When I first received my Epson SureColor P800 printer for review, I was dumbfounded at how to print borderless through Lightroom Classic. The quality of the printer was great, but I was getting a 0.25″ margin on the top, left and right sides of my 8.5″ x 11″ print, and a 0.56″ margin on the bottom. I wanted no margins at all, but adjusting the sliders in Lightroom just presented me with an error message.
So how do you print borderless in Lightroom? Turns out it’s pretty simple.
Page Setup
The trick lies in the Page Setup menu. If you’re in the Print module, click the Page Setup… button, located in the left sidebar in Lightroom. Or, go to File > Page Setup.
You’ll be presented with a few different options. The only thing you need to pay attention to here is the paper size. Depending on your situation, you’ll see US Letter, as well as one or two other US Letter (Borderless) options. This should go for any size paper you select — not just a standard US Letter (8.5″ x 11″) sheet.
Retain Size or Auto Expand?
Not all printers will have this option, but depending on the size of the paper you’re printing on, you’ll want to select a paper size for Retain Size or Auto Expand.
Retain Size doesn’t enlarge your image, meaning that it doesn’t crop anything off. However, this can lead to a thin white border on one or more edges of the paper. This depends on a number of things — mainly the size of the paper and the alignment as it’s fed to the printer. As long as you set the printer size and type of paper in your printer’s settings, you shouldn’t have a problem.
Alternatively, Auto Expand enlarges the image slightly to avoid these white lines. A few pixels of your image might not be printed, however. If you’re using an odd paper size, or one that’s not recognized by your printer, this might be the safest bet.
Adjust margins in Lightroom
Once you’ve completed this step, you can go back to the Lightroom Layout area and drag your Margins to zero. Then, under Cell Size, drag the Height and Width sliders as far as they’ll go. This will make your image expand to fill the page in a non-destructive way, allowing you to drag the image around to fit the page size.
If your image still doesn’t fill the page, simply click Zoom to Fill under Image Settings.
Time to print!
From there, you can simply click the Print button to start printing your image, or click Printer… to go over some additional options.
What you see is going to vary with the printer. My Epson 1430 does not offer options for Retain Size/Expand. In fact, clicking on the Page Setup button in LR brings up a box labeled “Print Setup,” not “Page Setup.” I think the key to borderless for most users is to select “Borderless” from the Paper Source choices, and to set the margins to zero and the cell size to maximums.
Correct, it’ll vary from printer-to-printer, but regardless, you should see Borderless there, which is what I was getting at. I’ve made a quick note in the story to clarify.
What you see is going to vary with the printer. My Epson 1430 does not offer options for Retain Size/Expand. In fact, clicking on the Page Setup button in LR brings up a box labeled “Print Setup,” not “Page Setup.” I think the key to borderless for most users is to select “Borderless” from the Paper Source choices, and to set the margins to zero and the cell size to maximums.
Correct, it’ll vary from printer-to-printer, but regardless, you should see Borderless there, which is what I was getting at. I’ve made a quick note in the story to clarify.
What you see is going to vary with the printer. My Epson 1430 does not offer options for Retain Size/Expand. In fact, clicking on the Page Setup button in LR brings up a box labeled “Print Setup,” not “Page Setup.” I think the key to borderless for most users is to select “Borderless” from the Paper Source choices, and to set the margins to zero and the cell size to maximums.
I had to go to my printer under the control panel and choose borderless there and appy. Nothing else would work.