Does 'borderless printing' mean smaller paper?

[cnr]

Hello, I'm about to buy a Canon i950 and was hoping someone could answer a question. What exactly is 'bordlerless printing'? Does it just mean printing on smaller paper? I want to get good quality paper and Canon has 'borderless' paper in 4x6 and 5x7 (and also photo 'cards' in 4x6??). But couldnt I just print 3 4x6 on an 8x11 sheet and cut them - and save $?

Also, does anyone know if Canons 'Photo Paper Pro' is glossy or not? Its supposed to be their best paper, but I prefer a matte finish.

Thanks!

 

[M39shadow]

What borderless is is just what it says. Inkjet printers used to not print to the edge of the paper because of the risk of spraying ink into the print mechanism. Newer print mechanisms avoid this problem and can print right to the edge of the paper. What size of paper that can be borderlessly printed varies by print/manufacturer. Some do 4 x 6 only. Some may do 5 x 7. I read that HPs newest that are coming can do borderless 8 1/2 by 11. I'm not sure what the Cannon you want can do but the it should be listed somewhere in the specifications.

That said there is something you need to be aware of with borderless printing. Because your images probably will not be exactly the size of your paper you may have to manipulate the image some to get borderless print. I don't know how Cannon handles it.

Some print drivers require that the image be exactly the size you want to print in order to get borderless print, otherwise there will be borders either lengthwise or height wise. This is a poor excuse for borderless printing because it will take a lot more work on your part.

Other print drivers will scale the image to fill the page size and will automatically crop off any parts of the image that exceed the dimensions of the page. This is the best method. However to keep the cropped portions to a minimum it helps if your image is as close as possible to the ratio of the paper. 4 x 6 paper has a 2:3 ratio for example.

 

[cnr]

Thanks for the info - I've never printed pics before so didnt know they used to have a built-in border. Good point about the pic size - I hadnt looked at the different ratios. The 4x3 ratio of digicams doesnt exactly meet with 4x6 or 5x7, but they're close. Somewhere else I read that Canon software can put 4 borderless on an 8.5x11 sheet and thats pretty close to the 4x3 ratio.

I'm sure I'll still be wasting a few sheets getting it all worked out.


Thanks again!