Saturday, December 31, 2011

How to Print a 4x6 sheet of prints with the Canon Print Plug-In (UPDATED: 1/1/2012)


How to Print a 4x6 sheet of prints with the Canon Print Plug-In
Start by Exporting an Image Strip from Lightroom (or
QImage)

WARNING: In this example I’m using a 24” wide roll of paper, but if you are using a different size (i.e., 17” or 44”) then you should replace every occurrence of 24 with the width your paper roll.

  1. In Lightroom (I’m using 3.6), you need to create a new Single Image/Contact Sheet layout style with rotate to fit. For the layout section all the margins and cell spacing must be zero, the rows should be 1 (but it can be more if you want) and the columns should be 6. The cell size should be 6.00 in height by 4.00 in width. See the photo above for my settings.
  2. In Lightroom you won’t print to the printer but instead you’ll choose Print To: JPEG File and set the file resolution to 300, the JPEG quality to 100 and the custom file dimension to 24.00 in x 6.00 in. Since I’m printing to JPEG I just choose sRGB for the profile and Relative for the rendering intent. Some will argue with my settings, but honestly for 4x6 prints this is fine as I don’t consider 4x6 to be fine art. :)
  3. You can now open this JPEG up in Photoshop (required – both CS4 and CS5 work for me). DPP should work but doesn’t because it has a 6000x6000 pixel size minimum requirement for some stupid reason.
  4. In Photoshop you have to choose File | Export and in my case I’ll choose iPF6300 Print Plug-In…
  5. Go to the Page Setup tab and choose Borderless Printing (Input Image Size should say Width 24.00in x Height 6.00in – if it doesn’t, go create your JPEG again in Lightroom). Orientation must say Portrait and Paper Source must be Roll Paper. The Roll Paper Options must say Automatic Cutting Available and the checkbox for No Spaces at Top or Bottom (Conserve Paper) MUST BE CHECKED!

  6. For the Main tab choose your settings as usual. Again, for something like this I’d usually use the Canon Premium RC Photo Luster paper with the Print Mode set to Highest and Output Profile to Auto (Color) (because it’s a Canon Paper) and Matching Method set to Perceptual (People, Dark Areas) (only available with the Auto (Color) option). You can set this page to anything you like as only the Page Setup is important here.


Here’s how I configure my Main tab


Here’s how I configure my Page Setup tab

Conclusion

I hope this helps people. Use the comments below if you have any questions. I’ve only tried it out on a iPF6300, but it should work on anything that uses this plug-in. The key thing to remember is that I’m using a 24” wide roll of paper. If you are using a different size (i.e., 17” or 44”) then you should replace every occurrence of 24 with the width your paper roll.

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6 comments:

Mike said...

Don't you have to cut off 2 inches of excess paper after printing?

ronmartblog.com said...

No, that is why u must check conserve paper.

dallvr said...

I can't get this to work with my 6350 and LR4. First, setting up the strip seems to be impossible because LR won't let me set up 4 x 6 cells. Second, I can't pick roll paper with a 24 x 6 dimension in page setup. I will give it a try using Aperture later, but the print module in LR4 is very convoluted and nonintuitive. I can't even print a single borderless 4 x 6 on my Epson R3000.

ronmartblog.com said...

Hi Dallvr,

I'll admit it took me a bit to figure this one out again, but I got it to work with Lightroom 4.4. The trick is that you have to pick the closest borderless size you can from Page Setup for your ipf6450 printer driver. I chose a custom size of 24x8 (because 8 was the min size).

Once you do that you can set the settings EXACTLY as I've done in the screen shot for Lightroom. The trick is that when you get to the Print Job section you MUST set custom file dimensions of 24x6in.

After this you have a file you can use with your printer when you do Print to File.

At that point it's just a matter of printing from Photoshop and choosing the Borderless option EXACTLY as I've shown in the article from the printer driver.

I agree Lightroom sucks, but it can be done (at least I did it on Windows).

Doing a 4x6 on the R3000 was a piece of cake if you have 4x6 paper. You just need to have a single 4x6 document.

Again, if you have a PC you can also use QImage to do this which you might find easier: See http://www.ronmartblog.com/2010/11/printing-series-qimage-ultimate.html

dallvr said...

Thanks Ron, I will give this a try with LR 4.4 and my ipf6350 tomorrow and let you know how it goes. I almost got the strip of 4 x 6 to work from Aperture, but it forced me to use a longer strip of paper, which would have resulted in a lot of wastage.

As far as the 4 x 6 from LR on the R3000, the problem was that it was impossible to print borderless on 4 x 6 paper; the only way to get borderless 4 x 6 was to use a larger sheet of paper and trim. Borderless from Aperture has always been a piece of cake.

ronmartblog.com said...

Dallvr,

Here's the thing to remember - Lightroom isn't required. I was just using it as a easy way to create the file from source images (which is why it's printing to JPEG not to the printer directly)

You just need something - anything (even Photoshop using File | Place) to create a 6" tall x 24" wide image of your photos. Once you have that you can fool the printer driver by doing Export from Photoshop and printing borderless with the conserve paper option checked in the Canon Export Module.

I've been able to do borderless from Photoshop CS6 on Windows on 4x6 paper to my R3000. I'm not a huge fan of Lightroom for printing, so if you have CS6 try that. I've done over 50 borderless 4x6 prints from CS6 with no problem on my R3000.