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Archive 2014 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?

  
 
Alan321
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


I have a whole lot of scanned documents that I want to print from Lr 5.5 but the laser printer needs a margin around each page. The scans were all done at full size (a4 sheet = 297mm x 210mm).

There seems to be no option that says "print this in the middle and lose the excess at the edges", like pretty much any photocopier would do. There also seems to be no way to crop a page in Lr to a specific size so that I can avoid cropping more than I have to.

Is the only real option to crop a bit more than I'd like and then print with no scaling ? It'll work but it's less than elegant.


By the way, the documents need to fit in with printed originals and so I don't want them looking smaller.

- Alan



Jul 13, 2014 at 11:52 AM
OntheRez
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


Alan,

I've found Lr's print module to be perhaps its strongest feature and via custom sizes or whatever have never been unable to print. I'm not following exactly what the problem is. I assume the scanned pages had margins. Are you saying Lr somehow is eliminating the margins?

Also, my first instinct would be to use a PDF tool (I have both Acrobat and PDFPen Pro) to convert the scans to PDF. In fact I would scan them as PDFs (not JPEG) in the first place. Is this an option?

Robert



Jul 13, 2014 at 12:37 PM
skibum5
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


OntheRez wrote:
Alan,

I've found Lr's print module to be perhaps its strongest feature and via custom sizes or whatever have never been unable to print. I'm not following exactly what the problem is. I assume the scanned pages had margins. Are you saying Lr somehow is eliminating the margins?

Also, my first instinct would be to use a PDF tool (I have both Acrobat and PDFPen Pro) to convert the scans to PDF. In fact I would scan them as PDFs (not JPEG) in the first place. Is this an option?

Robert


I think he is saying the opposite, that Lr will not let him get rid of the scanned margins. He want the main text and info to print at the same size, but when he scanned he scanned the whole pages including edges and now Lr wants to fit those complete scans within the margins of his new print outs and thus shrinking down everything.



Jul 13, 2014 at 01:15 PM
Eyeball
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


I think you're both wrong .

I think he has borderless scans. He wants to print those scans on a printer that has a smaller print area. Instead of "shrink-to-fit", he wants to print at the same "actual pixels" of his scan, cropping off only the minimum amount that is needed to fit into the smaller print area.

There was a "centering" thread that came up on LuLa a couple of weeks ago. Seems like checking "borderless printing" can help although it evidently is not available for all printers/drivers. It may not help the zooming/cropping issues. Here is the link:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=91260.0



Jul 13, 2014 at 01:37 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


Spot on, skibum5. The Lr printout has margins of its own plus the margins that I scanned. It then has to shrink everything and it looks like a smaller font was used than for the original prints.

Robert, I use a scansnap document scanner but its automatic scan to pdf feature dumbs the images down to 150 ppi. I want to keep 300ppi for better printing should the need arise. So I use ABBYY FineReader 12 Pro to convert the images to searchable text but some have all sorts of handwritten annotations, stamps, etc. that will not be read by OCR. Therefore I need to keep the viewable/printable scanned image as part of the pdf file.

My laser printer has a page offset feature that lets me offset the top left corner by a positive or negative amount vertically and horizontally, but using it won't overcome the need for margins on the new prints. Seems like a pretty useless feature but I can't see where I was going wrong with the settings. Perhaps it has some special application.

My next best (only) option is to crop the image but Lr won't let me produce a crop rectangle that comes in the amount required for the printer margins. An automatic crop for printing option would be very handy.

- Alan



Jul 13, 2014 at 01:38 PM
Eyeball
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


Alan321 wrote:
My next best (only) option is to crop the image but Lr won't let me produce a crop rectangle that comes in the amount required for the printer margins. An automatic crop for printing option would be very handy.


Taking a quick look that approach seems like about the best you will get out of the LR print module.

The "Enter Custom" for the crop tool won't let you select the right aspect ratio? Mine seems to accept just about anything although I didn't check to see if it was lying.



Jul 13, 2014 at 02:13 PM
Peter Figen
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


Sounds like you need to print this from Photoshop. I've never printed from Lr - actually never ever use it, but, are you saying you can't make an arbitrary crop in Lr to any dimension you want?


Jul 13, 2014 at 02:17 PM
OntheRez
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a … should have been taken book on this one

You are correct that Lr seems to not allow true borderless printing or at least I can't seem to get it under .13" inch. Not sure what that is in metric as we're still stuck with a dark ages measuring system here in the USA

I have never encountered (perhaps because I haven't tried) any limitation on Lr's crop ability - i.e. to get rid of the extra margin. If it's there, then Peter's spot on. Ps definitely isn't limited. I wasn't aware of Snapscan's stupid limitations. Even an HP 1536dnf multifunction with HP's limited software will do 300 dpi.

One last thought, can you OCR everything BUT the stamps and hand writing, then work those as a JPEG? Most likely since Murphy's Law is universal the stamps and handwriting are mixed in with the text. Still, you might find the combined approach helpful for most pages.

Not a lot of help, I'm afraid,

Robert

One other thought, one can define any sort of custom size paper in the print set up. Perhaps tell Lr that the paper is X and Y more than true length and width and trick Lr into losing the extra margin.



Jul 13, 2014 at 03:04 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


Lr will let me specify a custom crop ratio of my choice. It will let me make the rectabgle any size that I want but only by dragging and resizing with the mouse - it won't let me specify an exact size in mm, inches or pixels. So I'd get a rectangle, have to reduce it, then relocate it, then perhaps reduce it again. If it can't just print at specified ppi and to heck with the lost margins then I'd at least want a definite crop rectangle size that fits within the printer margins. Then I might only have to move it once rather than resize it too.

The scansnap works nicely and will scan jpegs at any resolution but the convert to pdf is limited to 150ppi images. That's ok if you've done a full conversion to text but not if the image may have to be reproduced. Acrobat XI wasn't very useful either but I did not try the pro version. FineReader Pro 12 lets me do what I want but the "FineReader Engine" used by scanner manufacturers is apparently limited. Either that or Fuji-Xerox built the limitation into their front-end software.

This crop/print task may well be better suited to Ps than Lr but I'll have to check it out. If it can do what I want then presumably it can be automated too.

- Alan



Jul 14, 2014 at 09:01 AM
Eyeball
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


QImage would be another program that I would think should do this if you happen to have it.


Jul 14, 2014 at 09:38 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


Thanks, I had forgotten all about QImage. Too many years working on Macs



Jul 15, 2014 at 05:41 AM
hugowolf
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Can you help me with printing from Lr at actual size ?


Alan321 wrote:
...

This crop/print task may well be better suited to Ps than Lr but I'll have to check it out. If it can do what I want then presumably it can be automated too.


If you have Photoshop, then it isn't difficult:
1. Right click on the image in Lr, then Edit In, Edit copy in Ps
2. Check that the scanner set the image dimensions, if not: Image, Image Size, set the size but make sure that Resampling is unchecked.
3. Use the rectangular selection tool (marquee tool) with Style set for Fixed Size, then mark your selection
4. Image > Crop
5. Save and Exit back to Lr for printing

Apart from the lack of cropping and scaling, the printing from lr is far better than from Ps.

Brian A






Jul 15, 2014 at 01:56 PM





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