Photoshop CS6 freezes with attempts to change printer settings

Question

(This problem also occurs with InDesign CS6, so I will post to that forum as well. First one to give me a solution gets my undying love and devotion appreciation.)
My employer acquired a Canon 6010 printer with a Fiery print controller last year. I have no problems printing from my personal Windows laptop. 
However, from my employer's iMac (OS X 10.6.8) I get the spinning beach ball of death at least 90% of the time that I open an existing document and attempt to change the printer settings. The only way out is via Force Quit. Inexplicably I can occasionally succeed in changing printer settings. I think the record was having to force quit the application 11 times. Not sure - I quit counting.
So far our only semi-consistent work around: create a new document and copy and paste the contents from the existing document. Not cool. But sometimes the app freezes with brand new documents, thus destroying my work around anyway.
Additional Information:
I have installed all CS6 upgrades.
Our technical support contractor recreated the problem and could not find any solution other than the work around.
Canon says the problem is with the applications.
This happens whether I attempt to change the printer settings immediately or make changes to the document first.
It does not matter what other applications are running.
Rebooting the system after the app freezes does not make it work.
We cannot upgrade past 10.6.8 because of the age of the hardware. But CS6 is supposed to run on Snow Leopard.
I have tested this with other applications, including some older Adobe software. It does not happen with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3, Acrobat 8 Pro, Acrobat 9 Pro or Acrobat XI Pro.
This happens whether the documents were created and saved on the Mac or on a Windows computer.
Re-saving the documents and/or printer settings does not change the outcome. Once I restart the application Photoshop may remember the paper size, but doesn't remember duplex settings. (From another thread in this forum I suspect a corrupt printer preferences file.)
Per the instructions in the other thread I reset the printing preferences by launching the app while holding down shift-control-command. That enabled me to change the printer settings one time. Every subsequent attempt brought back the spinning beach ball.
No other employees report similar problems (including a few MacBook users). However, they do not use Photoshop or InDesign, nor do they typically change printer settings.
Sorry if some of that is irrelevant - just trying to give you as much info as possible and tell you what I've tried already. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Bonnie

Answer 1

Nanneri, my situation is similar in that creating the PDF and printing from that does take longer than just printing from InDesign and Photoshop.
I finally got a Canon tech rep on site who understood my problem. Though we had tried reinstalling the drivers (as had previous Canon reps), this guy got it right. Neither Photoshop nor InDesign has locked up since - at least not for the Canon 6010. (Photoshop has locked up twice when I've attempted to print to a Canon iPF8300s wideformat that isn't on the Fiery. Restarting PS has fixed that.)
Based on my experience, I would start with new drivers.
FYI: I am having problems printing to a new Canon C7065 that also uses Fiery. But the problems vary and I haven't isolated the factors. Sometimes I get a printed error report. Sometimes it just doesn't print. But no more software lockups.
In our case, I suspected our problems were related to having old hardware that can't be upgraded past OS X 10.6.8, which is the oldest OS compatible with both CS6 and the Fiery. But since you are on a newer OS, and a different printer, I'm beginning to wonder about the Fiery.
Hope you find a solution soon. Keep us posted!