Lightroom print cropping

[larkis]

I have an issue where my Lightroom seems to display images correctly but once it sends them to the printer they get cropped differently. Here is a screen shot of what Lightroom displays and then what the print preview displays.



Does anyone have any tips ? I'm printing to a Epson 4800 printer using OSX 10.8.2 with Lightroom 4.1.

[Bryan Conner]

Try updating your Lightroom to the latest version.  I do not know if this was a bug or not, but it is worth a try.  4.2 is the latest version and 4.3 is a Release Candidate. 

[Dan Glynhampton]

The only time I've seen this kind of effect is if the aspect ratio of your image is different from the aspect ratio of the cell in the print module (e.g your image has a 3:2 aspect ratio but the print cell is set up for an 8 x 10 print)

Could that be the problem here?

Dan

[leuallen]

You probably have zoom to fit set (or some such wording). It is in the upper panel. If this is set, the image will crop to fill the cell size. If not set, and the image is not the same aspect ratio as the cell, then there will be unprinted area inside the cell and the image is not cropped.

Larry

[larkis]

I downloaded Lightroom 4.2 and the issue remains. Not sure why this would be happening since my page width is 8.5in and the pictures i'm trying to print are 7.5in. A single image does not get cropped like this only if two are on the page. I calculated the cell size to be the aspect ratio of my images. Also, I would assume the page that Lightroom presents me with for laying out the images is based on the printer margins and settings that get selected in the page setup.

[Rhossydd]

I calculated the cell size to be the aspect ratio of my images.

It's worth double checking your maths on that. It sounds the most likely place for an error.

[larkis]

If that is the case, is there a technical explanation why Lightroom would display something that works on the page with it's own math but send something totally different to the printer ? It's sort of like setting an image to be 640x480 in photoshop but having the save for web command produce an image that is 600x400 on disk. The virtual page in Lightroom shows my printers margins so I'm working within that. When I print a single image I also make it 7.5 inches high and no cropping occurs so I know the printer is capable of printing that width.

[larkis]

So I did some more digging around with the numbers and came to the conclusion that this is probably a bug or a feature that is implemented backwards. Basically what seems to create the problem is the "Photo Border" feature. When you add a border the image in Lightroom gets scaled down to compensate and that is what Lightroom displays. When printing however, the image is scaled back up to the size of the frame and the border is now masking it. Here are some images to demonstrate this:

The original image:



The way Lightroom displays it when the border is added:



The way Lightroom prints it:



What actually goes on (masking instead of scaling to compensate for the border):



Has anyone else run into this or can confirm that they get the same behaviour on their end ?

[dmerger]

Your original image does not have a 7.5 x 5 aspect ratio, but you are printing it at 7.5 x 5.  This discrepancy would at least explain the slight cropping when LR displays the image at 7.5 x 5.  

Oops, I was measuring the original with the grey border.  It appears the the photo itself is 7.5 x 5.

[UniqueCaptures]

I too am having this issue on a bigger scale. I'm attempting a 13x19 and as the print comes from the epson r1900 the left side is notably cropped. Was there ever a solution to correct this?

NOTE: this is not a color matching or calibration issue. Even thought the screen image on the left and print do not show a good match here they both look wonderful. I just need to have the space back under the foot to allow for a slight coverage with the final matting.

[Dan Glynhampton]

I wonder if the margin settings your are using of 0.00in are the problem?

If you are printing borderless, is the image being oversized somewhere in the print chain to ensure there is no white border?  Or if you are just trying to fill the paper, is Lightroom trying to print in an area that the printer cannot print to, hence the cut off on the print?

Dan

[UniqueCaptures]

I just setting the margin to 0.12 and the print is still printing boarderless. I must have a master setting somewhere telling it to expand to fill sheet. I'm not sure if I'm getting closer or not.

[Dan Glynhampton]

I just setting the margin to 0.12 and the print is still printing boarderless. I must have a master setting somewhere telling it to expand to fill sheet. I'm not sure if I'm getting closer or not.

I would suggest checking the setting in your printer driver itself to see if "borderless printing" or something similar is selected.  If it is my guess is that the printer driver is resizing the image you send it to cover the whole paper and including an overlap. That probably isn't good for your image quality either.

I suggest making sure you haven't got borderless printing enabled, then set margins of 1in all round and try a print.  If there's no cropping you're getting closer.

Are you using a Mac or Windows machine?  The Epson Windows print drivers include a print preview option which if turned on shows you what the printer is going to print and gives you the opportunity to cancel if something is wrong. It's a great feature which has saved me wasting many sheets of paper, so if that's available to you make use of it.


Dan