Can't remove white space around printed document

[nb37610728]

Hi all,

I am currently trying to print out out a sticker document that needs to be precise. There are 24 circles on the A4 paper, I used some green marks to see if the printer was even close to correct, which it's not because I can obviously see some white space when printed.

In my PDF I can see nothing wrong, so I'm not sure if it's my PDF or printer? I'm currently using an old printer but just for testing, I'm supposed to be using a Brother mfc-j5720dw but as I said I will be using it when I'm 100% sure it works as I'm testing right now.

Will be showing some images of my InDesign document, if it helps!

Woud love to hear if anyone knows how to fix this!

[John Mensinger]

There are a lot of variables your post doesn't cover.

Are you printing directly from InDesign?

Your printer can't print all the way to the edge of the paper. Most can't. So depending on the settings you use, in both the application and the print driver, the image may be shifting away from the edge, or getting cut off near the edge. The last image you posted looks like perhaps your positioning is based on Upper Left and the image is getting shifted. You might try a Centered page position and make sure Scale to Fit is not enabled. It still won't print to the edge, but it should come closer to hitting your labels, assuming the InDesign layout matched the physical label layout correctly.

[nb37610728]

Hi! Thanks for your answer

I've tried printing both from InDesign and from a PDF, I've also tried it using 100% and fit to document but it didn't seem to work either way. I have put it on centered, but it didn't seem to do anything differently.

[rob day]

Can you show us a screen capture of the Print>Setup from InDesign?

[nb37610728]

Hi!

It seems I am not able to edit "Offset" and "Gap":

[rob day]

The print driver might also have a scale setting in the OS print dialog. Looking at your screen capture in #1, it looks like the art has been scaled relative to the paper die cut.

If you click Printer... is there a Paper Handling option with a Scale to Fit?

[nb37610728]

I think it's pretty much the same as yours

[Willi Adelberger]

Best way is:

1. Export as PDF
2. Print from acrobat, and don't fit to paper size, print in 100%, even if it claims that the content cannot be printed complete.

[rob day]

See #2

[Migintosh]

Sometimes I have to print on address stickers, similar to what you're trying with the round stickers. I've had the same problem getting them to align, and here's something that worked for me.

I start by measuring the label sheet and setting frames with a small stroke in position where the stickers are. Here's an example:

I export as PDF and print to plain paper. I then hold the plain paper against the blank sheet of stickers and see how far off the expected drift of the printer deposited the image. Here's an example where the black frames represent the sticker sheet, and the red frames represent what prints on the plain paper.

Based on this information, I go back to InDesign and select all of my frames and nudge them to the left and up a bit. I then PDF and print on plain paper again and see how close I'm getting. When it's pretty much on target, I run the PDF on the label sheet just to be sure it's working. When the frames print pretty much where the stickers are, I can be relatively sure that what ever I place in the InDesign document where the frames are will print on the sheet in the correct position. This isn't a universal solution, as a different printer might have a different amount of drift, but for my own printer, I can use the template without problems. If you design the content of your sticker so that any drift won't be noticeable, it should work for you. In your case, you can make the green bleed off of the cut portion of the circle, but the closer the white circle sits to the edge of the circle, the more the drift will be noticeable.