Print length when printing canvas on Epson 9900

[daveao]

I know some of you have been down this ugly path in the past and may be able to give me a formula to save me some time and money. I have already wasted a good portion of a 44" roll of Epson Premium Satin Canvas on prints that are coming out too short to work on my canvas wraps.

I am working with an Epson 9900 and want prints with lengths in the 48" to 60" range. All of my prints  are coming out short from my desired running length. Have any of you come up with a formula for compensating for this issue?  I am looking for a paper feed adjustment setting or a multiplier that I can use when setting the print length in the print set up.

Thanks in advance! Dave

[dgberg]

Your doing something wrong as we print over 90" all of the time.
Mac - Lightroom
Page setup
paper size
manage custom size
page size - width _____   Heigth_____.
Fill in those 2 blanks and print.
If your coming up just a litlle short say a half inch just add another inch to your canvas length.
I never cut it that close anyway. Usually an 1 1/2" of unprinted canvas at both sides and ends for stretching.

[bill t.]

Oh, that.  For some reason all my canvases come out of my 9880 by about 1/16 inch short per 14 inches, same as my previous printer.  So an 8 foot print comes out about 7/16" short.  Always.  There's a way to change some parameter somewhere in the printer setup screen, but I just size things accordingly before printing.

[dgberg]

Oops,my apologies. I thought you could not get prints to the above mentioned 40" or 60" lengths.
If thats not the case and you are just a fraction short I would just do as Bill and probably most others do just add some more material to your custom length.
Someone here may know how to go in and fine tune that dimension.

[Ken Doo]

There may be shrinkage after printing on canvas---after coating the canvas--- which is actually caused by water in the coating on poly-cotton canvas.  My canvas prints come out of the printer to their exact dimensions.  The size changes only after coating.  I call it the Seinfeld "George Castanza" effect ("It was the pool!  It was the pool!").  I have noticed that print shrinkage is more apparent running the length of the canvas (as opposed to across the roll).  The formula I have been given to counter this is to increase the dimension of the length only by 1.25%.  After coating shrinkage, you should be pretty close to the right length.

ken

[Light Seeker]

I've just started working with Breathing Color Lyve. On a 20" print I have to scale the image 0.2" longer (e.g. 20.2" total) for it to come out as a 20" print. On a 10" print I have to add 0.1". Perhaps a 40" print would require 0.4" of compensation, but I'm not sure yet if this is linear. That is before coating.

The canvas shrinks along its length when I print on it. It's width however, remained the same.

I imagine that trial and error is required to determine what kind of correction you have to do for you paper / printer combination.

Terry.

[jule]

I've just started working with Breathing Color Lyve. On a 20" print I have to scale the image 0.2" longer (e.g. 20.2" total) for it to come out as a 20" print. On a 10" print I have to add 0.1". Perhaps a 40" print would require 0.4" of compensation, but I'm not sure yet if this is linear. That is before coating.

The canvas shrinks along its length when I print on it. It's width however, remained the same.

I imagine that trial and error is required to determine what kind of correction you have to do for you paper / printer combination.

Terry.

Terry, is this just with your canvas, or does this happen when you print on paper as well? If it happens on paper as well, it could be that paper feed adjustments need to be made on the control panel, bering in mind that this will also effect the resultant ink coverage. I had an issue where my prints on my Epson 9800 were short and my shadow areas were becoming muddied - only marginally. I increased the paper feed adjustment (trial and error) so that the output size matched the requested size - presto - my shadow areas improved as well.

Julie
Julie

[davidh202]

Hi all,
I had suggested Dave come here with his problem after reading it on another forum.
I had replied and  still have a lot of trouble understanding how the canvas can shrink only where the ink is applied and wetting the image area of the canvas without causing curling and puckering of the border areas that are not recieving Ink.
There would be a substantial differences in surface tension and the coefficient of contraction going on between the wet and dry areas!

If you take artist  watercolor paper and wet it while painting in different degrees in different areas, it causes substantial curling and wavyness in the paper upon drying and I cannot fathom why the non inked edges of the canvas would not in fact do the same thing if shrinkage was involved due to wetting.
 Funny I had thought of George Costanza and the pool also. ;-)
 

[Ken Doo]

I'm also printing on Breathing Color's Lyve Canvas on an Epson 9800.  No shrinkage after printing.  There is that slight *ahem* George Costanza effect after hvlp spraying with Glamour II.  Shrinkage appears most noticeably along the length of the canvas.  No Costanza effect on any other type of media---only spray sealed canvas.  I've got a series of canvas prints to do this coming week, so I'll pay particular attention....

[Light Seeker]

Terry, is this just with your canvas, or does this happen when you print on paper as well?

This is just with canvas (Lyve). I measured a few cotton rag prints (matte and fiber based gloss) to double check and their dimensions are correct. I'm printing on a 3800.

Frankly, I thought this was common knowledge. In Michael's interview of Andrew Collett in Luminous Landscape Video Journal 19, viewers are cautioned by Andrew that canvas will shrink when printed. He explains that it will only shrink along the length; whereas the width will remain unchanged. He starts to explain this at 31:40.

Based on Andrews comments I made a 20" long print and measured it. Indeed, it was shorter when printed than it was in Photoshop. I made a second 20" print but this time I resized it to 20.2". The print came out to exactly 20". All of this was before any coating was applied.

Terry.

[langier]

I'm gallery wrapping my canvas. The main image I run with a blurry edge that blends into the wrap part of the image. Since the frames I'm using have some variability, combined with the blended edge and stretching, for my work it doesn't matter much.

Other canvas gets dry mounted and framed so a little off on the "exact" length doesn't matter.

The art of printing is a lot like building a house where you get it pretty close then tweak the image with the framing an presentation of the ready-to-hang artwork, IMO.

In all reality, these little things drive us nuts, but for everyone else, it's of little consequence in the scheme of things...

[Garnick]

Hello All,

I generally spend much of my "forum browsing" time on the "EpsonWideFormat" group, however, I have found this to be a very informative area as well.  So for what it's worth, I'll add my 2.5¢(after inflation).  A few years ago when I first started printing on canvas with my SP7600 I too was inflicted with the dreaded "canvas shrinkage" problem.  On the aforementioned forum there were a number of "fixes" posted, none of which I found to be terribly effective.  At that time I was using Premier Art Canvas, so after perusing their website I found an answer that seemed to be a natural solution.  It was indeed a Paper Feed Adjustment to accommodate for the thickness and other particular properties of canvas.  Of course the posted adjustment required some tweaking, but within 2 or 3 tests I had it nailed down.  I still use the 7600 for the occasional B&W job, since QTR is not available for the 9900.  This problem reared its ugly head again when I started canvas printing on the 9900, so back to the forum.  With the 9900 and the Leopard(Mac) driver the Paper Feed Adjustment made no difference at all.  As a matter of fact it seemed that the adjustment was not meant to be altered by the user in the Mac driver.  An assumption that was quickly substantiated on the forum.  So again I was relegated to adding dimension to the image in order to get the size required when printing on canvas.  This was NOT what I wanted at all, so one day as I was about to print another canvas I decided to try a different approach, obviously one that I should have used from the beginning.  On the 9900 printer control panel I went to Paper Type>Fine Art Papers and scrolled down to Canvas.  That's the only thing I did differently from previous attempts and it worked perfectly.  All of my other driver settings are the same, and as long as I remember to set this on the control panel the "length" dimension of the image is "EXACT"!  No more fiddling around with adding canvas dimension or any of the other "band aid" fixes.  Other than the fact that the Paper Feed Adjustment seems to have absolutely no effect on the 9900 with the Mac driver, it would appear that Epson has definitely got it right this time and has built in the proper feed adjustment for canvas.  I posted this on the "other" forum and have had excellent response from those who have tried it.

I use the Eco Print Shield coatings from Premier Imaging(aqueous based) and never have a problem with "actual" shrinkage either.  Obviously I cannot comment on other aqueous based products.

I hope this is of some help.

Gary                 

[Garnick]

One more aspect that I forgot to mention, if you will indulge me one more time.  It is my "firm" belief that there is no such thing as canvas shrinkage during printing.  It is assumed that since the inks are indeed aqueous based, and canvas is a fabric, this "fabric can shrink during printing due to the application of a water based substance, INK.  Well if that were true, it seems reasonable that the canvas would "shrink" ONLY where that ink has been applied.  You may disagree with this reasoning, but I believe it to be sound.  So if we apply this form of reasoning to the problem at hand and if the printed area is less that the overall width of the canvas, would it not hold true that only the inked(printed) area would exhibit this so called shrinkage?  Now if that were the case, the unprinted edges of the canvas would exhibit a wrinkled or rippling effect, since the printed area and its accompanying"shrinkage" would then be applying a certain degree of pressure on the unprinted edges.  Example: take a piece of Kraft paper and moisten the inner portion of the sheet, leaving a couple of inches of border area dry.  What you will notice is that the centre(moistened) area has indeed lost some of its dimensional stability, therefore putting stress on the dry borders, causing the border areas to wrinkle in an abnormal and somewhat irregular fashion once the centre has dried.  I will admit that I have seen this happen to some extent after coating the canvas with an aqueous based product, but it has never affected the overall length of the image and will always dry back to its pre-coating state.  This has been my experience with the canvases I have used; Premier Art, two Hahnemülle canvas products and presently Breathing Color Chromata White.

Gary

PS:  As I was going back over some of the posts in this thread I noticed the one from 'davidh202' that is very much along the
       same line as this one, so please forgive me for rehashing this issue.  Suffice to say that I definitely agree with Davids
       reasoning and the most eloquent manner in which he states his position on this subject.  Somehow I missed his post the
       first time through.        

[davidh202]

Gary,
I just read your new reply as I was typing this. and I had posed that very question about different shrinkage rates from the very begining both here and on the other forum.It doesn't hold up as far as my logic is concerned. My earlier post....
"If you take artist  watercolor paper and wet it while painting in different degrees in different areas, it causes substantial curling and wavyness in the paper upon drying and I cannot fathom why the non inked edges of the canvas would not in fact do the same thing if shrinkage was involved due to wetting".



I had replied to Dave that I also have been setting the 7900 printer control panel to the 'canvas' setting and have never experienced any problems. I am also printing from Qimage.
Dave said he had indeed tried the Canvas setting with no solution to his problem.?

It really does make logical sense that since the width of the canvas is a fixed value and mostly all have no problem with the width outcome,  that it is indeed a problem related to feed or the physical measurement of the canvas in the length calculation by whatever mechanism does that calculation since that is the significant variable in the equation.
 It is quite possible the fact that the physical travel of the head is from side to side leads to better accuracy where in the length it can be miscalculated,Consequently, the longer the print is the more exaggerated the miscalculation is.

I am too new at this to know whether or not the size calculations are strictly done by counting pixels laid down or if there is a laser or some such device in the head of these printers that measures the travel of the head over the paper (canvas) to do the size calc.

If it is indeed a laser device,and canvas has a very rough texture, could it  be reading the peaks and valleys of the canvas surface which would add up to a greater overall distance, and thus shortening the actual print length "as the crow flies" so to speak?
In the width measurement (usually narrow) it wouldn't be noticable, but in the length it would add up significantly over a longer distance.
David
  

[davidh202]

Gary,
 I think were playing post tag

[daveao]

Hi Gary. Thanks very much for your posting of print length on the 9900. If I am hearing you correctly, you took all of your print setups on the MAC back to normal with no "paper feed adjustments" (kept at 0). Then you just went onto the 9900's control panel and select canvas under "paper type".  As far as I know I have had this selection on my printer all along and have still had "short" prints. I was just getting ready to head down a path of recalculating print lengths and going that route but now you have me intrigued as I want to make prints without having to set longer print sizes. Any other words of wisdom here on this topic with you 9900? I think I just need to try some more and carefully record every setting and then watch and document the results.

Regards, Dave

[davidh202]

Hi Dave!

I'm glad you showed up here but apparantly there is still much debate as to the actual answer. humm
I really wish that one of the printer engineers would reply and give us the real truth.

I can just picture all of them sitting around a conference table laughing their arses off and saying...

"Lets keep em all in the dark,look at all the money we make on consumables with all these people having to do all this calibration and testing"
 

[davidh202]

I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the issue of lens-body AF focus accuracy and calibration in DSLRs.
A similar analogy...

My belief is the feed mechanisms of various printers,and even printers of the same manufacturer and model can differ to some degree (especially ones with vacuum hold downs), and cause variables in the paper feeding and length even if the correct recommended media settings are made in the driver. As with AF fine tuning I think this may be a necessary evil to set accuracy in an individual printer if there are discrepancies.
That is probably why platten and vacuum setting choices are there to begin with and  "custom settings" can be saved.

[Garnick]

Hi Dave,

Yes, that's correct, the PF Adjustment is set to "0", as on the Mac it seems to serve NO purpose, which has been substantiated on several occasions on another forum.  I don't now if this is true on a PC, but on the Mac no PF Adjustment has any affect at all.  Perhaps this has been fixed in 10.6, but I don't believe so.

I'll be back to work tomorrow and will check all of my driver settings again and send them along.  I use Epson Enhanced Matte Paper for testing the images to be printed on Canvas and I have a "correction factor" that I apply once I'm happy with the results on the paper.  Obviously canvas is rather costly to be using for testing.  I do know that my media type setting in the driver is Canvas and of course I then set the Paper Type on the control panel to Canvas as well, but I'll check it all again tomorrow and let you know what's working for me.

Gary

[Farmer]

If you want to test the PF feed function, you need to understand that its purpose is to deal with micro banding, with the emphasis being on micro.

Get some plain paper and print at 720x360 and then make some adjustments and you'll likely see the difference.  It does help to provide adjustment for using third party media in particular where the thickness, for example, doesn't quite match the driver choice enough.