cupsd chokes when printing photos

[Shea Martin]

>From Digikam, I try to print 4 photos @ 3.5"x5", on a sheet of photo paper,
using the printing wizard which comes with kipi-plugins. Photos are about
1900x1200 res. Printer is a HP7260 printerr, and I am using the hpijs with
cups. The driver settings are photo on photo paper (whatever res that works
out to be).
 
 Printing 2 photos takes about 5~10 minutes before printer kicks in. The
size of /var increases by about 187MB. A nice quality printed photo sheet
is spit out.
 
 When I try to print 4 photos on the same page, gs runs at 99% CPU for about
8~12 mins, then goes away, and cupsd take up 99% cpu. cupsd will continue
to run at 99% for a long time. I have never let it run more that 24hours
without removing the job. But the point is, that nothing ever gets sent to
the printer.
 
 I can handle slow, but this just plain does not work. My machine is no
speed demon, but is a dual 1GHz, with 512 MB RAM.
 
 I tried gnome-photo-printer. The printer kicked in after a about 30
seconds. But the quality of the prints sucked, and it is not really the
kind of software I'd turn my wife loose on.

Any help would be great.

~S