Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi folks,

I use two different printers with QI - an HP B9180 for larger size prints and a Canon iP4500 for more "routine" stuff.

Using an A2 cut down the middle (210mm x 594mm) I can print a pan on the HP with no difficulty and I have done it on the Canon too (with the same size of paper). Now, for some reason, I've  lost or forgotten the setup on the Canon. In the Canon driver, I've set up a paper size of 594 x 210 mm (allowed in the driver settings) and a page size equal to or a little less than that. When I open the print properties dialog box from QI it shows the size as "Custom (scaled)" and prints accordingly (i.e. much too small). The "preview" in QI itself looks fine. The Canon help file is of little use with this and I've searched elsewhere with little success. The other thing I can't seem to do (any more) is to name the custom paper size - I had been able to do this in the past. When I select the size under "Custom" there seems no way and nowhere to name that custom size. Nor does there seem any way to delete the ones I set in the past.

My memory eludes me (well I am nearly 70)  ;D

Regards

John

I'm on the way to a solution here. In the B9180 driver, you can name individual custom sizes. When you do this, they also appear in the Canon list of available paper sizes! As far as I can tell, they only appear there if they don't exceed the size limits imposed by the Canon driver.

I have also experimented (with the Canon) with setting the paper in portrait mode. When you drag the thumbnail across in QI with "Fit to Page" set, it re-orientates itself and seems to work.

A useful thing here is that if the native printer driver includes a preview option, then provide QI is routed through the native driver you at least see what's going to happen.

A preview option like this would be invaluable in QI - the preview pane doesn't always display what will really happen, as I found out out!

That's the one thing you can count on; Qimage will show you what you are sending to the driver.
If you have scaling or enlarging turned on in the driver, that will alter the print after Qimage has sent the correct data.


The Print Properties box in Qimage is actually your Canon print driver. Your settings or changes in there are being applied after Qimage has finished sending the data.
Hope this helps,
Fred

Hi all,

I've found how to set custom page sizes in Windows (certainly for XP, probably similar procedure in other flavours). Apologies to those who knew this already, but I hope it helps those who did not!

Open Control Panel/Printers and Faxes. Right click on the "white space" in the opened window, and choose Server Properties. In that dialog, click on 'Create a new form', specify the dimensions, name it and save. That's it! It will now be available to any printer that can handle the dimensions.

Hope this helps.

John

Brilliant tip thanks.