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romebot3000
romebot3000
Known Participant
June 18, 2019
Question

Print Module - How to calculate even borders?

  • June 18, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 3848 views

Hello, I'm getting a bit confused. Let's say I want to print on A4 ( will want to print the same pic on various sizes)

The dimensions ratio is different than what I shoot which is 3:2.

What I want is to make a 2cm border top, right and left, and a 3cm border on bottom.

How do I calculate the actual borders so that it comes out that way?

I think the left and right bleed to the edge, but the top and bottom have a bit of a border due to the different in ratios of the print and paper.

So I guess I would add 2cm to left and right, but how do I calculate the top and bottom?

(on a separate note, when I go to page setup, there is an A4 paper size, but it is a hair off the standard size. I can't seem to duplicate it an edit it, so I tried to create my own, but here too I wasn't sure if I was doing it right, or why i should have to create one. must be I'm not understanding something. feel I should be using the default size.)

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

JP Hess
JP Hess
Inspiring
June 18, 2019

I use a Canon Pixma Pro 100. I have found that it has been necessary to create templates for larger print sizes that have offset borders in order to have "even" borders on the actual print. It was easier to do that than to fight the system. The templates seem to work every time.

romebot3000
romebot3000Author
Known Participant
June 19, 2019

Thanks! Can you explain how you did this?

R
richardplondon
Community Expert
June 18, 2019

You have two types of control in LR, for layout in the Print module: page based, and image cell based.

There are three choices for page layout method: the Single image / contact sheet option is best for this purpose.

Page based margins are measured from the edge of the paper. There may be a printer-imposed unprintable edge (assuming you are not set to "borderless" printing - it is simpler to NOT use borderless if you can). That unprintable edge is included within the page margin that LR sets. So you can directly set whatever you want at left, right, top, bottom.

LR also reports an image cell size. This can be smaller than the space within the page margins, or the same, but not bigger. (The same is true for each cell of a layout grid, when you subdivide that space into rows and columns.)

So if you enlarge the image cell size as much as LR will let you, by dragging those sliders, it will occupy all of the space inside the page margins.

Now your image sits inside the image cell, centred, as large as it can be accommodated. You choose whether LR is allowed to rotate it when that would make it bigger, or whether LR should respect its orientation. Obviously a portrait image fitted into a landscape space will have to leave big white spaces either side.

The shape proportion of the image (as currently cropped) and the shape of the image cell, will very often differ when you carry out your page layout in this way.

In that case an image will touch two sides of the cell and sit clear of the other two, leaving gaps, when it's "Zoomed to Fit" within this cell.

If you instead select "Zoom to Fill", LR auto-trims the image on the fly so that it shows the same shape as the containing cell. This permits LR to show it bigger, completely filling the cell leaving no gaps. This happens without needing to alter the Crop of the image concerned, in Develop: it is purely applied to the output and has no other impact. If the way this has been done is compositionally unsuitable you can "slide" the image within its cell in that 'loose-fit' direction only (since it is 'tight-fit' in the other direction, that won't slide).

hth - RP

    romebot3000
    romebot3000Author
    Known Participant
    June 19, 2019

    Thanks for the answer! But I don't want to zoom to fit. I want the full image, that when stretched out like you say, leaves a white space above and below. What I want to do is make a 2cm border all around.. Left and right seem easy enough, but how do I calculate the the top and bottom border is, so that, including the white that's already there, will be 2cm.. the answer will be 2cm minus X. How do I solve for X?

    (and I'm still not clear why when I choose A4 and print to a file, and then open it in Photoshop, it's slightly off, and more importantly how I can solve that by either creating a new page size (but not sure the values to put in w/ margins, etc), or editing the default (though I don't see how to do that), or creating borderless page (where is that set?), etc.)

    Thanks!

    R
    richardplondon
    Community Expert
    June 19, 2019

    As I said, unprintable hardware margins are included within whatever page margin LR lets you set. So if you want a finished margin of X cm, you set X cm.

    If the unprintable hardware margin is reported broader than X cm on a given side, that is the smallest figure you can set on that size: because the hardware physically cannot achieve X cm there.

    Note: very often paper is not manufactured precisely to size - for a stated nominal format, such as A4 or 5" x 7". Believe it or not the width and height that say "A4" paper is even stated as can vary, over and above particular paper physically measuring different than it has been stated.

    The print driver just works with whatever dimensions it's been told, communicating those into LR also on the presumption that they are correct. Then the images are sized, sent, and the printer sprays the ink, accordingly. If the trailing paper edge is going to turn out in practice not to arrive the expected distance after the last of the inked area rolls through, the printer has no way to know nor to do anything about this - and neither does the layout as seen in LR.

    Borderless mode is set within a print driver dialog (if that printer offers such a mode). Even if you are in fact "printing" to JPG, LR has always based its page layout on some real world printing configuration.

    If this printing configuration includes the selection of borderless as well as all the other print specific configuration including page size - then LR adopts a hardware print margin of zero all round. This permits the LR page margins to go down to zero (they won't do this by themselves). Then you can switch your print job from "to printer", so that it "prints" to JPG instead. Many printer drivers internally scale-up images when configured to "borderless" in order to ensure a full bleed - for practical reasons, but at the cost of dimensional inaccuracy - though some print drivers can be specially configured not to do so.

    When it comes to image shape either your crop perfectly matches the aspect of the stated paper size or not... but small errors of one or two pixels are to be expected sometimes.

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