Borderless Printing Versus Bordered Prints
When people planning to print their images the first question they usually encounter is to print bordered or borderless. Wast majority of the people think that the only difference between them is borders around the image, and many of them think: "I don't see why I need borders, and choose borderless". However, it isn't so easy, there several points that hard to see from the first look. Let's consider below some pitfolls of borderles printing, and both approach in general.
Printing without margins (borderless)
One of the most widespread printing approach is borderless printing. Let's consider this first. A classical photo-image typically has short-to-long sizes ratio of 2/3, or 4/6 if you prefer, meaning 4 inches for the short side and 6 inches for the long side. This size is good because it can utilize 4"x6" paper. However, however before print borderless photographer need to pay attention to the tree key points:
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To print an image borderlessly, some extension of the image must be set up,
as shown in the image below. Doesn't matter if you use your own printer, photo lab, or professional photo studio,
the extension need because of printing tolerance, and
extension is always bigger than printing tolerance in order to print the image without white
lines on any edge.
The red frame show the printing area, for borderless printing printing area is equal to paper size.
The extensions will not be on the printed image. It means when photographers print image, even 4x6 they choose to print not all the image.
Of course the extensions are not so big as it depicted on illustration above, but it still exist. -
As we observed with small papers (4"x6"), the ratio of image and papers usually the same.
However, if we need to print something larger,
for example 5"x7", 8"x10", 11"x17", 13"x19", 17"x22", etc.,
most of papers and frames do not have a 2/3 ratio.
This means if you want to print the image to that papers you need to cut off
significant part of image, resulting in cropping.
Sometimes this is acceptable, and sometimes it is not,
but it is important to understand this limitation.
The situation with frames is even worse. You can buy the frame anywhere, but frames not always adhere to a 2/3 ratio. Many frames also include a mat - flat piece of paper-based material included within a picture frame, which serves as additional decoration and performs several practical functions, such as separating the art from the glass (see details on Wikipedia). The ratio of frame and mat very often does not match each other or the 2/3 ratio. So, when you print the image borderlessly for size larger than 4"x6", it will suffer from the first problem due to the paper-ratio, and if you want to frame the image, you need to leave some additional space on each edge for framing.
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The third questions for borderless printing is image quality.
For the best quality, printer manufacturers of most modern professional printers
recommend leaving a margin along each edge of paper.
For example, for 17"x22" prints, Canon recommends leaving a 25mm (0.98 inch) margin from the short edge and 3.4mm (0.13 inch) from the long edge. The actual printable area is the space inside these margins. You can see an example of the paper with margins and printable area above.
Yes, it is possible to print a bigger size with margins and cut out margins, but usually it has no sense especially for big paper sizes (because you still need any margins to fix it in frame, or to visually separate image from wall if you don't use the frame)
PhotoInPrint provides the option of borderless printing, so you can make a prints with no margins. However, you should understand that slight cropping may occur at the edges since the printed image is enlarged to fill the entire page. Borderless printing is not available for A5, B5, B4, B3, Legal, or 11" x 17" (28 x 43 cm) paper sizes, so you can't choose borderless printing in web interface for these sizes. Depending on the type of paper, borderless printing may reduce print quality at the top and bottom edges of the paper. Borderless Printing on thick paper may also cause smudging on the front or back surface of the paper.
We recommend using Printing with borders because of the perfect quality and the variety of printing option that allow you to fit you image to any frame or mat that you have.
Printing with margins (Bordered Prints)
For the best quality of prints and for the most flexibility in case
of printing to large format paper or for framing, we recommend using margins. It means photo prints with white borders.
You can use bordered printing for any paper sizes, for example you can get 4x6 prints with white borders.
The PhotoInPrint web interface allows you to choose any margins you need.
To provide exceptional image quality PhotoInPrint web interface doesn't allow to choose margins less than minimal required margins. We suggest opting for the recommended margin sizes, or larger ones, to ensure the best quality of prints. You can see Minimal printing area and Margins in the table below.
The PhotoInPrint web interface also allows you to set up margins through the printing area. This is a very useful option for cases when you have a frame with a mat and need to print an image for this frame. First, check the space that the mat leaves for your image (long side, short side, and ratio = short / long side). Use your favorite photo-editor to crop the image if necessary, so that it has the same ratio. Here, we also need to understand that the printed image should be a little bit bigger than the mat size, because if you print it at exactly the same size, it will be difficult to put it into the frame and avoid white lines between the printed image and the mat. We recommend it be at least 5mm (0.2 inch) bigger on each side. Now, you have the printing area sizes and can choose the paper size.
The PhotoInPrint web-interface provide functionality that comparable to the functionality of real printer and allow you to set up printing options you need.