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How to Set Resolution of Book Printed on My Printer #1
jwarthman's picture
by jwarthman
June 20, 2011 - 2:30am

I created an Aperture book, and wish to print it on my Epson 4800. The book's pages are 8.5 x 11.

I notice the Print dialog is much different than the dialog for simply printing images. One thing in particular has been causing me to pull my hair out! On the “Printer Features: section is something called “Resolution”. I want high quality prints, so I select the highest quality available: 720 x 720.

The thing is, whenever I do that, only part of the book page prints, and it fills the 8.5 x 11 paper!

After much trial and error with various settings I discovered that, for an entire book page to print on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper, I must reduce the printer resolution to 360 x 360!

This is non-intuitive. I expect Aperture and/or the Epson driver to scale the book page according to the resolution I choose.

Also of note, if I create a PDF rather than printing to my Epson, the results are correct regardless of the selected printer resolution.

Some of the other settings I'm using are:

Paper Size: US Letter (Maximum)
Scale to fit paper size is “On”
Destination Paper Size: Suggested Paper: US Letter (Maximum)
Scale Down Only: On

So I'm wondering if this is a bug with Aperture and/or the Epson driver, and if anyone knows something else I could try to get my book to print with 720 x 720 resolution?

Thanks in advance!

-- Jim

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
June 21, 2011 - 11:40am

Jim,

I don’t see that “Printer Features” on mine, but then again I don’t have a very good printer :)

I can’t comment on why you’d be seeing what you are seeing, and yes it certainly could be a bug, but here’s a few things to look into.

1. Do you see the same problem printing through any other app (i.e. Photoshop or even iPhoto)? This would help isolate the issue.

2. Are you sure you’re using the latest version of the printer driver? Visit the Epson website and look there; just because the OS thinks it’s the latest version doesn’t mean that it is.

3. While the printer may have a resolution of 720ppi, you’re probably not going to benefit from printing at that rez. Printers interpolate to fill in the gaps, and at 360 printing, you’re asking the printer to double it, which is just fine. You know the Retina Display on the iPhone 4? That’s 326 pixels per inch, which is (according to Apple) beyond the resolution that the human eye can resolve. So anything more than that is just a waste, right? At least that’s my interpretation. I think that the super high resolution printers are more about getting smoother gradients than about defining that stray hair off someone’s head perfectly.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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