Best Printer for Print & Cut

[DJG]

Sorry I've not been back again - I've been ill for the last week with a stomach bug, now over the worst but very feeble having lost nearly 5lbs in weight - that's the silver lining! Will give full report on my Canon experience when I am fit enough to deal with anything other than emergencies but thank you to all who have responded.
Shirley.

Sorry you've been ill Shirley, that's a drastic way to loose weight. Look forward to your report

[BowBow]

Well, here I am again, fit at last though still not replacing lost weight, now weigh the same as when I was 20! I'm not grumbling about that but am puzzled as I am eating quite well.
However - the PRINTER! Verdict - both good and bad. The good - pulls through 300g without a problem, also 284g photo paper. Nice print quality and prints straight every time, which is more than the HP did. Inks can be replaced individually as needed. The reason it wouldn't print from S.Studio was because I hadn't actually installed it!! When the disk was put in everything except S.S. worked fine without me doing anything so of course I assumed that it had installed itself. Having jumped through all the hoops of installation it now prints from S.S. fine so that is one objective achieved. Now the bad - and as far as I am concerned it is quite a problem - it will only print very limited sizes, no A5 photo which I use a lot when making A6 cards (front and back) and very few envelope sizes. A lot of the sizes for paper and envelopes are Japanese sizes which mean nothing to me. When I contacted Canon about the lack of A5 photo print they said that as they don't make A5 photo paper they don't support it but I could put 2 pictures on A4 - BUT, they have to be the same picture - no good at all for front and back of cards. I am now using the 7"x5" size and folding it to make A7 but of course I can't find any A7 envelopes so am having to make them - goodness knows when I'll get my cards done - probably just in time for next year! The upside of that is that I'm using less ink and as it's about £70 for a full set of 6 XL inks that can't be bad. If I had my time again I would buy a different printer, simply because it's taking so long adjusting what I want to do with what the printer will allow me to do.
Shirley.

[DJG]

Glad you're feeling better Shirley. Christmas is coming with all the extra calories. Can you not add custom sizes to print I know some computers can other than that try Googling for the Japanese sizes to see if we have the equivalent. I've got a Canon MG3200 and replacing the two cartridges costs nearly as much as the printer. After Christmas I'm hoping to invest in a CISS (continuous ink system) for it so it will be a lot cheaper to run.

[dozyrosy]

Shirley, do you have any other graphics or possibly desk top publishing software that you could use to prepare your printing with? I have a very old version of Paint Shop pro which has an option to set up - arrange, resize, etc - and print as many images on one sheet as I wish. I also use Serif PagePlus occasionally to do fronts and backs of cards in one go, so you can do, for example, an A5 card on the one sheet, and 5 1/2" square cards and smaller, with a bit of guillotining. You can get old versions of this very cheaply, and as far as I can remember I believe there is also a cut down freebie version, so this might be worth investigating? it's also worth trying a test print on speciality/photo papers without using the appropriate settings so that you can use the whole A4 size.

HTH,
Rosemary

[BowBow]

Thanks for your suggestions ladies. Right now I'm so up against it timewise that I can't afford any more experimenting but I shall certainly give your suggestions a go when I'm out from under. Not sure how to go about designing my cards in either S.S. or Craft Artist and then exporting them to another programme prior to printing. In fact the programmes will allow me to use any size I want (almost) but when it comes to printing them it is the printer that is in charge. In fact when I have done a custom size the printer comes up with some message (can't remember the details) which says it doesn't fit the size available. Of course I could do all my A5 folded (=A6) cards on matt card no problem - it only allows A5 from the bottom tray and will not do Photo print from there - but I like the high gloss finish for most of my cards. Ah well, as I used to tell my children, very little in life is perfect but it still drives me nuts when it isn't!
Shirley.

[Neries]

Hi Shirley glad you are feeling better.

I have a similar problem with my Canon MG5350. I wanted to print out inserts onto ready sized/cut for 6x6 card from my Ultimate Verse Insert Design CD. I ended up fiddling it by setting the printer paper size to A4 and putting the paper in the back feeder moving in the guides to hold the paper in place. In UVID I just moved my writing over slightly and it now prints alright, although I still have the problem about the colour not being correct when using UVID and in M/S Word. It will only print one shade of each colour yet Studio prints perfect colours.

[BowBow]

Thanks for sharing Neries, it's good to know that it's not just me having problems with printers. If only someone could invent the perfect printer for card makers - trouble is I need the office/business ability as well. I could do more of what I want by using A4 photo but it's so wasteful and heavy duty A4 photo doesn't come cheap. Perhaps when I'm more relaxed I'll be able to explore the possibilities more.
Shirley.