Originally Posted by
wingsthree
Using Bonjoir to access printers on the OS X side works fine if you don't care about specific driver settings associated with the printer hardware. In my case, I print some photography work using Qimage Pro (not available for Mac). Therefore it appears that I can't access the Epson's driver settings to change print parameters, so the purpose is defeated, unless I reboot entirely into Windows via Boot Camp.
Am I missing something, or are we relegated to the generic printer driver, which does have some basic settings, but completely insufficient for high end photographic printing?
On my Macpro I print to two printers from XP on Parallels.
The information on setting this up was hinted at on page 3 of this thread, but I've managed to put together full instructions. I agree, the Bonjour printing just isn't up to the job for photo printing.
You need a recent downloaded Parallels Desktop rather than the boxed CD. I started out using 1896.2 rc2 from Sept 15th and have had recent success with build 1922-rc2 which is a lot faster and has been bug free for me so far. 1940 is no problem either.
The following is for directly attached USB printers... (screen capture movie to show you how it is done with an Epson printer http://dpreview.hotair.fastmail.co.u..._IPP_Howto.mov)
(screen capture movie of how to set up a Canon 5200 attached by USB.
http://dpreview.hotair.fastmail.co.u...00%20setup.mov)
Sharing the printer up to the Parallels environment is the tricky bit. What you have to do is set up a shared printer specification on the mac that is a raw pass through of data. This means you can then print using Qimage and the Windows driver.
1.
You go through the process of correctly installing the printer on the mac with the normal drivers. You then have to open up a terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) and run the command 'lpinfo -v' - this gives you some information that you need to cut and paste for the next stage. In the output you are looking for a line like:
Code:
direct usb://EPSON/Stylus%20Pro%207800?serial=NE048060509133533-
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is the bit you will cut and paste later.
1. (ALTERNATIVE METHOD contribution by 'rphoto')
The same information is in System Profile under the Printer section URI field. It is easier to cut and paste from here too.
2.
Now start up the Safari web browser and go to the local CUPS printing interface page : http://127.0.0.1:631 You will have to enter your short username and password.
CUPS is the underlying print engine on OS X, so if you click on the printers page you will see the USB printer that is already setup. You want to use the add printer option,..
2a.
The first page of Name/Location/Description is arbitrary information except that the Name is the unique name for the printer and it is the name you will type in when setting up the network printer on the Windows virtual machine.
2b.
Second page: Set the Device to "USB printer"
2c.
Thrid page: cut and paste the usb://... information from the terminal
2d.
Fourth page: set Make to "Raw"
2e.
Fifth page: set Model to the only available option of "Raw queue"
It should now confirm the printer is setup and you are done with the CUPS interface as the printer definition will show up in the normal Mac preferemces interface.
3.
Bring up the system preferences and the "Print and Fax" page. There is a tab for "Printer sharing". In this tab, make sure that your new printer definition is shared.
4.
I won't go through the instructions for setting up Xp under Parallels, but you can pretty much get it running with default settings. 512 MB memory works fine for Qimage. You set up a Parallels shared drive to allow access to your photos.
4a.
You need to have the printer driver already installed on the virtual machine, so follow the manufacturers instructions for this.
4b.
Under Windows you setup a new network printer (don't browse for the printer... set it up specifically). You need to know the dns name or IP address of your Mac.
The printer address is...
Code:
http://mac_ip_address_or_dns_name:631/printers/printer_name_from_step_2a
4c.
Select the right driver from the list. Windows will not be able to detect the correct printer driver.
With that little lot you should be done and Windows just becomes your printing environment. Performance is alright and it doesn't slow down the Mac too much. When the print job has spooled, the MAc takes over and you can shut down Windows while it is still printing.
I also have Qimage pointing to a Canon Pixma 5200R shared over the network and it can do this under parallels without any setup on the Mac.
Hope this helps.
Networked Epson R2400 Driver Settings
