Printing Borderless Photos Without A Borderless Printer

Printing Borderless Photos Without a Borderless Printer by: [email protected]

Print borderless photographs without a borderless printer by creating a template in Photoshop. Make sure your printer supports heavyweight paper before attempting this tutorial. FotoFects and the author of this tutorial are not responsible for any printer problems you may have.

1

Create a new document (Ctrl+N) with the following properties: Width: 8.5 inches Height: 11 inches Resolution: 300 pixels/inch Color Mode: CMYK Color; 16 bit Background Contents: White Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Click OK.

2

Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N).

3

Select the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" (M). Set the "Style" to "Fixed Size" and input the width and height of the photographs you wish to print. For this tutorial, I will use a width of 4 inches and a height of 6 inches to print borderless 4x6 photographs. Fill in the selection with the colour black.

4

Contract the current selection (Select> Modify> Contract) by 3 pixels. Click OK.

5

Delete the selection (Backspace) and deselect the current selection (Ctrl+D).

6

Align the current layer to the center of the page. To do this, select the canvas (Ctrl+A), align to the verticle center (Layer> Align to Selection> Verticle Centers) and align to the horizontal center (Layer> Align to Selection> Horizontal Centers).

7

Duplicate the current layer (Ctrl+J).

8

With the new layer selected, scale the "Width" and "Height" to "105 percent) using the "Transform Scale" tool (Ctrl+T). Press Return when done.

9

Using the "Text" tool (T), type in the word "Top" and place it on the top of the outer rectangle. This will define where the top of the document is.

10

Print this document. Do not scale the document to media. If it warns that the document is larger than the printable area and clipping will occur, click "Proceed".

11

After the document is printed, use doublesided tape to tape the photopaper in the inner rectangular box.

12

To print out a photograph, open the image in Photoshop and drag it into the document you've printed. Set the blending mode of the photograph to "Difference" and resize it to fit within the outer rectangle. The area between the outer rectangle and the inner rectangle will define the bleeding area; area that will be printed but may not appear on the paper.

13

When done, hide all the layers except for the photograph and set the photograph's layer blending mode to "Normal".

14

Load the paper with the photo paper taped on it in your printer. Make sure your paper is loaded in the printer in the right direction.

15

Print the current document in Photoshop. Do not scale the document to media. If it warns that the document is larger than the printable area and clipping will occur, click "Proceed".

16

When printing, make sure there are no problems such as a paper jam.

17

After the print is completed, carefully remove the photograph from the paper it's taped on. Remove any extended tabs on the photo paper and your photograph is now printed borderless. Reuse the Photoshop template and the printed template for future printing.