Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi. I am almost finished with my trial time of ultimate, I love it except:I can’t get an image to center most of the time. Background: I use a prograff1000 with windows 10. I can print an image with canon print studio with a border and it’s always centered within the tolerance. In qimage it appears centered. The number say it’s placed on the page centered but the print will be short on the right side most of the time. I have tried align center in preferences , intelicenter etc. now I am spinning my wheels, checking bordeeless, normal in the driver I know I am missing something somewhere. If I am printing an 81/2 x 11 paper and using a .5 in the B border hitting fit to page. And in the edit window the left and right say .26 let’s say and it appears centered what am I missing in the driver side that will cause the image to have a clear discrepancy left and right sided spacing. With the same driver settings it prints within tolerance in print studio pro. Any advice would be great as I love the software but just can’t seem to ge the workflow correct.

There are two things you should do.  First, turn on print preview in the driver.  Does it look centered in the driver's preview?  Second, actually measure the paper: is it exactly 8.5 inches in width?

Regards,
Mike

Thanks. Will do on the preview. Yes the paper measures good. Canson.  I read lots of discrepancies about if in the driver I should check borderless. Any thoughts. Thx.

You typically only use borderless when you need to exceed the print size offered by non-borderless mode but you can also use it to center prints that are too large to center in non-borderless mode.  For example, the Pro-1000 has an 8.0 x 10.685 inch printable area for 8.5x11 paper but the non-printable margins are not equal (the printable area is not centered).  In non-borderless mode, if you try to print a fit-to-page print (with auto cropping on), you'll get an 8.0 x 10.685 inch print but it cannot be centered vertically (on the 11 inch side) because the top non-printable margin is smaller than the bottom.  You can get around that by printing in borderless mode.  In any case, the location (distances from paper edge) listed in the full page editor should be accurate within a millimeter or two: the tolerance of the paper feed mechanism.  The driver reports the size of the non-printable margins and those locations are the physical locations on the paper as reported by the driver.  If those are not accurate, either the driver isn't working properly or the paper loading mechanism has a problem.

I will mention that Canon XPS drivers have a lot of bugs, many of them related to margins.  If you are using the Pro-1000 XPS driver, switch to the normal (non-XPS) driver and see if that makes a difference.

Mike

Ah. I am using the XPS driver. I will try the the other driver. Interesting. When I put the driver in borderless do I then have to go into preferences “margins” and choose align in center, then fit to page again? Or just leave it? Thanks for all the help.

You should set all of the additional margins in preferences to zero by clicking "clear margins".  IntelliCenter will center prints regardless of margins.  The only time IntelliCenter won't center is when it can't: because the print is too large to be centered in a non-centered printable area.

Mike

Thank you for the tips. I have been able to get some prints centered, and a few not centered even though the numbers say it’s centered and the print preview looks centered. Print head is aligned.  What exactly are those numbers in the margins preference? And every time I make a print I have to zero them? Something doesn’t add up.  Not saying it’s the software, it’s always user error in my book. I just wish I was getting somewhere, I just feel like every time I hit print I am crossing my fingers.

Mike, I was reading An answer you gave to another gentleman.  Should I be using intelispace? I am printing Canson  platine on canon1000. Printable borders are not even and I want the image centered on the entire paper. 

Always use IntelliCenter if you want prints centered on the paper.  It will center all prints regardless of margins unless you make the print so big that it is physically impossible to center it (not enough "slack" left in the printable area to center a print that big).

Mike

A consistency I have noticed is with 5x7 paper. In landscape mode, normal printing in the driver.  I did some tests. I set the image well within the boundaries of the printable area. And the number all say centered as does the preview looked centered. And the print is always a little longer on the right side. That is for any type of 5x7 paper. It is consistent. Is there something I should check?

Activate print preview in the driver so that the driver shows you the page before the printer actually print it: does it look centered in the driver's preview?

Next, measure the paper: is it exactly 5x7?

Now measure the print on the paper: is it exactly the size shown in QU?

Finally, measure the distance from all 4 edges of the paper to the edge of the print and compare those to the 4 numbers in the page editor (click on the Edit Page button under the live view and then look at the 4 numbers on the Size/Loc tab in the page editor).

If we have the answer to those questions, we can know exactly what is going on.

Mike

Thanks for all your help. I am happy to say that I have been consistently getting good centered prints now except for Moab 5x7 which stubbornly will not produce a centered print.  To run 5x7 matte on the pro graf you have to correct the driver to accept the paper into the top feeder. I kinda feel like maybe the top feed cannot correctly load a 300 weight paper straight because every other paper is doing fine. The Moab looks great in print preview but the print is always uneven if it has borders.  Anyone have success with a 300 weight paper in the top loader? Thank you again.

If the print is the correct size, that would mean the white gap to the left of the print is larger than the white gap to the right of the print.  If that's the case, then for some reason the printer is loading the paper shifted to the right a bit (when looking from the front of the printer) instead of loading it centered.

How do you "correct the driver" to get matte paper to use the top feed?  I can see no way to do that because when you select the premium matte paper, the driver only allows manual feed: that's the only selection.

Edit: I see you can select top tray if you use just matte paper and not premium matte.  There are warnings in the driver about using standard paper sizes that don't allow for large margins though.  It is possible that the printer just wasn't designed to print on matte paper unless you resort to one of the paper sizes with large margins and you are experiencing one of the pitfalls of overriding that warning.

Mike

Yes. The pro graf actually doesn’t even allow “matte” in the top feed at 5x7. You have check the clear margins in the driver window to allow for the paper to be accepted.  A normal 5x7 is printing fine. I believe I have it all together now. I hope. Every time  I print I am crossing my fingers. But I did about 30 prints yesterday and besides two that had slightly crooked prints and those I believe the paper just didn’t load correctly.

Since I have been looking under a microscope at my prints, I have a question.  If I print an image with 1 inch border all the way around, how critical should I judge the print as far as the one inch being perfect on all four sides from the edge?

It's only going to be as accurate as the paper loading mechanism.  Don't expect much better than about a 1 or 2mm error.

Mike

FWIW - Over the past 15 years I have had 4 different printers - all of them Epsons.  None of them printed perfectly in the center.  Doesn't matter what software used to print.  Epson print preview shows perfect centering. Always off left to right (Perfectly fine in the direction of the feed) by a very slight - but noticeable amount.  Also, on larger prints (12x18 say), skews slights across the length - maybe a couple of mm.  Sheet feed or front load, doesn't matter.  It's a purely mechanical thing. I usually print borderless or trim prints to size so it has not been a problem for me.  On the rare occasions where I need centering, I appropriately adjust the offsets in QU.  I realize this is a different printer, but I have just assumed it was normal.

If the skew is always consistent (always off to the right by the same amount for example), you can compensate by changing the page margins in QU.  If the paper you are using allows borderless mode, you can do something like get a perfect 1/4 inch border around the entire page.  You just have to play with the margins until you compensate for the paper loading not being centered... and turn off the overspray/expansion.

Mike

Happy to say I purchased the software yesterday. Great software. Great help.

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