Thursday, February 10, 2011

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?

5 comments:

  1. If you got it right...never touch it again. It is just one of those things that people who use it everyday think it is soooo easy.

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  2. That's why I use the programs that are already set for 2 sided and 4 sided cards!

    I'm too slow to do it any other way!

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  3. Frann, Yep I guess it is like brain surgery, it is easy for a brain surgon. I have to do things the hard way.

    Hermit, I use AutoCAD to design the cards and you can do wonders with inserted pictures in that program along with closely controlling the dimensions of the print out. Just had to figure out how to print both sides so they would align. Easy for some, hard for me.

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  4. You have my sympathy,I couldn't do any of that stuff,just not mechanically inclined.glad you got it figured out. Blessings jane

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  5. Jane, I bet it would have been easier for me 20 years ago.

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