printing borderless 5×7/4×6 pics

George,

I don’t have a printer that can print borderless, but my suggestion would be to first, check the help section for your printer to see if you need to tick some box in the options, but otherwise I would assume this would work;

* open your image
* flatten, if not not already
* do any sharpening you wish
* make sure the size is exactly as you wish (4×6 or 5×7) * make that layer is active in the Layers palette
* go to select>select all
* go to edit>copy
* go to file>new (should come up with proper res. & size) * go to edit>paste
* go to file>print and make sure you have the paper size set for 4×6 or 5×7 (and maybe some option to tell it to print full bleed, it should say in your help section)

George, I don’t think borderless is an option in X for many printers. You might want to look to see if there’s a GIMP print driver for yours. That might make it work. Borderless and duplexing are very hard to find for X.

George,

You can make it borderless anyway

just set it up as described earlier by Beth with making a canvas to paste your 4×6 or 5×7 on (or many of them on) print as before and

get out the old papercutter! Just cut along the edges of the image.

edit—just to throw out another thought here, sometimes making a white matte around the image and then a beveled and embossed frame encompassing everything (maybe with a dropshadow too) looks great. This would all be done digitally and is not hard. This perimeter treatment gives an image depth, dimension and interest.

George

Have you looked in printer properties – is there an option for "borderless" near the paper options?

fran

NANCY,
i am not sure what you mean by a beveled or embossed frame, could you please explain how to do this for me? if possiable i still want the finished size of the pic to be 5×7 or 4×6, including the frame. thank you.

George,

Here is a link to an image I did for one of the Challenges (the weekly offsite fun thing some of us participate in). I added a beveled and embossed frame to it as well as a white matte. The original was an 8×10 for printing, so it lost a lot of detail in converting it to a small jpg (for faster loading on the pbase site)…but you’ll get the idea. If you’re interested in creating digital frames (with or without a matte), come back.

<http://www.pbase.com/image/22908778/original>

Nancy

WOW……..how can do that.

Isn’t that cool? She posted those instructions sometime last winter, and I use them over and over. I’ve even learned to get a little bit creative with them!

George,

I will work up some directions this afternoon and post here. Have some things to attend to right now. Or maybe Beth will have chimed in before I get back.

Nancy

NANCY,
thank you for wanting to take the time to make up some directions for me…………i can hardly wait 🙂

OK, so my company is gone now, and I’m copying the instructions (almost) as Nancy wrote them in a post from Dec 22, 2002.

——————————–

1. Crop image to 4.5 X 6.5 inches (allowing room for frame.)

2. Unlock/simplify the background layer and then create another new layer.

3. Set foreground/background colors to white/black.

4. Image>Resize>Canvas to 5 X 7 on the new layer.

5. Command/Click image layer to select image

6. Make new blank layer on top of the stack (will still have the "ants" outline), Edit>Stroke (I use 25 pixels, outside), and you have a new layer with only a white border.

7. Command D to deselect the ants

8. Make another new layer on the top of the stack.

9. Click on the layer with the white border.

10. With Magic Wand, select the transparent region around the image (the checkerboard part.)

11. Click on blank topmost layer, which will still have "ants" outline.

12. Choose the color for the outer frame with the eyedropper or using color swatches.

13. Use Paintbucket inside "ants" outline to fill with the desired color.

14. Command D to deselect the ants.

15. Still on uppermost layer, choose "Layer Styles" from pallet tabs.

16. Choose "Bevels" from dropdown triangle.

17. Choose "Simple Inner" (holding the cursor over choices displays the full name) – maybe hit "Apply" (program isn’t open.)

18. Click back on top layer

19. Double click "f" symbol

20. Set angle to 130 degrees/increase bevel to 27

From here on, the instructions are for a drop shadow, which I didn’t care for. (Nancy’s insert, not mine!)

21. Click on white border layer

22. Click on "Layer Styles"

23. Choose "Drop Shadow" with dropdown triangle

24. Choose "Low"

25. Click on wite border layer again

26. Double click "f" symbol

27. Make sure angle is 130

28. Increase shadow distance to 35

29. Click back on any layer ‘cuz you’re finished!

File size (for frame alone) is now about 7M and frame is 3 dimensional looking, shaded.

For an 8 X 10, crop to 7 X 9, this leaves 1/2 inch on each edge for matte/frame. Increase the white stroke to about 55 pixels, or to suit.

For light-edged images I often begin by stroking with very thin black line, and this would then be the first of three new layers on top.

———————————-

Nancy went to a lot of trouble writing up these instructions, and the first time or two I tried this, I kept "losing my place." I suggest you name your new layers as you’re creating them!

I don’t think I made any big errors. Try it and post back if you’re having trouble.

thanks Beth…….i will try this after supper tonight and let you know how i make out.

could not wait until after supper to try this. i got as far as step 5. when i command/click on the image layer nothing happens. i then go to step 6 and i make a new layer on top but there are no "ants" outline and when i go to edit stroke it says there is nothing to stroke. i will try it again and as in the past "I will not give up"

tried it again and this time i got it 🙂

was able to do it ONCE, now hunger set in. i will try it again after supper. once again i got stuck on step 5.

George,

Ah good, Beth stepped up to the plate and gave directions before I could return. The only changes I would make to what she wrote would be

#4 Image>Resize>Canvas to 5×7 (at this point you still have exactly the same number of layers that comprised your image, be it one or many) After you resize, you will have the checkboard pattern, denoting transparency, surrounding your image.

#5 since you are getting stuck here; the idea is to have marching ants totally surround your image, but not including the checkerboard. If you have many layers, say a base layer and then layers on top of that containing items but those aren’t using up the same amount of space as the whole 4.5×6.5 layer, make sure you have the base layer active (otherwise you would just be selecting a part of the image)

#10 I’m just reminding you to have "Contiguous" checked in the options above the workarea.

#17 Click on "Simple Inner" (or experiment with other choices)

#20 Set angle and bevel size as desired

note: the white matte size in pixels which Beth uses is fine for a an image of printing resolution, like 300. But if your image has a significantly lower res. you would need to add a smaller size matte.

Though this is written for a 5×7, it is applicable to any size image. If you wanted to print an 8×10 with a 1/2" border all around, resize image to 7×9, create a new canvas that is 8×10. Decide the width of matte and frame. Of course you could also omit the matte and only have a frame by selecting the tranparent area, fill with a color and apply the bevel style.

I just took a screen shot for an example. Instead of an image, I just used a blue rectangle to symbolize the image. This way you can see my layers in this very simple example. If before adding canvas, my image had many layers on top of the blue base, I would need to select the blue base layer by control/command click for step #5.

Let us know if this works out for you, George.

<http://www.pbase.com/image/22932228>

Nancy

edit—if your screen looks a little different than mine, it is because I use PSE version 1

I played around with this last night and things are working out very well for me. I can now add this to the bag of tricks I have learned since becoming part of this forum. as long as the weather cooperates I will spend the majority of today outside taking pictures of the fall foliage here in the north east, then I can try out all the good stuff I have learned from all the terrific people on here.

I’m printing ‘borderless’ all the time.
In the Page Setup dialog change Format for: ‘Any Printer’ to your printer and if it supports ‘borderless’ you will see the choices in the Paper Size combo box (like 4×6 (borderless)).
That is all.
If your image is exactly matches the chosen paper size you are done, otherwise use ‘Scale to Fit Media’ when printing.

yuriy.

George,

Glad you got the frame thing to work out for you. Experiment with differing sizes. With an 8×10 I personally like quite a width of white matte and a thinish frame. I also often add just a touch of "Noise" under the filter menu so it doesn’t have a plastic look. I also often use a style on the white matte layer or add a narrow drop shadow for dimension. Another thing you can experiment with is…

after adding the extra canvas, prior to adding the white matte, select your image by control/command clicking that layer, place a new blank layer above, have black as foreground color, add a thin black stroke (maybe 3-8 pixels with "outside" checked). And then proceed with another blank layer for adding the white matte etc.

Nancy

And… I was never able to get this set of instructions to cooperate when I wanted to matte and frame an oval selection. I don’t think it was the fault of the instructions, rather it was me. In any event, I’ve developed a way to manage a rectangular frame and matte for an oval, circle, etc. If you’re interested, let me know.

Beth, i am very interested in a rectangular frame/matte for an oval.if you have the time please let me know how to do this.

I’ve gotta go start dinner right now (I live in the Northwest, not the Northeast!) I’ll try to get back and post it in a little while – after I figure out what the chicken will look like by the time it hits the plate.

There’s gonna be a delay, George, because I realized how long this takes to type out! Plus, getting the oval sized the way you want can be a little tricky, so I’ll add that part in, too. It may be tomorrow morning before I get this one posted. I’m sorry.

Beth,
please take your time, there is no need to rush. whenever you have a chance to post that will be fine. i am very content with "frameing" my pics right now. i have been playing with differant bevel/color combinations and have gotten some interesting results. with the help you have given me and the help of others here, i am really enjoying PSE 2. i NEVER could have learned so much so fast on my own. what a great forum 🙂 this is!!!!