# How to get the Pro 100 to print EXACTLY to the edge without loss



## Mancubus (Aug 25, 2017)

I have bought a Pixma Pro 100 and I'm quite happy with the quality, my only complaint is that when printing borderless it crops a little bit (just a little) and the outmost edges of the photo are left out.

I did a print of a model photo and her hand was quite close to the edge of the frame, when I saw the print it cropped the tip of her finger like this, the red line showing where the printer cropped:







Is there a solution to this?


----------



## Mikehit (Aug 25, 2017)

Is it only that direction or is it vertical as well? I presume that is only a proportion of the shot - it may be that it is fitting to the page and cropping whichever dimension is too long for the paper. 

Which program are you using for printing - Lightroom, PS or another program? 
Are you using PC or mac?


----------



## LDS (Aug 25, 2017)

Mancubus said:


> I have bought a Pixma Pro 100 and I'm quite happy with the quality, my only complaint is that when printing borderless it crops a little bit (just a little) and the outmost edges of the photo are left out.



When printing borderless, the printer will expand the image over the sheet margins. The latest drivers should have, as shown, a control to the amount of the expansion:

Mac: http://ugp01.c-ij.com/ij/webmanual/PrinterDriver/M/PRO-100S%20series/1.0/EN/PPG/dg-c_borderless.html 
Win: http://ugp01.c-ij.com/ij/webmanual/PrinterDriver/W/PRO-100S%20series/1.0/EN/PPG/dg-c_borderless.html 

Anyway.IMHO, for very precise borderless print is better to print on a larger sheet, and then trim it properly.


----------



## hne (Aug 25, 2017)

LDS said:


> Mancubus said:
> 
> 
> > I have bought a Pixma Pro 100 and I'm quite happy with the quality, my only complaint is that when printing borderless it crops a little bit (just a little) and the outmost edges of the photo are left out.
> ...



Indeed they do. Last time I checked, both Canon and Epson printer drivers enlarged your print by an unspecified amount when you checked the borderless output mode, making it impossible to print exact to scale in borderless mode. But that's purely a driver user interface thing. Gutenprint in Linux allows you to set exact size/resolution and placement, including negative margins when borderless printing is checked. I'm normally using -1mm margins on small sheets and -2mm on larger ones.

If your printer driver can't give you this level of control, I'd suggest you complain to your printer manufacturer.


----------



## BeenThere (Aug 25, 2017)

You can't expect mechanical paper handling by a printer to be accurate to within one pixel accuracy. That is why the image is expanded beyond physical border for borderless printing.


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Aug 25, 2017)

You can tweak the amount of expansion with some printing apps like Qimage, but, as others have noted, paper does not go thru a printer in a perfect manner.

Below is a quote from Qimage Help. Its a popular app for those who want more control over their printing.

"*Borderless Overspray/Size Expansion *- Many print drivers offer a "borderless" or "no margins" mode that allows printing from edge to edge and top to bottom with no white border. If you would like to print a 4x6 print on 4x6 paper for example, you would expect the 4x6 print to align perfectly with the edges and top/bottom of the paper. Unfortunately, printers do not load paper precisely enough to cover exactly 4.0 x 6.0 inches of paper with a 4.0 x 6.0 inch print simply because the paper loading and positioning process is not exact. To compensate and insure that you don't get small slivers of white on the top, bottom, left, or right of your print, most print drivers artificially "expand" prints so that they are larger than necessary and so that part of the print actually oversprays onto a sponge behind the roller. When printing your 4x6 on 4x6 paper for example, the driver might see the 4x6 print and expand it to 4.2 x 6.2 so that 0.1 inches of the print overspray the left, right, top, and bottom, thus insuring that you have full coverage as long as the paper loads within 0.1 inch of the expected location. This expansion/overspray characteristic is a common feature of most print drivers, however, the artificial expansion of print sizes and overspray off the edge of the paper create problems of their own. While expanding a 4.0x6.0 print (as selected in your printing software) to 4.2 x 6.2 might be acceptable in most cases, this "size expansion" can cause other issues. If you are printing three 4x6 prints to a borderless 8.5 x 11 page for example, you will find that your 4x6 prints are a little larger than 4x6. Overspray can also cause unwanted cropping since part of the image might actually be oversprayed beyond the edge of the paper, making your prints look like they are missing some of the edges. There may be times when you would like to use borderless mode but you also want to insure that you get the exact sizes you ordered and you want to insure that parts of your prints are not oversprayed past the edge of the page. In these situations where exact print sizes and minimizing overspray are important, click "Edit", "Preferences", "Print and Page Formatting" from the Qimage main window and select "Borderless Overspray/Expansion" and choose "Disable Overspray and Size Expansion". This will allow you to print exact print sizes and also minimize overspray off the page. Such an option is important, for example, if you are creating a layout of multiple photos on an 8.5 x 11 borderless page and you simply want to use as much space as possible on the page but you still want exact print sizes and you don't want part of your prints to be clipped at the edges of the page. Note that when you disable expansion/overspray, however, you are subject to the accuracy of the paper loading mechanism so you may still find that you have a 1/32 inch white border on the left and 1/32 inch clipped on the right simply because the paper didn't load perfectly. If the paper loading error is consistent (always 1/32 border on the left and missing 1/32 of the image on the right), you can compensate by using "Edit", "Preferences", "Print and Page Formatting", "Page Margins". In this example, enter a margin of -1/32 inch on the left and 1/32 inch on the right: -0.03 left and 0.03 right.
*NOTE: *Disabling borderless overspray/expansion will only affect jobs printed to a printer. This option (the allow/disable selection) will have no effect when you are printing to file. Normally when printing to a file, you are preparing a job for a printer that is not available/connected so the printer cannot be queried for capabilities to allow for accurate disabling of borderless overspray/expansion. As a result, the setting (allow/disable) for the overspray/size expansion is ignored when printing to file."


----------



## Mancubus (Aug 26, 2017)

Thank you all for the helpful replies.


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Aug 26, 2017)

The easiest solution is to compose photos that leave extra room between the subject and the edges. I'm nortorious for holding my camera at a angle, so I always compose a photo loosely to allow for straightening and loss of the edges from framing or border-less printing. I can always crop a little if I leave too much.


----------

