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Author Topic: Margins Incorrect when Printing From Lr  (Read 2829 times)

Wayne Fox

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Re: Margins Incorrect when Printing From Lr
« Reply #20 on: February 06, 2019, 03:46:57 pm »

Also, I kept seeing odd printing when clicking the (left hand) Print command.  Only part of an image would print.  My solution is to click the (right hand) Printer...  Odd, but it works.  This happened with my 3880 which died about a year ago.  I haven't tried clicking Print with my Canon printers, don't want to waste paper and ink again.
And I print using the Print button 90% of the time (dozens of prints a day)  and I never have a problem.

There isn’t really anything magic about either button.  If you use the Print button then whatever settings are in the driver will be used. The result will be identical to clicking the Printer... button and then just clicking Print there.  All the LR Print button does is bypass the Print Settings dialog box. If after Clicking the Printer... button if you need to make changes in the Print Settings dialog box, then clicking Print would have not made those changes.

All of those settings are stored in LR templates, and it’s pretty easy to change something using the left side Page Setup and Print Settings... buttons to tweak something and forget to save those to the template.  If you make a new template and setup everything except Print Settings then whatever was loaded in the driver (which may be from another program if you just launched LR) is saved in the template until you explicitly open Print Settings... , enter your desired settings, and then save them to the template.

All of settings in the driver are stored in the templates but it can be easy to forget that.  Obviously going through  the Printer... button is a safe route and doesn’t take much time, but if you are just clicking Printer .. then clicking Print and not checking and changing anything, there will be no difference in the results.

As to your situation and why it seems an anomaly, I can’t say.  I do know after printing from LR since beta and working with dozens of customers who purchased Epson printers and printing from Lightroom with similar problems, they have always come down to two issues on a Mac.  I myself struggled with this as I began doing my own printing, and when I became part of my current retail operation in 2010 the staff here had terrible problems with the first issue below (I offer this for the sake of those reading this thread in the future that are struggling with issues like this, and not directed to any one person on the thread.  Additionally, I haven’t used Canon printers for quite some time so I’m not sure how the Canon printer driver operates, other than I think it’s pretty safe to say all the Print button does is by pass the Print Settings dialog box no matter what printer you have attached).

First is  understanding that in the printer dialog boxes,  paper size (width and length) and orientation (Portrait and Landscape) have nothing at all to do with the size of the print you are making based on the orientation of the finished image.  The paper size is the width of the paper that is being put into the printer as width and then length of the print.  The orientation is whether the image needs to be turned 90 degrees to fit that sheet of paper.  If I have a 13x19 piece of paper but my image is a landscape orientation so I put 19” as width and 13” as height into the Page Setup, the printer is now expecting me to put a 19” wide piece of paper into it. (obviously a problem with a 17” printer).  I need to tell the printer the size of the paper (13” width and 19” height).  As far as the orientation, the driver is asking if the image needs to be rotated 90 degrees based on the piece of paper going through it.  So if I had a landscape oriented image, and I’m using a p9000, and to shorten the printing time I create a page size that is 19” wide and 13” high and insert the paper accordingly (I do this with almost all sheet paper), then this image to the printer is Portrait orientation .. it doesn’t need to be rotated. At first it seems confusing but that’s because we are dealing with two different things, and the printer settings don’t have a clue and don’t care what you are putting on the paper so all it can do is assume the paper you inserted is  the size you entered and whether it needs to rotate the image.

The other thing that can really mess an image up quick and is quite common is using a Macintosh OS printing preset inside the Print Settings dialog box.  This is the one setting that LR cannot reliably store in the template.  So if you are using a Macintosh OS printing preset inside the Print Settings dialog box to set your paper size etc. inside a template, you can get some really weird stuff when you use that template.  The Mac OS preset store all settings just iike the LR template does, and the two can conflict with each other.  I don’t know how Lightroom and the driver handle conflicts (or cases where the Mac OS preset is no longer there), but   to get reliability out of your templates you need to make sure the Mac OS Presets:  popup is set to Default Settings, then make all of your changes to both dialog boxes, then right click on the template and save them. ( I also see users that will click on the template, then right click on the template to save the changes, which of course doesn’t work because as soon as you click on the template all of the settings reverted to what was already stored in the template.). If you want to use the Mac OS presets to store your prints settings(maybe because you use them in another program), then this is one time I would say using the Print button might not be a good idea, so you can click Printer... and make sure the Mac OS preset is correct and all your other settings are correct. I would add that if you are using LR templates however, it would be far more efficient to just setup all those settings and then save them in the template rather than relying the Mac OS preset.

I have over 100 templates in Lightroom, everything from multiple prints with borders on various sheets of paper to 44”x84” prints.  I had issues with odd things as well when I first starting printing many years ago (an Epson 9600) , but I’m pretty sure it was from using incorrect settings, as now that I pay attention to these two things, I never get partial prints, sideways prints, incorrect prints or really weird borders anymore.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 05:03:58 pm by Wayne Fox »
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mbaginy

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Re: Margins Incorrect when Printing From Lr
« Reply #21 on: February 06, 2019, 04:05:37 pm »

Wayne, that's a very detailed explanation, thanks.  I've encountered the problem of only partial printing a few times in the past when clicking Print (used to be called print one, I believe).  Every time I clicked Printer... the image printed properly.  When I clicked Print the image was cut off.

I know what LR is supposed to do (as you explained), but my experience shows that in real life results differ.  I haven't a clue if it's limited to my former 3880 or my iMac or another freak combination of hard and software.  All I can say is that I've experienced this a few times and since I no longer click Print, I no longer have the problem.

If I would experience the same performance (oddity) with my current Canon Pro 1000 I can't say.  I won't push my luck and alter my current printing workflow - it works and I don't mind the (one) extra click.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Margins Incorrect when Printing From Lr
« Reply #22 on: February 06, 2019, 08:37:25 pm »

I have encountered the problem with LR presets that Wayne mentioned.

When I upgraded my printer from a 3800 to a P800, I had to update a big bunch of my old presets.

Then one day I made a print from a familiar paper on the new printer and the margins were all wrong. I thought I checked everything, and tried several more prints, with the same bad margins.

In desperation I then switched to a different paper using its preset, and the margins were fine. That gave me the clue that something was wrong with the first preset, and comparing the two I finally found the problem. If I recall correctly, it did indeed have to do with rotating the image at some point in the bad preset.

Sigh!
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-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)

rdonson

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Re: Margins Incorrect when Printing From Lr
« Reply #23 on: February 06, 2019, 08:48:29 pm »

The only time I've experienced what drralph showed it was because I screwed up a custom paper size (13x38).  Not the dimensions of the sheet but a needed parameter in the Page Setup.

In the Page Setup window there is a field "Non-Printable Area:"  If left at "User Defined" and some funky values or 0 for "Left, Top, Right and Bottom" you get results like drralph showed.

The solution was to click on the "User Defined" box and choose "EPSON SC-P800 Series".  That's when life returned to normal for me.

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Regards,
Ron
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