printing full page, scale to fit media, will not center

1082 views1 repliesLast post: 12/26/2003
when i print full page images and set it to "scale to fit media", it never prints exactly in the middle of the page. it always prints with the top and bottom margins even but the left margin is very close to the edge and the right margin has a huge gap. what confuses me is that it doesnt seem to be a printer problem being that i have seen this on 3 different computers and printers. when i am in the page setup and set to landscape, i see...

left .066
right .5
top .25
bottom .251

and in the preview at the top of the window, you see the uncentered look. the problem is it will not let you edit those numbers. i cant believe that there is no way to print this centered and able to edit those numbers. is this at all possible?
#1
Greg,

Those numbers are mandatory margins for your printer. If you want your image to be centered on the page, you will have to add white "shims" to your image. Since, on this landscape page, the .5 on the right is the largest mandatory margin, make all of your other margins .5 inches by adding a .25 shim to the top, a .249 shim to the bottom and a .434 shim to the left. Those "shims" are just white strips in your actual image. You can make selections and paint them in as white, or you can resize your image to its final apparent size and then expand the Canvas in the direction of the shims.

Assuming your paper size is 8.5x11, adding a .5 inch white margin to your image will reduce your usable image to 7.5x10. Since 8x10 is a standard photographic size, I give up the idea of equal margins and just print an 8x10 image .552 inches from the bottom on portrait images or .552 inches from the right on landscape images. My printers mandatory margin is .552 inches instead of the .5 inch figure for your printer. Since I trim off the white margins anyway to obtain marginless prints, it doesn't really matter exactly where the 8x10 lies on the 8.5x11 sheet.

But in your case, if you do want equal margins, you are going to have to settle for a 7.5x10 image.

-- Burton --
#2