bordeless alignment issues with Pixma Pro 9000 II

[capitanfracassa]

I have a new Pixma Pro 9000 II printer and I am trying to print from Photoshop onto the old world equivalent of 4x6", which is 100x150mm.

In borderless mode there is no custom paper size, so I have to choose 4x6".

Photoshop reports the paper to be 101.6 x 152.4mm. The image is exactly 100x150mm, which are also the real dimensions of the paper.

Printing with zero offset and scaling result in perfect alignment on the bottom left corner (in landscape orientation, physically it is the top left corner). The top and right side are about 4% cropped.

With trial and error I got decent results (about equal 0.5% crop on each side) with 97.1% scaling, and offsetting the top 0.317mm and the left 0.176.

This is very annoying, and it took me over a dozen prints to get there.

But moreover, it is offending my sense of an orderly universe. These numbers seem totally arbitrary, unrelated to either the real or the virtual paper size.


What gives?

 

[The Hat]

capitanfracassa

OK lets get right to the bottom of your real problem and that is your print setup.
The Pro 9000 will print 4 x 6 borderless no problem whats so ever.

What I can see from your description above is youre trying to print 6 x 4 instead of 4 x 6.
Your printer will print borderless on photo glossy paper in these sizes.
3 x 5" 4 x 6 4 x 5 4 x 7 5 x 7 8 x 10
8 x 11 8 x 11 10 x 12 11 x 16 13 x 19 14 x 17

All the sizes I have listed are at Imperial size but some in the print setup are also in metre.
Photoshop does indeed list 4 x6 as 101.6 x 152.4mm thats exact, but the actual size is 102 x 153mm.

So which ever size you choose to use for your borderless prints, just remember to select portrait only
and not landscape and youll not have any more wasted paper.
Happy Printing..

 

[capitanfracassa]

@The Hat,
I don't know what in what I wrote made you read it that way. But that isn't the problem as far as I can see.

The image is landscape (horizontal 150mm, vertical 100mm). The paper is always loaded according to Canon instructions in portrait form (horizontal 100mm, vertical 150mm).
In order to print a landscape image you need to tick the landscape button, otherwise you get half size print in the top half of the paper.
That is why the top left corner of the paper as fed to the printer is actually the bottom left corner of the right side up image.

Orientation problems would have caused a 33% or 50% misalignment problem.

 

[The Hat]

@The Hat,
I don't know what in what I wrote made you read it that way. But that isn't the problem as far as I can see.

The image is landscape (horizontal 150mm, vertical 100mm). The paper is always loaded according to Canon instructions in portrait form (horizontal 100mm, vertical 150mm).
In order to print a landscape image you need to tick the landscape button, otherwise you get half size print in the top half of the paper.
That is why the top left corner of the paper as fed to the printer is actually the bottom left corner of the right side up image.

Orientation problems would have caused a 33% or 50% misalignment problem.

No I reckon I called it right the first time.
Try rotating your print in Photoshop from landscape to portrait first then proceed to print setup
and set it to portrait and you will find it works perfectly for you.

To properly utilise borderless printing with Canon printers you need to match
the exact conditions of printer driver, not the other way around.

Otherwise the printer will not print your pictures correctly
as you already have found out to your own cost..

 

[capitanfracassa]

Try rotating your print in Photoshop from landscape to portrait first then proceed to print setup
and set it to portrait and you will find it works perfectly for you.

To properly utilise borderless printing with Canon printers you need to match
the exact conditions of printer driver, not the other way around.

Otherwise the printer will not print your pictures correctly
as you already have found out to your own cost..

OK, I tried. It didn't solve the problem. I haven't checked if the offest problem is different. But the scaling problem appears the same.

 

[The Hat]

capitanfracassa
It sounds like your problem is with Photoshop and not the printer at all.
Try clicking on image on the task bar and select (image size) change your width and height to 102 x 153 mm,
then just print out your photo with no cropping or scaling and it will work trust me.

 

[fotofreek]

I don't know about the full photoshop program, but in Photoshop elements, when you click on the printer ikon, you can use the print preview window to change a file from portrait to landscape or the reverse before sending it to the printer. That way, you don't have to change the orientation of the photo in photoshop before sending it to the printer. Since Elements is a subset of functions from the full Photoshop program I expect that the same function is available there as well.

When printing borderless I expect that you know how to select how much expansion of the image you want to avoid any borders. There is also a function to center a print. I've also had a printer that permitted the print to skew slightly as it was going through the printer and I got a slight white border on one side.

 

[capitanfracassa]

When printing borderless I expect that you know how to select how much expansion of the image you want to avoid any borders. There is also a function to center a print. I've also had a printer that permitted the print to skew slightly as it was going through the printer and I got a slight white border on one side.

Since this is my first encounter with canon printer driver, I did not know about the expansion setting. That was the cause of the unwanted scaling of the image. Now that I set it on the minimum, the scaling went away. Thank you!

Having done that, I noticed that the orientation change (which is done in photoshop, but I assume photoshop merely sends the command to the printer) screws the offset. I suspect that had I used real 4x6" paper, the orientation change
would have worked correctly, but with 100x150 paper and 4x6" printer setting, the orientation change is incorrectly computed, so The Hat's advice to rotate in photoshop before printing is the only solution.

My new settings are Portrait, minimal expansion, 0 offsets, 0 scaling, and image set to 100.06 x 151mm. Using the print dialog "center" button doesn't work as well because the center is relative to the paper size, and since the paper size is wrong, the centering is off.

The printer is good, and the mystery was solved. But Canon's shenanigans, expecting me to import paper from the US, are offensive.

 

[stratman]

The Hat is one of the go to guys with these big boy printers. You gotta question, The Hat's gotta solution.

I've never used the Pro 9000 II printer, but is there a print preview function in your Canon driver software that would show image alignment problems before printing? That function has saved me a few times from wasting paper, disks and ink with my printer.

 

[fotofreek]

The Hat is one of the go to guys with these big boy printers. You gotta question, The Hat's gotta solution.

I've never used the Pro 9000 II printer, but is there a print preview function in your Canon driver software that would show image alignment problems before printing? That function has saved me a few times from wasting paper, disks and ink with my printer.

Photoshop elements (and probably the big photoshop program) has a "print preview dialogue box" that has a function for changing the image to portrait from landscape or the reverse. It is also great for reminding you that you had not cropped the image to fit the selected paper size. Saves paper, ink, time, and moments of anger.