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Participant
February 14, 2017
Question

.0625 shift when printing, again...

  • February 14, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 1002 views

I know this topic has come up before; I've walked through a dozen threads on it, but I'm still not convinced that the "acceptable margin for error on your printer" is the answer.  Quick walk-through:

  1. Printing playing cards, two rows of four on 8.5x11 paper.  I have one document for the fronts, one for the back.
  2. I'm not having the printer print double sided -- I print one side, feed the paper back through to print the other side.
  3. I printed hundreds of sheets like this over the past three months while prototyping a game.  The front and back aligned every time with such a small margin for error that it was unnoticeable when the cards were cut out.
  4. Installed InDesign on a new laptop and can't get a single front and back aligned now.  This includes files that I produced on the old machine which previously lined up perfectly.
  5. It's incredibly consistent -- there's an additional .0625 inch to the right margin on the landscaped pages.  And it's .0625 every time.  Someone made the comment that if you print front/back 10 times you'll get 8 variations.  Point taken, but not happening here.  The change is extremely consistent.

It seems like I must have a setting in InDesign adding that extra bit of margin to both new and old documents at print time, but I can't find it anywhere.  Copying my print profile summary below and would certainly appreciate any guesses or insights that people have to offer.

Print Preset: 8 Card Spread
Printer: HPFD7EB5 (HP ENVY 4500 series)
PPD: N/A
PPD File: N/A

General
    Copies: 1
    Collate: N/A
    Reverse Order: Off
    Pages: All
    Sequence: All Pages
    Spreads: Off
    Print Master Pages: Off
    Print Layers: Visible & Printable Layers
    Print Non-printing Objects: Off
    Print Blank Pages: Off
    Print Visible Guides and Baseline Grids: Off

Setup
    Paper Size: Letter
    Paper Width: 8.5 in
    Paper Height: 11 in
    Page Orientation: Landscape
    Paper Offset: N/A
    Paper Gap: N/A
    Transverse: N/A
    Scaling: 100%
    Constrain Proportions: On
    Page Position: Centered
    Thumbnails: Off
    Tiling: Off

Marks and Bleed
    Crop Marks: Off
    Bleed Marks: Off
    Registration Marks: Off
    Color Bars: Off
    Page Information: Off
    Printer Mark Type: Default
    Crop Mark Weight: 0.25 pt
    Mark Offset from Page: 0 in
    Use Document Bleed Settings: Off
    Bleed Top: 0 in
    Bleed Bottom: 0 in
    Bleed Left: 0 in
    Bleed Right: 0 in
    Include Slug Area: Off

Output
    Color: Composite RGB
    Text As Black: Off
    Trapping: N/A
    Flip: N/A
    Negative: N/A
    Screening: N/A
    Simulate Overprint: Off

Graphics
    Send Data: Optimized Subsampling
    Download: N/A
    Download PPD Fonts: N/A
    PostScript®: N/A
    Data Format: N/A

Color Management
    Document Profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1
    Color Handling: Let InDesign Determine Colors
    Printer Profile: Document RGB - sRGB IEC61966-2.1
    Preserve RGB Numbers: Off
    Proof Profile: N/A
    Simulate Paper Color: N/A

Advanced
    Print &as Bitmap: Off
    Bitmap Resolution: N/A
    OPI Image Replacement: N/A
    EPS: N/A
    PDF: N/A
    Bitmap Images: N/A
    Transparency Flattener Preset: [Medium Resolution]
    Ignore Spread Overrides: Off

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2 replies

Community Expert
February 14, 2017

Your printer summary shows no PPD, do you have the proper PPDs installed for this printer?

Dr_UsualAuthor
Participant
February 14, 2017

Ah, that could be it.  It's a brand new laptop and it auto-detected the printer on the network, so it's possible that I had a specific driver installed on my old laptop and a generic one on this machine.  I'll give that a try this morning.  Thanks!

Eric Dumas
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 14, 2017

Hi, just to make sure, the whole design on the page is always offset by the same amount.

Has your content in InDesign moved somehow?

Dr_UsualAuthor
Participant
February 14, 2017

Nope, I double checked that -- everything's lined up the same in the InDesign doc.  It's easy to check, since they're standard playing card size at 2.5" x 3.5".  Also, I have fourteen different files that lay out different decks/backs via data merge.  Wouldn't totally discount the idea that I could somehow bump each of them, but it's more likely a setting that I tweaked (or didn't tweak) globally.

Thanks!