Why Can't I Print Full Size?

[ehbowen]

Okay. I've been using Scribus for about a year now, mostly for formatting full-length novels, and they all came out great. So I thought that a church bulletin should be simplicity itself. Key words: "should be..."

I had formal experience as a typesetter and layout man many moons ago before I began boiling water as a day job, so I knew what I wanted to do. Simple church bulletin, four page layout, each page 5.25" x 8", printed front and back on a letter-size sheet of premium quality bond paper, trim the edges for bleed, and fold to finished size. And I wanted to do it in Scribus.

The layout was beautiful (see attachments). But I could NOT get it to print full size, with the two sides aligned on the fold line! I tried exporting it to PDF, I tried printing directly, I tried playing with the bleed and margin setting...each time it came out about 75% the size of what I intended, with the two sides misaligned.

After staying up and playing with it past midnight Saturday on into Sunday morning I threw in the towel, exported the pages individually, pasted them together into LibreOffice Draw, and called it a night. I can do that this week if necessary. But I'd much rather get Scribus working the way I think it should. Any help?

(Legalities note: Artwork is either licensed from DepositPhotos, contributed by the denomination our church is a member of, or internally generated. All typefaces are open source and free for commercial usage.)

[AdmFubar]

Lot of info is missing about your document. From what i can see from the images provided, your top margin is out of whack. Cant determine why from just the images.

Would need to see the whole document to find what is wrong. Can you attach the document for us to peruse? If you can use the collect for output, and then zip the directory so we can have all the relevant  bits of the file.

[ehbowen]

Lot of info is missing about your document. From what i can see from the images provided, your top margin is out of whack. Cant determine why from just the images.

Would need to see the whole document to find what is wrong. Can you attach the document for us to peruse? If you can use the collect for output, and then zip the directory so we can have all the relevant  bits of the file.

Okay. I had to crunch it down quite a bit as I was using the full-resolution stock photo files I purchased, so the original file was over 54 megs...! But I replaced the images with downscaled versions and kept the same layout, and I still have the same printing problem. So I'll upload that now.

Thanks for taking a look at it. I'm wanting to move to in-house design using open source software as opposed to the expensive preprinted bulletin services. So I'd like to get Scribus working successfully.

By the way, if I was to go back to my original four-page layout...is there a PDF option which will print it correctly as far as page order? I couldn't find it and ended up moving the back cover to Page 1.

[ehbowen]

Lot of info is missing about your document. From what i can see from the images provided, your top margin is out of whack. Cant determine why from just the images.

Would need to see the whole document to find what is wrong. Can you attach the document for us to peruse? If you can use the collect for output, and then zip the directory so we can have all the relevant  bits of the file.

Okay. I had to crunch it down quite a bit as I was using the full-resolution stock photo files I purchased, so the original file was over 54 megs...! But I replaced the images with downscaled versions and kept the same layout, and I still have the same printing problem. So I'll upload that now.

Thanks for taking a look at it. I'm wanting to move to in-house design using open source software as opposed to the expensive preprinted bulletin services. So I'd like to get Scribus working successfully.

By the way, if I was to go back to my original four-page layout...is there a PDF option which will print it correctly as far as page order? I couldn't find it and ended up moving the back cover to Page 1.

By The Way, I was experimenting with bleeds but not going full bleed with this layout. So that header image of the church was not intended to bleed...in this version. For this coming Sunday I'm going with a larger image and I'll bleed the top of it as well.

[utnik]

...By the way, if I was to go back to my original four-page layout...is there a PDF option which will print it correctly as far as page order? I couldn't find it and ended up moving the back cover to Page 1.

the usual way would be to generate a standard layout with 'facing pages' and the first page on the right side and print it as a 'booklet' (many .pdf readers allow this by default.)
the approach with two landscape pages (p4/p1 and p2/p3) works as well and is easy as long as there are just 4 portrait pages. what went wrong when you tried this? was the .pdf file already scaled to 75% and misaligned, or did this happen later, when printing?

utnik

[ehbowen]

Besides printing direct, I tried printing the PDF via Okular (I'm on Linux...Ubuntu Studio 24.04LTS). And, according to the Properties data there, my page size is the desired 5.25" x 8" (see attachment).

Possibly it's a printer issue (Xerox WorkCentre 6515DN); I tried "fit" scaling, "full size" scaling, no scaling...basically, I tried every single scaling option it offered. The results were consistent, although consistently unacceptable. If it was a printer issue, though, it was resolved by transferring the data to LibreOffice Draw; I printed that file the very first time with no issues. But that's a rather kludgy workflow for the other members of the church whom I'd like to have assist me in future.

[utnik]

i don't know okular. but it looks as scribus did its job. as you stick to the (very unusual) way to have four single pages in the order 4, 1, 2, 3, okular must deal with it in another way than the normal booklet printing. (and if you're printing on 8.5"/11" paper it may be misaligned by the missing 0.5"...)

utnik

[ehbowen]

Possibly I'm confused as to how Scribus handles bleeds. Is there documentation on that?
Here's what I'm expecting when I set up a document with bleeds:

• Page Size = Final trimmed size (in this case, 5.25" x 8", or 10.5" x 8" for the full double page spread
• Bleed = Area outside the trimmed page which is to be printed with color, with the intent of trimming to give a "fully printed page" (marginless) feel. In this case, it would be .08".
• Margin = Area not to be printed, either for layout or (in this case) technical regions...my Xerox WorkCentre requires a minimum page margin of .1614" on all sides.
• Output page size = full size of the media to be printed on, in this case US Letter-sized bond paper (8.5" x 11").

Am I off with any of this?

By The Way, I tried going back to my original facing pages/first page right (booklet format) layout. But I couldn't find an option to format it for output as a booklet, either within Scribus or in the printer settings itself. Probably I'm missing something very simple.

[utnik]

hi ehbowen

Possibly I'm confused as to how Scribus handles bleeds. Is there documentation on that?
Here's what I'm expecting when I set up a document with bleeds:

• Page Size = Final trimmed size (in this case, 5.25" x 8", or 10.5" x 8" for the full double page spread
• Bleed = Area outside the trimmed page which is to be printed with color, with the intent of trimming to give a "fully printed page" (marginless) feel. In this case, it would be .08".
• Margin = Area not to be printed, either for layout or (in this case) technical regions...my Xerox WorkCentre requires a minimum page margin of .1614" on all sides.
• Output page size = full size of the media to be printed on, in this case US Letter-sized bond paper (8.5" x 11").

Am I off with any of this?

the screenshot in post #5 shows that you generated your .pdf without the bleeds. ('pre-press' tab in the .pdf export window...)

...I couldn't find an option to format it for output as a booklet, either within Scribus or in the printer settings itself.

as i said before, i don't know okular. maybe it has no 'booklet' function.
i use 'acrobat reader' and 'foxit reader'. both of them support booklet printing. but there is a small .pdf handler called 'jpdftweak'. it looks a bit old fashioned, but it does booklet reordering and many other things. if neither your .pdf reader nor your printer driver does the trick, you might give it a try.

utnik

[Nermander]

If you are using bleed, not all PDF viewers handle this properly.

When you generate a PDF from Scribus, the bleed ends up outside the Trimbox defined in the PDF (the Trimbox will be set to the page size) and many PDF viewers ignore everything outside the Trimbox.

The normal recommendation is to "test" your PDF with Adobe Reader (but that is difficult if you do not have access to a Windows PC).

[AdmFubar]

got to play around with you document. It printed correctly for me eventually.
Check your printer's print options. This seems to be where the issue is. Also the prepress options for pdf export, no printer marks selected, the document bleeds option isnt selected, I have and 1/8 in bleed set by the printer. it seems to print correctly for me. Also check the margins setting  in your print window, the Option button in the print window in okular should open another window with the first tab of Page, there margins settings are there. make sure they are set to the lowest amount for your printer.

[ehbowen]

If you are using bleed, not all PDF viewers handle this properly.

When you generate a PDF from Scribus, the bleed ends up outside the Trimbox defined in the PDF (the Trimbox will be set to the page size) and many PDF viewers ignore everything outside the Trimbox.

The normal recommendation is to "test" your PDF with Adobe Reader (but that is difficult if you do not have access to a Windows PC).

Even if my PDF reader is faulty, I would think that I should be able to output the file correctly to a local network printer direct from Scribus.

got to play around with you document. It printed correctly for me eventually.
Check your printer's print options. This seems to be where the issue is. Also the prepress options for pdf export, no printer marks selected, the document bleeds option isnt selected, I have and 1/8 in bleed set by the printer. it seems to print correctly for me. Also check the margins setting  in your print window, the Option button in the print window in okular should open another window with the first tab of Page, there margins settings are there. make sure they are set to the lowest amount for your printer.

I tried a few more tweaks to my original file. I got the pages to print properly centered and aligned...but they're still scaled about 70% of what they should be, even though the margin ruler on Scribus shows the proper page size. And, again, I was able to print essentially the same information transferred to LibreOffice Draw the first time with no trouble which makes me believe it's not anything inherent in the printer or driver. It could well be an erroneous setting, though...just haven't discovered which one as of yet.

[AdmFubar]

Was having fun this evening re-imagining your layout. Use them if you like.

[Nermander]

Even if my PDF reader is faulty, I would think that I should be able to output the file correctly to a local network printer direct from Scribus.

Unfortunately, printing directly from Scribus probably have more issues than using a PDF viewer. There has even been suggestions to remove printing completely from Scribus because it is not very reliable.

I don't even know how printing from Scribus handles bleed and Trimbox... I have never printed from Scribus.

[ehbowen]

Was having fun this evening re-imagining your layout. Use them if you like.

Thanks! Not bad, not bad at all.

I'll be going with a near variant of my original design for the rest of this Advent season (consistency, y'know)...but I'm going to save this for future use. Thanks again!