Can't do borderless printing with custom sizes in Preview

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Level 1

6 points

Can't do borderless printing with custom sizes in Preview

I am using Mavericks and Preview to print photos on a Canon printer than is capable of borderless printing. If I am printing standard sizes such as A5 or 4x6 which have a borderless op-tion I can print borderless no problems.

I have set up many custom sizes with zero margins and others with margins of the required size. These work in Pages to print birthday cards, but when I use them in Preview it adds a border even though I have specified none.

I have tried other software like iPhoto but it doesn't offer custom sizes or zero borders, while Canon's own Easy Photo Print will print borderless, but it cuts off the edges of the photos for some reason.

What do I have to do in Preview to make custom sizes print the whole photo borderless?

Thanks.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jan 4, 2019 11:40 PM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,382 points

Jan 18, 2019 11:00 AM in response to a brody

In Preview when you go to select print, you will show details which yields a page like this:

Then under paper size menu on the right side, you can change to manage custom sizes, and edit the margins of custom page sizes, as shown below:

This will give you custom named sizes for the fit you desire. Note the scale to fit settings on the first image.

"Print Entire Image" means something different from "Fill Entire paper". Your preview on the left hand side will give an actual fit of what the print will appear like.

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Answer 2

a brody

Level 10

85,382 points

Jan 26, 2019 2:00 PM in response to Unkle e

Back to the second image, you notice how it says bottom, left, right, top. If any of these margins is not set to zero on the selected paper size, then the print itself will always have borders. You need to custom set a paper size that does not have pre-established borders.

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

85,382 points

Jan 16, 2019 3:38 PM in response to Unkle e

Make sure the paper size selected in Preview matches the inches the actual image is in size. You can fit to page, or you can fill page when you make a print. Fill page attempts to fill the whole page within the margins, whereas fit page will force the photo into the margins already selected.

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Answer 4

Unkle e Author

Level 1

6 points

Jan 20, 2019 2:12 AM in response to a brody

Thanks so much for taking an interest, and for your detailed reply with screenshots. I really appreciate the trouble you went to. That was more or less as I understood it, but, unfortunately, I tried again and it still printed a border when I didn't. Let me outline exactly what I did in case I missed something.

I have a photograph 360 px wide and 640 px high (i.e. 16:9 ratio). I used Preview to print it onto an A6 sheet, whose details I had entered into "Manage Custom Sizes" as 105 mm x 148.5 mm. I set the margins as zero all round (the printer is capable of printing borderless, and we do 150mm x 100 mm borderless photo prints all the time, no worries). Because the photo was larger than the paper, I selected "Scale to Fit" and chose "Fill EntirePaper". But when I printed, it put a border approximately 3 mm all round. Not only that, it cut off a small amount of the photo, again probably about 3 mm - meaning that it probably printed the photo at the correct size, but the border I didn't want cut off the edge of the photo.

So either Preview, or our OS (Mavericks), or our printer (a Canon IP8700) is not producing what is specified, even though the software and printer seem quite capable of it.

If you have any ideas of how I could do something different to get the required result, I would greatly appreciate it thanks.

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Answer 5

Unkle e Author

Level 1

6 points

Jan 20, 2019 2:15 AM in response to Unkle e

Just to clarify, I could probably have printed this particular test print using 6x4 borderless, because the size was very similar. But this was just an example, a test, and often it is other sizes we want to print, to fit on cards, etc.

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