[Noted]

Say I make a new A4 page in Photoshop or Illustrator then fill it all in red, I would expect the whole page, when printed, to be red.

But in fact this happens:



Ive tried so many ways to fill the whole page but I have no idea how to.

Any help?

[vtgts500kw]

because you are printing with an inkjet printer. it is impossible for it to print the whole page.

you need a postscript capable printer.

[art_director]

another method is to print on a larger piece of paper and trim it down to size.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by vtgts500kw

because you are printing with an inkjet printer. it is impossible for it to print the whole page.

you need a postscript capable printer.

Complete and total balderdash. Full-bleed (borderless) capability has NOTHING to do with whether the printer is PostScript or not, and NOTHING to do with whether it's an inkjet or not.

MOST inkjet printers (few of which have PostScript) now do borderless printing. You just have to set it to borderless mode -- it will NOT be set to borderless by default. On my Canon, for example, this is set up in Page Setup. In Epsons, it's more complicated. Read your printer's instructions (which are probably in the form of a help file) to figure it out for your model. I print borderless photos all the time.

Most color laser printers (most of which do have PostScript), on the other hand, do NOT do full-bleed. On these, it's generally expected that the user needs crop and registration marks on oversize paper, so the 1/8" border is usually irrelevant.

tooki

[CaptainHaddock]

Balderdash is a little strong. How about out-of-date? Time was, inkjet printers couldn't print to the edge because the rollers and stuff needed space. But a lot can now if you just choose the right print setup options.

Tooki, I have a Canon printer as well. Are you able to print borderless photos even when the photo proportions are different than that of the paper? (say 2:3 photos on 5:7 photo paper) I always get white bars when I try it.

[Noted]

You were right. In print setup theres an option for borderless printing. However when I turn this on, its like the whole image im printing is expanded. It does however fill the whole page but everything is just scaled up.

For example if I printed the whole page orange it comes out like this big

[meem]

To print on the whole page correctly the printer has to do that. It's called bleed. Full bleed printers can't really print right to the edge. Because of things like the paper shifting as it moves through the printer and such. I'm willing to bet that if you printed like 100 of the same photo onthe borderless setting that if you look at the edges of a few or hold em up to each other you can see the they are not aligned with each other perfectly (im sure they are close but not perfect). It's the same reason that most commercial printers, using laser printers or some sort of offset, use the method Art Director said. if I print 100 8.5x11 images on 11x17 paper then tried to cut it out (even with a machine that cuts every page in one pass) you will see white egdes on the left side of some and on the right side of others. So printers will print bigger then cut the image out of that.



I probably over explained that but basically its to compensate for misalignment of paper/printhead I imagine in a inkjet printer. in a laser printer the fuser/paper could be and usually are slightly misaligned.