Print-out Alignment

Have you ever tried to print something out on both sides of the paper that need to exactly line up? It isn’t as easy as it sounds; at least it wasn’t for this old dumb county boy.

I thought it would be neat to make a Valentine’s Day greeting card for my Aunt all by myself on my computer. Shoot, I got the software to handle that, at least I thought I did. Well, there is nothing wrong with my software, but there is something missing in the head of the operator.

There are four sides to a card, the front, the back and when you open it, there is a left and a right side. I had something that I wanted to put on every side. So I got started.

I made two different layouts, the front and back on one 6.5” x 10” layout and the two inside pages on another 6.5” x 10”. When folded up the card would be 5” x 6.5” so that it would fit the envelope that I had for it.

The outside had the front on the right and the back on the left. The inside had the writing (a poem I wrote) on the right side and a picture/design on the left side. Now came the problem. Since the flat card layout is smaller than a full sheet of paper, you just couldn’t run it through the printer twice. Now I had to think. Haven’t done that in years and it hurt.

I first printed the outside of the card. The back came out of the printer first with the bottom to the left. To keep the same orientation, I turned it over and placed it in the “in” tray with the back leading. I was smart enough to realize that I had to rotate the layout 180 degrees to get the inside verse side to line up with the outside back side. Then I printed it.

Oops, the orientation was correct but the front and back were offset. I measured the mismatch and offset the print that much on the next go-around. That actually worked. It sounded like I figured that out quickly, but that was not the case. It took a couple of hours to get it figured out. Now, I wonder if I will remember how to do that the next time?