Positioning prints centrally on a Greeting Card

<p>This may appeal to those with a mathematical bent!<br>

I have brought some photorag greeting cards which are 420 x 148.5 mm with a vertical fold<br>

When they folded they measure 210 x 148.5 mm.<br>

I have an Epson 3800 printer<br>

My task is to print a 7.5 x 5 inch (190.5 x 127mm) image on a greeting card centrally on the greeting card with an equal border all the way round.<br>

Now when I load the card I know that Epson cannot do borderless printing for this paper-size. Instead it reduces the image size to 96%<br>

It also seems to want to put an 8mm border on the long edge and a 3mm border on the short edges <br>

Try as I may I cannot do get the image centered.<br>

How do I achieve this?<br>

Tim</p>

<p>Did you try making a custom page size? Set the margin to 0.56 all the way around and see if that gets you any closer. </p>

<p>well, it'd be helpful to know what program you're using to try to print. Usually, the 38xx wants to put a 1/8th (0.125") border around everything and yes, borderless is limited to Epson defined print sizes, not random or custom sizes. It's not obvious why it would throw a 8mm border. How do you have the custom paper size defined? It may just be a by-product of the exact size/aspect ratio of the image vs. the printable area of the paper, you end up having to 'zoom' it in a bit in order to get a full image</p>

<p>Thanks for responses thus far. I am using Lightroom. My custom page is defined correctly. The image is surrounded by a border which I created in photoshop. The image is centralised using photoshop.</p>

Position of an image within a page depends on the printer and the software. The printer may impose borders so that the

page may be transported in a proprietary manner. There are also variations in registration, which are approximately 1/16"

for ink jets. My laser jet has a positional error of about 1/32", which is more significant the narrower the border.

 

 

If you can't tolerate an uneven border, the best approach my be trimming for a full bleed, or setting the border to 1/4" or

more to minimize the effect of registration errors.

 

 

I use Adobe InDesign for layouts, which introduces negligible error.

<p>This will probably depend on what program you are using to print your greeting card. I am using Photoshop, and here is how I would do it. The idea is to make an image of the complete greeting card (including all the white, non printed area) and print it centered on the paper with 100% scaling.</p>

<p>First I will make a new blank (white) image in Photoshop with the exact same size as the paper, i.e. 420 mm x 148.5 mm. It must have the exact same resolution as the image that you want to print.</p>

<p>Then I copy the image on top of this new blank image(in Photoshop as a new layer). You must place the image on the greeting card exactly where you want to have it. I now have an image of the complete greeting card with the image on it and with the exact same size as the paper you want to print it on.<br /> <br />I then will print this new image. When using Photoshop to print, I will first get Photoshops dialog for printing. Here I ensure that the image is centered on the paper and that the scaling is 100% (not fit on paper or its like).</p>

<p>When I open the printers dialog window I will selelct a user define paper size. I will sett it to the greeting cards size, i.e. 420 mm x 148.5 mm. Also ensure that output paper is set to be "Same as paper size" and that no reduce/enlarge or fit on paper is selected. You don't want that.</p>

<p>Hope this was of any help.</p>

<p>Thank you Frode- that is most helpful. It seems that Photoshop has a slightly more intuitive screen than Lightoom and I think this has cracked the problem.<br>

Many thanks<br>

Tim</p>

<p>You will probably get a message about the image being greater than the printable paper size. This is about the part of the image that will fall in the non-printable part of the paper (the border because you cannot print border less, but your new image includes this area). Just proceed. I have the 3880 printer and a Windows 7 PC, and in the printer's setting dialog I can select to have a preview. I always turn that on so I can have a final look at the image before using any paper on it. Beware that the colors might be way out (straight out gruesome!) on that preview. I assume it is because that preview is not color managed.</p>

<p><em>"Then I copy the image on top of this new blank image(in Photoshop as a new layer)".</em><br>

Just out of curiosity. What is the difference of having a layer over the background or printing a flattened copy. I am asking, because I know that some software has to be “tricked” to do what you want it to do.<br>

Thanks,<br>

GS</p>

 

<p>There will be no difference if you merge the layers, and the description I gave will give you a white background layer with the image layer above it. It required the fewest steps, and it doesn't require you to calculate anything. You can use the rulers in Photoshop to check when all the borders are of equal size.</p>

<p>Silly me! I had the impresion that a borderless print was the goal.</p>

<p>In a way it is borderless printing (100% scaling, centered). There will be an unprinted area around the whole paper. Since the image is white in this area, it does not do any difference.<br>

Btw: Borderless printing is only possible on some standard sizes of paper on the 3880 (and I believe that this is the same with the 3800)</p>

Get a piece of ordinary A4 paper and do various test prints till it lines up properly. If the card you are using is not an A4 dimension cut you ordinary paper to the same size as the card before you do a series of test prints. You can usually do three or four test prints on one sheet of paper. I do this regularly for birthday cards for the family.