Much appreciated, good point about Intelli-Center value in top to bottom centering. I can only tell you what my experience is:
Given the following:-same result for various paper types, sizes, manufacturers, as well as canon media type selections
-use of either the XPS or regular driver
-latest Qimage, and canon drivers and firmware
-image always sized/cropped so that it falls within the printable space for a given media-type selection (for example - 1 inch border for Canon Pro-Platinum)
Results:- In Qimage (Intelli-Center turned on): the right long-edge border of the print (when facing the printer) is always slightly larger that the left long-edge border of the print
- In Qimage (Intelli-Center turned off): print is perfectly centered
- Outside of Qimage: print is perfectly centered
***same result regardless of paper types, sizes, manufacturers, as well as canon/custom media type selections
To be clear, I am a huge fan of Q-Image and will continue to use it (note that I stopped directly printing out of photoshop and stopped using Image Print once I mastered Qimage a few years back). I was mortified this morning as the Canon tech took me through the process of successfully printing in Print Studio, we could not get the exact same success in Qimage, and I thought I might be forced to use it instead of Qimage. I was thrilled and finding a solution in Qimage that was so simple that worked.
Bottom Line: -What can I do to help you troubleshoot this issue? I will go and measure the paper for example.
Until I can find a fix:-I would rather use center where I am getting measured equal results and worry about 1-offs when I encounter them. I don't expect many as the variation is margins seems to be at the top and bottom in portrait mode where I am having the problem on the left and right.
As long as people realize, this is not good advice in general. Sometimes you get the right results... for the wrong reason. IntelliCenter centers prints on the physical paper; it works even if the non-printable margins are not equal. Center placement mode centers prints within the printable area, so when using Center placement, if you have a half inch non-printable margin on the bottom and a .25 inch margin on the top (which is common for some printers/papers), the Center placement option will not center the print on the page. It will be too high on the page due to the larger bottom margin. IntelliCenter on the other hand, will center the print even in that situation where the non-printable margins are unequal, provided you don't make the print so large that it is impossible to center it given those unequal margins. If your printer does have equal non-printable margins on the left/right and top/bottom, both center and IntelliCenter will perform identically.
IntelliCenter is what you want to use if you want the print centered on the physical paper every time. The only time it won't, as I pointed out, is if your printable area is not centered (your non-printable margins at the edges are unequal) and you do something like fill the entire printable area with a print (fit to page). In that case, you've filled a non-centered printable area with a print and there is no "slack" to move it to the center so no placement option will be able to center your print. But for most printing such as printing an 11x17 on 13x19 paper, an 8x10 on 8.5x11 paper, and so on, IntelliCenter will work perfectly.
Now, if it doesn't work, the fault does not lie with Qimage as there are other issues that can cause what you describe! These are listed below in order of probability.
(1) Paper is not the size you think it is. Measure your paper! I cannot stress this enough as I see it all the time. You buy a pack of 13x19 paper, print, and the print isn't centered. Get a tape measure and measure it. More than half the time when someone has this exact complaint, I'll get a response saying that the customer is shocked and the paper measured something different, say 12.75 x 13.1 inches. One tell-tale sign that this is the problem is when I ask them to turn on "Print Preview" in the driver so you get a driver preview before the print is actually printed. They usually find that the driver preview shows the print centered but when it comes out of the printer, it isn't. That's proof that Qimage has done it's job and the driver thinks the print should be centered: the reason it isn't is because the paper is not the size you told the driver!
(2) Paper loading mechanism isn't loading the paper properly (or straight). The loading mechanisms aren't perfect so they may load the paper a bit too far to one side (or even crooked).
(3) The driver doesn't have the proper margins stored in its selection for the media size you selected. I put this last because I've only seen it once, but after ruling out the first two, this is the only other option. Remember that Qimage gets all specifications for the paper from the driver and that includes the non-printable margins. Ruling out the first two scenarios, the only way Qimage can be wrong when centering a print in IntelliCenter is if the driver itself is wrong.
Mike
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