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Borderless in Epson 3800

Noel Greene

pro member
I recently purchased Epson 3800 so far I am having great difficulty getting anywhere close to borderless prints. I select the "borderless" box but all trials so far dont get me anywhere near borderless. I would expect a small margin on the top and bottom but the printed images are sort of slotted into one corner with a large margin on the right edge and on the top edge. I have printed with PS CS4 and today tried with LR2 but still no borderless image or anywhere close.

I am using A3 Epson Premium Luster .. which the manual says supports "borderless" .. I must be making some basic set up error. Can anyone help. It is so time consuming with little positive result.

Noel greene
 

Noel Greene

pro member
Thanks

Hello Ken, Thanks for taking the time to rely to my question. I have indeed read Eric Chans fantastic 3800 article, in fact it helped me greatly with some of the other early issues I had with the 3800 such as profiling etc and he took the time to email me presonally which I think was very considerate. I am very very new to this level of Workflow, Colour management and this level of Printer. The prints I have produced on the 3800 so far are very nice and a big big step up from an older 2200 I have. But I still just cannot get the borderless print facility working to any real degree. I have the paper feed right - I havent even dared to use the front or back feeder, I am just using the automatic feed like a "normal" Printer. I have made sure that the "paper" is set at SHEET. The 3800 Manual is poor I think, it makes a lot of assumptions i.e. that a new owner is proficient in high level printer use .. which I think the should reconsider .. moving to the 3800 is probably a big step for many digitial workers .. its not like moving up from the 3800 to a 9600 where the person will understand the ins and outs of the system. I must be leaving a button unclicked somewhere .. like resize to fit or something like that .. I have looked at a lot of the Printing Forums but there seems to be little p"patience" with what must be a basic issue such as mine. This is why I turned to OPF. There is always a high level of courtesy on this forum. Any extra advice would be appreciated.
 

Andrew Stannard

pro member
Hi Noel,

I'm printing on an Epson 3800 using LR2 and Vista64, and borderless has been working fine for me (at A4 size at least, haven't tried A3).

In the print setup dialog make sure your paper source is set to 'Sheet (borderless)' - which is a different option to just 'Sheet'. And of course that your paper size is set to A3.

Then in the printer properties make sure that 'borderless' is ticked. Under my dirvers there is then a 'Expansion' button to the right of 'borderless' tick box. Clicking this opens up another panel, which I normally leave set to 'Auto Expand' and the slider set to 'Max'.

If you're using LR, you'll then in the Print Module you''ll need to make sure that your margins in the Layout tab on the right-hand side are set to 0 for top, bottom, left & right. Also in the Layout tab make sure that the cell size is set to the maximum possible in both width and height.

These settings work fine for me - hope they help you out.



Cheers,
 

Noel Greene

pro member
Hello Andy, thanks a lot for this advice .. I will try your options this afternoon. I cannot remember seeing a Sheet(borderless) option .. I have ticked the borderless box, but I havent tweaked the Expansion button at all. I will try your suggestions. Many thanks
 

Andrew Stannard

pro member
Hi,

Let us know how you get on.

Happy to send through some screen shots of settings if required. Are you on Windows or Mac? Don't know how different the drivers are between the two.
 

Noel Greene

pro member
Windows Vista

Hello Andy

I use Windows Vista .. over the last few months I have been upgrading my equipment .. the 3800 and a Lenovo ThinPad - which I am using for Printing .. I also have bought into CS4 so this is a huge learning curve for me at this time ... but having laid out the cash for the 3800 on the basis that it could do borderless I really need to get it working properly. The print quality from the 3800 is really good and what I hope to do is to able to print images myself for places where I have opportunities to display and also to sell ..

I would be very happy if you sent me some screenshots

best regards

Noel Greene
 

Andrew Stannard

pro member
Hi,

If you click on the link below you should get a screenshot of my setup (hopefully!)

http://www.astannard.com/opf/3800_borderless_setup.jpg


Things to note:

- In the 'Print Setup' box source is set to Sheet (borderless)
- In the big '3800 Properties' box, paper settings are set to 'Sheet' and Borderless is ticked
- Expansion set to 'Auto Expand' and amount of enlargement set to 'max'

On the right-hand side in Lightroom:

- Margins set to 0.
- Cell size set to mximum allowed.

You will of course need a picture that is of the correct aspect ratio for A3. If it's a little bit off you can click the 'zoom to fill' box which is in the 'Image Settings' tab on the right-hand side in LR (not shown on screenshot).

Good luck!

Andy.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Noel,

First let me say that when you speak of the Epson 3800, I will assume you mean the Epson Stylus Pro 3800. (And I note there are two variants of that, the "Stylus Pro 3800 Portrait Edition" and the "Stylus Pro 3800 Professional Edition".)

I have no experience with the Epson Stylus Pro 3800, but let me pass on my observations about borderless printing with my Epson Stylus Photo 1900. My platform is Windows XP Pro.

Note first that I do all my photo printing via Qimage.

On the printer Properties sheet, on the Advanced tab, there is a pair of "radio buttons", "borders" and "borderless". Borderless can be selected for most paper sizes and types. There is no adjustment for "expansion" (as there was in connection with the borderless mode on some other Epson printer I had).

If I have selected, for example, 8.5" x 11" paper, and select the borderless mode, then Qimage reports the available printing area as 8.499" x 10.998".

I compose my page based on that (or let Qimage do it), and the result is a borderless print.

I note that the reporting by Qimage of the actual available printing size (presumably as reported by the printer driver) is a very useful tool in troubleshooting printer situations. If you don't have Qimage, you might want to consider getting it for that reason alone. (It also reports the image resolution at the input to the printer driver for the current printer configuration, rarely-known information.)

I realize that none of this gives any insight into why you are unable to employ borderless printing on your Epson Stylus Pro 3800, but perhaps it will give you some points of comparison.

Good luck in cracking this mystery.

I conclude with a favorite anecdote about borderless prints.

A few years ago, Carla was selected to have her picture used as the lead for an article in a regional glossy magazine about the Red Hat Society (she was at the time the queen of one of the society's many chapters in the area).

The magazine dispatched a stringer, a supposed professional photographer, to our home for the shot.

After the shot appeared, I contacted him and asked If I could purchase some prints. He rather grudgingly said yes.

I told him I wanted 8" x 10" prints. borderless. He said, "Oh I'm sorry, my printer won't do borderless".

I said, "So, you use 8" x 10" paper for 8" x 10" prints, do you?"

He said, "No, I print 8" x 10" prints on 8.5" x 11" paper."

I said, "Well, when you trim them, they will be borderless."

He said, "Well, I never thought of it that way."

When he delivered the prints, they were still untrimmed. He said, "I always have such a hard time trimming prints with a scissors. I figured, from what I saw when I was at your home, you would have a real trimmer, so maybe you could do it yourself."
 

Noel Greene

pro member
Hello Andy, I tried your suggestions and was making good progress. I even got a warning htat the image size was greater than the paper size and that some cropping would occur. Great, I said, never mind the cropping just press the print button. Well it certainly cropped the image but it still printed to the exact same size as my earlier attempts. The left hand side is borderless as is the bottom, but the right hand side is consistently about 2 inches from the edge and the top is 1 inch from the edge. I just cannot understand this..
 

Noel Greene

pro member
Hello Doug, everyone is so helpful on this site and thanks for your time. The printer is the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 but I think I have hit a "wall" in a Printing Marathon .. nothing I seem to do will get this borderless effect that I need. I need these images to print full size because of the Framing and the Matt Cuts that I can buy off the shelf.

I have been researching this Printing problem for a week now (and using INK and Paper) and in many cases I have heard of the QImage print option. I notice that they have a trial period .. it looks an option .. do you find it easy to use ?

best regards

Noel Greene
 

Andrew Stannard

pro member
Hi,

One further thing to check, bit of a long shot though...

In the page layout tab of the print drivers properties, check that your output paper is set to 'Same as paper size'. Am fairly certain that this is what it defaults to in anycase.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Noel,

I have been researching this Printing problem for a week now (and using INK and Paper) and in many cases I have heard of the QImage print option. I notice that they have a trial period .. it looks an option .. do you find it easy to use?

Yes I do, but it is very complicated and has an enormous range of capabilities, so of course one has to put some time into dealing with it. There are many ways to do almost any given thing. And of course there are a number of idiosyncrasies in the user interface (I tell the developer/publisher he is a mad genius).

The first step is to realize that Qimage takes a completely different outlook than the printing functionality of many image editors. It does not deal at all with the (wholly spurious) notion of an "inch size" of an image (which of course is an artificial set of dimensions involving the totally arbitrary image resolution indicators) and printing the image at some percentage of that size.

Rather, it deals with printing the image (whatever its pixel dimensions) at a certain desired printed size. (Fancy that!)

Once you choose a "frame" size for the print, you can initially emplace the image in it one of two ways:

• Scaled so that it all (just) fits the frame (thus leaving white space at top/bottom or left/right if the aspect ratio of the image is not the same as that of the frame - the default being to evenly distribute the white space, but this can be easily changed).

• Scaled and then cropped in the least aggressive way that allows the frame to be filled (the default being that the crop is centered, but both the size and location of the crop can then be easily changed).

These crop parameters may be saved, and even associated with the file so that they will be recalled when the file is again printed. (There is even the possibility of saving, for each file, several sets of crop definitions, one to be used in the case of each of several frame sizes.)

And the entire description of a job (including, if you wish, the specific files to be emplaced) may be saved so that the entire job may be rerun in the future.

There is never any need to "resize" the image before submitting it for printing (in fact, doing so is generally counterproductive). When you commit to print a certain image file at certain printed dimensions, Qimage does all the necessary work to mediate (optimally) between the pixel dimensions of the image and the interface resolution of the printer driver (and you have your choice among numerous very sophisticated interpolation algorithms to be used for that, if you are an interpolation maven).

The program will apply printer profiles. It also allows the user to make ad hoc modifications of each image, including changes in brightness and contrast, or the application of sharpening only for printing.

None of this dealing with individual images results in the writing of modified image files (unless of course you wish to do so). It all works by saving "recipes", which direct modification of the images "on the fly" when printing is about to be done..

I'm sure that with an unregistered version you will be able to do the "sniffing" I mentioned. And you may find that Qimage is the way you should do all your photo printing.

I'm hardy an expert, but I do use its basic features daily, and if you get involved, I'd be glad to give you some hints and tips. (And there are many real experts on Qimage on this forum.)

Best regards,

Doug
 

Noel Greene

pro member
Doug, thanks a lot, I really appreciate your time on this. I will have alook at QImage but at this stage with a new Printer and new to Photoshop I am almost overwhelmed with technical stuff. I need a week to go thro all of this stuff. It just amazes me that Epson and perhaps other Printer Manufactures dont seem to care too much once they have sold the product. I will keep you posted on my progress. Many thanks
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Noel,

OK Andy, I will try that as well. I am beginning to think that this is some form of an alignment problem.

You probably covered this in your earlier posts, but could you please describe for me just what happens on the paper when you try to make a borderless print.

For example:

• The entire image I expect is printed but appears with white borders around it. [And if so, are these the inherent minimum normal print border of the printer, if you know those?]

or

• There is a white border on one side of the image but the print bleeds off the other side, and some of the content is gone on that side.

I note in Eric Chan's monumental piece on the 3800 a peculiar thing in which the "centering" works differently for one type of paper only (UltraSmooth Fine Art).

Are there different choices for how both paper guides are set in this printer? (For example, in my Stylus Pro R1900, only the left paper guide is moved.)

Best regards,

Doug
 

Kim Fullbrook

New member
Like Doug I've successfully printed borderless prints using Qimage. It's not the easiest program to set up for borderless but once it's done you can leave it until you change paper size
 
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