Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: mbaginy on May 07, 2015, 11:35:48 am
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I’ve noticed this phenomenon for over a year. When printing from LR5 (and now with LR6), quite often about a quarter of the image is cut off (not printed) on the right-hand side of the image.
I recently printed a series of square images on A2 size paper. I’d saved a preset with the settings. A few days later, I added some images to the series and wanted to print these in the same manner. Applying the present, the right-hand side of the image was cut off again!
After checking and double-checking the settings, the same happened again. I rebooted the iMac but to not avail, LR refused to print the entire (square) image!
What I had been doing was, to press “Print” at the bottom left of the (right-hand) printing commands. Since I was sure that all page and printer settings were correct, I bypassed the “Print…” command.
Just to see what happens, I pressed the “Printer…” command, then Print in the print dialog box, which opens (without changing any settings). And lo and behold, it printed properly! I then recalled, that the previous time that cut-off happened, I used the same workaround. So my forgetfulness, along with this bug, cost me a few sheets of MOAB A2 paper and some ink.
Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? I’ll now never again use the “Print” button again (until I again forget). I’m never certain of the result!
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I’ve noticed this phenomenon for over a year. When printing from LR5 (and now with LR6), quite often about a quarter of the image is cut off (not printed) on the right-hand side of the image.
I recently printed a series of square images on A2 size paper. I’d saved a preset with the settings. A few days later, I added some images to the series and wanted to print these in the same manner. Applying the present, the right-hand side of the image was cut off again!
After checking and double-checking the settings, the same happened again. I rebooted the iMac but to not avail, LR refused to print the entire (square) image!
What I had been doing was, to press “Print” at the bottom left of the (right-hand) printing commands. Since I was sure that all page and printer settings were correct, I bypassed the “Print…” command.
Just to see what happens, I pressed the “Printer…” command, then Print in the print dialog box, which opens (without changing any settings). And lo and behold, it printed properly! I then recalled, that the previous time that cut-off happened, I used the same workaround. So my forgetfulness, along with this bug, cost me a few sheets of MOAB A2 paper and some ink.
Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? I’ll now never again use the “Print” button again (until I again forget). I’m never certain of the result!
so just curious, in the print settings dialog box, did you create and use a preset? What you describe is what happens if you try to use a printer driver/OS preset inside of a Lightroom preset.
If you want to use the print button with reliability, make sure you use the page setup button first to get your paper size right, then you use the print settings button and get all of the related settings right, but leave the popup menu in that dialog set to default. If you change anything in those two, be sure to right click your Lightroom preset and update with current settings.
Lightroom will remember everything in both of those dialog boxes, but it cannot handle a preset that is created within the print settings dialog box.
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Thanks for your explanation Wayne. Knowing how quirky the print module of LR is, I always work from left to right, top to bottom. My first step is to define the paper size, then move on to positioning my image.
I've never, since LR1, had LR's printing work for me as simply as Michael and Jeff explained in their video tutorials. If I select paper size, then choose my margins, the image size should fill the resulting space. It doesn't work that way. I've always had to: select paper size, set all margins to zero, then adjust the left margin, then the image size and fiddle to get the right margin equal to the left. Just recently, I couldn't type the top margin (equal to left and right) into the margin setting - I had to increase the bottom margin until it reached the required distance. And the top margin readout never changed! The image moved upwards but the readout stayed at it's incorrect value!
I'm quite sure the problem is with LR and not my workflow. I've found that LR (seemingly) can't handle simple mathematics and I can't really trust the dimensional readout. As much as I enjoy using LR, I've found their print module to be poor, to say the least. It should be possible to select paper size, set margins and have the image size fill the remaining dimensions. It should also be possible for such sophisticated software as LR, to correct margins when I adjust one of the settings. It doesn't - readout remains some silly number, despite the image having moved or having been resized.
That doesn't explain (to my understanding) why LR had cut off the right-hand side of my print. I seem to have found a functioning work-around, but it adds to the mysteries and uncertainties of LR printing.
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I struggled with printing from LightRoom for a while, but finally have figured out enough to make it work for me. But, there are many features I still need to learn so I can take advantage of them.
Most likely, after updating to LR6, I will either take a course, or buy a good reference book that will help me.
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Thanks for your explanation Wayne. Knowing how quirky the print module of LR is, I always work from left to right, top to bottom. My first step is to define the paper size, then move on to positioning my image.
I've never, since LR1, had LR's printing work for me as simply as Michael and Jeff explained in their video tutorials. If I select paper size, then choose my margins, the image size should fill the resulting space. It doesn't work that way. I've always had to: select paper size, set all margins to zero, then adjust the left margin, then the image size and fiddle to get the right margin equal to the left. Just recently, I couldn't type the top margin (equal to left and right) into the margin setting - I had to increase the bottom margin until it reached the required distance. And the top margin readout never changed! The image moved upwards but the readout stayed at it's incorrect value!
I'm quite sure the problem is with LR and not my workflow. I've found that LR (seemingly) can't handle simple mathematics and I can't really trust the dimensional readout. As much as I enjoy using LR, I've found their print module to be poor, to say the least. It should be possible to select paper size, set margins and have the image size fill the remaining dimensions. It should also be possible for such sophisticated software as LR, to correct margins when I adjust one of the settings. It doesn't - readout remains some silly number, despite the image having moved or having been resized.
That doesn't explain (to my understanding) why LR had cut off the right-hand side of my print. I seem to have found a functioning work-around, but it adds to the mysteries and uncertainties of LR printing.
Without seeing all your settings and dialog boxes it’s difficult to troubleshoot the problem. But my experience with LR printing is the opposite, it works pretty much flawlessly, images end up where I expect them, and I have no issues. If you are getting the right hand side of a print cut off, something in your settings and setup seems to be amiss.
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So far my recent problems have been pilot error. I have always used the 'Printer' button, as I like to go through the settings to make sure everything is OK. My printing is rather basic, two sizes of paper and usually full frame, with the occasional Picture Package to crank out 5X7s.
No technical glitches that I know of. I do run maintenance on the computer on a regular basis to clear caches etc.
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Wayne, I’m quite sure to be doing everything correctly. Basically, I’m confronted with two oddities. The first is the (sporadic) refusal for LR to print about 25% of the right-hand side of an image, which I seem to be able to cope with by not using the PRINT button.
But for the second, I haven’t found a simple solution. I simply can’t get the dimensional readout of the image layout to reflect the preview and the actual print. I need to use a pencil and paper and do the math in such a manner, that the software seemingly dictates. That mean’s, not to believe some of the readouts – finding the one to believe and the others to ignore isn’t simple.
Take a look at my example. I wanted the left, right and top borders to be 40mm. The resulting image size should fall into place and is not my real concern. I first set up the page, defining A2 paper. Then I began defining the layout, actually a simple process. What looks fine on the preview gives shows odd dimensional readout. I simply don’t believe, the top margin is only 3.2mm. And to finally achieve my goal, LR requires me to measure from the bottom of the image!
That means, I need to measure the paper, measure the image height, etc. But the readout of the image size on the preview doesn’t necessarily equal what I see – it seems to show the uncropped image, described as cell size. If my assumption is true, how does the uncropped image size help me in my layout. What I want to print is the cropped image!
I finally achieve my results (the print) but by far bot as simple as I had imagined. I’m amazed of LR seemingly ignoring false dimensions. It seems to me, that LR would want to convince me that 1 + 1 + 1 = 5.4!
Maybe I’m truly missing something here, but it can’t be too obvious and can’t be warning with proper error messages.
Wayne, have you ever printed by defining the paper size, then selecting the left, right and top margins, then allowing the image size (cell size?) to be as it may be.
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So far my recent problems have been pilot error.
It would be nice to find, that my problems were based on (another!) user error.
At the moment, I can't spot where I'm goofing up. I'm following the stages, step-by-step, explaining to myself out loud, what I'm doing, so to possibly catch some mistake(s). Haven't spotted it yet.
As long as I remember my work-around process and take the time to do the arithmetic, the print turns out fine. Just doesn't seem state-of-the-art.
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Are you using a mac computer and canon printer?
I recall an issue at a friend similar to yours, also on mac in combination with canon.
Reinstall of canon printer drive i believe solved the problem.
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Jan, I'm using an Epson 3880 printer with all current updates for drivers, operating system, etc. I still have a Canon i9950 but use it only for office printing and printing DCs. I wish the Epson could print CDs!! And yes, I use Macs.
I'm not convinced that this is a printer / printer driver problem. In that case, my workaround shouldn't work. But then, I'm only a user and have far less understanding of computers or programming than many other Lula members. Similarly with digital cameras and the technology involved.
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As Wayne says this is a bit difficult to diagnose without knowing your other settings, but I’ll throw my two pennyworth in.
On the face of it it sounds like there may be a ‘communication’ error between the printer driver and Lightroom, thus possibly the reason for the different results using the Print and Printer buttons. ‘Printer’ calls up the print dialogue whilst ‘Print’ does not. This may be behind the problem (see my last paragraph below).
I tried to reproduce the behaviour you describe in LR5.7 but could not. All worked as expected. I wonder whether you could try selecting the printer and then paper size in the ‘Page Setup…’ dialogue, then create your margins, and finally save this as a print template. If this prints correctly, and you then re-use this Template to make further prints, Lightroom should then recall all the correct settings and print correctly.
Just another two thoughts. Before you try the above go to the Mac’s ‘System Preferences’, ‘Print & Scan’ and delete all your printers (use the minus button below the list). Then add them again using the plus button. One thing to watch out for is that the Mac is not defaulting to your Canon printer when you are trying to print on the Epson. Using a Lightroom printer Template should prevent this from happening. But I always check Page Setup… before printing just to make sure (wastes less paper !). I have found it is possible to have one printer selected in ‘Page Setup…’ and another in the print dialogue. I‘ve spent quite a lot of time, paper and ink ‘cross printing’ to the wrong printer by mistake, although this is not supposed to happen. This is not one of the Mac’s strong points.
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which I seem to be able to cope with by not using the PRINT button.
so if you click the Printer ... button instead of the print button, do you have to change a few settings before you actually print the job? Or can you just hit Printer ... then in the dialog box hit print with success?
Are you using single image/Contact sheet or custom Package option in LR?
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so if you click the Printer ... button instead of the print button, do you have to change a few settings before you actually print the job? Or can you just hit Printer ... then in the dialog box hit print with success?
Are you using single image/Contact sheet or custom Package option in LR?
Wayne, I don't alter any setting following the Printer... button - I simply press print in the dialog box which pops up. No changes, just the extra step and all seems well. Quite strange.
I'm using Single Image/Contact Sheet.
I suppose I'm the only member who ran into such a SNAFU. At least I have a workaround, just need to keep it in mind. The odd margin readouts make printing more tedious, but doing the match long hand at least allows me to print as intended, despite the weird dimensional readout.
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... I wonder whether you could try selecting the printer and then paper size in the ‘Page Setup…’ dialogue, then create your margins, and finally save this as a print template. If this prints correctly, and you then re-use this Template to make further prints, Lightroom should then recall all the correct settings and print correctly.
... Before you try the above go to the Mac’s ‘System Preferences’, ‘Print & Scan’ and delete all your printers (use the minus button below the list). Then add them again using the plus button. One thing to watch out for is that the Mac is not defaulting to your Canon printer when you are trying to print on the Epson. Using a Lightroom printer Template should prevent this from happening. But I always check Page Setup… before printing just to make sure (wastes less paper !). I have found it is possible to have one printer selected in ‘Page Setup…’ and another in the print dialogue. I‘ve spent quite a lot of time, paper and ink ‘cross printing’ to the wrong printer by mistake, although this is not supposed to happen. This is not one of the Mac’s strong points.
Simon, thanks for your suggestions. I've deleted all Epson driver information and reinstalled it. I've checked and double checked the settings in the printer dialog box. I always select the paper size first, then set layout - working from left to right & top to bottom. I've used presets, one moment it prints properly, then next moment it cuts off a portion of the right-hand side of the print. I can't willingly duplicate that behavior. I can't make heads or tails of this. But this has only happened (as yet) when pressing the Print button. Pressing Print... and then continuing the print operation via the dialog box prints properly. Really weird.
I'll just forget the whole thing since I have a workaround. I'm a bit surprised, that I seem the only one encountering such behavior. Oh well, the mysterious world of computers. The odd margin dimensions is another oddity I'll just have to accept. Seems to work fine & dandy for others, just not for me. But I have a pad of paper on my desk and a ruler. Really high tech!
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Wayne, I don't alter any setting following the Printer... button - I simply press print in the dialog box which pops up. No changes, just the extra step and all seems well. Quite strange.
I'm using Single Image/Contact Sheet.
I suppose I'm the only member who ran into such a SNAFU. At least I have a workaround, just need to keep it in mind. The odd margin readouts make printing more tedious, but doing the match long hand at least allows me to print as intended, despite the weird dimensional readout.
Nope, it just happened with me, as we speak! Same exact problem with the same exact work around.
I just now, after printing 6 different images on letter size paper, I retried hitting the PRINT button again to see if the problem was still there. It printed fine.
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Nope, it just happened with me, as we speak!
Walt, I'm sad to hear of your troubles, but I'm thrilled not to be the only one experiencing this problem. I was beginning to doubt my sanity.
Who knows, maybe someone at Adobe has read of our problems and will investigate to fix the situation.
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Gonna chime in and say I have had issues with LR's printing.
Love, love love, the soft-proofing but the printing is aggravating at best. Its almost as if the settings don't "take".
I gave up and got a printing software. Mirage Print
There are others but thats the one I ended up with. I have nowhere near the issues I had with LR.
BTW
Mac OS
Epson 7900 printer.
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I gave up and got a printing software. Mirage Print
That reminds me, I've had a CD with Mirage Print for about two years but never installed it. Maybe I should get the current version and finally use it! Thanks for reminding me, Jimmy. Yes, your impression matches mine - the some setting simply don't "take".
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Gonna chime in and say I have had issues with LR's printing.
Love, love love, the soft-proofing but the printing is aggravating at best. Its almost as if the settings don't "take".
I gave up and got a printing software. Mirage Print
There are others but thats the one I ended up with. I have nowhere near the issues I had with LR.
BTW
Mac OS
Epson 7900 printer.
I keep hearing this, so I’m puzzled. I have at least 15 presets for lightroom and different size prints to different printers, everything from 5x7 moab entrada cards to 24x30 bordered prints. I haven’t used anything other than the Print button unless I need mutliple copies for any of these presets for years, and I’ve made 7 or 8 of them recently, first time perfect with no problem. I’m away on vacation so I can’t try and duplicate the OP’s specific problem, but if the settings don’t “take” I would suspect something in the setup/saving of the preset.
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Wayne, have you ever printed by defining the paper size, then selecting the left, right and top margins, then allowing the image size (cell size?) to be as it may be.
that’s how most of my presets are made ...
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Well Wayne, judging from my experience I'd say, that you've been fortunate. Please take a look at that image I uploaded. It printed as I had wanted, with equal margins left, right and on top. But look at the silly readout of 3.2 mm for the top margin!! It just don't make sense. It can't be right! That's the issue I have on a daily basis with the margins and dimensions shown in LR readout. I simply can't believe them and can't understand why LR seems unable to perform simple math! When setting margins in WinWord, I've never encountered problems. But LR is always showing me inaccurate dimensions!
The problem with cut off prints can't be reproduced. Most of the time the Print button works as it should. Then I close shop for the day and the next time I print (same preset, same paper size, same settings), Print cuts off that part of the image! Rebooting doesn't help, I'm not fiddling with settings in a manner which intends to foul up the proper workflow. It simply happens. Only work-around I've found is as explained previously. It's an LR bug, I'm convinced of it. And it seems, I'm not alone with this odd printing behavior. I'm pleased to hear, that you haven't encountered strange LR behavior - I hope that continues.
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Mark,
I don’t think I’ve been fortunate. I teach lightroom at my store, and my staff at the store print using Lightroom daily to an 11880, a r3000 and a 3880. We have a very diverse size of prints we make, and each day some of them will be printed with a preset because it’s a common size, others without using a preset because they are unique When someone is having trouble getting it to work properly, I haven’t found a circumstance where they weren’t doing something not quite right (yet anyway).
I will admit your screenshot does look strange and if it prints differently than it looks it is difficult to try and figure out why. Without seeing screenshots of all of your dialog boxes it’s impossible to tell if you are doing things the same way I would. I’ve tried to duplicate your problem while traveling (other than “printing” it, but I’m pretty confident that what I see in the Lightroom preview window will be accurate) and I can’t duplicate what your screenshot shows. The only times I’ve had issues with this as when I entered something incorrectly. Again I don’t know what settings you have entered where, so it’s impossible to duplicate your exact circumstance.
So not that you are doing any of these, but more for the benefit of those following this post and having similar issues, 90% of the time I see students or my staff have issues with this, one of 3 things is the reason.
1. They have transposed the width and height box in the custom paper setup screen, entering the width of the paper based on the orientation of the print. The printer doesn’t care about that, it only wants to know how wide is the sheet of paper, and how long it is. So if you enter 19” wide by 13” high because your print is going to be that size and is landscape orientation, you can run into problems, the typical symptom is the print is cutoff in weird places and only a piece of it printed. I you are printing a landscape print on 13”x19” paper, you still enter 13” in the width and 19 in the height, they you click the landscape orientation.
2. They have chosen a preset in the Print Settings dialog to set up the printer settings (paper type, feed path, resolution). Lightroom can’t handle this. It can store all of the settings you make in the Printer Settings dialog box inside of the Lightroom preset, but it doesn’t seem to be able to handle the fact that a preset was used in this dialog. To be reliable this dialog must always be left to “Default Settings”. Even if the chosen preset correctly sets all of the correct information, the fact that something other than “default settings” is used, it will almost always cause problems if you save the settings while the preset is selected.
3. After making a change they click on the preset to save it, before they right click on it to store the changes. As soon as you make any tweak to any setting, whether it is one of the 2 printer dialog boxes or the Lightroom settings on the right, LR will de-select your preset. I’ve frequently seen users think they need to re-select that preset and then right click it to set the new settings. Of course as soon as you click to select it, LR reverts to the settings in the preset so your changes are gone and it looks as though LR “forgot” the changes, when in fact they were never saved in the preset. It’s a little bit of an odd interface thing, but you have to right click the preset while it is not highlighted and select update with current settings. As soon as you do, it should highlight.
As I mentioned, you easily could have an issue that I can’t duplicate, it’s not like computers don’t do weird things at times, and so it could be you are doing everything the same as I would but getting an odd result. I’ve never had a circumstance where using the print button doesn’t work but clicking the printer button then immediately the print button would. (although this might be related to using a preset in the printer settings dialog). without screenshots of all dialog boxes it’s pretty hard to try and pinpoint if there is anything might be doing differently than I do.
I would be great to sort it out, if there is truly a bug, or if perhaps there’s something your are doing a little differently that logically should work but for some reason LR doesn’t like.
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There are probably great reasons why your problem is happening, but similar problems occur from every application. I used to print from Aperture and created a mass of presets for every paper and paper size and still got things coming out the wrong size. Every time you did an update you lost your presets.
I then discovered Mirage Print and have never looked back. Printing is a science by itself. I don't edit in my print application so I never print from editing applications.
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But look at the silly readout of 3.2 mm for the top margin!! It just don't make sense. It can't be right! That's the issue I have on a daily basis with the margins and dimensions shown in LR readout. I simply can't believe them and can't understand why LR seems unable to perform simple math! When setting margins in WinWord, I've never encountered problems. But LR is always showing me inaccurate dimensions!
A margin of 3.2mm makes me wonder if this is being derived from the printer’s safe edge margin (assuming it’s not printing borderless) ?
What I am also wondering is whether this is a communication ‘error’ between the printer and LR. What would be useful to have is a screenshot of your PageSetup dialogue to see how the settings therein relate to what LR is showing.
I also note, and this is probably unrelated, that the decimal points in the dimension in your screenshot are shown as commas rather than full stops (I know countries other than the UK and Europe use this convention). I'm just interested to know why this might be ?
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Wayne, thanks for your extensive explanation. I've been double and triple checking my settings and am convinced of an LR bug.
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Bob, I'll give Mirage a try. Would have preferred to stick with LR, rather than use additional software, but I'll give it a whirl.
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A margin of 3.2mm makes me wonder if this is being derived from the printer’s safe edge margin (assuming it’s not printing borderless) ?
What I am also wondering is whether this is a communication ‘error’ between the printer and LR. What would be useful to have is a screenshot of your PageSetup dialogue to see how the settings therein relate to what LR is showing.
I also note, and this is probably unrelated, that the decimal points in the dimension in your screenshot are shown as commas rather than full stops (I know countries other than the UK and Europe use this convention). I'm just interested to know why this might be ?
Simon, yes, the top margin of 3.2mm is the minimum margin (unless printing boarderless). But the dimension itself seems meaningless. Take a look at the screen shots below. The dimension could be 10mm or 25mm or whatever - it never corresponds to the actual top margin! I'm amazed that others seem to be able to set paper size, then three margins and the resulting image is sized in the remaining space. I've never been able to do that.
I don't see any mistake in my page setup. I've uploaded a view of this.
I've been able to use my workaround so prints are not cut off (at times). And I've been able to find a workflow for print layout by doing the math myself.
As to the decimal points (comma vs. period), it's sometimes frustrating that some software requires commas, others a period. My LR version requires commas - else I get an error message. I downloaded the software in Germany but use the English language setting. I don't know what is used in the US. is there a difference between English and American versions? I never knew that commas were used in England instead of periods (full stops?). Converting between inches and millimeters causes enough anguish. My MOAB 13 x 19" paper is named super B/A3 in the page setup. Then buying frames requires me to convert to metric. What a pain! Didn't Jimmy Carter want the US to convert to metric?
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Wayne, thanks for your extensive explanation. I've been double and triple checking my settings and am convinced of an LR bug.
I still am very doubtful there is a Lightroom bug, but I suppose there might be a driver issue on your machine.
Based on the first image you posted and what I think you are trying to accomplish, I think you would be better served to use the custom package option to accomplish what I think you are trying to do, as the single image option assumes you are centering everything, so as you discovered you end up having to do some math to try and create the offset based on increasing the bottom margin. When I use the single image option, I am trying to center the image, so the two side margins are always the same, and the top and bottom margin are the same (and must be larger than the minimum margin in the printer driver). The cell size is always the full size, result is the image is centered on the paper. So I would never have settings similar to what were posted in the last images.
If I wanted to create an image with a margin on top and sides that were equal, and the bottom larger, I would do this with a custom paper size where the margins are entered there instead of in Lightroom. Then when using the custom package option in LR those margins are then locked out, you can’t put the image node there So drag the image into the page, drag the entire image to snap it to the top left corner, drag down the bottom right corner till it snaps to the margin, and accept whatever the bottom is. Pretty quick.
Maybe I’m clueless as to what you are trying to accomplish, but I’ve never found a circumstance in the thousands of images I and my staff have printed from lightroom where I couldn’t get what I wanted pretty easily. MiragePrint is a nice program, but I’m sort of the opposite opinion of bob (and not meaning any disrespect), Lightroom is certainly designed to make printing easy,and I left the world of RIP’s a few years ago. One of the main advantages of LR is not having to produce a tiff file to send to the printer if I have done everything within Lightroom. As I mentioned, we print from it all day every day with no real issues.