How To Print Posters To Artisan from Windows
by Hanz Makmur Mar 09, 2010 makmur @ cs.rutgers.eduThis document explains how to print posters from Acrobat Reader to a large format printer. We chose Acrobat reader because the best way to print poster is to print to PDF first. (PDF is an acronym for Printer Description File)
Rather than print directly from a composing program, we recommend creating the poster as a PDF file, and print that. This will allow you to preview the poster, and avoid idiosyncracies in the many composing programs.
If you need a freeware PDF writer for Windows, try BullZip. If you are a MacOS X user, MacOS has built in ability to print to PDF. You see this option in the print window.
Before you can print to Artisan, our HP DesignJet Z3200ps,
you will need to:
A. Setup an LPR Queue on your Windows OS for artisan.
To create an LPR queue for your WindowsOS, follow Printing using LPD to CS printers on Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Windows7 and verify that:
- Your LPD server is set to printserverh.cs.rutgers.edu, the extra 'h' means no banner page will print on each job.
- Under Queue Name enter: artisan
- If you need a driver, you can get it from HP DesignJet Z3200 website
B. Add 36x60 Paper Size on your Windows OS.
By default, WindowsOS does not print extra large paper and does not have predefined paper size for printing poster. To set paper size, follow the instruction set in Adding a Custom Paper Size on Windows
C. Setup Installed PaperSize for Artisan Printer Driver.
Before you can print to artisan, you need to make sure that your printer driver is set up to print to the right paper size. This is a common mistake on printing to artisan. By default all printer drivers is set to Letter size paper and not the 36 inch wide paper size installed on artisan.
- Select Property of the artisan printer queue you just created. This will open the property window of Artisan.
- Under General click on Printing Preferences
button. This will open a Paper/Quality Tab window as shown. Click
on the Advanced tab
- In the advanced tab, Look under Paper/Output -> Paper Size and select 30x60If you don't see it, redo Step B above.
- Click OK to close the Preferences
window and click another Ok to close the Property window.
In this example, we will use use Acrobat Reader version 9 and up to print the PDF file. In general, it is a good idea to convert whatever you are trying to print to PDF first before printing a poster size of it. This will give you a chance to review the poster before you print it.
- Open your PDF file you are trying to print. Under File menu,
select Print. This will open a Print dialog as shown
below. Make sure that you have the Artisan Printer selected as your
printer.
- Set how you want the print out to print. By default, it
will Shrink to Printable Area. This means, if your print out
is bigger than 36x60, it will shrink it to fit the paper. If your
document is smaller than the available paper, it will print whatever
you have in the 36x60 inch paper. You should play with the available
options to see if it is what you want to print.
There are other Options you can try. For example, Fit to Printable Area and the effect can be seen in the preview window.
- Make sure that the width of the paper is 36 inches.
- Make sure that the Height of the paper is 60 inches.
- Notice that based on your adjustment, the zoom value changes. It is important to note that if your original document is small, zooming the document could result in poor quality printout unless you use high resolution bitmaps.
- Pay attention at the Preview window which shows how your document fit in the paper available on the printer.
- When you are satisfied with the preview, click the OK button to send the print job to the printer. Note that normally a whole page on the poster printer takes about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on complexity of and size of your document.