What does 'borderless' really mean?.....

Hello everyone.

Using a S800 (totally satisfied) and will move up to the i950.

"Borderless', does that mean the printer finds the edges of the paper on its own?...or....Do you have to trim anything depending on the exact path of the paper as it is placed into the printer.?

To clarify, when I print 4x6 many times after tearing off the perforated edges I still have to trim one or the other edge.

When they say 'borderless, and you insert a paper exactly 4x6 (or 5x7, 8x10, 13 x 19) does the printer align the paper to the print head (or visa versa) to make it borderless with no need for any trimming?

Looking forward to your help, thank you,

Nicholas, http://www.nickphoto123.com
--
The joy of photography is being there when you take the picture.

I have a i950, and yes, you get true borderless - but - and this is what a Canon tech support guy told me - only when you use the Canon ImageBrowser software. I use Mac and have tried printing from their iPhoto app., and it leaves a border. ImageBrowser does not. So, if you use Photoshop, iPhoto, or any other image software, simply "save" it , or "export" it to ImageBrowser, and it will print borderless (any size).

Nicholas said:

Hello everyone.

Using a S800 (totally satisfied) and will move up to the i950.

"Borderless', does that mean the printer finds the edges of the
paper on its own?...or....Do you have to trim anything depending on
the exact path of the paper as it is placed into the printer.?

To clarify, when I print 4x6 many times after tearing off the
perforated edges I still have to trim one or the other edge.
When they say 'borderless, and you insert a paper exactly 4x6 (or
5x7, 8x10, 13 x 19) does the printer align the paper to the
print head (or visa versa) to make it borderless with no need for
any trimming?

Looking forward to your help, thank you,

Nicholas, http://www.nickphoto123.com
--
The joy of photography is being there when you take the picture.

Click to expand...

Canon's Easy PhotoPrint works really well too. It free off there website under the drivers section.

Does you S800 not print borderless photos? The reason I ask is my Canon S520 does (really well). Just throw in the paper, be it, 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8.5 x 11 what have you and tell it what paper you are using and bam! A beautiful print every time.

I am looking at getting the i950 as well in the future once the price comes down a little.

The S800 was made before borderless printing, and can only achieve it with special perforated paper. Other than that it is a pretty decent printer.

All the Canon printers since the S820/S900/S750/S520 have supported borderless printing. True borderless, just put in that size paper and it prints right ot the edge.

On Macs, the borderless is only available on system X.2 or higher. I do not believe borderless printing is supported on older versions of the Mac OS.

This is the Canon info page for Mac support.

http://www.usa.canon.com/html/conCprSupport.jsp?type=osx&sname=printers&section=10144

--
http://www.pbase.com/wp12001
'Say what again?'

I've gotten perfectly fine borderless 4x6 prints while printing directly from Photoshop Elements.

Nicholas - When printing in borderless mode, the image is slightly enlarged so that it extends off the page a bit to ensure there are no white gaps at the edges. There's a setting in the printer properties that controls the amount of over-extension from none (or minimal) to a lot (maybe 1/8 or 1/4 inch). So you can set it at the minimum/none extension, and bump it up if you see some border. From what I've heard, other borderless printers do the over-extension thing, also, though some may not provide control over the amount of extension.

TimG2600 said:

I have a i950, and yes, you get true borderless - but - and this is
what a Canon tech support guy told me - only when you use the Canon
ImageBrowser software. I use Mac and have tried printing from their
iPhoto app., and it leaves a border. ImageBrowser does not. So, if
you use Photoshop, iPhoto, or any other image software, simply
"save" it , or "export" it to ImageBrowser, and it will print
borderless (any size).

Click to expand...

This is not correct. You can print borderless from any app. The borderless function is in the driver. When you print from qimage, photoshop, etc. just make sure you go into printer properties and you have the borderless box checked in the driver. I don't know why canon would have a tech support person dumb enough to say you can only use imagebrowser.

Keep in mind that you have to have in the proper ratio, the ezphotoprint autocrops it to the correct ratio. Qimage pro has the option to do this also. In photoshop and many other programs you have to manually crop or resize it first.

True borderless printers do this by expanding the edges of the print slightly past the edge of the paper. Canon's have a setting in the driver to adjust how much it expands it.

TimG2600 said:

Nicholas said:

Hello everyone.

Using a S800 (totally satisfied) and will move up to the i950.

"Borderless', does that mean the printer finds the edges of the
paper on its own?...or....Do you have to trim anything depending on
the exact path of the paper as it is placed into the printer.?

To clarify, when I print 4x6 many times after tearing off the
perforated edges I still have to trim one or the other edge.
When they say 'borderless, and you insert a paper exactly 4x6 (or
5x7, 8x10, 13 x 19) does the printer align the paper to the
print head (or visa versa) to make it borderless with no need for
any trimming?

Looking forward to your help, thank you,

Nicholas, http://www.nickphoto123.com
--
The joy of photography is being there when you take the picture.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

WP said:

On Macs, the borderless is only available on system X.2 or higher.
I do not believe borderless printing is supported on older versions
of the Mac OS.

Click to expand...

I'm using Mac OS 9.2.1 (with an i850) and have no problems printing borderless 4X6, 5X7 and 8.5X11 in any and all applications

• Ivan

the canon s9000/s900 and, i assume, other inkjets that do borderless printing, do not measure the precise paper size, they just rely on the image being the same size as the paper, or slightly larger

an image size that is the same as the nominal paper size does not guarantee borderles printing, this is due to manufacturing/environmental variations in paper size, printer tolerances, and paper load/feed misalignment

with mac os 10.2.x the canon driver provides four 'extension' settings (same for the windows driver i think), these control the amount by which the image is enlarged to ensure that it prints without a border (any ink that is sprayed beyond the edge of the paper is absorbed by a sponge strip located under the path of the head)

the minimum setting does not increase the image size, with luck this may produce a borderless print, but i find there is often just a sliver of border on one edge

the next setting up is all i've ever needed to use to guarantee borderless results (in fact the extension it gives is about twice as much as is needed most times)

the next two settings produce significant enlargement, but for tightly cropped images this can ruin the print, and i've never needed to use them. unfortunately the maximum setting is the driver default, so it needs setting on every new print job

imho canon should revise the driver to give finer control of the extension setting and allow changing the default

when i first got the printer i wondered why the fold alignment was wrong in some brochures i printed and also why some images seemed to have been cropped, so eventually i investigated the effect of the extension settings...

the extension seems to be an absolute amount, rather than a percentage of the paper size, the extension is asymmetric so the image centre point is shifted relative to the paper centre point

these are the figures, in mm, measurements were identical for a4 and a3 paper sizes. these figures are for the s9000. i repeated a single measurement on a friends' s900 and got the same numbers, so i'd guess other printers in the same family will be the same too

extension...Yshift......Xshift......top...left...right....bottom
min...........0............0...........0.0...0.0...0.0......0.0
next..........0.5.........0.2.........0.6...0.6...1.0.....1.6
next..........1............0.4.........1.4...1.3...2.1.....3.4
max..........1.5.........0.6.........2.0...1.9...3.1......5.0

Yshift and Xshift give the shift of the original image centre point away from the nominal paper centre point and towards the bottom right corner

top/left/right/bottom give the amount of image bleed over these edges of the paper

the maximum setting crops 5mm horizontally and 7mm vertically, that is a lot especially for smaller paper sizes

How do you do it? Do you use Canon ImageBrowser, Photoshop...? Thanks.

• McD. (OS 9.2.1 & i950)

Ivan Good said:

I'm using Mac OS 9.2.1 (with an i850) and have no problems printing
borderless 4X6, 5X7 and 8.5X11 in any and all applications

Click to expand...

TimG2600 said:

I have a i950, and yes, you get true borderless - but - and this is
what a Canon tech support guy told me - only when you use the Canon
ImageBrowser software.

Click to expand...

That Canon tech person is full of BS. Borderless is not a function of the imaging software but of the printer and driver! All I can think of is that you had a clueless tech guy.

...................for your information.

Good day, Nicholas, http://www.nickphoto123.com
--
The joy of photography is being there when you take the picture.