High-speed digital image printing system

摘要

Techniques are disclosed for decreasing the time required for a photo-printing device (such as a commercial photo-printing kiosk) to print a plurality of digital images. For example, the digital images may be transferred from a print client to a print server and stored in a RAMdisk at the print server prior to printing. Image processing may be performed on at least some of the digital images prior to the initiation of printing. The digital images may be processed in decreasing order of estimated image processing time. Two or more of these techniques may be combined to decrease the total time required to print the digital images by, for example, increasing the speed with which images may be accessed, decreasing the amount of time that passes before printing begins, and enabling all of the digital images to be printed without stopping and restarting the print engine.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for printing a plurality of digital images, the method comprising:
determining, by a computing device, an expected image processing time of each of the plurality of digital images; comparing, by the computing device, the expected image processing time of each of the plurality of digital images to a threshold amount of time, wherein the threshold amount of time is based at least in part on an amount of time to print an image using a print engine; performing, by the computing device, image processing on the plurality of digital images to produce a plurality of processed images, wherein the image processing is performed on the plurality of digital images in an order based at least in part on the expected image processing time of each of the plurality of digital images; and printing a first plurality of processed images using the print engine.