Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I am using Windows 7 and Epson R2880 and printing TIFF files, post processed in Windows Pro 5.  I usually print either 8.5 by 11 or 13 by 19 inches with borders of .25, .5 or 1.0 inches.  When I attempt to set Qimage Ultime to print with .25 borders it comes out with asymmetrical borders, in portrait the left and right borders are about 1 iinch, the top is .25 and the bottom is a little less than 1 inch.  This is only one sample, but any attempt to set those borders comes out wrong with this type of problem.

I actually had it come out correctly once but cannot get it to do it again.  I assume I am making a mistake in my settings, but cannot find any instructions on how to handle this type of problem.

I am using Sigma cameras from the SD9 and have found Qimage is excellent for this camera, and want to continue doing so.

Thanks for your help!

Pete

Pete,
When you use the term borders, do you mean you added borders, or are you using the term borders to mean margins?
Then we can answer your question.
Also explain print size. You are using 8.5 x 11 paper and 13 x 19 paper, but what size prints?

Supper time here.
Be back before 6:00 PM EST

Fred

Fred,

Sorry about that.  I mean margins.

Pete

OK, now I need to have an idea what size prints?  Also to make this easier, check your selection of print placement.
See screen snap.
It might be just as simple as selecting Optimal Spaced or Centered as opposed to compact or Freehand.
So we need, print size and number of prints per page. Page size. Placement setting, and what Qimage reports at the very upper right area.
See screen snap.

Probably wont get back to you until early morning. But post the answers, and Terry or Brian will help as they live in the UK and are 5 hours ahead of us.
Although I am on here by 5 am EST, and that's early too.
Don't worry. Between all the good folks on here, you will be right as rain very shortly.

Fred

Fred,

O.K.  here are the settings on my last attempt:

With Default Print Properties set at:
“fit to page”

and Margins set at 0.0 (by Clearing Margins)

Current Size: 7.39 X 9
Auto Crop: On
Placement Optimal/Spaced

At top of picture it is: 8.498 X10.998 (700 X700)
these values are from picture itself.

The paper is 8.5 X 11.0 inch and the picture that prints out is top and bottom a little over an inch, the left side is a little over ½ inch and the right side is 3/4 inch.

I am quite sure if I tried any other settings I would get somwhat different results (often the print is offset in odd ways.
The main problem is I see no stable relationship between my settings and what is printed out.

If you need anything else let me know and thanks for your help and the help of others.

Pete

Hi Pete,
Before Fred gets here, one more query.
You said:
That really is a no-no. You should only get the printable are to match the paper size by selecting borderless in your driver and since your print size is well inside the printable area (3mm or 1/8th inch page margins is normal for Epson), you do not need borderless.
What are your "normal" page margins and printable area as reported by QU?
It may be you setting the margins to zero has confused the driver and all ok with them put back to normal (click clear margins).
Try that and wait to see if Fred has any more ideas - he may have the 2880 driver to check details.
Terry

Peter,
Good Morning,
I see that Terry has offered a good thought as to you possibly having invoked extra margins, using the margins setting in Qimage.
As he said, that's a no-no unless you are printing a book and need extra fixed to one side, or special greeting card of sorts.

I have been messing with your driver for a while, and finally managed to get a match to your settings.


This is the only one that I cannot duplicate because it is a product of having Qimage Fit to page when the printable area of the page was set to that size.
So I did it manually.
You would need to do FIT TO PAGE AGAIN to have QU resize the print.

Ok I managed to mess it up to where I duplicated your readings.
See screen snaps.

Screen snap 011 is the problem.
Take the check mark out of that Scaling box.

The simplest way to effect the fix is to go into Qimage Ultimate and click HELP and RESET PRINTER SETTINGS.
Qimage will shut down. Reopen QU and open the driver, (Printer Page Setup) top right corner, left button of three.
Now all you do is set the paper type; set the quality back to MAX QUALITY; and set the color controls to OFF if you use a printer profile or a different choice if you don't.
That's it!
OK yourself out of the driver.

Now you are set to normal.
Upper right says 720 x 720  and 10.766 x 8,266.

Ok Pete, now please explain what size print you wish to make with normal margins or with special margins.

Hope you are following us so far.
If not, just say, Fred! You lost me at this point.............

Fred

Fred,

O.K., I did that and now the picture does fit the settings, with the margins now 0.1181 for bottom and right side and 0.1167 for top and left side.  These are the fixed minimum amounts set by the printer.

The problem is that if I want, for example 0.25 margins I am not sure how I set the margins to get that. If I set an additional 0.25 to each of the margins, I still have the offset, that makes sense. But if I set the margins so that 0.25 is the total, I still have an offset similar to the one above. That does not make sense.

Does this make any sense to you?

Pete

Hi Pete,
You need to set "additional margins" with a value of the difference between 0.25" and the driver margin.
See an example for my R800, especially set to inches for you and Fred  ;D (note my forum title!!)
Epson printers do seem to have small differences in the page margins, side to side and top to bottom.
Don't forget this reduces the printable area.
Terry

Terry,

That is the problem, becaise I have had it set so that all four margins were the same.  If you are going to mount the prints using mattes then this does not matter, but I like to display the prints without this elaborate process, just putting a backing of the print.  The difference in the margins printed out is very disturbing.

The fact that I was able to find settings that gave me all four margins the same size suggests I should be able to do it again if I can figure out what I am now doing wrong.

Thanks.

Pete

I have your driver here.
Yes, you might have had the margins set properly, but when you put a check in the driver box called REDUCE/ENLARGE you mess it all up.
Avoid that, and it works.

Fred

Fred,

i do not have Reduce/Enlarge checked and i still have the problem.  What isinteresting is the fact that if I increase the margin to .50 the offsets get much larger, not just the small fixed offset set by the printer.

Incidentally, I just noticed that on the picture in the upper left corner is a small white box that says 2X2.  Is that relevant?

Pete

Very relevant!
It tells you that you asked Qimage to make a print that is larger than the printable area of the paper size you told the driver.

Pete,
Let's start over...
I know you had a checkmark in that Enlarge box before. Using RESET Printer from Qimage should have cleared it, and I'm sure it did.

But this should be very easy to do.

1) All I ask is that you tell me what size paper you are using, and did you select that size in the driver?

2) What size print are you trying to make?
If no particular size then:
2a) Are you simply trying to make a print as large as possible with .25 inch margins all the way around?

Never mind anything else.
Can you just reply to the above questions?

PS are you working with landscape or portrait orientation of the page?


Fred

Peter,
While waiting for your reply, I had a few moments to assume that you want the largest print possible with 1/4 inch margins all the way around.
I simply added the appropriate numbers as per Terry's attached screen snap which provided a 0.25 margin all the way around.

Then I clicked the Print Properties icon, selected Fit to Page, and added my image.

I ended up with 1/4 inch margins all the way around a print that is 8.0  x 10.50 inches.

I made a paper print on glossy to make sure the driver didn't change anything.

My driver on my R1800 is showing the exact same numbers as your 2880 driver. Same page/print dimensions.
So, I'm sure is Terry's R800

So please follow up and let's get you comfortable with Qimage Ultimate.

Fred

Fred,

Your assumptions are correct.  This is what I want to do.

And your advice was good as well. I think the key was the fact that I had to get the settings correct before I loaded a picture.  I have just printed out a picture at 0.25 and one at 0.5 margins and both of them printed out correctly, the margins are correct and all sides are the same.

One oddity, when I print out images that, up to now, fitted well into this size without cropping them, the prints come out with the side margins greater than the top and bottom.  If I put auto-crop on they are cropped and come out totally symmetrical.

I can, of course, make the size of the print smaller, but I am still curious why this has cropped up (pun intened) now.

Oh, how do i make these setting default so I do not have to do the whole setup each time?

Thank you so much for getting me this far.  With luck I  will have a stable printer now.

Pete

Pete,
I don't know the origins of the images for your prints. Were they cropped earlier? Are they from a camera?
Regardless, Qimage Ultimate is telling you that your requested print size 8.0 x 10.5 is a different shape (aspect ratio) from the image shape.
Qimage needs permission to crop a little on one side to allow it to expand the image to fill your other side.

Look at it this way.

Most SLR cameras produce an image at a ratio of 3:2. Most typical Point and Shoot cameras produce an image with a 4:3 ratio.
If you wanted to print a 5 x 7 print, neither aspect ratio matches 5 x 7, so Qimage will have to crop a little to fill out your size request.


Default?    Just close Qimage. It remembers everything. Next time you open it, it will be just like it is now.
If you should want to save the settings and use them on another day,

You can click FILE SAVE , and when the box opens you can click the S button and save the SETTINGS, or tick the "J" button and save the JOB.
When you want it again, click FILE RECALL and click the correct button and load it.
Another easy way to recall the settings is:
Click File and then OPEN Automated Job Log.
Find your previous print; highlight it, OPEN!
That's all there is to it.

Fred

Pete,
Not an oddity, it's all to do with aspect ratio of the image and print size. The side margins are bigger with crop scissors off because the aspect ratio of the image is not the same as the print.
Example.
10.5 x 8.0, ratio is  1.313
If the image is 1.5 (DSLR full size) the with crop scissors off the print will be 10.5 x 7.0
With crop scissors on, the image would be cropped. See screen shot attachments below.
2 off the page preview and one from the Cropping tab in the Page Editor
Terry

Fred and Terry.

That is all true, and I am using files from a DSLR.  The only problem I am having is up to now I have had no problem with this file (or others like it) needing a crop to be printed at 8.5 X 11 with a margin even of 0.25.  I have never had to drop to such a small print as I do now.

I can live with it, just curious why it is behaving this way now.

Again, thanks for solving my basic problem.  It was very annoying and you have gotten me back in business!


Pete

I repeat
Assuming your file is the same pixel size as tyour DSL camera, it's ratio is 1.5. A print of 8.5x11 is 1.29; one that is 8 x 10.5 is 1.31.
It's simple arithmetic that the 1.5 image does not fit 8.5x11 or 8x10.5, hence the need to crop. Of course 8.5x11 is not possible on 8.5x11 paper unless borderless is set.
What exactly do you mean by this, quote numbers? On that paper the biggest you can print is about 8.25x10.75 (no borderless set) and about 1/8th inch margins. I think you wanted 1/4" margins which we've dealt with already.
If you think you've printed bigger than this before in some other application, you've been fooled.
You had better watch the learning video "Aspect Ratios and Cropping" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pgHp45B1QXo&vq=hd720
Terry

Better listen to Terry.
He can do this tricky number stuff even in metric!

Seriously,
Had the crop scissor been on by default, you probably wouldn't have noticed as the print would have fit the printable area on the first insertion.
That's what the "other" programs do. 
"You want an 10.5 x 8.0? You got it!" They never give you the option of controlling crop on or off, 

Terry gave you some great screen snaps yesterday.
You can even control the placement of the crop. See the 4 screen snaps attached.

You slide the little picture around to include and exclude what you want. This is done in the PAGE EDITOR SCREEN.

Peter,
We (Terry especially, and I) would appreciate you telling is the pixel dimensions of the image you are going to print.
Simply place your mouse cursor on the thumbnail of this image, and read the dimensions in the "hotbar" lower left corner of Qimage/

You are looking for 2348 x 3522..... something like that!
Terry will explain it best from that information.

Thanks,
Fred

Fred and Terry

I did some checking in the other program and you were correct.  It was cropping automatically without notifying me of that fact.

You are correct. You are limited by the size of the paper and the amount of space the printer needs to print an image on that size of paper.

Thank you both for all your help.  I now understand what is going on and what I was doing wrong in setting up Qimage.

If I ever have any problems printing in Qimage again I also now know where to come to find great help in sorting it out.


Thanks again to you both.

Pete

Hi Pete,
We are pleased that you have got there. Qimage Ultimate is precise about print sizes, you can always see what size is being sent to the printer by looking on the Queue tab below the Preview.
You are welcome  ;)
Terry