Epson R2400 Borderless Custom Paper Sheet Sizes on the Macintosh

Note: This technique was developed on a Macintosh running Tiger (10.4.10).

A while back a received an email about printing borderless custom paper sizes with the Epson R2400 printer and Macintosh. At the time, I did a few tests which demonstrated that custom sheet sizes would not allow the borderless attribute. Since I had no pressing need, I pursued it no further.

Recently, I began looking at printing custom note cards. After a receiving a sampler pack from Red River Paper, I rediscovered the borderless problem with user defined paper sizes. The size in the sample pack was 7″ x 10″. I had experimented a little with 6.25″ by 9″ sheets earlier.

I discovered that even by attempting to use an 8″ x 10″ paper size and designing my card to the upper left sides, I could not get a borderless print. An 8″ x 10″ sheet printed borderless but when I put a 6.25″ x 9″ sheet in place of the larger sheet, borders appeared.

Also, some of the samples from Red River Paper required the Manual – Roll setting for the media setting of Velvet Fine Art. That was not possible with a normal user sheet size.

Well, I don’t know the difference between stubbornness and tenacity. After a bit of stumbling, I found a way to get my way with the borderless issue. This does require a slightly twisted approach.

Using the 7″ by 10″ sheet as an example, here is the way.

First, a target custom page size must be created in the Page Setup dialog under the Paper Size drop down and Manage Custom Sizes.

I created a 7×10 in size with 0″ margins and named it 7×10 Borderless. If you use this size from the from the Page Setup dialog, you will only have roll paper as a feed type in the print dialog. To overcome this, you will need a small bottom margin which will allow standard or roll paper feed. I created a normal 7×10 paper size with margins of 0.10 inches on each side. For this procedure, we will only use the borderless size.

Now we will need a normal paper size that has an aspect ratio that is close our target size. The ISO A sizes all have a long side that is 1.414 times the short size. The target size has a ratio of 1.429. If the ratio is far off, then the final output will have white borders along the sides or the top and bottom. Small differences will still have small white borders in theory, but since the printer driver enlarges slightly, they will not be seen on the printed copy.

The A4 paper size in the Page Setup dialog is very close to our ratio.

Now, we need to make our source page match the Page Setup page size. I simply defined the width to be 8.27 inches and kept set height as proportional to the width.

Now our design size is the same as the page size. And, we can choose borderless sheet feed or manual rolls. The manual – roll feed tray does not adjust to our seven-inch width, but with care it can be fed into the printer.

Now we have a designed page that is very close to the A6 size, and we have selected borderless sheet. It is time to print.

This is where we make the world right. In the print dialog with the copies and pages drop down, there is a Paper Handling section. Pick that. In the resulting dialog, click the radio button for fit to page size and choose our 7×10 Borderless custom page size.

Now do whatever else needs to be done in the Print dialog and print away. I suggest first do a print preview to make certain the numbers fit together. You might need to tweak some placements. For example, I initially had printing occurring on the card score line.

After completion of the above, I could print borderless with either the sheet feeder or the manual roll feeder.

This does have limitations. The ratio of long side to short side of out custom paper size must match one of the existing standard sizes that allow borderless printing. If the custom size is an ISO size then it is easy to find a match. Also, avoid sizing gyrations. For example, a 3.5″ x 5″ is a perfect match for the 7″ x 10″ size. But, resizing the original down to the small size and then back up can cause quality problems.

For my experiment, there was no glaring problems sizing up to the ISO size, but it will make sense to design for the size I’ll need to use to closely match a Page Setup size.

This is what works for me. It is somewhat convoluted but, at times that is the way to an end.