Printing photographs from SuSE Linux 7.1 on up

Support knowledgebase (jsmeix_print-photo)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: Versions 7.1 to 7.3

Request:

You would like to print out photographs under SuSE Linux.

Background information:

Starting with SuSE Linux 7.1 we include the ghostscript driver 'stp' which allows printing out photographs at high quality.
This Ghostscript driver is a direct descendant of the printer driver available in GIMP.
The options of the ghostscript driver stp are analogous to the settings available for printing in GIMP - see man gs-stp for further information.

Printing photographs directly in GIMP

The package gimp (series gra) is installed by default - i.e. when you have choosen to install 'standard system + Office'. If you have done so, you will also find example pictures in the directory
/opt/office52/share/gallery/photos/

Prerequisite for printing directly out of GIMP is a working 'raw' printer queue - see the chapters on printing in the manuals and the support database articles Setting up printers and Printer problems: Special causes in SuSE Linux 7.1 - Section "Names of the print queues". If you've set up your printer with e.g. YaST2 and you've been able to print the YaST2 test page a working raw print queue has been set up automatically, normally under the name 'lp-raw'.
lpc status | grep raw
will show you the available raw print queues.

To print let's say
/opt/office52/share/gallery/photos/mountns1.jpg
directly out of GIMP, you start gimp with
gimp /opt/office52/share/gallery/photos/mountns1.jpg
and click with the right mouse button in the displayed picture.
Choose 'File >' and then 'Print...'.
Under settings choose your printer model or one compatible to it. See also the support database article Buying printers and compatibility. Use
lpr -Pname_of_the_raw_print_queue
as print command, where name_of_the_raw_print_queue normally is lp-raw and the print command therefore lpr -Plp-raw.The media size is normally letter.
The remaining settings are easily controlled in the preview and allow individually customizing the print out of a picture.

As the resolution of the above example isn't very high, the print out lacks sharpness. You will find a much better test picture at http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/99/21/lady/gesamt.shtml

Printing photographs with the ghostscript driver stp

The ghostscript driver stp is specially suited to print photographs. For standard prints, specially for fast and low price black and white printing, ghostscript offers noticably faster drivers.

To print photographs, you should do an additional printer setup with YaST2. For printers supported by the ghostscript driver stp, you may choose one of several predefined configurations for this driver.

One caveat is, that the preset dithering algorithm 'adaptive hybrid' doesn't work for all kind of files. One example being the YaST2 test page. Therefore the printouts of these files aren't really acceptable. As the dithering algorithm 'ordered' does also work for those files, the configuration should be changed. Proceed according to the support database article Printer problems: Special causes in SuSE Linux 7.1 - sections 'printing photographs with the stp driver' and 'Settings in /etc/apsfilterrc... files'.

Printing photographs with the ghostscript driver stp is then done as usual by using the command lpr - see the chapters on printing in the manuals or the support database article Setting up printers.


See also:
o Installing a Printer
o Installing a printer since SuSE Linux 6.4 and up to 7.3

Keywords: PRINTER, PRINT, PHOTOGRAPHS, PRINTING PHOTOGRAPHS, 71, 7.1

Categories: Frequently asked Questions , Documentation , Printer

Feedback welcome: Send Mail to jsmeix@suse.de (Please give the following subject: SDB-jsmeix_print-photo)
SDB-jsmeix_print-photo, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 27. Feb 2001
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 14. Mär 2002 by pthomas (sdb_gen 1.40.0)