Borderless printing on the 3800

[Crying Saul]

Hello all. I'm sure this has been asked before but I couldn't find anything by searching the forum. I'm having trouble with getting borderless prints on my new 3800. I've read the Epson manual, which states that you either (1) use Auto Expand or (2) manually oversize the image in PS and then select Retain Size in the driver.

Please have a look at the screenshot called 1.jpg below. I can't select any of the borderless options unless I check "Scale to fit paper size".

If I want to go through the "Auto Expand" route, then it seems I also need to disable "Scale down only" (because I want the printer to upscale the photo so that it slightly exceeds the paper size – the Epson manual says it's around 3%, ajustable via the driver which is currently set to Max on my machine).

When I finish with those two checkboxes, I can then proceed to what is shown on the second screenshot.

Problem is, I've tried Auto Expand *and* Retain Size, both with A4 Traditional Paper and A3+ Premium Luster, but nothing remotely borderless comes out of the printer. At one time it actually cropped the image while still leaving around 5 cm of white margins all around it (around 2 inches). Obviously I'm doing something wrong or missing something in the driver's settings, but I don't know what i might be...

Thanks for any help.

[Wayne Fox]

I printed a borderless super A3/B print on my 3800 just now to replicate your problem,  and it seemed to work fine.  I used the sheet feeder option rahter than the rear feed but that shouldn't matter.

Not sure what I did different than you, but here are my steps ... perhaps you can pick up something.

first I resized the print without resampling  to be 19" tall, which let it 15" wide.  I chose the correct paper size/feed option  except I was using the auto feeder.

In the next dialog in Photoshop, I made sure the scale to fit media box was turned off.  Setting this to scale to fit media may be problematic, because I think photoshop will send a file based on the printer needing to leave a border all the way around it.  Turned off, Photoshop will send whatever the document size specified in the file itself.   If you don't resize it as I mentioned above, you may be able to just enter 19" or 13" in the correct box here.

The first dialog box you posted i(paper handling) is probably irrelevant.  to be honest I've never ever used that dialog in the driver.  At this point I think you just need to make sure the Print Settings menu shows the correct paper size/feed path with borderless (auto expand) in the page setup line.

Not sure I'm being very clear.  If this is confusing let me know and I'll post a couple of screen shots for you.

[Crying Saul]

Ah, Mr. Fox, your reply has been an illumination... I had the feeling that the paper size and feed path were supposed to be chosen *prior* to accessing the driver settings, only every time I went to Page Setup in Photoshop, the paper sizes that were available to me were A4, Super A3 and several others, without any of the detailed Epson page sizes and border/less options. Since I was only printing on these two formats, it suited me fine.

However, upon reading your post, it was obvious that you were setting your page before accessing the driver settings, and I set out to have just one more look. Well, in case some other half-blind amateur searches the forums for this issue, here's the solution which escaped me for almost a week: the "Format For: " option in Page Setup should *not* say "Any printer", but should have the 3800 specifically selected. Since I have two printers on my machine, this was not the most obvious place to search (for me at least).

Thanks a lot for clearing that up for me.

[kim]

Borderless printing on Epsons can be tricky when using Photoshop. What works well for me is using Qimage to do the printing rather than from within Photoshop. There are many different settings influencing borderless printing and they can be confusing until you get them right, but overall it works well. Qimage has lots of other benefits like the resizing, custom sharpening and border control. I'd recommend trying out the demo.