Some of our customers like a white border framing their prints. It suits certain images, and there is nothing wrong with it. Most, though, prefer the full edge-to-edge look. A print that runs right to the edge simply has more impact.

The catch has always been the waste. To get that borderless finish on many machines, you print larger than the final size and then trim the white margin away. The offcut goes in the bin. Across a busy week, that adds up to a lot of paper, a lot of cost, and a lot of material that served no purpose.

If you own a Canon imagePROGRAF wide format printer, that trade-off goes away.

Why the white border costs more than it looks

Trimming to size feels like a small step, but the numbers behind it are not small.

Every print you crop leaves an unprinted strip that you have paid for and cannot use. On wide rolls, those strips are wider than people expect. Multiply that across a full production run and the wasted media starts to show up in your paper costs, your reorder frequency, and the amount you send to recycling or landfill.

There is a time cost too. Trimming is another stage in the workflow, another point where alignment can drift, and another chance for a print to be spoiled at the final hurdle.

Print to the edge, with no offcut

With the exception of the TC series, the entire Canon imagePROGRAF range can be told to print edge-to-edge on any size of roll. No white border, no trimming, no wasted media.

It works through a sensor that measures the width of the loaded roll, then prints to the full width automatically. You load the media, choose borderless, and the printer does the rest. Because the print already runs to the edge, there is nothing to cut off afterwards.

That is the real shift. You are not trimming waste away after the fact. You are never creating it in the first place.

A worked example: the GP-4600S

The Canon imagePROGRAF GP-4600S is a good machine to picture this on. It is a 44 inch, seven-colour production printer built for posters, signage and high-volume graphics, and free-size borderless printing is included regardless of the media or size you load.

For a print shop or an in-house team, the savings build up. There is automatic media loading, an optional second roll to keep longer runs moving, and the everyday benefit of not throwing money away on offcuts. The GP-4600S is also EPEAT Gold registered and ships in cardboard rather than polystyrene packaging, so the environmental case holds up beyond the print itself.

You can see the rest of the range on our Canon large format printers page if you want to compare models.

How this compares to the HP DesignJet Z6

It is a fair question, because the HP DesignJet Z6 can also produce a borderless-looking result. The difference is in how it gets there.

The HP uses a vertical cutter, the V-Trimmer, to slice the left and right margins off the print. The finished piece looks borderless, but you have still printed those margins and then cut them away, and the unprinted paper is discarded.

The Canon approach removes that step. The sensor detects the roll edges and prints to the full width, so there is no margin to trim and nothing to throw away. The same borderless finish, without the offcut.

Good for your budget, good for the planet

Borderless printing on a Canon imagePROGRAF is one of those features that pays you back quietly, on every print. You get the full-impact, edge-to-edge look your customers want, you stop paying for paper you cannot use, and you cut down on waste at the same time.

If you would like to talk through which imagePROGRAF model suits the work you do, or you want to see the GP-4600S in more detail, the Prizma Graphics team is happy to help. Give us a call or drop us a line and we will point you to the right machine for your setup.