Photoshop CS/XP/HP 6110 – can’t print centered

TW
Posted By
Teresa_Widdowson
May 4, 2005
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431
Replies
3
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Closed
I’ve read other postings on problems printing centered but nothing is matching my environment. I have Photoshop CS on XP with an HP 6110. All I want to do is print my picture centered both vertically and horizontally on the page. I have selected "Center Image" in the Print Preview dialog box. I’ve selected Scale to Fit Image. I have the latest version of HP printer drivers installed. It looks to me like the margins in the Page Setup dialog box are overriding those in the Print Preview dialog box. That’s the only thing I can think of. Because when I look at the Page Layout box, with Letter 8.5 x 11 selected, it defaults to the following margins (in inches): Left: 0.07, Right .46. The top and bottom margins are .25. When I print the page, the right margin is greater than the left. I contacted HP and they said the printer is working fine and it must be an Adobe problem. Is there any way to override the Page Setup margins or is there some other reason that this is occurring? Any idea on how to fix this?

Thanks!
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TW
Teresa_Widdowson
May 10, 2005
Does anyone have any ideas for me?? Thanks!
Y
YrbkMgr
May 10, 2005
Teresa,

It is neither an HP problem nor an Adobe problem – it’s a function of how printers work and the intent of a document within photoshop.

All printers have a physical margin beyond which they cannot print. That is hard coded into your operating system when you install printer drivers. If you tell the printer that you have an 8.5 x 11 page, it knows that it cannot print beyond a certain point. Hard margins.

When you think about the bottom margin for example, the paper is pushed by rollers underneath a print head. At some point, you run out of paper to push underneath the print head, so it is not uncommon to find that the bottom margin is far greater than the top margin.

So the point is, there are physical limitations of a printer.

Now, the other thing that contributes to what you are experiencing, is the issue of image size. Photoshop is not a page layout program – it doesn’t understand pages like MS Word or any other page layout program.

Many people say "I want to design an imgage to fit on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, so that’s how large I’ll make my canvas." That’s the wrong approach.

Photoshop is an image editing program, so you make your canvas the size appropriate for the image. If you make your image size the size of a piece of paper, you will see exactly what you are seeing – the printer cannot print to certain areas of the paper, even though there’s image data there.

You have to reduce your canvas size to something smaller, like 8×10 and then trim your paper if you want no borders, or if you want it centered.

You can fool your printer by telling it you have a larger piece of paper than you are actually putting in there, but that’s not recommended since you run the risk of dripping ink into your printer.

Additionally, some printers have borderless printing capabilities and when enabled, you are able to center an image – that’s printer/manufacturer dependant.

In sum, make your image canvas smaller.

Peace,
Tony
TW
Teresa_Widdowson
May 10, 2005
Thanks Tony! I will give that a shot. Thank you for your very thorough explanation! It helps to understand what is going on rather than just getting a canned answer like "make your image smaller".

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