Winnipeg Web Design

Photoshop affected by slow network printing?

This is a question that seems really odd to me, and I’m sure it does to you as well.  I have actually found out that it does have some affect on Photoshop for whatever reason.

First let me brief you on the setup I had that brought up this issue.  Earlier this year I bought myself a laptop (Dell XPS M1530) and connected it to my wireless network.  I then setup my desktop computer to share its printers with the surrounding devices.  It all worked fine even thought I noticed it was a bit slow when printing to the network printer.

I know that network printing is slower than local printing, so I didn’t think too much about it.  I then had another problem that I thought was a separate issue from the slow printing.  My Photoshop (CS3) was loading fast, but as soon as I opened an image it would freeze for a minute or two.  I knew that the problem was not in my computers hardware as it is loaded with 4GB memory.

This is when I started hunting for why my Photoshop was slow when opening an image.  I found out that it was an issue with my default printer being on a network.  I put Adobe PDF as my default printer, and now Photoshop loaded images quick and without freezing.

I later found out that all I had to do to speed up my network printing was configure it differently.  In essence, I tricked my computer into thinking it is local, but really it is on the network.  Below are the steps I took:

1. Go into “Control Panel >> Printers >> Add Printer”
2. Add A Local Printer >> Create A New Port >> Local Port
3. Enter a port name of the printer’s network location (Eg. \\DESKTOP-PC\Printer)
4. Then go through the rest of the process selecting the right brand name
5. Set this printer as default and your printing will fly across the network at amazing speeds

I hope this article helps some of you out there with the same problem.  Probably isn’t an overly common problem, but drop me a line if this works for you!

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Tags: network, printing

Written by Brenley Dueck