Thursday, November 29, 2007

Printers and Scanners: Raster Image Processor

A parallel laser printer fails while printing a document that includes raster images. The print succeeds when you change the printer from printing 600 dots per inch (dpi) to 300 dpi. You need to print the document at 600 dpi.
How can you correct this problem?
1. >>Install more memory in the printer.
2. Connect the printer using USB instead of the parallel interface.
3. Install more memory in the computer.
4. Update the printer device driver.

Explanation : You should install more memory in the printer. A raster image is made of an array of pixels, or dots. The laser printer's raster image processor (RIP) prepares the printable image from the raster image. If the image is too large or too complex for the printer to hold the entire page in memory, the print operation fails. If you are unable to increase printer memory, you can work around the problem by reducing the print resolution or reducing the size of the image.

You should not connect the printer using USB instead of the parallel interface. Changing to a USB connection might enable the computer to load the image faster to the printer, but the only difference this would make is that the print job would probably fail more quickly.

You should not update the printer device driver. Raster image processing is handled internally by the printer's RIP, which is not related to hardware device driver support.

You should not install more memory in the computer. The problem is with a memory overflow in the printer, not the computer.