Increasing the Print Speed
General tips
Selecting Speed & Progress setting (for Windows only)
Follow the instructions in this section to select settings that increase the print speed.
Just as printing at a high resolution requires more processing time than printing at a low resolution, printing in color takes longer than printing in black-and-white because the volume of data in a color document is much larger. For this reason, it is important to be selective in your use of color printing if you also require a fast print speed.
However, even if your document requires the highest resolution and extensive use of color—for example, when you are printing a camera-ready composite that includes color photographs—it may still be possible to optimize the print speed by adjusting other print settings and changing the operating environment. Keep in mind that some settings that increase the print speed may also lower print quality.
The following table lists the factors that affect print speed and print quality.
Print quality Print speed
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Lower Faster
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Higher Slower
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Printer settings
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Paper & Quality Options (Windows), Print Quality (Macintosh)*
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Economy, Fast Economy, Normal, Fine, Super Fine
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Photo, Best Photo, Photo RPM
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High Speed
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On
|
Off
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Image characteristics
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Image size
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Small
|
Large
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Resolution
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Low
|
High
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*Varies depending on the media type.
The table below lists the factors affecting print speed only.
Print speed
|
Faster
|
Slower
|
Printer settings
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Orientation
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Portrait
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Landscape
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Black Ink Only
|
On
|
Off
|
Mirror Image*
|
Off
|
On
|
Edge smoothing*
|
Off
|
On
|
PhotoEnhance
|
Off
|
On
|
Collate*
|
Off
|
On
|
Reverse Order*
|
Off
|
On
|
Hardware resources
|
System speed
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Faster
|
Slower
|
Free hard disk space
|
Large
|
Small
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Available memory
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Large
|
Small
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Software status
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Running applications
|
One
|
Many
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* Varies depending on the printer driver and application.
Selecting Speed & Progress setting (for Windows only)
You can increase print speed by selecting certain settings in the Speed & Progress window. Click the Speed & Progress button on your printer driver’s Maintenance window.
The following screen appears.
The table below lists the factors affecting print speed.
Print speed
|
Faster
|
Slower
|
High Speed Copies
|
On
|
Off
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Always spool RAW datatype (Windows XP and 2000)
|
On
|
Off
|
Page Rendering Mode (Windows XP and 2000)
|
On
|
Off
|
Print as Bitmap (Windows XP and 2000)
|
On
|
Off
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For more details on each item, see the online help.
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