Photo printing... borderless=pointless?

[DarkAudit]

I went through an entire ink cartridge and a pack of photo paper today trying to get a photo of a kitteh printed. I tried the borderless setting, and no matter what software package I tried, I always ended up with kitteh missing ears.

This is the original:

Printer is an HP Photosmart 4280C. It is determined to zoom in and cut off about 1/4" or so around all the edges if I go with a borderless print. If I go with a bordered print, it's all there. No missing kitteh ears. But I don't want to print with a border. Borderless is an option with both the printer and the software, and I want the print to look like the picture I took. Why is that such a challenge?

From my early Googles, it's apparent that this is as designed into the printer. Hindsight is 20/20. It was a bad decision to buy this printer with the intent to print many photos.

Is there a printer out there for the home that will print borderless photos that match the actual images instead of some funky zoomed version?

 

[YAOMTC]

Do you have OpenOffice? If you do, you could find/create a template for the size of the photo medium, put the photo in a document based on that template, make it borderless, and try to print that way. If you use Microsoft Office instead, I'm sure there's a similar process. Could work.

 

[DarkAudit]

That's precisely the thing I want to avoid. A printer and it's software should not need to jump through that many hoops to get a proper print. If a true borderless print is not possible, then there should be some sort of warning when you choose the borderless option. I should not have to google as part of the troubleshooting process to find that this was designed into the printer itself.

If it claims borderless right out of the box, then it should do borderless properly with the default settings. If it cuts off kitteh's ears, then it's going back (although this current printer is too old to return).

 

[Shakey]

I believe the size of the pictures you take are a little different than the size of the actual paper you print it out on. That's why it cuts it off. I'm not sure if there is a way to change what gets cut off.

 

[curbstreet]

are you using the Hp75 Hp74 cartridges or are you using the HP74XL Hp75xl. There is a pretty remarkable difference in output between those two sets of ink.

out put as noted

Hp74 = 200pages at 5% coverage
Hp75 = 170pgs "" ""
Hp74XL = 750pgs
HP75XL =520pgs

If you have a Cartridge World ink refill place in your area give them a try, you'll save 40-50% of the ink and unlike Walgreens or Walmart the cartridges are cleaned with a cleaning solution ran through them to remove excess ink and residue and then filled in a vacum chamber to prevent the formation of air bubbles in the cartirdge. As long as the metallic strip on your cartridges is fine you should be able to refill your cartridges 2 - 4 times.

 

[checkeredhat]

...I'd just take it to a photo printing place and get a nice print made for cheap.

Although, now that I've typed that I remember that 8X10s at most printing places are $2.99 (ie: Not cheap), and since I don't work at one anymore, I can no longer get them for 70 cents. Crap.

When printing photos from home, I always use photoshop, or even MS Office if I'm using a library computer, rather than using the printer's horrible printing wizard. I'd rather fiddle with it for 20seconds in another program than be disappointed.