PSE2021 Organizer Cannot Print Correctly (to 4" x 6" Paper at Least)

[DP*]

PSE 20121 Organizer has a serious printing bug.

I am trying to print to Canon 4x6" glossy photo paper. In PSE2021 it's not possible to print to this size paper correctly - white bands are left at the right and bottom of the printed photo.

In the Organizer do File -> Print  and set up for 4x6 printing:

• Printer Settings
• Paper Type: Photo Paper Plus Glossy II
• Print Quality: High
• Tray: cassette
• Select paper size
• 4" x 6" 10x15cm
• Select type of print
• Individual prints
• Select Print Size
• 4" x 6"
• Crop to fit: checked

This will fail to print correctly - it leaves a white band at the bottom and right of the printed photo

Press More Options -> Custom Print Size

And you see that PSE2021 cannot print to 4"x6". It wants to print to 5.69" x 3.50". If you try to enter the correct values (4"x 6") PSE complains "The value you've entered is outside the range (0.20 … 5.69 ). The closest valid value will be used."

This bug is not present in PSE2020 which prints correctly and More Options -> Custom Print Size shows the correct values (6.00 and 4.00)

As far as I can tell from playing with the printer dialogs, PSE2021 may fail to print correctly to all paper sizes but I haven't actually tried printing to other sizes to confirm.

For me, this is a serious enough bug to revert back to PSE2020 unless there's some simple solution I'm missing.

thanks

[Greg_S.]

I agree that there seem to be some issues with printing in the Organizer.  Have you tried printing in the Editor?  I was able to make the necessary adjustments there to print a 4x6 size.  But it took some fiddling around.  What printer do you have?  And what OS are you using?  If you are using Windows, what version and build are you on? (Look under Settings>System>About - Windows Specifications.)

[DP*]

Interesting - printing from the Editor works fine but it's broken in the Organizer.

The printer is a Canon MG7720. The OS is Windows 10 Pro, build 19041.508

[hatstead · Accepted solution]

The print engines in editor and organizer are not the same. This remains unchanged from prior versions of PSE in my experience. Bottom line is to print via editor.

[DP*]

Seems strange to use different print engines in Organizer and Editor especially as the print UIs are the same as far as I can tell.

Printing from the Editor is a bit inconvenient for me so I guess I'll probably abandon PSE2021 and revert to PSE2020 until the bug is fixed (fingers crossed on that given the long-standing major bugs in Organizer that have been extant for years).

[Greg_S.]

I've been complaining about the different print engines for years.  (There are some minor differences in the UI.)  For reasons that have never been clear to me, the two engines can produce entirely different results with identical settings.

You are using the identical Windows 10 Pro build as me.  I shall poke around some more to see whether MSFT drivers are at fault.  I recently built a new machine and I don't recall whether I installed my printer's driver from the manufacturer or relied on the Windows installation.   I also have an Epson printer that I have not yet set up.  Will see if that gives different results.

I will also escalate this issue to Adobe, but don't hold your breath for an update.

[DP*]

Thanks, much appreciated. Kind of surprising that this printing error shows up now - as far as I know, printing has been substantially unchanged for many years. I'm not sure what might have changed that would trigger this. I poked around in the Registry and didn't spot anything obvious that was printing-related. 

[Greg_S.]

I've now tried installing the manufacturers' drivers on my HP and Epson printers, and I can't get either of them to print a 6x4.  I've also confirmed the bug with another user.  So, for present, the only solution is to use the Editor's print engine.

[DP*]

Thanks for investigating. Such an odd/unexpected bug. I've reverted to PSE2020 until (fingers crossed) a fix is available.

[ABWay]

I am only confirming DP's Problem Report. Please push this issue for resolution:

PSE Organizer 2021 only prints 4x6 as 3.50x5.50. Custom Print Size does not help since it only allows 0.20-3.50 & 0.20-5.50. And, Scale to Fit Media still only prints as 3.50x5.50. PSE Editor does print 4x6, but this work-around lacks other Organizer features and is inconvenient. This is a serious problem not present in the PSE 2019 Organizer.

I have been an annual upgrader (PSE/PrE) since 2006 and have just upgraded to PSE/PrE 2021.

[DP*]

Someone (an Adobe Community Professional) marked this answer as "Correct". What exactly does that signify? Does it indicate any willingness on Adobe's part to acknowledge or address the bug?

Using the Editor to print is a useful workaround so in some sense it's "correct" but this is a showstopper bug for me so a "correct" response for me would mean fixing Organizer's printing function.

thanks

[MichelBParis]

Theoretically, only OP or ACP, MVPs, moderators or Adobe Staff are supposed to mark/unmark a post as 'correct'.

In practice, the forum platform allows several 'correct' answers to a single post. In this forum, the OP very rarely take the trouble to click on that choice, even if he/she acknowledges in posts that the solution works.

Again theoretically, the 'correct' answer is mainly supposed to sort and find discussions more easily, and accessorily to reward the answering user with new 'badges'.

Personnally I don't care for the reward, I am very happy if the OP gives good or negative feedback, so I have very rarely marked posts as 'correct'.

Using the Editor to print is a useful workaround so in some sense it's "correct" but this is a showstopper bug for me so a "correct" response for me would mean fixing Organizer's printing function.

Sorry to be blunt, but I find this is nonsense.

"Correct" is applied to the answer, not to happy news for the OP. We are looking for 'helpful' answers;  it's easy to give your feedback and mood in the discussion itself. In the older version of this forum, we had the choice between 'Correct' and 'Helpful'. Nobody really agreed to that distinction.

[DP*]

I actually never even noticed the ability to mark an answer as "Correct" until you pointed it out. Firstly, it's not something I'd expect to see (I don't recall seeing it on other forums) and secondly it looks more like a label than a call to action (it would be better to title it "Mark as Correct Answer" rather than "Correct Answer").

The name "Correct answer" doesn't seem right. "Best answer" or "Most helpful answer"  might be more apposite.

Then again, one might argue that the most helpful answer should be the one with the most likes and get rid of whole "Correct Answer" mechanism.

...and while I have your attention: do you think there's any chance that Adobe might give some visibility into their queue of bugs and feature requests? Rather than exposing their true bug-tracking/project management tools I'm think of something along the lines of the various UserVoice sites that Microsoft runs where end users make and vote on requests/bugs and Microsoft personnel (occasionally) respond e.g., https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/293349-outlook-for-ios

thanks

[MichelBParis]

...and while I have your attention: do you think there's any chance that Adobe might give some visibility into their queue of bugs and feature requests? Rather than exposing their true bug-tracking/project management tools I'm think of something along the lines of the various UserVoice sites that Microsoft runs where end users make and vote on requests/bugs and Microsoft personnel (occasionally) respond e.g., https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/293349-outlook-for-ios

Good questions. What I do believe is that what you are expecting already exists, at least for the main Adobe products; however I don't expect anything new for Elements.

https://feedback.photoshop.com/ is the official Adobe site for that purpose. You should really take some time to browse those discussions. You'll find a mixture of very elaborate discussions by great experts as well as wars about UI issues, with bitter complaints as well as sensible ideas. Some softwares also use User Voice, and many product managers are very active on twitter.

And Elements? Remember that there are already many years that the team has been moved to India. Photoshop and Premiere Elements are now driven by the same product manager as Photoshop and Lightroom.

Look at that faq which makes quite clear that Elements is specifically targetted at beginners.

https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements/faq.html?red=a&tduid=75ca8c663cec570424f66b0a342b2...

Elements is NOT a big source of profit, compared with the big brothers with the subscription model. It must not be an internal competitor. The new orientation is about IA and automatic features, which indicates that there is hope for the future. However a side effect is that there is not enough help for beginners; we do get help from Adobe Staff, but the main support is from fellow users. Questions in the feedback forum are very rarely answered.

Well, you asked my opinion!

[DP*]

Thanks for the reply. 

Granted that PSE may not not a big money maker for Adobe but it's not cheap software. At its price I expect at least some useful new features to be released periodically and egregious bugs to be squashed.

Sadly, the Organizer - the component which is the more important to me - has had few useful features added to it and awful bugs that have persisted for years (e.g., People tags being stripped when editing, media analysis tools which use so much resources they have to be disabled and a Places functionality that broke years ago). 

But...I still really like PSE. I've used it since it was Photoshop Album 1.0 back in 2003. I find its organizing capabilities to be the best I've used (I have more than 200K assets in PSE - one of the largest catalogs I believe). I don't particularly like Lightroom but I suppose I could use it if PSE went away. I've not found anything else I like (especially something that could ingest the metadata from PSE).

thanks

[Hero-of-Doom]

Not sure this true with all printers, but Organizer 2021 is over-riding the Print settings (after you press Print), and setting the paper size to 5x7. 

[DP*]

Good news! This printing bug appears to have been fixed in the newly-released PSE2021.1.

I installed the update and initially had some problems printing at all. A reboot fixed that and now I'm able to print on 4x6 paper without a problem.

Thanks Adobe team!

[Greg_S.]

Thanks for confirming that the bug has been fixed in the latest update.

[DP*]

This same bug is back in PSE2024: the PSE2024 Organizer cannot print correctly to 4x6 paper - it wants to print to 5.69" x 3.50".

Adobe., please fix this ASAP.

thanks

[old falcon]

Frankly, I do NOT expect this bug to be extinguished any time soon. I fought with it before with previous versions of PSE and now PSE 2024 still doesn't work. Since I have an Epson printer, I use the Epson Photo+ app on my iMacMini and it seems to be just fine. Export as a jpeg to favorite place and load into Epson Photo+ and save hair pulling and @#$^%.

[DP*]

I first encountered this bug in the intiial release version of PSE2021 but it was soon fixed in 2021.1. The bug was not present in PSE2022 or PSE2023. I'm hoping it'll get fixed in an update to PSE2024.