Printing

ColorBender Print View Mode gives an accurate preview of the printed output, yet all image adjustments remain operational.

A typical Print View is shown below. If the View Window is large enough, ColorBender will show the output at actual size. If it is not large enough, it will zoom the output preview to fit the window while maintaining relative size and position.

Turning on the Guide Lines gives the following display. The outside blue rectangle (just within the page borders) shows the print margins, the two vertical and two horizontal lines divide the image into thirds (providing layout reference), and the cropped-out part of the image is shown lightened. The Guide Lines and cropped image parts are not printed. The image may be repositioned by dragging it with the mouse, or, any other ColorBender operation can be applied.

The text at the bottom of the View Window gives the zoom factor and the actual size of the print page and the image that will be printed. It also gives the image resolution to verify that it is adequate for good print quality.

Selecting the Process Information button opens the following window that summarizes image, transform and print settings. For example, note the bottom entries for the printable area. If you set the image size to 10.75 inches and the aspect ratio to 1.30, it will exactly fill the printable area of the printed output. (Of course, this can be done automatically by selecting the "print" entry of the "presets" in the size mangement popup menu.

Setting the Page Format

To select one of the standard or saved paper sizes and margins

• Select from the menu File/Page Setup...
• From the Paper Size: popup menu, select the paper size
• Set the orientation to either panaramic or portrait

To set a custom paper size and margins

• Select from the menu File/Page Setup...
• From the Paper Size: popup menu, select Manage Custom Sizes
• Enter the width, height and margins
• For some printers, minimum margins can be selected automatically from the Printer Margins: popup menu
• To save these settings for future use, press the + operation and enter a name.

The following figure shows the window for creating a custom paper size and margins.

Image Size and Placement

ColorBender automatically centers the printed image in the printable area. The printable area is the page size less the print margins. The image is printed actual size unless it is too large, in which case, the size of the image is reduced to fit within the margins. When this happens, the size on the adjustment panel is set and shown in red, indicating that the user had set a larger size, but conditions did not allow it.

Recommended Formats

The OS X standard print margins are not symmetric so images will not be centered on the page when printed (although it is centered in the printable area). It is recommended that you set up new page definitions with equal margins. Printers may not be able to print to the edges of the paper. If you specify a margin less than this minimum interval, and try to print a full sized image, it will not print the edges. Thus, set the minimum margins to be equal and to be printable. The "Printer Margins:" popup menu on the "Custom Page Sizes" Window will set the minimum margins for the selected printer.

Print Color Management

The printer driver uses color management to match the printed output to the display. So, in general, you will adjust an image so it is displayed as you want, and the print should be a good match.

It may be that there is a systematic brightness difference between the display and printer output. ColorBender allows setting an effective printer gamma value that is not shown on the display, but is applied to the image while it is printed. Printer gamma basics.

 

ColorBender 1.1 is a Universal Application that runs on Mac OS X 10.4 or later

© 4G Color 2005, 2006, 2007 all rights reserved, Website updated March 7, 2007