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Question

Problems printing labels on A4 paper

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 18, 2023
3 replies
2370 views

Hi everyone

I have created a design in Illustrator for product labels. The label is (W:105mm H:48mm), and there are 12 labels in a sheet; the sheet has a 4.5mm edge at the top and bottom, which is not part of the label; in fact: 48*6=288mm. An A4 sheet is 297mm.

The problem is when I print, the labels are off-centre, so the design at the top and bottom of each label goes in the one below or above.

Up to now, I have tried the following:

Leaving a 4.5mm space at the top and bottom of my document
Make the document in Illustrator 288mm instead of 297mm
Increase the Height of each label by 1.5mm so that the design covers the whole 297mm sheet of paper.

But the result doesn't change. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance for your time

This topic has been closed for replies.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Many consumer printers are not the most exact in specifications and can easily misposition print. But let's assume not for now.

How are you printing these?

If you are currently printing directly from Illustrator, you'd might have better results saving your document as a PDF and printing from Acrobat. Regardless, It's important to make sure no auto-resizing is going on (e.g. in Acrobat: make sure it's set at "Actual Size" and not "Fit"), which comes from trying to adapt to a printer's printable area. Assuming your document is built to the sheet size (A4), with your labels positioned appropriately (which sounds like what you've done), and you have selected the right paper size in your printer's page setup, it should teoretically falle xacatly in posisti. It's useful to print a test file like the one attached to test positioning. If not, you can at least then measure how much it's "off" on this text print.

In Illustrator's print dialog, you can actually tweak positioning a bit... by clicking the center point and entering the how many mm you need to move left-right or up-down.

LabelTest.pdf

S

Stephan5FE6Author

Known Participant

Thanks everyone for your prompt replies

It seems like increasing the height of each label by 1.5mm fixed the alignment, now the first 3 rows are almost perfect, the others still lack a little bit.

Let's assume we numerate the labels like this:

From 1 to 6 they look fine

These are labels 1 and 2:

there is still a 1mm white line at the top

These are labels 7, 8, 9, 10:

The text at the top of labels 9 and 10, is almost being cut and printed on labels 7 and 8

These are labels 11 and 12:

There is a 3mm white line at the bottom which makes the text at the top of the label fall completely at the bottom of labels 10 and 11

Why is the print leaving 1mm at the top 3 at the bottom and still not being exact? Adding some bleed could help?

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

it looks very much that your print output is being reduced to fit inside printable area

Please screen shot all of your print settings so we can determine at what point things are going awry.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @Stephan5FE6,

We understand that encountering technical issues can be frustrating. I hope the suggestions shared by Jacob helped resolve the problem. If not, kindly share more details, like the exact version of the OS/Illustrator, system config (CPU/GPU/Memory/Printer Make and Model), a sample file (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/share-your-files-in-6-simple-steps/td-p/12967531), and a screen recording of the problem (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/screen-record-an-issue-on-windows-amp-macos-for-sharing/td-p/12967727) / screenshots of the output image and the print settings used so that we can investigate this further?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Stephan,

Presuming that your label design fits within 105 x 48 mm (always have a bit of clear space round the actual artwork for unavoidable mismatch of individual sheets), and that (your label design is copied as Effect from the original (so it can be edited easily) and that) the copies have the right distance centre to centre (105 x 48):

I believe that the issue may be the way your printer places the artwork on the sheet, and that a simple solution may be to move the artwork on the Artboard by the opposite amount the mismatch you can measure on the print.

In other words, a customized adaptation to that particular printer.

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