how to determine the full printable area

T
Posted By
topsecret
Mar 9, 2005
Views
559
Replies
11
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Closed
hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard

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C
Clyde
Mar 9, 2005
topsecret wrote:
hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard

Check your printer manual.

Clyde
T
topsecret
Mar 9, 2005
i have 3 printers, and no one says that, i mean the real measurements, of the printable area..
M
Menno
Mar 9, 2005
Make a (grey) rectangle in PS that is larger than the paper size. Print it, you’ll get a message that some cropping will occur, that’s okay. Then take a ruler and measure the dimensions of the rectangle printed on the paper or the white borders around the printed rectangle. That’s the way I defined the printable area for my printer.

To save some ink you can make it a "hollow rectangle", i.e. leave the inner area of the rectangle white.
For exampl: A4 paper = 21 x 29.7 cm. Make a grey rectangle of 25 x 35 cm, cut a rectangle of 17 x 26 cm out of the gray area. That leaves you with a border of 4 cm wide that will cover the edge of the printable area of your paper.

Tip:
On my printer (Epson Photo 700), the bottom margin (of a portrait paper) is 14 mm while the others are 3 mm. By extending the paper at the bottom side with a strip of paper, I’m artificially extending the height of the paper. Put the strip and the regular paper together with two pieces of tape at the back. Now if I define my paper as a custom size and make it 11 mm longer than it really is, I get a uniform white border of 3 mm on every side of the paper. After printing, remove the extra strip and reuse it for the next print.

Menno

topsecret wrote:
hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard
T
topsecret
Mar 9, 2005
thanks menno, i did that way too,
btu i am using also another way, i place biger print
then when i send to print, photoshop tels me, that is too big, so i go taking milimiters until is ok, is fast too.

interesting tip, but i just bought me a good cutter machine, so i cut the white borders and thats it,

anyway soon the printers will print without borders

"Menno" escribi
P
paul
Mar 9, 2005
The way I handled it in drafting software was to put tiny faint dots in the corners to force centering of the image and control over margins. I also established the margin size with a test print & a ruler.

Menno wrote:
Make a (grey) rectangle in PS that is larger than the paper size. Print it, you’ll get a message that some cropping will occur, that’s okay. Then take a ruler and measure the dimensions of the rectangle printed on the paper or the white borders around the printed rectangle. That’s the way I defined the printable area for my printer.

To save some ink you can make it a "hollow rectangle", i.e. leave the inner area of the rectangle white.
For exampl: A4 paper = 21 x 29.7 cm. Make a grey rectangle of 25 x 35 cm, cut a rectangle of 17 x 26 cm out of the gray area. That leaves you with a border of 4 cm wide that will cover the edge of the printable area of your paper.

Tip:
On my printer (Epson Photo 700), the bottom margin (of a portrait paper) is 14 mm while the others are 3 mm. By extending the paper at the bottom side with a strip of paper, I’m artificially extending the height of the paper. Put the strip and the regular paper together with two pieces of tape at the back. Now if I define my paper as a custom size and make it 11 mm longer than it really is, I get a uniform white border of 3 mm on every side of the paper. After printing, remove the extra strip and reuse it for the next print.

Menno

topsecret wrote:

hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard

E
eastside
Mar 10, 2005
hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard

I take it you want to find the maximum horizontal and vertical dimensions of an image that you want to print on a particular size of paper in Photoshop. If so, here’s the way I did it for my printer:
1. Start with the vertical dimension and set it to a large dimension that exceeds the maximum
2. Set the horizontal well within the minimum because we want to find the vertical max first
3. Try a print command
4. You should get the message: "The image is larger than the paper’s printable area; some clipping will occur."
5. Cancel the print
6. Using the canvas command, decrease the vertical dimension
7. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5, 6 until you stop getting the message. You’ve found
the maximum vertical size
8. Now set a large horizontal size using the canvas command and repeat the same steps

If you know how to conduct a binary search you can quickly get it down to hundreths of an inch. I had to do the above because the maximum printable area wasn’t published for my Epson printer. If it’s a 2200, for example, the max sizes are

Letter (A4): 8.25 x 10.32
A3: 11.45 x 15.87
Super B: 12.7 x 12.512
M
measekite
Mar 10, 2005
Why not using the cropping tool and set that to the size you want to print. Then crop, make other adjustments and print. The canvas and image size will be adjusted automatically. You do not have to figure out anything and you get true borderless prints.

Eastside wrote:

hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard

I take it you want to find the maximum horizontal and vertical dimensions of an image that you want to print on a particular size of paper in Photoshop. If so, here’s the way I did it for my printer:
1. Start with the vertical dimension and set it to a large dimension that exceeds the maximum
2. Set the horizontal well within the minimum because we want to find the vertical max first
3. Try a print command
4. You should get the message: "The image is larger than the paper’s printable area; some clipping will occur."
5. Cancel the print
6. Using the canvas command, decrease the vertical dimension
7. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5, 6 until you stop getting the message. You’ve found
the maximum vertical size
8. Now set a large horizontal size using the canvas command and repeat the same steps

If you know how to conduct a binary search you can quickly get it down to hundreths of an inch. I had to do the above because the maximum printable area wasn’t published for my Epson printer. If it’s a 2200, for example, the max sizes are

Letter (A4): 8.25 x 10.32
A3: 11.45 x 15.87
Super B: 12.7 x 12.512

B
Brian
Mar 19, 2005
measekite wrote:

Why not using the cropping tool and set that to the size you want to print. Then crop, make other adjustments and print. The canvas and image size will be adjusted automatically. You do not have to figure out anything and you get true borderless prints.

Eastside wrote:

hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard

I take it you want to find the maximum horizontal and vertical dimensions of an image that you want to print on a particular size of paper in Photoshop. If so, here’s the way I did it for my printer:
1. Start with the vertical dimension and set it to a large dimension
that exceeds the maximum
2. Set the horizontal well within the minimum because we want to find the vertical max first
3. Try a print command
4. You should get the message: "The image is larger than the paper’s printable area; some clipping will occur."
5. Cancel the print
6. Using the canvas command, decrease the vertical dimension
7. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5, 6 until you stop getting the message. You’ve
found the maximum vertical size
8. Now set a large horizontal size using the canvas command and repeat the same steps

If you know how to conduct a binary search you can quickly get it down to hundreths of an inch. I had to do the above because the maximum printable area wasn’t published for my Epson printer. If it’s a 2200, for example, the max sizes are

Letter (A4): 8.25 x 10.32
A3: 11.45 x 15.87
Super B: 12.7 x 12.512
Sounds like it is about time Adobe took a leaf out of Corel’s book and gave a decent Print Preview screen, which does show the printable area of any printer connected and being used.

Brian.
H
Hecate
Mar 20, 2005
On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 20:43:12 +1100, Brian
wrote:

Sounds like it is about time Adobe took a leaf out of Corel’s book and gave a decent Print Preview screen, which does show the printable area of any printer connected and being used.
They should swap – Corel gives them a decent print preview and Adobe gives them colour management that works 🙂



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
B
Brian
Mar 20, 2005
Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 20:43:12 +1100, Brian
wrote:

Sounds like it is about time Adobe took a leaf out of Corel’s book and gave a decent Print Preview screen, which does show the printable area of any printer connected and being used.

They should swap – Corel gives them a decent print preview and Adobe gives them colour management that works 🙂



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

What can I say to that one? LOL. Printing to my own desktop printer I get terrific results…with a commerical printer…wouldn’t like to say :-0

Brian.
T
tomcas
Mar 20, 2005
topsecret wrote:
hello
whne printing, my printer alway live a little white margin, since i made the image at the paper size, this needs to
scaled a little-

i will like to know exactly the printable are,
how to make it?

richard
If you have Word:
File, Page setup, Margins, set all to zero and click OK. You will get a prompt that your margins are too small. Choose fix. The margins you now see displayed are the minimums.
Subtract this from your paper size and you now have your maximum printable area.
If you don’t have word, just use Irfanview.

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