Edge compensation
If your prints lose their outer margins, this is the setting that puts them back.
Printers that print borderless do it by making the image slightly larger than the paper, so that a sheet feeding a fraction out of line never leaves a white sliver along an edge. The overshoot is deliberate, and it crops — whatever you designed in the outermost few percent of your strip is thrown away.
Edge compensation shrinks the print by the same amount beforehand, so the two cancel and what lands on the paper is what you designed.
How to tell you need it
The clearest sign shows up on a two-up sheet — two strips on one sheet:
- The gap down the middle looks generous.
- The margins at the outer edges look thin or missing.
- Cut it in half and one strip is fat on the left, the other fat on the right.
That asymmetry is the tell. The middle gap is interior so the printer never touches it, while both outer edges lose the same amount to the overshoot.
Set it
- Open SettingsThis devicePrint fleet.
- Find your printer in the list. Edge compensation sits directly beneath it, on that printer’s own row.
- Step it up in 0.5% increments and run a test print to check. A test print uses the same paper and the same compensation a guest’s strip will.
Working out the number
You do not have to guess. On a two-up sheet, the compensation you need is the width of the middle gap, as a percentage of the sheet width:
gap width ÷ sheet width × 100 = edge compensation %
So an 8 mm gap on a 4-inch (101.6 mm) sheet works out at about 8%. If you have no sheet to measure yet, start at 3% and adjust.
Starting points by printer
Every figure below came off a real printed sheet. Manufacturers do not publish their overshoot, so a printer that is not listed simply has not been measured yet — start at 3% and work from the sheet in front of you.
| Printer | Edge compensation | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Canon SELPHY CP1500 | 3% | 4×6 media, 2×6 strips printed two-up. |
What it does not change
Edge compensation applies to prints only. The photos guests download, the copy saved to the iPad and the gallery link are all untouched — a printer setting never reaches a picture anyone keeps.
If the middle gap still looks wide
After calibrating, the middle gap will still be roughly twice the outer margins, and that is correct: the seam carries the right-hand margin of one strip and the left-hand margin of the other, meeting. Cutting down the center gives two strips with even margins.
If you want a narrower seam, the lever is your template’s own side margins, not this setting.