Zan Image Printer

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Print to image - PDF, TIFF, GIF, BMP, PNG, JPEG, JPEG 2000

FAQ>>

Frequently Asked Questions




How much is it? What is the pricing schedule?
Zan Image Printer costs $69.95 and free technical support included. Quantity discounts are available for multiple licenses. For full details, see Pricing and Buy Now.

Is there any way to make Zan Image Printer work with NT 4.0?
No, Zan Image Printer only supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 (including x64, Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe).

Often the export options are limited to either BMP or TIFF - what if we want to print to JPEG files?
We'd like to test printing color pages, but the trial version can't print to JPEG?
This is because the current Color option is Black & White. To save grayscale or color images (e.g., JPEG and JPEG 2000 files), you must set Zan Image Printer into Color mode:
1.  Open the Printer folder (Start > Printers and Faxes), right click on the printer, and select Printing Preferences.
2.  Click the Paper/Quality tab, check the Color radio button.
3.  Close and reopen your application for the changes to take effect.
4.  The JPEG options will then be available from the Image tab.

Usually, you can choose to install at least two copies of Zan Image Printer, one defaults to Black & White mode, the other defaults to Color mode. The Black & White mode only lets you print to monochrome BMP, GIF, PDF, PNG and TIFF files, but it has the advantage of quickly saving the documents. The Color mode enables printing to monochrome, 256, grayscale and true color images, but at a slower printing speed.

What are printing preferences?
Printing preferences (printer properties) are the options available on your printer.

To open the Printing preferences dialog box in the Printer folder:
On Windows XP Professional:
a) Click the Start button
b) Click Printers and Faxes within the Start menu
c) Right click on the installed Zan Image Printer icon and select the Printing Preferences... menu

On Windows 7:
a) Click the Start menu, then Control Panel, and finally View devices and printers
b) Right click on the installed Zan Image Printer icon and select the Printing Preferences... menu

To open the Printing preferences dialog box from within another program:
Open any application that supports printing (e.g., Notepad, Internet Explorer), select Print from the application's File menu, then:
Click on the installed Zan Image Printer icon, then click the Preferences button.

For Zan Image Printer, you will find 6 tabs on the printer property sheet:
Layout, Paper/Quality, Save, Image, Settings, and About/Registration.
The Layout, and Paper/Quality are standard printer properties, see "General Settings" on how to change paper size, color, dpi resolution/print quality, and orientation for the currently logged-in user or within an individual application.
The Save, Image, Settings, and About/Registration tabs allow you to set all Zan Image Printer specific options, such as save folder, image file format, etc.

How can I change the printer's default standard settings so that I don't need to change them each time I print a document?
To change the printer settings for all users:
1. Open the Printers folder, right click on the printer, and select Properties.
2. Click the Printing Preferences... button
3. Use the Layout tab, Paper/Quality tab, and the Advanced tab to set various options such as paper size, DPI, and color mode.
4. Click OK to return to Properties dialog box
5. Click Advanced tab
6. Click Printing Defaults
7. Use the Layout tab, Paper/Quality tab, and the Advanced tab to set various options such as paper size, DPI, and color mode.


I ordered your image printer and got the registration code, how do we download it and how do we register?
After your order has been completed, you will receive your registration code via e-mail. Please follow the below steps to register:
1. Log on as an administrator to your computer.

2. If you have not installed Zan Image Printer trial version on your computer yet, visit our Download page, download the trial version of Zan Image Printer, and install it on your computer.

3. Open the Printing preferences dialog box in the Printer folder:
On Windows XP Professional:
a) Click the Start button
b) Click Printers and Faxes within the Start menu
c) Right click on the installed Zan Image Printer icon and select the Printing Preferences... menu

On Windows 7:
a) Click the Start menu, then Control Panel, and finally View devices and printers
b) Right click on the installed Zan Image Printer icon and select the Printing Preferences... menu

4. Enter the registration code into the edit box on the Registration tab. We recommend that you COPY and PASTE rather than type the registration code manually to avoid errors entering the registration code. Your registration code can be found at the bottom of the confirmation email you received after ordering, the registration code has the following format:
xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

5. Click the Apply, OK or Print button to complete the registration process. On Windows Vista or Windows 7, a User Access Control (UAC) window may appear stating that an unidentified program (zvprtsrv.exe) wants to access your computer, you must select Allow to proceed. Once you have registered, all restrictions will be removed and Zan Image Printer will become fully functional.

I ordered and received an email confirming my order, I am still waiting for the registration code, can you look into this situation?
Your registration code can be found at the bottom of the confirmation email you received. The registration code format will appear like this:
xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

I did not receive a confirmation email or registration code after ordering, why?
You will receive an automated email confirming your order shortly after submitting the online order form. There may be two reasons that you didn't receive our confirmation email after ordering:
1. You may have accidentally typed your email address wrong on the order form.
2. Your email program employs message filtering to prevent you from receiving spam. There is no perfect tool to identify spam, and our legitimate confirmation email may be mistakenly treated as spam and was delivered to the "Bulk Mail" (or equivalent) folder of your email program.
If you do not receive an email with a registration code within a reasonable amount of time (within a few hours max), and you cannot find the confirmation email in the Bulk or Spam folder, please adjust your email application's spam filter settings, or contact us with a secondary email address.

My registration code doesn't work? What am I doing wrong?
There are two common reasons this happens:
1. You may have accidentally typed in the wrong registration code. We recommend you COPY and PASTE rather than type the registration code manually. Your registration code can be found at the bottom of the confirmation email you received after ordering, the registration code format will appear like this:
xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx
2. You are logged in as a normal, non-privileged user. You need to be running as an administrator to enter the registration code.

Does Zan Image Printer have an SDK, how do I programmatically control Zan Image Printer?
All options presented in the user interface can be controlled programmatically. For full details, see the Developer page.

Is the program able to do batch printing, do you support batch conversion from DOC to TIFF?
Many Windows applications support printing a file from the command line. If you are looking for command line utilities that can be used in a batch file or script that will print MS Offices files (e.g., .doc, .xls, .ppt), web HTML files, or Adobe PDF files and thus convert them to images, see the Developer page for more details.

How do I get the output image to my desired pixel dimensions? For example, I want the generated image to be 1728 x 2338 pixels?
The generated image pixel dimensions depend on the selected paper size and DPI resolution.
To make a faxable TIFF with a given width and height, you usually do not need to enable the "Scaling" or "Cropping" option. Instead, select the "Automatically adjust the image width to create a faxable TIFF" option and/or "Produce an image height of xxxx lines" option in the "Advanced TIFF Options" dialog box.

If the image is not exactly the size you want, you can crop or scale the image or set the printer to use a custom paper size:
  • Method 1:
    Crop the image to a specific size. Zan Image Printer crops or pads the image to ensure it reaches the specified size.

  • Method 2:
    Scale the image to a specific size. Zan Image Printer scales or pads the image to ensure it reaches the specified size.

  • Method 3:
    Print on custom paper size. See the Paper Size section for instructions on how to calculate the paper size to set the output image to desired pixel dimensions.

    • Scaling distorts the image whereas cropping does not; it merely discards some of the borders. When you crop or scale an image, select the Paper Size/DPI settings so that the original image's size is as close as possible to the desired size. For example, if you want the final image to be 1728 x 2338 pixels, you may prefer printing on Letter (or A4) paper size at 200 x 200 DPI, and then use the cropping or scaling options to fine-tune the final image to the size you want. If you print on Letter at 200 x 200 DPI, the original image's size (1700 x 2200 pixels) is closer to 1728 x 2338 than 300 x 300 DPI (2550 x 3300 pixels) so less cropping/scaling is required.

    Limitations with the custom paper size method:
  • Difficult to create a pixel-accurate image unless used in conjunction with method 1 or 2.
  • Some applications do not support selecting a custom paper size as the default paper size. For example, if you set a custom paper size as the default paper size, the default paper size may be set back to Letter or A4 when you close and reopen the application. In this case, you have to manually change the default paper size to the custom paper size each time your application is launched.


    • If the print job hangs, what should I do?
    Please try following steps:
    1.  Close all printing applications and delete all pending print jobs in the queue.
    2.  Bring up the Task List by right-clicking on the Task Bar and selecting "Task Manager". Select zvprtsrv.exe and click the "End Process" button to close all running instances of zvprtsrv.exe.
    3.  Open the command prompt, and type net stop spooler, this stops the print spooler service.
    4.  Then type net start spooler, this restarts the print spooler service.
    If the above fix still doesn't work, the system may need to be restarted.

    How do I completely uninstall Zan Image Printer?
    To completely uninstall Zan Image Printer and all related components:
    Click on Start | Settings | Control Panel, double-click on Add / Remove Programs,
    look through the list of installed programs, select Zan Image Printer, click the Add / Remove button and click Yes to delete.
    If you get an error that the file is in use or have any other problems uninstalling, you may need to manually check and delete all the files:
    1. Close all printing applications.
    2. Open the Printers folder (Start > Printers and Faxes), and delete all the copies of Zan Image Printer.
    3. Bring up the Task List by right-clicking on the Task Bar and selecting "Task Manager". Select zvprtsrv.exe and click the "End Process" button to close all running instances of zvprtsrv.exe.
    4. Delete the c:\Program Files\zvprt50 folder.
    5. Open the command prompt, and type net stop spooler, this stops the print spooler service.
    6. Delete zvprtmon5.dll and zvprtmonui5.dll from the system32 folder.
    7. Open the command prompt, and type net start spooler, this restarts the print spooler service.


    I saw in the description of your printer driver that you support Floyd-Steinberg dithering, but I can't figure out how to enable this option.
    I have a site that is using Zan Image Printer to print from an application. They have a template within the application that results in the fields being printed lightly within Zan Image Printer. Is there any way to make the printing bold or higher contrast?
    Normally, you save monochrome image files in Black & White mode using the printer's default halftoning algorithm. However in some cases, you can improve the image quality by binarizing the image from color to monochrome using a custom binarization method which can make images appear more natural:
    First, set Zan Image Printer into Color mode, then save to monochrome files. Doing this will cause Zan Image Printer to reduce the number of colors in the image to 2 (black & white) by using one of the binarization methods (Floyd-Steinberg dithering by default).

    To set Zan Image Printer into Color mode:
    1.Open the Printer folder (Start > Printers and Faxes), right click on the printer, and select Printing Preferences.
    2.Click the Paper/Quality tab, check the Color radio button.
    3.Close and reopen your application for the changes to take effect.

    Note: Keep in mind that it is best to only use this method when you really need it, because printing in color mode will slow down the printing process greatly.

    Quite a few recipients have been saying that the TIFF image I sent to them is distorted, what would be the reason for that?
    I have been experimenting with the demo version of your driver and have found an incompatibility between the CCITT Group 4 compression your software uses and what our downstream system will accept. Can this issue be resolved from your end?
    I'm testing your driver with a 3-page HTML document and I'm only getting the first page saved as a TIFF image. Is this a limitation of your evaluation version, or am I doing something wrong? Can I print a multipage HTML document to a single TIFF image file?
    For the TIFF compatibility issue, see the Image->TIFF page.


    When we print to the driver from our app, images are coming out at 600 dpi even though the printing preferences are set to 300, have you seen this before?
    When printing from Microsoft Word or Excel in an automated fashion, the printer driver settings seem to be ignored and it uses some sort of internal default settings for DPI values, is there a way to get these Printer DPI settings to take precedence over the internal printer settings that are used by MS Word or MS Excel?
    Our software always uses the highest available solution from the selected printer driver, regardless of what is configured in the printer settings. Is there any way to limit the max resolution in printer?
    Acrobat has no trouble at all printing to the paper size if I open the program directly. If I right-click a PDF and select print (the equivalent of my command line print call) it does not pick up the paper size settings. Is there a setting in the ini files that enforces the Letter/A4 size or is that only available in the preferences screen?
    My TIFF printer seems to be stuck on using Letter sized paper, even though I've set the paper to A4, can you help?
    The above issues are all caused by the printing application and not by Zan Image Printer.
    One possible solution to these issues is to restrict the supported DPI/paper size to those that will actually be used by your printing application. You can then print to a printer with only your desired paper size/DPI available. For example, if you need to print at 300 x 300 DPI on Letter paper size, during the setup, you can configure the selected printer to only support 300 x 300 DPI and Letter paper size. In this way, the printing application is forced (restricted) to use 300 x 300 DPI and Letter paper size, i.e., the printing application will not be able to switch from 300 x 300 DPI to 600 x 600 DPI and you will no longer have to worry about the printing application overriding or ignoring Zan Image Printer settings.

    I just purchased the software and need to know how to change the settings to allow appending items into one file? What are the actual steps and/or settings for "Appending", that is printing multiple files into a single .tif?
    I need help with printing images from different programs to a single TIFF file. I was told to select the appending option, which I did, but I don't understand how to get the images into a single file?
    Zan Image Printer can combine or merge multiple document types into a single TIFF/PDF file.
    Use the following steps to accomplish this:
    1. On the Save tab, specify a single file name if you want to always append to the same file. Alternatively, you can specify a variable file name using macros. For example, if you specify a relatively fixed file name like "document[%date]", you can append to a different file each day. The images will append to the same file as long as you have not passed midnight. Only after midnight will a new file be created and the images for that day will be appended to the new file.

    2. On the Image->TIFF or Image->PDF tab, set "File Mode" to "Append to existing file":

    3. Print to Zan Image Printer to start appending documents into the specified file. Specify a different file name when you want to change to another TIFF/PDF file (either a new or existing file).


    Please give more information on how to create more Zan Image Printer instances. We need to know how to install multiple instances of the virtual printer on one print server?
    There are two ways you can create more Zan Image Printer instances:
    1) You can add an instance of Zan Image Printer by executing the "zvprtcfg.exe" or "zvprtcfg_win32.exe" application in Zan Image Printer's installation folder with the "printer.add" command.
    Examples:
    Clone all of the properties of an existing Printer "zan image printer (bw1) to a new printer "zan image printer (bw2)":
    C:\Program Files\zvprt50>zvprtcfg zan image printer (bw1) printer.add=zan image printer (bw2)

    Create a new printer "zan image printer":
    Use all group1 DPI resolutions and set the default DPI to 300 x 300.
    Use default paper size list and set the default paper size to Letter.
    C:\Program Files\zvprt50>zvprtcfg printer.add=zan image printer, group1:300x300,default:Letter

    Repeat the "printer.add" command for additional printers.


    OR


    2) Run the Zan Image Printer setup program. The setup options dialog opens.

    In the printers list, clear or rename the printers that have already been installed on your computer to prevent overwriting of the existing printer settings.

    To rename a printer, select the printer that you want to rename, and click the Settings... button. In the Printer Name box, enter a new name for the printer.

    To define a new printer, click the New... button to enter a name for the new printer and add it to the printers list.

    To add more printers, repeat these previous instructions.
    After making changes, click the OK button. The installation finishes, and the new printers are added to your computer.

    You list many DPIs as well as custom on the feature list, but the menu only shows the 50-600dpi in fixed intervals. Where is the custom DPI setting?
    There are two ways you can use custom DPIs:
    1) During installation, you can specify custom DPI resolutions for the printer.

    OR

    2) After Zan Image Printer is installed, you can execute the gpd.dpi command provided by the command line utilities zvprtcfg and zvprtcfg_win32 to change the supported DPI resolutions for the printer.
    Example:
    C:\Program Files\zvprt50>zvprtcfg Zan Image Printer (BW) gpd.dpi=80x80

    How to print a continuous document with no page breaks?
    You can create a custom paper size and set the page height to be the maximum possible length that will needed by your application. For example, if your images need to have a width of 6.5 inches and different heights based on the image (starting at 3"and going to 9"), you can create a 6.5" x 9" custom paper size, then on Zan Image Printer's Processing tab, click to select the Enable border trimming check box, and select the Bottom check box in the Borders to Trim group box:

    You can then print to Zan Image Printer on this custom paper size (you should not use fit to page to print your document on this custom roll paper). The net result is that you will end up with a continuous image.

    We have a customer who is experiencing an issue related to driver versions. Namely, they have a copy of our application (with Zan) installed on a 64-bit Windows Server. During the installation process, your configuration binary selects the 64-bit driver, which is fine. However, now when they share the printer to 32-bit clients, the 32-bit driver is not available. Can you please recommend a way that they can use to load the 32-bit driver onto the server for clients to use?
    By default, for an x64 (64-bit) version operating system, during the installation process, Zan Image Printer automatically selects and installs the x64 driver, and no x86 (32-bit) driver will be installed. If you want to share an x64 printer with an x86 system, you can configure the Zan Image Printer setup to install both the x64 and x86 drivers on an x64 system so that the x86 client that connects to that x64 computer can automatically download the x86 driver for use and send files to that shared printer. To do this:
    You can extract the files of a downloaded Zan Image Printer setup program zvprt5.exe to a folder of your choice using WinRAR or WinZip, open the extracted setup.ini file, add the x86driver keyword in the [setup] section and set it to 2. Example:
    [setup]
    x86driver=2
    Then run zvprt5_setup.exe to install. This will install the x86 drivers for all Zan Image Printer instances on your x64 system.

    During the installation process, you will need to have access to the x86 version of the following unidrv files to install the Zan Image Printer x86 driver on an x64 system:
    unidrv.dll
    unidrv.hlp
    unidrvui.dll
    unires.dll
    stdnames.gpd
    The x86 version of the unidrv files are usually located in the folder at %System32Dir%\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\ (C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\, for example).

    During the installation process, you will be prompted for a 32-bit installation disc of your operation system to locate the x86 version of the unidrv files. You can simply click the Cancel button if you already have the x86 version of the unidrv files loaded on your x64 system in the folder at %System32Dir%\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\. To copy the unidrv files from an x86 system to your x64 system before installation, do the following:
    1. On your x86 system, open the folder C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\ (the source path, where the files are located), note the following unidrv files:
    unidrv.dll
    unidrv.hlp
    unidrvui.dll
    unires.dll
    stdnames.gpd

    2. On your x64 system, open the folder C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\ (the destination path, where the files should be copied to). If the directory does not exist, create a new folder with that path. Use your favorite method for sending files between two Windows computers to copy the unidrv files you selected on the x86 system (see step 1) into the C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\ on your x64 system.

    Note: You may use the Zan Image Printer as a shared network printer, provided that you have obtained licenses for the software covering all workstations that will access the software through the network. For instance, if 10 different workstations will access the software on the network, each workstation is counted as a user, regardless of whether they use the software at different times or concurrently. For more details, see license types.

    How do I create a custom page size?
    For instructions on how to create custom paper size, see the Developer page.

    When I install your software is possible to hide the options that the user does not need and/or block the users from making changes to the settings?
    Use the following steps to hide specific Zan Image Printer tabs:
    1. Click the Program Information button on the About or Registration tab:


    2. The Program Information dialog will open, double click the Configuration Directory row within the list. This will open the directory where Zan Image Printer stores the user preferences/configuration *.ini files.



    3. Open the general.ini file with any plain text editor (e.g., Notepad), use the hideui option to hide specific Zan Image Printer tabs. Example:
    hideui=save,image,settings,proginfo
    hideui (a comma ',' separated string) controls which property tabs are hidden from the user so the user cannot change the related settings:
    save - hide the Save tab
    image - hide the Image tab
    settings - hide the Settings tab
    unidrvtabs - hide the standard UNIDRV Paper/Quality and Orientation tabs. Note: You cannot use this option to hide the Paper/Quality and Orientation tabs on Windows 2000.
    proginfo - hide the Program Information button on the About/Registration tab
    all - hide the Save, Image, Settings, Paper/Quality, Orientation tabs and the Program Information button altogether. Note: This will not hide the Paper/Quality and Orientation tabs on Windows 2000.
    If this parameter is blank, all of the property tabs are visible. The About/Registration tab cannot be hidden.

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