trying to print on 5x7 cards, text is not printing in correct placement

[erithacusgirl]

I've been trying to print greeting cards, with the text on the bottom of the page. I've created this simple card (one side only) in both Pages and Word, set up the page as a 5x7 in both circumstances. It appears in the pre-print correctly, as designed, but when it outputs into the printer the text ends up being centered on the fold of the page. In the preview the text is shown on the bottom half of the page, like a normal greeting card is set up.

When I loaded the paper, I correctly centered the cards with the guides snug on the sides. I also used the printer's screen to select the paper size correctly.

I have also aligned the printer via the utility.

I have also tried changing the printer dialog boxes per this help on print driver settings:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-officejet-pro-8610-e-all-in-one-printer-series/5367603/docum...

I have tried saving the document as a pdf and printing that way, tried to fit to page in the printer box, etc.

The printer is a whole month old and the inside and rollers are clean. I have printed photos recently and those came out fine, as do all the documents on normal letter size paper. 

In all the iterations I have tried to create this card, the screen shows the text in the correct placement, but the printer seems to have it's own ideas of where to put it.

Anyone????

[8lives]

Give HP Photo Creations a try, use this link.

[erithacusgirl]

Nope.

The printer did print the text in roughly the right place, but off center to the right by 2 inches or so. I was able to get it to print off center from my other efforts. Or more often it printed right down the center of the fold, ignoring the placement built into the pdf or pages or word documents.

In addition, this is not a good solution to the problem - I want to be able to use my fonts, etc.

Is it too much to ask a printer to be able to print on alternative size paper without using a crummy piece of software that does not meet the needs of a designer?

Thanks for replying, but so very frustrated. This should be so very simple. Something is wrong with this picture.

[8lives]

Did you set the 8710 paper size to 5x7 also?

Contact HP support at http://support.hp.com/us-en/contact-hp

[erithacusgirl]

I certainly did.

[RocketLife]

Hi Erithacusgirl.

HP Photo Creations can use any font on your computer. Just scroll to the bottom of the list on the toolbar and select System Fonts. (I often use dingbat and symbol fonts to get extra graphics, though HP Photo Creations can import PNG-format graphics with transparency as well.)

On the printing screen, you can select both the image size and the paper size. For a folded card, one dimension should be twice the image size. For example, if you have 8.5 x11 paper, you can set the image size to 8.5 x 5.5 to print a folded card that fills the page.

(I wasn't clear what size paper you were using. From your printer's specs, it seems B5 (JIS) is closest to 7x10.)

The print preview in HP Photo Creations should show what you'll get. If it doesn't print that way, there may be a problem with your printer. I suggest installing the full feature drivers if you haven't done that already.

Hope this helps,

RocketLife 

[erithacusgirl]

Thanks Rocketlife, that is helpful, and I'm glad to know that if I had scrolled a bit I could find my fonts. Good to know!

And - you are totally on the right track - when I finally got on the phone with support the little light in my brain turned on and I realized I had set the size at the folded paper size (having just input the doc size from the package stated dimensions), not the open, full size. Doh!

But the tech was able to fix even that through working with the document as a pdf and adjusting the paper size.

So, can't believe I went through all of that because I started off on the wrong foot. Ruler, you henceforth are my friend.

I'll make some time to play with the Photo Creations software, looks very useful for wrangling text and images.

Thanks!

[erithacusgirl]

Thanks 8lives for trying to help - I realize I set my document size to the size of the card folded, not the entire unfolded page space. What a dope.

Oh well, finally got it sorted and all is well.

[RocketLife]

Glad it worked out!

HP Photo Creations definitely has unique controls, but there are a lot of capabilities just under the surface, like blending, airbrushing, and gradients. (Our background is in digital cinema effects.)

It's especially good for printing collages and cards. 

Let us know if you have any questions. You'll also find lots of tips and tutorials in the links below.

Creating a custom text outline

Cheers,

RocketLife