Printing 8x10s on 4900 with 10" Roll paper in Lightroom

[Mike Guilbault]

I'm having trouble setting up the printer to print 8x10s (in Landscape/Horizontal) on 10" Premium Lustre (260) roll paper out of Lightroom.  I have a job for 20 8x10s of the same image.  Here's my settings:

[Mark D Segal]

Hard to know what to say without a description of the trouble.

[dgberg]

Are 10" widths one of the borderless widths for the 4900?
What did you get when you tried to print?

[Mike Guilbault]

ok... for some reason it was still feeding sheet paper and I didn't notice the feed.  I've got it printing now except that the paper is being cut with at least 1/2" gap above and below the 8" height of the image.  Is there a way to have it print continuously and cut the image every 8"?

[LeiMeng]

"double cut" should do the job.  but it wastes some paper. 

"single cut" saves paper but doesn't cut very precisely.

I usually manually trim it with my Rotatrim.

[Mike Guilbault]

... now I'm getting a 3" feed of paper after every cut with the Single Cut option selected.  It starts the print 3" in, and after it's part way printing, it cuts the 3" off and finishes the print, then cuts it at the bottom of the print (as it should).

ok... printing 3 - 10x8s.  Feeds paper 3" before printing the first print.  At the end of the first it cuts the print at the bottom and then feeds 3" before starting the next print (#2 of 3). Part way through the 2nd print, it cuts the 3" feed off and then continues printing.  Now, print #3 is printing and part way through it cuts between 2 & 3 (this is what I expected).  At the end of #3, it cuts properly. 

So why is feeding 3" at the start and between the 1st and 2nd print, but then prints and cuts as expected on print 2 & 3?

[Mike Guilbault]

ARGHHH!!  This time, on a three print run, it feed 3" before starting the first print, then it cut the first and second print right in between (as expected) but cut #2 and then feed 3" before starting print #3!!  What is going on?!

[Mike Guilbault]

Tried it through PS (CS5) instead of LR and this time it feed 3" between each print after cutting at the end of each print.  Wasted 9" of paper for 3 8x10s.  This can't be right.

[Mark D Segal]

I seem to recall somewhere in the manual reading that a three inch gap between prints is normal, but perhaps can be adjusted. I don't use this that often so I'm not sure, but if you haven't done so already I'd suggest a real careful read through everything about roll handling and management in the manual.

[Mike Guilbault]

Couldn't find anything in the manual regarding a 3" gap.  I've wasted about 36" of paper already trying to get this to work.  Afraid I don't have any use for 3" strips.

The manual suggested creating a Custom Paper Size for rolls, which I did.  But it doesn't explain what 'height' you should set the size at.  A 10" wide roll, as I'm trying to use here, and I've set the height at 8".  Should it be set at something different?  What if you want a 10x12" or 10xwhatever? 

[Mark D Segal]

Couldn't find anything in the manual regarding a 3" gap.  I've wasted about 36" of paper already trying to get this to work.  Afraid I don't have any use for 3" strips.

The manual suggested creating a Custom Paper Size for rolls, which I did.  But it doesn't explain what 'height' you should set the size at.  A 10" wide roll, as I'm trying to use here, and I've set the height at 8".  Should it be set at something different?  What if you want a 10x12" or 10xwhatever? 

The way i got this to work was to create a custom paper size for the for the full width of the roll, and the height being the total amount of paper into which the print will fit. Width and height in the driver are reversed relative to how they read in Photoshop. I'm not sure what the minmum feed-through needs to be for cutting. If this isn't in the manual, fire an email to Epson tech support.

[Mike Guilbault]

Well, this is the reply I got back from Epson:

"This is how the printer will operate. We are aware the manual states that setting the printer for Single Cut allows images to be printed end-to-end and saves paper. The last sentence in the description also reads "You will see a white margin between print jobs."

That wasn't much help. I'm aware of what the manual says - but that doesn't solve the problem.  Why does the manual stipulate that you can print end-to-end to save paper (including a diagram showing this) if it can't?  I can somewhat understand a space between print jobs, but this is all one job - 15 8x10s of the same image.  

I just don't get it.

[dgberg]

Since you can print borderless with the 10" wide material. Why don't you go into Lightroom and gang 10 in one long print. Just set a custom page size of 10 x 80.  Set rows to 10 and you should get 10 borderless 8 x 10 prints and all you have to do is cut them apart after printing. Pretty easy if you have a Rotatrim. I would also add an inch or two to the total length so you do not clip that first and last print. You have to cut them apart but at least you solved the wasted paper issue.
Just a long form explaination of Marks suggestion.
I agree it should work better then it does. Which is why just about everyone that has a printer with a cutter uses it to only separate the prints from the roll. You will pull your hair out trying to make it work.
Fine tuned cutting on most of these printers is just not ready for prime time.

[Mark D Segal]

Mike, actually Dan's suggestion of doing this out of LR makes sense, if you have LR. The LR print module operates like a RIP in terms of its print layout features, mitigating some of the quirks of the printer driver.

But if you don't have LR, my sense of what Epson means in the manual is that by selecting "Single Cut", you will save paper in the sense that even though there will be a white border between the prints, it is less of a border than would have occurred had you set it to cut each print individually, because in the latter case the driver would have advanced the paper MORE in order to do the cutting. So it's not a case of waste versus no waste, but less waste versus more waste.

[Farmer]

Good comments and advice from Dan and Mark, I reckon.  To you it's one job, but to the driver/printer it's 15 jobs (it gets sent through 15 times from the computer).

[Sven W]

You can also manually set the Roll Paper Margin to 3 mm (0.12 inch).
And it support 8" and 10" borderless. Page 62 in the manual.
In the ImagePrint RIP you can use a feature called "Inked Area", whereas the printer cut directly after what the name implement.

/Sven

[Mike Guilbault]

I'm assuming that the problem lies with the printer thinking this is 15 print jobs instead of one. Is that correct?  How would you make it one print job?

I was thinking of doing what Dan suggested (I do have LR), but 'dagnabit' the manual says Single Cut will do this and was one of the reasons I bought this printer.  This would mean I would have to set up a print size 10x80 for 10 prints, 10x120 for 15 prints and just about everyone from 2 to 30 or so prints.  I may as well print on single sheets if I'm going to have to do all that cutting anyway and avoid the print-curl problem.

Now I'm wondering about the larger paper rolls too.  I was thinking of getting a 50' roll of 17" paper, but if I'm going to waste so much of it, and fight the curling problem, maybe I should just stick to sheets and forego with borderless or anything longer than 21" (on a 17x22" sheet). Means I have to limit my width to about 14" if I want to print a full frame image though.  That's disappointing.