How do I stop Preview printing things in the center of the paper?

Question

How do I stop Preview printing things in the center of the paper?

This has been asked MULTIPLE times in the communities and no correct answer has been given. I feel Apple needs to way in on this question, or someone please tell me that it just can not simple be done.

I have a small image. It prints in the center. I don't want that. I simple want the image printed left justified. That is all. No tiling/sidebar business, just a simple left justified print out. Why is this so difficult or impossible?

If there is no way of properly doing this (without hacks), please just say so. This is ridiculous, there simply should be left, right, center horizontally, top, bottom center vertically controls in the print dialog box.

Frustrated. Don't want to use another app for simple printing. Please anyone help! Apple, fix this! Thank you.

Preview-OTHER, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), Mac OS X Preview

Posted on Feb 1, 2016 8:13 AM

Reply

Answer 1

MrHoffman

Level 10

146,443 points

Feb 1, 2016 8:40 AM in response to MarsJupiterVenus

This is a user forum. Apple does not necessarily read nor reply to postings here.

If you have a suggestion or an enhancement request or a gripe with OS X, please use the Contact Us link, and send it directly to Apple and/or to the CUPS team.

I don't see anything in CUPS that does what you want, though I'd be tempted to test with the number-up-layout option — probably won't work, but it's the closest.

In the interim, you'll probably be using a tool to reformat the image for printing as required. (It would not surprise me to learn that a script or tool could be created to perform page alignment operations for printing, depending on the particular file format in use, but that'll involve some more details than included here.)

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 1, 2016 3:32 PM in response to MarsJupiterVenus

I'll visit the Feedback link. However, this clearly is not a CUPS issue, this is an application issue. Seeing that "Preview" is an image viewer/editor that comes with the operating system, I filled this under System Software, since there was no other category that "Preview" would fit. I realize Apple probably isn't reading any of this, but the probably should. (Good customer service/Karma) A few people on staff to monitor the message boards and be helpful would be nice. Apple as the largest company in America, you could employ a small team to hang around here and legitimately help people out.

Reply

Answer 3

MrHoffman

Level 10

146,443 points

Feb 1, 2016 3:55 PM in response to MarsJupiterVenus

CUPS is the printing system used on OS X. Preview and most everything on OS X uses CUPS to access the printer. Therefore, CUPS is probably involved here, unless whatever you're doing is very specific to how Preview is implemented and operated.

Post some details such as the image format and what sort of alignment might be required, and whether or not some sort of scripting might get you where you want. Why? Because any changes that might happen here are probably not going to happen for a couple of OS X releases at the earliest — to get onto the schedule — if your requested change is not already included in some upcoming release. So... Maybe a workaround, whether that's running through some permutation in Preview or some add-on script, or any of the various image editors — some of which can probably be scripted via AppleScript or maybe JavaScript, too.

Apple is not the largest company in America. Alphabet reportedly is. But that does not alter the longstanding Apple request to send enhancement requests directly to Apple, and not via the forums. Or post some details, and see if somebody can figure out a workaround for you.

Reply

Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

685,257 points

Feb 1, 2016 8:26 AM in response to MarsJupiterVenus

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

Reply