Increasing the Print Speed

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		Lower Faster	Higher Slower
Printer settings	Paper & Quality Options (Windows), Print Quality (Macintosh)*	Economy, Fast Economy, Normal, Draft	Fine, Photo, Photo RPM
Printer settings	High Speed	On	Off
Image characteristics	Image size	Small	Large
Image characteristics	Resolution	Low	High

Print speed		Faster	Slower
Printer settings	Orientation	Portrait	Landscape
	Grayscale	On	Off
	Mirror Image*	Off	On
	Edge smoothing*	Off	On
	PhotoEnhance	Off	On
	Collate*	Off	On
	Reverse Order*	Off	On
Hardware resources	System speed	Faster	Slower
	Free hard disk space	Large	Small
	Available memory	Large	Small
Software status	Running applications	One	Many

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.

Print speed	Faster	Slower
High Speed Copies	On	Off
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