Lightest format for printing

Question

I am printing an image (monochrome) from a portable thermal printer (model: Brother PJ-623) using Raspberry Pi. Image is stored in eps format.

Problem: It takes ~9-12 seconds before the printing is started. I think may be the issue is in format of the image. So is there any format which the printer can read faster than eps format?

Or any other solution if possible?

EDIT: I'm using gnuplot in Qt-creator to create the image file.

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Best regards, Hammad Tariq

Answer 1

I tried other format like png and pdf using following command in GNUPLOT:

set term png size H,W

where H, W were resolution of the image generated.

But they were not helping in the start as the print contained distortions. It turned out the problem was with the dpi.

So after some research I found out following link:

GNUPLOT pdf terminal

I found the following commands using the above link:

set terminal postscript enhanced color
set output '| ps2pdf - plot.pdf'

It converts the ps file to pdf with the same result in pdf as was in the ps file.

And it was taking only 3seconds for the printer to read.

I hope it would help someone in future. Regards, Hammad

Answer 2

If your EPS if vector based you don't really have a choice in format. The only other option is a PDF, which is likely to be less efficient than an EPS. It's likely that the driver you're using is not very efficient at printing vector graphics. You can do a test by converting the image to a high resolution JPEG and seeing if there's a difference in print time.

However, if you're using the EPS format for raster images then you're better off using a high quality JPEG file anyways. EPS is inefficient for storing pixel information compared to TIFF and JPEG.

Of course I have to wonder what's so bad about a 10 second print time. Is it just a curiosity thing, or is it critical that these print super fast?