We often hear from customers who have printed at the wrong size or the wrong orientation, and only spotted it once the media has run through and the ink has gone down. On a wide roll, that mistake is not a cheap one. The good news is there is a simple habit that heads off nearly all of it, and it is already sitting inside your printer driver. It is the preview before printing option, and once you get into the habit of using it, you will wonder how you managed without it.

What "preview before printing" actually does

On a Canon imagePROGRAF, you switch it on with a single tick box on the first tab of the driver. Open Printing Preferences, look at the Main tab, and you will find "Preview before printing" near the bottom. Tick it, click OK, and instead of the job going straight to the roll, you get a real preview of how your image will sit on the media. You see the true size, the orientation and the layout on the roll before a single drop of ink goes down.

The screenshot below shows the difference. On the left, the poster is set portrait on the roll and leaves a wide strip of blank media down one side, which is paid-for paper you will never get back. On the right, the same poster has been rotated ninety degrees to fit the roll width, so almost none of the media goes to waste. The preview is what lets you catch that in a couple of seconds.

The "Preview before printing" tick box on the Main tab, and the preview catching a poster that would waste half the roll (left) versus rotated to fit (right).

The mistakes it catches before they cost you

A quick look at the preview will pick up the things that usually only show themselves once the print is already ruined:

●     Wrong size, where a scaling setting has blown the image up or shrunk it down.

●     Wrong orientation, where a portrait file is sitting across a wide roll and wasting the space beside it.

●     Colour set to monochrome or greyscale by accident, so a full-colour job would come out flat.

●     The wrong media type or roll width selected, which throws off both the fit and the colour.

●     Awkward placement that leaves big margins top and bottom, using more of the roll than the job needs.

Why it matters more on large format

Cost per print is high on wide format because one sheet can be a metre or more of coated media, with a heavy lay-down of ink on top. A wasted A0 sheet is not the same as a stray A4 on an office printer. Every time the preview lets you spot a problem and fix it first, you have turned an expensive mistake into a five-second correction. Over a busy week of print runs, that adds up across both your media and your ink.

A good habit as you learn a new machine

When you have just taken delivery of a new printer, the preview is a gentle way to learn how your files translate onto the roll. Keep it ticked as you get used to the driver and the settings, and you can ease off later once picking the right options has become second nature. It gives you the chance to make changes before you commit to a hard copy, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of those first few weeks.

Spotted something off? Here is what to do

If the preview shows a problem, close it, pop back into the driver, and change the setting that needs it. Rotate the image, reset the scale, switch the colour mode back to full colour, or pick the correct media. Then preview again to check it looks right. It really is that simple, and it beats reprinting a full sheet every time.

The right kit behind every good print

A good habit like this works best alongside the right hardware and consumables. We supply Canon large format printers and the photo and fine art printers behind this kind of work, along with the paper and media and Canon ink cartridges to keep them running well. If you want a few more small wins like this one, our post on the simple things that make the biggest difference on Canon imagePROGRAF printers is worth a read, and our wide format printer buying guide covers choosing the right machine in the first place.

If something is not behaving the way it should, our printer repairs team can take a look, or you can get in touch and we will point you in the right direction.