large format printing : Wide Load
Background
Wide format printers are getting cheaper and more economical, making large prints like 13x20, 20x30, and larger possible even for the advanced amateur. Logic dictates that a wide format inkjet printer is nothing more than a big printer and that printing to a wide format printer should be no different than printing to your typical desktop inkjet except that it allows you to work with larger page sizes. Unfortunately there are a lot of snags that you may encounter when printing (very) large prints. Most involve printer/driver setup and are easily corrected while others may require a rethink on how you have your equipment connected, what type of equipment you are using to print, whether or not your current hard drive has the capacity for wide format printing, whether or not you need more RAM, etc. Let's take a look at printing large and we'll try to cover all the common missteps in the minefield. We'll keep both Qimage and PhotoShop in mind for this article as those are popular PC/Windows printing applications and are the applications that I deal with most in wide format printing.
Page Size
Wide format printers often handle paper/page size differently than your average inkjet, particularly with respect to borderless or "no margins" printing. First, it is important to realize that there are two methods that drivers use to perform borderless printing: expand page and expand prints. In the expand page mode, the driver simply increases the size of the page so that it is larger than the physical paper size. In this borderless printing mode, the driver will actually show a printable area larger than the physical paper size. For example, a 16 inch wide roll may show as 16.23 inches across in your printing software. What is actually happening is that the driver is printing approximately .12 inches off the left and right edges of the roll. With this method, it is important to print your large prints in the center of the page. For example, use "centered" or "optimal/spaced" in Qimage. This will ensure that the "overspray" that extends off the edges of the paper is minimized and you won't lose the edges of the print because they are printing up against one edge or the other. If you use something like "compact" or "optimal", Qimage will place the print at the left edge of the paper and .12 inches of the print will be off the page, cropping the print slightly. Epson calls this expand page mode "Retain Size" in their latest wide format drivers. In the older (7600/9600) drivers, this was the only option available so no options were visible. What you need to keep in mind with the expand page mode is that the driver expands the page size so that it extends slightly beyond the edges of the paper. In doing so, it is possible to print off the edge of the paper and lose some of your prints. Try to avoid this "clipping" by not printing anything all the way against the left/right edges of the paper when aligning your prints on the page preview on screen.
The other method of borderless printing (one that is used on most standard inkjet printers) is the expand prints mode. In this mode, the printable area remains the size of the paper (16.0 inches across for example), but prints are expanded in size. With this mode, you can specify 16 inches as the width and the driver will "artificially" expand the print to 16.23 inches so that the print is large enough for some overspray to the left/right: the overspray eliminates tiny slivers of unprinted paper at the edges due to slight misalignment of the paper. This mode is more common but often more confusing because every print you send will be slightly larger than what you specified. Even if you print 4x6 prints on a 16x20 page, the 4x6 prints will be just slightly larger than 4x6 and this may confuse people or prompt them to blame the printing software for the size problem when in fact it is the driver that took the 4x6 print and expanded it after the fact. If the expand prints mode (called "Auto Expand" by Epson in their latest wide format drivers) is being used, Qimage does have an option that can defeat the size expansion so that you can obtain prints of the specified size without the driver expanding them. See "Page Formatting", "Borderless Overspray/Expansion" in Qimage. Some drivers even allow you to turn this expansion off (or at least reduce it) by dragging the "amount of extension" slider all the way to the left in the driver. Keep in mind that doing this produces less overspray so any "sloppiness" in the paper loading mechanism may show up as unprinted slivers on the edges of the print.
Content copyright © 1998-2006 Steve's Digicam Online, Inc.
Wide format printers are getting cheaper and more economical, making large prints like 13x20, 20x30, and larger possible even for the advanced amateur. Logic dictates that a wide format inkjet printer is nothing more than a big printer and that printing to a wide format printer should be no different than printing to your typical desktop inkjet except that it allows you to work with larger page sizes. Unfortunately there are a lot of snags that you may encounter when printing (very) large prints. Most involve printer/driver setup and are easily corrected while others may require a rethink on how you have your equipment connected, what type of equipment you are using to print, whether or not your current hard drive has the capacity for wide format printing, whether or not you need more RAM, etc. Let's take a look at printing large and we'll try to cover all the common missteps in the minefield. We'll keep both Qimage and PhotoShop in mind for this article as those are popular PC/Windows printing applications and are the applications that I deal with most in wide format printing.
Page Size
Wide format printers often handle paper/page size differently than your average inkjet, particularly with respect to borderless or "no margins" printing. First, it is important to realize that there are two methods that drivers use to perform borderless printing: expand page and expand prints. In the expand page mode, the driver simply increases the size of the page so that it is larger than the physical paper size. In this borderless printing mode, the driver will actually show a printable area larger than the physical paper size. For example, a 16 inch wide roll may show as 16.23 inches across in your printing software. What is actually happening is that the driver is printing approximately .12 inches off the left and right edges of the roll. With this method, it is important to print your large prints in the center of the page. For example, use "centered" or "optimal/spaced" in Qimage. This will ensure that the "overspray" that extends off the edges of the paper is minimized and you won't lose the edges of the print because they are printing up against one edge or the other. If you use something like "compact" or "optimal", Qimage will place the print at the left edge of the paper and .12 inches of the print will be off the page, cropping the print slightly. Epson calls this expand page mode "Retain Size" in their latest wide format drivers. In the older (7600/9600) drivers, this was the only option available so no options were visible. What you need to keep in mind with the expand page mode is that the driver expands the page size so that it extends slightly beyond the edges of the paper. In doing so, it is possible to print off the edge of the paper and lose some of your prints. Try to avoid this "clipping" by not printing anything all the way against the left/right edges of the paper when aligning your prints on the page preview on screen.
The other method of borderless printing (one that is used on most standard inkjet printers) is the expand prints mode. In this mode, the printable area remains the size of the paper (16.0 inches across for example), but prints are expanded in size. With this mode, you can specify 16 inches as the width and the driver will "artificially" expand the print to 16.23 inches so that the print is large enough for some overspray to the left/right: the overspray eliminates tiny slivers of unprinted paper at the edges due to slight misalignment of the paper. This mode is more common but often more confusing because every print you send will be slightly larger than what you specified. Even if you print 4x6 prints on a 16x20 page, the 4x6 prints will be just slightly larger than 4x6 and this may confuse people or prompt them to blame the printing software for the size problem when in fact it is the driver that took the 4x6 print and expanded it after the fact. If the expand prints mode (called "Auto Expand" by Epson in their latest wide format drivers) is being used, Qimage does have an option that can defeat the size expansion so that you can obtain prints of the specified size without the driver expanding them. See "Page Formatting", "Borderless Overspray/Expansion" in Qimage. Some drivers even allow you to turn this expansion off (or at least reduce it) by dragging the "amount of extension" slider all the way to the left in the driver. Keep in mind that doing this produces less overspray so any "sloppiness" in the paper loading mechanism may show up as unprinted slivers on the edges of the print.
Content copyright © 1998-2006 Steve's Digicam Online, Inc.
