64-bit Lightroom Potential Gotcha
One of the appealing features in the latest releases of Lightroom is that it can run in 64-bit mode. Using 64-bit mode lets Lightroom take advantage of the latest advanced memory handling capabilities on Mac OS X and Windows. On the Mac, at least, it means that Lightroom can run quite a bit faster. This capability does, however, come with at least one gotcha: Printing.
Bruno Walther wrote me a few days ago and said the following:
I was foolish enough set my Lightroom 2.1 to 64 bit on my Mac Pro (OS X 10.5). After I had not printed for some time, I wanted to print a picture again some weeks ago. To my surprise the print looked ugly: streaks all over the place. I performed tests after tests and replaced one printhead after the other and eventually started replacing color cartridges as well. It was obvious to me that the problem must be somewhere with the printer. After tons of paper and time wasted I eventually discovered that the problem had to do with the change to 64 bit.
Apparently, if you want to print in 64-bit mode, you need to use a 64-bit printer driver. And, in Bruno’s case, there isn’t a 64-bit driver for his HP DesignJet 130. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a warning or error messages in the process which leads to confusion over why the results come out poorly. The result is that Bruno spent gobs of money in ink and paper before figuring out what was going on.
I’ve not seen this myself as I’ve been running in 32-bit mode for the most part. But now that I know it’s a potential issue, I’ll be giving it a try when I get a chance to see how it works for me on my printers.
64-bit mode is indeed the wave of the future. But it seems that there’ll be a few speed bumps along the way. If you’re going to give 64-bit mode a chance, watch out for unexpected bumps and fall back to 32-bit mode as your first troubleshooting step if something seems amok.
Related Posts:
- Lightroom 2 64-bit Printing on thingelstand.com
- Print Problems with Lightroom 2 in 64-Bit-Mode on the Adobe User-to-User forums
- LR2 can't see some driver settings in leopard on the Luminous Landscape forums
7 Comments
And printing to a PDF, then printing the PDF is problematic?
I can understand plugins requiring the same architecture, but I'm surprised that the print function runs in the same memory space as the active applications.
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Thanks for the heads-up. I never would have figured that one out. Saved me ink :)
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The printer driver's UI plugins run in the host app's process, and thus have to be 64 bit capable, but the actual printing is done by CUPS in another process that is completely separate.
I'd guess the problem was that without the UI the printer ran with it's default settings which probably don't yield good prints.
However, I'd bet that printing to a PDF and then printing that PDF from a 32 bit app would work just fine.
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Weird. I use 64 bit LR and print without a problem!
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Richard, interesting. I guess you're using a printer with a proper 64-bit driver. Do you mind if I ask which one?
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Oddly no, I am using the R2400 and I don't think it has an update.
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Just like to state that this doesn't affect Windows, since you need to use a 64-bit printer driver on 64-bit Windows in the first place.
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