Printing borderless vs border photos

[ruffin]

I have both options to print border or borderless photos with my IP4300 or MP600
and Picasa or Irfanview software. I prefer borderless photos, however Im concerned
as to whether printers might overprint the photo paper stock and leave ink residue within the printer. Is it safer to stick with borders on my photo prints? Thanks for sharing your expertise and knowledge on this forum. Best Regards to all.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The safest thing to do is print on paper larger than your desired size and then trim it. For example, you can get three 4"x6" photos on one piece of 8.5"x11".

However, the printer is designed to take care of ink residue and you can probably go for years doing borderless printing. The waste ink pads can be replaced in a couple hours on most printers and doesn't cost much if you do it yourself. It's all a choice of how and when you want to do the extra work.

 

[qwertydude]

Usually there is a foam strip underneath the print area. This leads to channels which leads to the waste ink container. If you regularly, about every several hundred photos worth, pull the foam out and wash it you get less inky build up in the print area and also fill up the waste ink pads less. Although on the fixed counter canon's ip4600 and newer it's still tough to reset the waste ink counter.

 

[fotofreek]

It is a trade off - if you like borderless prints you trade the convenience factor of not having to trim every photo you print for the eventual buildup of ink in the waste ink pad. All things being equal, I'd go for convenience myself! Unfortuntely, when my Canon i960 and ip5000 printers give up, the next printers available new are the chipped, smaller capacity cart printers, so all things are not equal!

 

[IanYY]

I always print borderless for my family photo album. It's a personal preference, and has no noticeable ill effects on my ip4300 printer.

No doubt that the waste ink pads are filling faster with borderless prints, but monitoring the waste ink level shows I've still got some 6 years life left before they become full (monitored using Canon service test prints). This obviously depends on your own usage.

Canon's waste ink system means that only certain paper sizes are allowed for borderless - ink overflow is only permitted in certain positions. The printer detects invalid paper sizes and leaves unprinted edges on such paper. I am disappointed that Canon don't support borderless for the metric A6 size (105x148.5mm), so I am currently printing photos on 100x148mm (Hagaki) which is supported, as is 4x6" (approx 101.6x152.4mm).

I don't like printing bordered and then trimming to borderless. Apart from the wasted time involved, this leaves a visible white vertical edge to the paper, which you don't get when printing borderless.

Ian

 

[JoJo]

I have a Canon MX700 printer. I recently put many hours of work into designing an 8 1/2" x 11" Christmas card using photos from a recent European trip to be printed on both sides of matte paper against a light green printed background, then folded in half so that the outside front and back measure 8 1/2" vertically and 5 1/2" horizontally.

Now, however, I can't make my printer print at least the outside portion without an ugly 1/4" border on the 8 1/2" side and a full 1/4" border on what will be the top and bottom edges. It looks terrible. The inside (reverse side of the front and back pages after folding to form a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" card) also has an ugly and uneven unprinted strip of white border. When I checked the control panel, clicked on printer, and saw "border printing option," I selected Borderless. But it actually printed with the uneven and ugly unprinted portions at the edge. I guess I could trim this border away, but that ruins the design and places the cover lettering and photos too close to the edges. Ugh.

Is there a way to make the printer print to the edges in actual borderless fashion? I appreciate any help you can give me.

JoJo from Florida (a printer and computer novice)

 

[Grandad35]

When I select borderless printing, an "Amount of extension" slider appears with 4 positions. Try moving the slider to the right to expand your photo.

 

[The Hat]

JoJo

One of the ways to achieve borderless prints on your letter size matte paper is to simply trick your printer.

Select and set up your printer to print normally then choose borderless this will cause your printer
to automatically switch your paper choice to Photo Glossy Pro, now ignore the paper change
and just make sure that your paper size is still correctly set to 8 x 11 size and just hit the print button..

 

[JoJo]

Thank you, Grandad35! The simple solution worked perfectly. With the slider at the maximum position, my design printed perfectly and looks just fine. Our cards will be in the mail soon. I appreciate the assistance and am sorry to have been so dumb!

JoJo