P800 Borderless printing

[stevegoldenberg]

Hi all, I am enjoying the quality of the new Epson P800 but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to borderless print, either from Lightroom or Photoshop CC. I have tried both 11X17 and 13X19 but the printer always fails with the error "non supported paper size for borderless printing is loaded".

Have any of you figured out how to make borderless printing work?

[Mark D Segal]

Have you checked pages 71, 80, 111, 117, 118 and 159 of the P800 Manual and still having a problem?

[rdonson]

https://files.support.epson.com/docid/cpd4/cpd43251.pdf

[howardm]

generally, the borderless thing is selected in Page Setup by choosing the paper size and there will be another pulldown to choose the paper 'source' which is where borderless shows up.  It's generally not a Lightroom thing but a driver thing.

[Mark D Segal]

And Victoria Bampton's "Lightroom 6 The Missing FAQ" has instructions on what to do in Lightroom, along with the printer driver settings, to achieve borderless prints through LR.

[stevegoldenberg]

Yeah, I have poured over the user guide settings but every time I send it to the printer I get the same error. Here are some screen shots of my settings, perhaps you can see something I'm missing?

I have my Page Setup selections, my print driver selections (and you can see that the 13X19 Borderless Auto Expand is being received by the driver) and my lightroom selections. I realize the printed is off in these; I disconnected from it just now but this was the last set of settings I used. I also tried both 19 X 13 and 19 X 12.95 in the lightroom dialog, just in case and neither worked. The print renders in LR and is passed to the printer but then the printer stops and says it is an incompatible borderless size. According to page 71 of the user's guide it should be fine.

[Mark D Segal]

Just a thought - I don't know because I haven't tried it (I had to give my test P800 back to Epson) - but you mention paper size setting of 19*13, whereas in the manual and in the driver it says 13*19. This made me wonder whether you have width and length reversed relative to what borderless wants. Otherwise, the settings you show and the information in the manual would lead one to believe this should work. Also, do you have the correct paper feed selected for the way you are feeding the paper?

[stevegoldenberg]

Great thought but that didn't work either. I was able to get borderless to work via the sheet feeder but no luck in any size via the front-feeding fine art path. 

[JohnHeerema]

I also encounter this issue every year when I print borderless Christmas cards on 13x19 fine art media using my Epson P800. I've got a number of Epson large format printers, and the "easy" answer to this issue is to not use the P800 for them. The 3800 has the rear paper feed mechanism that Epson sadly dropped in the P800, which is far superior to the front loading manual feed mechanism. used in both printers.

The problem with the P800 is intermittent, and the seemingly exact same steps will occasionally work. Unfortunately, my assessment is that developing good user-facing software is simply outside Epson's expertise. The P800 software can be incredibly frustrating to work with, and the fundamental issue is that it is badly written (pointing a finger at user error glosses over the pervasive impact of poor design).

This year I was able to "sort of" get this to work by "upgrading" the printer driver. This years treat from Epson was moving the selection for borderless printing to the print dialog, rather than page setup ... and as a bonus, removing "Borderless - retain size" from the list of options. So now I can't print exact sizes at all anymore, which horribly screws up my Christmas cards. I think I'm going to have to print them on the 3800.

[deanwork]

Why the hell couldnt they have just left the 3880 alone? It was perfect. I have one that  I rarely  use except for digital negs and when I turn it on the nozzles are always perfect.  Epson created the perfect desktop printer and they had to screw with it. The P 800 is a perfectly fine machine but it’s no 3880. You still waste ink from MK to Pk so what’s the point. If the had wanted to put more permanent pigments in the 3800 they could have done that without loosing the rear feeding capability.  Epson made the best inkjet printer in the 17x22 media size and now it’s gone. Boo hoo.

I also encounter this issue every year when I print borderless Christmas cards on 13x19 fine art media using my Epson P800. I've got a number of Epson large format printers, and the "easy" answer to this issue is to not use the P800 for them. The 3800 has the rear paper feed mechanism that Epson sadly dropped in the P800, which is far superior to the front loading manual feed mechanism. used in both printers.

The problem with the P800 is intermittent, and the seemingly exact same steps will occasionally work. Unfortunately, my assessment is that developing good user-facing software is simply outside Epson's expertise. The P800 software can be incredibly frustrating to work with, and the fundamental issue is that it is badly written (pointing a finger at user error glosses over the pervasive impact of poor design).

This year I was able to "sort of" get this to work by "upgrading" the printer driver. This years treat from Epson was moving the selection for borderless printing to the print dialog, rather than page setup ... and as a bonus, removing "Borderless - retain size" from the list of options. So now I can't print exact sizes at all anymore, which horribly screws up my Christmas cards. I think I'm going to have to print them on the 3800.

[JohnHeerema]

Hmmm ... after quite a bit of experimentation, including setting a custom paper size to 12.95" x 19" (a valid choice, according to Epson's documentation), as well as using the built-in "A3+ Borderless (retain size)" size setting, I can't get past a printer error message which complains that borderless printing isn't supported for the selected media size. Naturally, it can't be ignored - the only option is to cancel the print job.

I believe that borderless printing of 13 x 19 Velvet Fine Art paper using a P800 is broken due to bugs in Epson's software.

I've tried loading Velvet Fine Art media via the sheet feeder (to do this, I have to tell the idiot Epson software that I've some some other kind of matte media loaded). This seemingly works, but is an obvious kludge. I'd go with the straight-through loading method, which is a lot better designed than the manual feed tray ... except that Epson's software insists that this option is only available for their Enhanced Matte poster board.

I'd like to conclude by saying something positive about Epson's software, but I'm having trouble being more positive than to say "it usually works". It's far from elegant. This seemingly minor issue has chewed up far too much of my time, and I still don't have a satisfactory solution other than going back to the 3800.

[Rand47]

OK, this is pure WAG since I no longer have P800.  Go into the “printer’s” menu panel, find a setting for “turn paper type/size check off”.... something like that.  Turn it off.

Rand

[Ferp]

Why the hell couldnt they have just left the 3880 alone? It was perfect. ....   Epson made the best inkjet printer in the 17x22 media size and now it’s gone. Boo hoo.

+1.  Almost perfect. The MK/PK switch can jam, rendering at least one K channel useless.  Various other errors can randomly pop-up on the LCD screen.  But even so, better than nearly everything else.

[JohnHeerema]

It's sure unfortunate when a well designed product is replaced with an "almost as good" product that's cheaper to produce.
It's unfortunate when a company can't be bothered to correct bugs in its software.

In my case, I've been printing Christmas cards using the P800 sheet feeder. It means that some pages are a bit crooked, because the sheet feeder just isn't as accurate as the rear paper feed on the 3800. So my Christmas cards are "almost as good" as they were when I printed them on the 3800.

[rdonson]

What driver version are you using for the P800?

[JohnHeerema]

I'm using the latest driver version and the latest firmware version.

Unfortunately, the firmware insists that 13" x 19" paper is not a supported size for borderless printing if you feed using the manual fine art media feeder. There's no away around it.

And .. Epson's sheet feeder mechanism tends to load paper crooked. I've had a number of Epsom desktop printers, and they all suffer from this problem over time. Here, I think the design just isn't very robust.

I really miss the nice rear manual feeder that the 3800 had - once again, Epson's "decontenting" and horrible software have made printing Christmas cards a nightmare.

[unesco]

I am wondering what is the problem. I have both P800 and 3880 fully operational and print 13" wide sheets borderless on both printers with perfect qulity. Form PS on Win7 and now on Win10. Mostly HM fine art barytas and rags.

[TonyW]

Just a thought - your printer driver settings look incorrect.  You may want to check what settings should be for the Harman paper (I think it may be classed as a Fine art paper)

Although I think you use a Mac and I am on Windows I imagine that most settings are the same across platforms. 

FWIW have you tried adjusting the settings as shown in attachments?

1.   In LR click the Page setup button this should open the Print setup dialogue and allow you to select your paper size i.e. 13x19 and Front FineArt(borderless) or one of the other allowable borderless options.  Also select the correct orientation.  Note that the actual print size and ppi being sent to the printer is shown in the image area of LR

2.  Clicking on the Properties button should opent the driver screen where you can adjust quality and paper source.

3.  Clicking the Borderless check box may bring up a warning screen that smudging may occur and to check manual but should not prevent printing.

Hope there is something here that helps resolve your issues

[JohnHeerema]

Are you using the sheet feeder, or the complicated front-loading mechanism?

I can print borderless using the sheet feeder ... but Epson's sheet feeder has trouble feeding Velvet Fine Art paper straight.

The problem only occurs with the front loading mechanism. There's no reason for it that I can imagine, as the paper ends up in the same place, regardless of how it's loaded.
The printer's firmware is the issue, as the firmware displays the "borderless printing not supported" message on the printer's local LCD.