Borderless Printing

[Rekusu]

What ho gents and ladies,

I have recently acquired a Pixma MP 640 printer that apparently was not working. Whatever, it does appear to be working just fine so I bought some new ink cartridges.

I'm a bit of a rookie with colour printing. My photos are usually submitted to photo-libraries so I don't bother printing.

Recently, I have been reworking some images to make them 'vintage,' sepia or hand coloured with torn or fuzzy borders. To make the 'torn' border stand out, I set the image size to A4, filled with black and dropped the image in. The result is a vintage image with a thin (3/4mm) black border, all within A4.

Now I come to printing with the MP640 and the problem. It has two settings for A4; white border or borderless. If I select white, it does what it says on the box, and now the printed image is smaller than A4 by 3/4mm size of the white border.

If I select borderless, it enlarges the image a little to give a 'bleed' area, hence borderless. The result is a printed image that does not have my original narrow 3/4mm black border, and the 'vintage/torn' edge is either on the very edge of the A4 sheet or is cut off altogether.

So my question is, is it possible to print an A4sized image onto A4 paper with the MP640, without either slight enlargement or reduction in size? I only want what I have on-screen, nothing more, nothing less. Sample of A4 image attached

Thanks,

Rekusu

 

[Łukasz]

Hi,

please take a look on that thread:
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/canon-easy-print-crops-photos.9215/

Maybe some demo:

Special notes on Pixma driver settings in borderless mode:
- by default, Pixma driver enlarge borderless prints to 104% of its original size

There is a slider in printer driver to set "100%", "102%", "104%" or "106%" enlargement for borderless print. If "100%" is set, some quirks may be spotted on prints, including:
- very thin white margins
- a little skewed print
- white margin at trailing edge

I'll strongly recommend to read all postings - especially:

Well.... printing borderless is impossible in most printers without cropping or enlarging the image do that it is guaranteed to fall outside the paper's borders. Paper positioning on printer is very inaccurate and that is why the driver must enlarge it beyond the edges of the paper.

If I may suggest something - try to re calculate canvas size with overprint value, then add thicker black(?) borders.
Border overprint for A4 size print seems to be:

• 100% - none
• 102% - +1% each side: 2,1 mm left/right, 3 mm top/bottom
• 104% - +2% each side: 4,2 mm left/right, 6 mm top/bottom
• 106% - +3% each side: 6,3 mm left/right, 9 mm top/bottom

(top/bottom margins seems to be affected by something else - please consider printing standalone border first on plain paper with settings for photo paper, and if it is OK, then try to print your work).

And switching printer to silent mode may produce better feeding accuracy.

Ł.

 

[The Hat]

There is one other thing you can try to achieve your perfect black border.

Just output your print as normal but on a paper size of 215 x 305 (RA4) and trim afterwards, or reduce your print by 4% on A4 to get the same result, but smaller.

 

[PeterBJ]

I wonder, will a Canon A4 printer handle the slightly larger RA4 format? And can you buy photo paper in this format?

 

[Łukasz]

On my local market it is possible to get A3+ non-OEM photo papers (just cut it to A4+).

By custom paper size, it is possible to print on media up to 215,9 x 676 mm, so hardware-level paper handling should be OK
But printable area isn't up with that... is only 203 x 667 mm.
It is main reason, why I consider hacking the printer driver

Ł.

 

[The Hat]

On my local market it is possible to get A3+ non-OEM photo papers (just cut it to A4+).

By custom paper size, it is possible to print on media up to 215,9 x 676 mm, so hardware-level paper handling should be OK
But printable area isn't up with that... is only 203 x 667 mm.
It is main reason, why I consider hacking the printer driver

Ł.

That’s the same way I get RA4 sizes from splitting A3+
The Canon will print 209 max x 660 mm this allows for the 3 mm margins..

 

[fotofreek]

Rekusu - Please tell us the locations of the photo you have on your initial post. Great job of converting it to an aged sepia print!