What you see is NOT what you get! print cropping problem

AM
Posted By
Alex_Mustille
Jan 29, 2007
Views
939
Replies
7
Status
Closed
Recent upgrade to Photoshop CS2 and using relatively new HP Photosmart 8450 printer on WinXP Pro SP2. I am experiencing a problem trying to print my digital photos to 4×6 (borderless) photo paper. I am using the Image Size function to change the document size to 4×6 (no resampling) from the raw size of roughly 6.67"x10.03".

Everything looks good in my print preview but when I print the printed image is cropped. What I see in my preview screen is significantly different than what I am seeing on my print. Rough estimates are that somewhere around 1/16 of an inch is being cropped on the left, up to 1/8 inch off the top and bottom, and up to 1/4 inch off the right. The document size in Photoshop is 4×6, I am using 4×6 paper, the HP driver is set to print on 4×6 borderless…why is my image being cropped?!

Any help will be greatly appreciated. I am putting together an album for family and need to print 100 images. Some of the images are being cropped at the worst possible place. Thanks!
Related Tags
crop print problem see

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

B
Bernie
Jan 29, 2007
It’s likely the printer is enlarging the image a bit to have a bleed.
JH
Jesse_Harding
Jan 29, 2007
Hi Alex,
I’ve had similar issues and I think it comes down to the printer. Even when you set some printers (including mine which is also an HP) at borderless, there seems to be a default border assigned to it.

Have you tried printing out of Illustrator? Illustrator will show you the border you are working with so you might be able to see if you are actually borderless.

For printing large amounts of photos I actually use Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/). I know that doesn’t help you with your Photoshop question though.

Jesse

Hello ,

Recent upgrade to Photoshop CS2 and using relatively new HP Photosmart 8450 printer on WinXP Pro SP2. I am experiencing a problem trying to print my digital photos to 4×6 (borderless) photo paper. I am using the Image Size function to change the document size to 4×6 (no resampling) from the raw size of roughly 6.67"x10.03".
Everything looks good in my print preview but when I print the printed image is cropped. What I see in my preview screen is significantly different than what I am seeing on my print. Rough estimates are that somewhere around 1/16 of an inch is being cropped on the left, up to 1/8 inch off the top and bottom, and up to 1/4 inch off the right. The document size in Photoshop is 4×6, I am using 4×6 paper, the HP driver is set to print on 4×6 borderless…why is my image being cropped?!
Any help will be greatly appreciated. I am putting together an album for family and need to print 100 images. Some of the images are being cropped at the worst possible place. Thanks!
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Jan 29, 2007
Alex,

Just in case you’re not familiar with the term "bleed", that refers to overprinting beyond the paper edge. So, while you may have borderless printing, you don’t typically have crop-free printing when printing borderlessly. Epson points this out in their user manual and I’d hope that HP would do the same. So, if you have prints where critical image data is near the edge of the print,I would either make a test print and add in some margins to allow for the bleed area, or else print with borders so the full image is kept within your paper dimensions. It would likely be a bit difficult for a printer to offer crop-free borderless prints since exact paper feed and registration is hard to maintain, particularly as you swap between paper sizes and adjust the guide rail for the paper.

Regards,

Daryl
AM
Alex_Mustille
Jan 29, 2007
Daryl, thanks for the reply. I have heard of bleed and am aware of overprinting in borderless mode. It just seems that a lot of my image is missing in the final print. I suppose I was expecting something a little less dramatic…maybe in the 1/32-1/16" range. As I mentioned, the right side of my image is being chopped at around 1/4". If printing in default borderless mode means losing up to 1/2" of my image horizontally, this will not work for me as many of my shots are nature shots where I’ve carefully framed the image in an artistic way. There appears to be no mention of this in my HP printer manual, which is also surprising.

I would prefer to have my entire image (or at least much more of it than I am currently getting) present on my prints, so I guess I will have to play around with adding margins. At least the problem seems to be occuring consistently, so I should be able to apply similar document size settings to each instead of adjusting individually before printing.

Thanks again for your help, and I am open to others’ suggestions if there are other techniques out there not mentioned here yet.
AM
Alex_Mustille
Jan 30, 2007
I’ve been performing some margin tests, and the following document size settings seem to work best for printing a 4×6 digital photo on an HP Photosmart 8450 with minimal bleed "image loss" around the edges:

W5.75"xL3.823"

When I go to print with preview I have also had success with turning off the default "center image" checkbox and instead manually entering Top=.1" and Left=0" for the printing position. Of course, these settings are for landscape prints. For portrait, the dimensions are reversed, and I have found this slight adjustment of the position setting to be best: Top=0" and Left=.08"

Only a slight nuisance. Perhaps I will choose to print with a border the next time around…

This is a great forum…thanks to all who replied!

Alex
RB
Robert_Barnett
Jan 30, 2007
Most printer drivers provide a slider to set the amount of over bleed. I know my Epson’s do. They also default to the maximum amount. See if you can find a control for this, it should be close to the borderless option and then dial down to the middle setting or the lowest setting and see how that does.

Robert

—
Do not assume that because I didn’t reply to your comments that you are correct or that I am wrong or that I am correct and your are wrong. You can assume that you bore me!
T
Talker
Jan 31, 2007
On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:44:58 -0800,
wrote:

I’ve been performing some margin tests, and the following document size settings seem to work best for printing a 4×6 digital photo on an HP Photosmart 8450 with minimal bleed "image loss" around the edges:

W5.75"xL3.823"

When I go to print with preview I have also had success with turning off the default "center image" checkbox and instead manually entering Top=.1" and Left=0" for the printing position. Of course, these settings are for landscape prints. For portrait, the dimensions are reversed, and I have found this slight adjustment of the position setting to be best: Top=0" and Left=.08"

Only a slight nuisance. Perhaps I will choose to print with a border the next time around…
This is a great forum…thanks to all who replied!

Alex

I have the HP 7550 photo printer, and it does the same thing. If you want to have the whole image in the print, you have to resize it, like you mentioned. I always take it down to 5½" by 3½", and that seems to work fine. I have never experimented like you have to see just how large I could make the print before it gets cropped off. Mine also does the same thing when I try to print borderless prints. I can’t understand why HP figured it would be a good idea to enlarge the image to cover the entire 4×6 piece of paper, when the image is already resized to exactly 4×6. The best way to get a 4×6 is to place several of them on one canvas, and print them on an 8½ by 11 piece of paper. You can fit three 4×6’s on one 8½x11 sheet.

Talker

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections