best way to gang 8x10's

[mstevensphoto]

Hi all,
   I've got cause to need a bunch of 8x10's and am finding that ganging them on my 24" roll and then doing borderless printing on my ipf8300 leaves me with two (outside) prints that are less than 8"wide and one (the center) that's over 8"wide. this is I'm sure from the printer enlarging to do borderless printing. the outside prints can be as far off as 1/8" which doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's more of a pain in the butt to cut/stack and I'm sure that sooner than later a customer will come back having tried to put one into an off the shelf 8x10 frame and found that it's a hair too small. SO, is there anyway I can gang 8x10's on a 24" roll and have them all be 8x10 once printed w/o a ton of paper waste?
gracias
Mark

[stretchdcanvas]

Not knowing what size sheets you can handle in finishing...
How about if you set up a document in PS that is 24x10 and place 3 8x10's across the page.  That's 4 cuts per 3 prints. And a manageable size.

I've made documents  of 8x10's that were 5 across and 10 high (40" wide x 100"H).  Thats 50 8x10's butted up against each other (perfect alignment is very important here).
I then print the file in the center of 42" paper for wiggle room (leaving white on the left and right of the file).
I use a manual cutter that can handle a little over 100" and I can cut out 50 8x10's with a total of 53 cuts.
That's @1.06 cuts per 8x10!
If you don't rush you can finish pretty quickly:)

[mstevensphoto]

I've got a 44" printer but it is most often loaded with a 24" roll. I would like to be doing exactly as you describe, three prints across. BUT to do that and print borderless I have the enlargement problem. I would like to be printing 3 rows of 3 (24x30") but the enlargement gives me two prints smaller than 8x10 and one print larger.
alignment isn't a problem, turn on image snap and PS will align everything just right.

[AFairley]

Why not just rotate 90 degrees and print 2 across?

[Mike Guilbault]

Although I'm using an Epson (4900), I had a similar problem to a lesser degree.  Lesser in that I was printing 8x10s on 10" roll paper. I needed 'exactly' 10" of image though because I had a 1/2" border around the image that I didn't want cropped at all, which is what the 'expansion' did when printing borderless.

To solve this I had to create a paper size that was 10.25" wide, so 1/8" wider on each side and choose the Retain Size option in the printer dialogue.  I made my image slightly wider as well by 1/4" in total, but the actual printed part was printing correctly on the 10" roll now - perfectly! 

So, if you're ganging up some 8x10s on a wider roll, you may have to play with the paper size a little and if your printer has it, select Retain Size rather than Expand.  I see the problem being the middle image, of course, being too wide then, but it may get you closer.  Or... can you use 10" rolls?

[stretchdcanvas]

Are you saying that if you send a 24"x10" file to the printer that has 24" paper loaded and specify borderless printing the print-size is not 24x10?

[mstevensphoto]

if I rotate 90 degrees and print two across I will encounter a massive waste of paper.
I am not saying that the ganged print is not 24x10" I'm not sure how to be more clear about this. when you print border-less the software automatically enlarges your image to account for any less than straight paper and to bleed the image across the cut line - this prevents you from ever having a little white line at the edge. Unfortunately because the software enlarges your image you now have two edge prints that get trimmed short and a middle print that's bigger than 8" across. so you have a piece of paper that's exactly 24" wide, but it's that way because there are two 7 and 15/16th prints and one 8 and 1/8 print.  I need to have three 8" prints.

Mike,
   Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give that a try and see what happens. are you letting the printer cut the top and bottom of the sheet too or do you end up having to trim that by hand?

[stretchdcanvas]

Forgive me if I'm missing something. 
I'm in utter disbelief that the printer would change your document size!
"when you print border-less the software automatically enlarges your image"...
Even if it doesn't have to? 
If it enlarges it that means the prints are more than 10" high, correct?
If yes that means you don't have an 8x10 in the bunch.
If no that means it's not constraining proportions when it enlarges.

Either way "Border-less" wouldn't my choice of the "best way to gang 8x10's". 
...maybe  for single large prints like 24x20 but not ganged prints where you need consistency.

[AFairley]

Forgive me if I'm missing something. 
I'm in utter disbelief that the printer would change your document size!

The borderless printing feature in every printer driver I have ever owned enlarges the image beyond the nominal size so that it "overlaps" the edges of the paper.  Maybe a RIP wont' do this, I don't know. 

Seems like what you have to do is to paste the gang-up into a single 24x30 image sized so each internal image is slightly smaller than 8x10 by the appropriate %, and there is a blank border of the appropriate width at the edges of the 24x30 image; then when the printer expands the image in borderless mode, only the white borders will expand beyond the edge of the paper, and the internal images will be enlarged by an equal % to hit the 8" dimension, so the edge of the outside images is at the edge of the paper.  You have to set this up as a single image so that the borderless expansion is applied to everthing inside equally.  I imagine this could be set up as an action in PS to create the new ganged image from a single image open in the program; something like resize individucal image to correct dimension, create new blank image sized at x% of 24x30, paste and arrange images into that, expand canvas to add borders to get to 24x30  Then you don't save or delete the ganged image when you're done.  More complicated if it's different images in the gang, but I'm sure there's a way to write an action for that too.

[mfryd]

Forgive me if I'm missing something. 
I'm in utter disbelief that the printer would change your document size!
"when you print border-less the software automatically enlarges your image"...
Even if it doesn't have to?  ...

The piece of information you are missing, is that it always has to.  Borderless printing always involves printing larger than the paper.

In the real world nothing is perfect.  An 8x10 cut sheet of paper is slightly off in size.  The paper does not feed perfectly straight, and may not be positioned exactly where desired.  If the printer were to attempt to print exactly 8x10 on 8x10 paper, then any misalignment or imperfections would result in a small white border on two or more sides.

The way most printers work is to print an image that is larger than the paper.  The edges of the printed image are lost as they print off the edges of the paper.  Losing some of the image off the edge is generally less objectionable than unwanted white borders.

Whenever you print borderless you need an image that's larger than the paper.

Some printer drivers handle this behind the scenes.  If you select borderless 8x10, they scale the image up to about 8.4 by 10.4.  You provide an 8 x10 image, and the printer driver handles stretching it (and resampling it) as needed.  A side effect of this hidden scaling is that it invalidates any careful resampling that you may have done to prepare an image that was an exact match for the printer's resolution.

Some printer drivers offer an option to eliminate the secret scaling and just present a larger paper size.  On my Epson 3880 I can select "8 x10 Borderless (Retain Size)".  This presents me an 8.39 by 10.39 canvas.  This option exposes the necessary overspray needed, without hiding it.  I like this as it gives me the option of knowing exactly how much Image I need to get an 8 x 10.


In the traditional printing industry, this extra amount that is needed is called "bleed".  It's typical for press printed pieces to be printed on larger paper, and then cut down to size.

[Mike Guilbault]

Mike,
   Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give that a try and see what happens. are you letting the printer cut the top and bottom of the sheet too or do you end up having to trim that by hand?

I use a 'Normal' cut on it and I get about an inch at the beginning and end of the job.  It's the best I could do to control waste.