In fact this is all about libgnomeprint 2.4.0
Raster image printing for metafile has let's call it performance bug. Look
at src/gnome-print-meta.c:meta_image
...
        for (y = 0; y < h; y++){
                gpm_encode_block (pc, px, w * ch);
                px += rowstride;
        }
...
This pice of code works fine for small images. But if we going to print
something like digital photo wich is usualy around 2Mb (and this is a
packed size so real raw image buffer will be much bigger) size and about a
1.5K lines in height gpm_encode_block will stress system with 1.5K
g_reallocs() for underlying metafile buffer wich will start from  ~10K and
finish with ~megs of raw image size.
Proposed fix will be just prealloc image size before image encoding.
See patch attached.