On 07/25/2007 05:01 PM somebody named pelibali wrote: > Hi, > > I'm new to linux and this evening attempted to print some of my > photos... > > First I tried the newest Picasa under my openSUSE 10.0, but it > resulted _draft_ quality _B/W_ prints, even that 1200 DPI has been > setup generally for our HP DeskJet 5940. > Picasa's template is generally OK, because could place easily e.g. > four of my photos on a single A4 page, but the draft quality I > couldn't overcome. Of course I tried the options (theoretically) > resulting better quality printouts and also checked the printer's > default settings, which was normal quality/color. > Therefore have no idea, how to work around this, because Picasa has > quite limited print setup options under Linux and search at Google > didn't help at all. > > At the end we managed to print the above four images via an > OpenOffice.org template my boyfriend prepared few months ago and like > that we succeeded. With Gimp I had bad experience in the past, so > this way was not tried now. > > Would you give me please any hints/ideas on your preference when > printing photos; I would be quite interested to hear some possibili- > ties. > > Thank you, > Agnes
First, the hardware (your printer) needs to be capable of printing the quality you want. Two or three years ago I bought an Epson Stylus Photo 820 for 75USD and using just CUPS printed 8x10" high-quality color photos... i.e., photo quality prints... good enough to win several photo contests. The judges and members of the photo club were surprised when I told them the photos were taken with a digital camera and printed at home on a $75 printer. The ink cartridges were standard Epson, but I had to buy special photo paper. The ink is warranteed to last only two years without fading. Epson sells "archival" ink cartridges whose ink is much more stable, said to be good for 50 years. See Epson's website for more info. Back to linux.... You have to configure the printer in CUPS for the quality you want. But CUPS, like all printer servers I've used with Linux since 1992, allows you to configure "virtual printers": that means you can have one (physical) printer but configure a draft virtual printer, a letter-quality virtual printer, an envelope virtual printer, a photo virtual printer, and so on. The different virtual printers have different names (which you give them during configuration) for one and the same physical printer. Supply the name when printing-- either from an app like Firefox or OpenOffice or at the command line with lp or lpr (see relevant man pages)-- and that one printer will output different print jobs with the quality and other configuration variables specified in the configuration of that virtual printer. If your printer has different input bins for regular paper, photo paper, and envelopes, you can send jobs to all these different virtual printers all at the same time, even from different client workstations, without getting out of your chair. If it doesn't, then you'll have to make sure the proper stock is fed into the printer for the appropriate job-- e.g., so you don't print your photo on regular paper or vice versa. hth, ken -- Abstinence-Only sex education is a little like Just-Hold-It potty training. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
