4900 & Ilford: Setup question

[walter.sk]

Just received a 17" roll of Ilford Gallery Smooth Pearl, and downloaded the Ilford profile for the 4900.  Ilford says to use the Premium Semigloss Photo Paper 250 setting as the paper selection, rather than the Epson Premium Luster.  I intend to try the Ilford profile and compare it with a Colormunki profile.

For the 4900 users here who use the IGSPearl, do you use the Epson Premium Semigloss or the Luster as your base setting?

Also, I would like to print 11x17's on the roll paper with the actual image being somewhat less, say 10.5x15.25.  But I want the printer to cut the paper to be exactly 11" high.  Can I do this?

[Wayne Fox]

You should use the media setting recommended, since that was the one used to create the profile.  Using a different setting may change ink loads and thus not be ideal.

To cut the paper exactly a certain height, but still with a border, you may have to do a couple of things.  Add the border to the image itself, make sure the final size is the size you want, and then print "borderless" and enable double cutting. 

[walter.sk]

Thanks, Wayne.  Ilford's profile for the Galerie Smooth Pearl using the Epson Semi Gloss as the base paper worked just fine.  Incidentally, the GSP's texture is not as deep as the Epson Premium Luster's, and does not seem, therefor, to scatter the light the way the Epson does.  It is also sharp, with as good a dynamic range (to me eye, anyway.)

I finally found how to set the margins on the roll paper to .12" on all sides.  In the printer driver I set a custom paper size of 17x11. In Qimage, which I prefer to printing from CS5, I chose a print size of 10.76x16.15, which fits within the margins.  I also set Qimage's page margins to "0" and that did the trick.  Out came a perfect 11x17, printed to max size yet having small borders.

The idea of using borderless printing and double cutting sounded good but would require resizing the file, adding the right margins, stroking the edges, and also (I think) using all of the inks to ink in the white borders.  I'd rather do it the above way.

This way, I can print 11x17's for $.80 a sheet (for paper), which is even less than buying the Ilford in 11x17 sheet size, and it leaves me free to do 16x24's on the same paper.

[Wayne Fox]

Sounds like you've got things working fine.

BTW, the printer should advance past the white border so the bordered area won't change the speed nor require any ink if it is working correctly.