Calibrating Your Printer Margins for AIPS Printouts

Printers have offsets that affect how well images are centered on a page. There are design offsets and mechanical offsets. Either offset type results in printed images with unbalanced borders that are not suitable for framing and just plain don't look good.

(Actual scan of an image printed out without margin corrections)

Designed offsets determine a pages minimum margins. Many printers have a minimum margin of nearly 0 inches from the leading edge of the sheet and up to .5 inches from the trailing edge of the sheet. Consequently, when printing large images, they will nearly be lined up with the leading edge of the sheet but a half inch from the trailing edge.

Designed offsets are defined in the printer driver. They are known by Windows and are communicated to software applications that request them. AIPS does request the offsets from Windows and uses them to make the appropriate adjustments that will result in balanced margins.

Mechanical offsets are caused by the specific, actual mechanics of your printer. Perhaps a feed roller is slipping a little, or your paper tray doesn't line up exactly right. Mechanical offsets are usually quite small but may nevertheless be quite noticeable.

To remove mechanical offsets, AIPS requires you to measure them and communicate them to AIPS. To do this you print out a "calibration" test pattern, measure how far off center the pattern is printed by folding the sheet in half, and enter the offsets into an AIPS form. AIPS saves the information in a disk file so you only need to calibrate once. Of course if your printer changes or handles a different paper differently you may need to calibrate again to compensate for any changes.

(The Calibration Test Pattern)

After measuring the offsets, you will enter them on the "Printer Calibration" form. When you close the form they are saved on your hard drive and are retrieved by AIPS whenever you print a picture.

(The Printer Calibration Form)

Many programs compensate for design offsets but few are capable of compensating for mechanical offsets. AIPS compensates for both design offsets and mechanical offsets resulting in printouts with attractive, professional looking borders.

    
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