Our granddaughter, Rebekah is coming for a visit next month. I thought it would be fun to make books with her in my studio. I haven't made these books in Photoshop (from the Russell Brown show) since my last stint at SIGGRAPH a few years back.
So, right after lunch, I set up my book template of 6 images and tried to print it out on my new Epson 3880 printer. What should have been a simple task (after all I have done this before, just on a different printer...) took more than 3 hours. And, I have to wonder if the Epson engineers have a laugh over this.
First off, the special paper from Red River Paper is specifically designed for this project; it measures 6" x 38", which allows for 6 images at a maximum size of 6" x 6", with a 1" tab at each end for tucking into the book ends.
So, from Photoshop, I made a custom paper size to match, 6" x 38", and set my image up to print. It looked fine in the preview, but when it came out of the printer, it printed just the first image - sideways, and completely off centered.
I tried a few more times before heading to Google search, and to my horror discovered that this particular Epson printer has a length limitation on the paper size. So I read all about buying special RIP's in order to get around this, but since they cost almost as much as the printer did, I kept searching.
Finally, I came across a post by Howard M on photo.net which discussed the maximum paper length of the 3880 as 37.5" or 37". And in fact, he had some of this 38" long Red River paper and it worked just fine. He didn't say how, but just knowing this made me determined to figure it out.
Back to the drawing board. I set the custom paper size to 6" x 37". First run - same problem! How could that be? Again, my previews looked just fine, and I was baffled again. I looked again at the actual printout and noticed that the printer was printing as if the width of the paper was 37" not 6".
So, back to my custom paper settings, I set the width to 6" and the length to 37" (even though this "shouldn't" matter to the printer as you can rotate the image using either landscape or portrait settings) and the image was finally printing out correctly.
The last adjustment was to the margins on the paper and an adjustment to my actual image size to account for the fact that the paper was indeed 38" long, and 3+ hours later I have a print to fold into a nice little handmade book.
Phew!
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