I’m having problems getting my photos to center when I go to print. This started about a month ago with my picture packages; I have to uncheck center and maually set the margins. Now, I can’t get my panoramics to center – I get the right edge of the photo showing on the left hand side of the print preview (I use an Epson 2200). Also, the print preview in PSE wil not work more than once if I go back and try again. Tonight, my 8×10’s started printing slightly off center. I’ve removed and reloaded both PSE and printer software, HELP! THX – john
But did you ditch the preferences folder?? This will not be erased with an uninstall.
Just a shot in the dark, nothing to loose… sudden quirky behavior is often alleviated by trashing the prefs file.
Relaunch holding the alt/shift/ctrl keys down until dialog appears, answer yes, let it finish loading. (Keep your fingers crossed it should be something so simple as this)
FWIW, my Epson’s printer driver is hugely customizable, I’m running WinXP Pro. The way it works with this OS; tons of device drivers are supplied with the OS, though they are rather generic versions which will allow a plug-n-play to be installed and function without a manufacturer’s driver installation. BUT, they will not give support to all of a device’s capabilities in many cases, my printer being a case in point. If I had not obtained XP version drivers from the Epson website I would not have access to the ink monitor and many other features.
Huh? 🙂 No, actually I do understand what you said, although I was having a little trouble at first figuring out why you were explaining it. It didn’t occur to me that generic OS drivers might be used. I always install the drivers that come with my peripherals, and I do have separate preferences for my HP printer, both the "regular" preferences for settings, etc., and also for the utilities portion. I was wondering if the same was true on a Win machine. Since John said the centering feature had been working right for a while and then stopped, I offered the possiblilty of printer pref corruption as another thing to look at.
I’ve never figured out the exact relationship between the amount of control Elements exerts over the printing of images as opposed to the degree of control of the printer itself. They interact in some way, but the secret to how must be pretty well guarded because nobody has ever explained it.
I’m reading in the link that this problem seems to be partial to Epson printers. However, all has been well for nearly a year since I got my Epson printer and PSE. Why all of a sudden does the page layout run wild? Is this just an irrational quirk of an otherwise sane hardware system?? THX – john
Hi Nancy & Beth – Could you clarify your advice on deleting the preferences? Are your refering to preferences for the Epson printer, PSE or perhaps both? How exactly to I eliminate preferences in XP for the printer or a program such as PSE? I found an undelete command for the printer; when I selected, a shortcut appeared on my desktop, which I then put in the trash bin. THX again for you kindness and help on this matter. Best – john
I can give you the instructions for deleting preferences for Elements: With Elements closed, click on the start up icon and then make a really quick grab for the Control, Alt, and Shift keys. (Or, if you have enough fingers, hold them down while clicking!) Hold all three down until you get a screen asking if you want to delete the Settings. Say Yes. A new Preference folder will rebuild as Elements continues to launch.
Now, as to the printer prefs – I just looked through the files on our XP Pro hard drive, and I couldn’t find anything on there for ‘preferences’ or ‘settings’ that might be related to a printer. ??? I run a Mac, and there is a Preference folder for my HP1215. When I trash it, all of the custom settings I’ve made disappear, and I can start all over, which is what happens when you delete the Elements Preference folder. If any kind of corruption has occurred, that will most often clear it up.
If deleting the Elements Preferences doesn’t help, you might try doing a complete uninstall of your printer software and then reinstalling.
By the way, there was a statement earlier in this thread about Epsons and problems centering. Actually people like me with HPs have more trouble with this, but it seems certain Epson models can get finicky, too.
Beth, have you written a macro for the delete preferences procedure yet? You have, with extraordinary care and patience, given this advice to literally dozens of folks over the past year+ – awesome!!
Chuck, her best bet would be to save her thread to wordpad and then just copy paste the next time someone asks….which is on average about once a week. Would save her alot of time and effort.
Beth, speaking of Epson printers and layouts…I never have a problem centering an image with my epson…under layout tab in the printer options I check ‘center’ and it’s perfect every time.
Ya, Jodi, overall the Epsons do a pretty consistent job of centering. The HPs are probably the worst. I don’t remember about Canons, but I think the person who started a thread about this several months ago was on one of those. A couple of the Epson models are a little kinky, but most of them do fine.
I still think there’s got to be an interrelationship between Elements and the printers, because I don’t have any trouble getting stuff centered that I print from other applications. You’d think if it was entirely the printer the problems would show up across the board. Strange. Also strange that somebody with the 2200 is having trouble. Isn’t that one of the snitzy Epsons?
I still think there’s got to be an interrelationship between Elements and the printers, because I don’t have any trouble getting stuff centered that I print from other applications.
It’s almost certainly just Elements, possibly a bug exposed by uncommon combinations of printer settings.
As far as centering goes, the printer driver just tells Elements how big the paper is. If the preview in Elements looks wrong, then it’s entirely Element’s fault, since the printer driver has nothing to do with that dialog.
Pete, I’m glad you used the word ‘almost’ – I have several photo apps that do the same off-center thing with my clunky HP multipurpose unit. After several unsuccessful attempts to correct the situation, I’ve learned to live with it, using a variety of ways to trick the printer – or I just get out the paper cutter at the end and center it the old-fashioned way. In my case, Elements is not the culprit, or at least not the only culprit.
Pete, I’m glad you used the word ‘almost’ – I have several photo apps that do the same off-center thing with my clunky HP multipurpose unit. After several unsuccessful attempts to correct the situation, I’ve learned to
live
with it, using a variety of ways to trick the printer – or I just get out the paper cutter at the end and center it the old-fashioned way.
Well, it’s really hard to diagnose the problem without actually seeing what’s going on. There’s "off-center" and then there’s "really off-center". The original poster wasn’t very clear, but I *think* he’s saying that not only is the image not centered, large areas of it aren’t even on the paper. That’s a different problem than seeing the whole image, but not getting it exactly centered on the page (which is, in fact, not really so much a problem as a basic limitation of the printer technology).
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that many printers do not have a centered "printable area". This is very common on ink jet printers, where there’s more unprintable margin at the bottom of the page than the top, due to the way the paper feeds through the printer.
If you tell Elements to scale the image to fit the page, it will scale it to fit the *printable* area, not the whole page, which is as it should be. That’s the best Elements can do, and it maximizes the use of the portion of the page that the printer driver presents to Elements. But the printout won’t be centered, using the default printer settings.
Now, some printers allow the user to adjust the behavior of the printable area. All of the Epsons I’ve used (three, since the Stylus Color 600) have provided a checkbox in the printer settings that center the printable area on the page. The way the driver does this is simply by trimming the top part of the printable area to match the bottom part. You get slightly fewer pixels and a reduced printable area, but it means you won’t have to do as much math to get the printout actually centered on the page if that’s what you want.
The Epson 2200 I just bought has an additional checkbox, called "Maximize Margins". This checkbox *expands* the printable area on the bottom of the page to match the top. The only downside to using this checkbox is that, depending on the type of paper and what you’re printing, the image quality at the bottom of the page may suffer, because the printer can’t get as much "traction" holding the paper in place when printing there.
Like I said, I can’t tell from the original post whether the person is suffering from some drastic problem, in which the image not only doesn’t center, but is greatly offset from the page, resulting in cropping of large areas, or if he’s just experiencing the normal non-centered ink jet printable area. But the latter might be something to consider.
My best solution has been to print on the 2200 using the Epson Film Factory software that comes with the printer – it looks hokey, but you download the files from PSE, then print through Film Factory, call up the Epson printer screens as prompted, and there are no problems. Also, you can print out a whole file of pictures instead of one at a time, after you’ve modified them in PSE, by loading them into a "roll" – the Epson name for a file. David Kahn
Pete, my printer delivers a predictable offset of 0.4 inches top-to-bottom vs. vertical center point; I learned that when I was using some 4×6 photo paper with breakaway edges (a tricky way to get ‘borderless’ -just break off the borders). I resorted to adding the 0.4 inches to my canvas via Image>Resize>Canvas Size to ‘push’ the image down the page. When I ran out of that style paper, I stopped fretting about it; I just use the paper cutter or scissors. But maybe if I look in the advanced page of the printer driver I might find that centering box you’ve described – thanks for that tip!
Chuck, I don’t know about windows, but the most recent mac HP drivers are notorious for their disregard of any document margins set within the program.
It’s kind of a shame. I’ve always used HP printers and found them reliable and economical, but I’ll never buy another one after all the grief I’vd had from drivers in the past year. I hear a lot of windows complaints, too, but don’t know how much of that may be PEBKAC, given who’s been complaining to me.
David Kahn, you are absolutely right. It looks ‘hockey’ but performs with excellence. I use it to print all my greeting cards because it has the specified option which goes with the Epson greeting card paper. Afterall, the software was made for the printer and judging by epson’s standard of quality you can’t expect any less. All the options you need are there and there is no confusion between printer and program. I haven’t had a problem with printing from Elements though.
Beth – THX for your instructions; In the mean time I also called Adobe and received the same advice. Unfortunately, this has not corrected my problem; nor has the advice in the Epson thread. I’ll keep working on it and advise. THX/Best – john
