It seems to me that you are trying to print near the limits of the canvas width, without understanding the settings within Qimage or your printer driver. That is why I suggested you started by printing a 20 inch square (or if you want to use metric, then 500mm would do  - just an easy size a bit below your canvas width - but remember which size you use). Just draw a square in Photoshop with a ten pixel wide brush, say, (you needn't waste ink) and crop the image to make it exactly square, with the colour at the edge of the image - we do not want a white border. When you get the image into QI, set the size to 500mm, and print it. Note your driver settings, if you've selected borderless printing/whatever, or in QI if you've selected anything else under the page formatting menu. Make sure you've set the page size in the driver to something like 24inches square. Measure the print on all four sides. If it is not square, or it's not within a mm or so of the 500mm, then let us know the measurements you get, and the details of your qi settings and printer driver settings.

Hello again,

So, Ray, my fault for not making it totally clear about the image I sent to print. The image that I created did indeed have the gallery edges and also a white border (2.5cm) to allow for the staples. The difference is that around the white border also had a black border just like you suggested in your test square example, that way I have cut lines but also it can't be considered as unprintable white space, so that when the dimensions in q are specified the entire image is printed. That's how I came up with the measurements being 5mm short. So...

On to Brian's comment about shrinkage, I've followed the links and it turns out that this is a common issue and so compensations must be made. Looks like we're back to you again Ray and your percentages and speadsheet, the yahoo post is talking specifically about the same media that I'm using (Breathing colo(u!)r) and the general thought is a percentage of 101.8% should be added to the length to allow for shrinkage. That just happens to be the suggestion for this brand but others will all vary.

My shrinkage does seem to be in both directions to a degree but it does seem to be that lengthwise along the roll it is shrinking evenly across the whole image therefore everything moves including the fold lines BUT across the width only the outside couple of inches seem to be moving so the fold marks aren't affected to a noticable degree.

Now I've applied varnish the shrinkage is now in the region of 10mm fyi.

I'm going to have a look at the feed adjustment and other settings too to see if anything else is messed up (I'll let you know) but for now it does seem like a question of making trial and error compensations until I get it right. Luckily my prints vary only from 30-75cm so I don't imagine there'll be a huge difference with settings across that range.

I guess if I stretch the finished image just across its length by the 101.8% as suggested it'll shrink back to its proper size. hmmm

Thanks again guys.

sQ

Hadn't even occurred to me to measure the whole canvas width, or that different images would vary in shrinkage, of  course it makes perfect sense when you think about it. Anyway, looks like we're resolved on this one. In a nutshell, canvas is a pain and forget about pixel perfection, it's not going to happen! Thanks to everyone for all your help, I've learned quite a bit over the last couple of days. Though mostly how my life isn't going to get any easier. haha

Cheers again.

sQ