the Epson 1280.  The drivers are updated.  I have no issues in X3, only X4.  It seems the slow printing, or even stalled printing are happening when I have curves with numerous node counts.  For example, I took some TTF text and typed something basic.  Printed no problem.  Added drop shadow, printed no problem.  Convert the text to curves...all of a sudden boggy printing.

 Sorry Tony.  I just saw your question.  The answer is yes.  The tag says "Color correction has been enabled for non-PostScript output".

Excellent info....someone is looking into it now...

 T.

 Are there len's on the page?In V12 there was a change to how stuff gets sent to printers that don't support Postscript if there are lens on the page...the old way could result in spool files larger then 300 MB and if that happens windows starts to purge the file....the current way takes longer to render the file but will print faster as long as the spool file doesn't get to big.

To mimic V9 behaviour click on the [ ] Rasterize Entier Page option in the print options dialog box with a resolution set to 200 dpi and see if X4 will kick it old school.

T. 

Tony,

 Yes there are a few small lenses on the page.  Folowing your instructions the page now starts to print in 8 seconds but it degrades the print quality.

John

Dull printing of PMS colors as CMYK is about profile choice.

Epson printers (for example) work best with multiples of the ink resolution.

1400 > 720, 360, 180 (best to worst use depend on scale of output)

Best solution for little cash with Epson and other inkjets is to convert an old computer to Linux and use Gutenprint. More color adjustment than you can poke a stick at and it talks directly to the printers heads with all the data conversion managed via Gutenprint. Including 6 color ink sets like the R1800 with adds blue and red. Light years better than Epson's own drivers and full Postscript via Ghostscript with ICC bells and whistles.  Don't know how they managed it but it really is exceptional quality.

Yani,

 Thanks for the good info.  My situation is that my work is mostly vector black & white/grayscale with an occasional drop shadow or lens.  More like 3 point perspective architectural drawings.  These are then exported to a CAD/CAM program with all layers intact to make our cast medallions.

John

I had purchased X3 immediately upon its release and slow printing was troublesome with that until a Hot Patch and Service Pack came out. It was annoying at first as I was excited about X3's ability to do things unable to do with previous versions of DRAW. I can't tell you how many times I published to .pdf to resolve the issue.

To appreciate the task of printing for the modern graphic artist: to convert to .pdf from any application can take a long time too. Sometimes equally as long as it takes to use the printer directly. However publish to .pdf is much more efficient. That the printing in itself can take so long is especially frustrating when you have a client there waiting for a proof. Always save before printing. And if the print driver hangs up, you can ctrl-alt-delete and close DRAW, then make a .pdf.

What I've learned is that when using a printer which is not postscript, to flatten my artwork before printing. Always have an unflattened editable version of the file. I have found that converting to a 300 dpi bitmap speeds some troublesome jobs. You just have to learn what will and won't work and keep an eye on how many megabytes the computer is handling. Selecting all and rasterizing works and then undo it. It may be frustrating, but you have to find work arounds that may not always be to your liking. In the meanwhile you may figure out a different method of working with DRAW. The longer I have worked with X3, I clean up my nodes as best as possible as part of the way I use DRAW. Now I have very little printing difficulty.

When working with a file with loads of nodes in Illustrator, it takes a long time to print as well. DRAW, having perhaps a 50 page document there is going to have more issues, isn't it? But then if I'd export to InDesign in .eps or a .tiff, when working in a long document, linking my images and making my file as simple as possible has solved a lot of things. So far, using the same working method, I haven't had trouble with X4.

If you work in Black and White then I [ ] Rasterize page is going to have some downfalls unless you choose a high DPI to send the job at....as devices can print solid colors at their native resolution (eg. 1200 dpi) then going at 300 dpi could make things look a little chunky compartively.

 Let me offer this if you feel like geeking out with your designs....if you're printing to a non postscript printer, a PS printer or exporting to Acrobat 4 compatibility mode, stuff is getting rasterized in the background as those formats cannot support transparency....we don't expose that in the UI as it's kinda techie for folks (unless you have a good understanding of pre-press and work in halftones/linescreens)

To make things print faster to these types of devices I would suggest structuring the document as follows (if possible)....

- for things with gradients, halftones, transparency keep them on bottom layers

- for all things vector, that are 100% of a color (like black, cyan..) keep them on upper layers

...before printing conver the bottom layers to bitmaps, 300 dpi and leave that top layers as vectors so they will be printed at the device resolution....

..the easier route is to up the [ ]  Rasterize this page resolution and let her fly.

 T.