Remember the cards I made yesterday as part of the FREE Jessica Sprague Computer Tricks for Cards class?  Well, there has been a lot of frustration in the JS forums because printers that claim to be borderless are acting anything BUT borderless. Ladies, I feel your pain.

Seriously.  WHY can’t you just click a button and have it actually print borderless? OR, how come, when you pick ALL of the borderless printing settings that are available, your project STILL has an edge cut off? Irritating.

I created a tutorial a while back that explained my journey through that frustration and I posted it over at The Hybrid Chick.  At the time, I was printing out of PSE, so those screens are PSE screens.

Yesterday, I printed out of CS5 for the first time, and I had to go in and fix/change some settings to get the borderless print that I was expecting.  Thankfully, I figured it out.  Now, I’d like to see if I can help others.  Hopefully this will at least get people thinking about their borderless printing settings!

FIRST of all, make sure your printer actually does print borderless. If it does NOT print borderless (and many basic printers don’t), then oftentimes what it will do is slightly shrink whatever is on your page so that it fits.  Remember that free envelope template I gave out?  Some people were printing it out and then declaring that it didn’t actually fit a dollar bill.  Yes, honey, it does.  Your printer shrunk my template.  If your printer does not print borderless, see if you can tweek the settings to get your image as close to the edge of your paper as possible without cutting it off. You can do this by increasing or decreasing the size % just a bit.

While you are testing your borderless printing settings, save yourself some frustration and a lot of ink by printing an overlay image on white copy paper. When I was testing mine out, I grabbed an overlay from my stash (anyone want to link me up with a free overlay for my peeps?) and dragged the corners so that it filled my 8.5×11 canvas with the edges right on the edge of the canvas.

Now, go to File>Print.  This is the screen that pops up in CS5 (on my Mac).  Click to enlarge.

Notice:

• The Printer that is selected is MY printer.  Make sure your printer is selected.  (For some reason, this changes on me, even though I only have one printer.)
• Position Center Image
• Bounding Box and Scale to Fit Media are NOT checked (this will shrink your project!).

Now, if I click on that Print Settings Button near the top, this is what I have:

Notice:

• My printer is still selected.
• My Photo Paper presets is selected (whatever that means.  I mess with this sometimes.)
• PAPER SIZE is Borderless 8.5x11in.  This is uber important.  If you do not have this option, then your printer is probably not borderless.

Now, I click on the drop down box that says “Layout” and I choose “Paper Type/Quality”.  This is my magic screen.

Notice:

• I always choose HP Premium Photo Papers, even when I’m printing on Red River, Ilford or other photo paper.
• The people of Red River have convinced me to print on Fast Normal.  They are geniuses.  This saves me on ink and my projects still look stellar!!
• I ALWAYS have to move my borderless expansion slider (which some people are calling overspray) all the way to the left (as shown).  Every. Single. Time.  It’s irritating, but at least I know to do it!

I click the Save button, it takes me back to the first screen, and I click print.  That’s it!

This works for me every time!  Let me know if this helps!!

Reminder: Today is $2 Tuesday at TDC!

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