Standard / Maximum Paper settings
I've noticed some weird behaviours regarding Paper settings in the driver when printing on coated papers earlier on and was reminded of them after reading posts in the DPReview Epson forum.
Maybe it's a glitch, maybe there's a reason e.g. print quality, but here's the general gist of it:
Depending on paper type selected in the driver, the Printable Area options (Standard/Maximum) on the Paper tab are greyed out. It doesn't appear to be a case of coated vs matte - if it's not a glitch it'd be interesting to know more e.g.
> Select Archival Matte - Standard/Maximum greyed out.
> Select Enhanced Matte - Standard/Maximum available
> Select Single Weight Matte - Standard/Maximum greyed out.
> Select Plain Paper - Standard/Maximum available
I noticed this when printing on coated and matte stock initially but didn't think much of it, as typically my prints are laid out to fit well within my selected cut and roll paper sizes anyway.
Can anyone confirm that behaviour on their system?
posted by Pete Walsh @ 11:59 PM 11 comments
At 6:02 AM, Nill Toulme said...
That might have been my post on dpr. I'm struggling with the margins.
As for Maximize Printable Area, the online Reference Guide says:
"This setting is available only when Plain Paper, Plain Paper (line drawing), or Tracing Paper is selected as the Media Type setting."
I.e., the glitch might actually be that it *is* available for Enhanced Matte.
I guess this means .55 inch is the minimum bottom margin with most cut sheet media. Even allowing for that, I'm having problems identifying a consistent method of making my multiple-print templates come out right.
Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
At 6:03 AM, Nill Toulme said...
p.s. Searching back on the forum, it appears that these issues have been sources of consternation for 4000 users too.
At 6:07 AM, Nill Toulme said...
p.p.s. Pete (and all), are you connecting via firewire or USB? I'm doing the former, and I can't connect to the printer with any of the utilities. I get "Unable to connect to the selected printer."
It prints just fine though.
Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
At 6:35 AM, Jim W. said...
Nill,
I'm connecting via FireWire, and have no problem running the utilities. (I'm using Mac OSX 10.3.9.)
Also, like you, I'm having difficulties sorting out the margins. For instance, when I tried printing a 2" x 16" test strip to a 16" roll paper, it unexpectedly printed *vertically* - using 16" of paper instead of two!
Does anyone know of a good tutorial for working with roll paper & the Epson printers?
Thanks!
-- Jim
At 10:09 AM, scott Graham said...
when using roll on a 4000 you have to define a custom paper size AND make sure that it is selected (two separate steps)
then the little preview window will show orientation, approx margins, etc.
you may have to select landscape or portrait, or I initially rotated the image 90---don't remember why I chose that method.
At 10:45 AM, stephen best said...
I had it rotate a narrow image as well. I think there's some minimum length so I keep it to 6" (or more) now.
I struggled with this custom page size stuff for quite a bit until I figured it out. For rolls, what I've done now is define custom page sizes for 17x6in, 17x7in, 17x8in etc and just choose the smallest that will fit. It's a bit odd, but the printer margins define the paper source. I specify 0.30cm top and 0.00cm for the bottom and sides which forces roll paper. If you set it to 0.00cm all round, you'll get some borderless auto-expand mode which you don't want. If you define all the margins at 1.00cm, you'll then get to choose from cut-sheet sources in the driver later as well. Different sources need different margins, except here you're doing it in reverse.
At 11:42 AM, stephen best said...
I might add that all the above is probably only relevant to Mac users and is a workaround for the fact that the Page Size dialog doesn't support a Paper Source. I don't know why Apple doesn't fix this for good instead of the useless features they added to 10.4.
At 3:55 PM, volker said...
Hi Pete,
My printer behaves like yours with respect to the Printable area options. Maybe this is a special feature ( that's what we used to say when we had a reproducible bug)?
At 7:31 AM, Greg said...
I think that "Maximize Printable Area" is only available on the lighter weight papers (plain, trace, etc.) because of limitations of the printer itself rather than a problem with the driver.
If I understand the 4800's (and 4000's) operation correctly, the way it's able to print on the last 1/2 inch of sheet feed media is by using a fan to create enogh suction to hold the paper in place once it's left the rear guide roller. Sucking a fairly thin and pliable piece of paper down to the pritning surface isn't too tough, but trying to do the same thing with a thicker, uneven piece of media (e.g., a sheet of enhanced matte with a slight corner bend) is quite difficult. Why I say this is because I've tried the plain paper setting with with EAM and sometimes the fan is unable to hold it still while printing the last 1/2 inch.
At 12:24 AM, Pete Walsh said...
Thanks guys for all your replies on this. I apologize for the delay in replying.
Greg that sounds feasible enough. I haven't read up on the suction factor! Hopefully there's some method to when the options are available - it just seems a little inconsistent and buglike.
Fortunately for me the lack of those options isn't a problem.
At 12:29 AM, Pete Walsh said...
Hi Nil, I'm connecting via USB and haven't had any problems re communication - provided the printer isn't busy.
Jim I don't know of any tutorials re roll paper. Did you specify a custom paper size and did the preview not match the orientation it actually printed? Ooops, I see others have replied too.
The custom page size is a bit of a pain though When printing to roll I'd prefer it just went ahead and printed and trimmed based on the file vs having to specify a custom size - maybe I'm missing something obvious, I better check again.
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