Joined up printing

After uploading a bunch of photos to Flickr I was reminded that I could do with some more photo paper, normal hand-held size paper. Now I'm sure I mentioned printing a borderless photo and it cropping the edge, fortunately it cropped something I wasn't bothered with. However it got me to thinking - can I pick up some photo paper that would allow borderless printing without cropping?

For those of a non-technical bent I'll explain the problem. The Maximum size of photo my Canon Powershot A620 will take is 3072 x 2304 pixels that's a ratio of 1.3 (3072/2304) almost all the photo paper is 10x15cm (4x6")that's a ratio of 1.5 (15/10). So that leaves me with two choices -



Either I accept a border on the sides or I crop it. Borders don't look so good and at this ratio cropping means I lose a whopping 11% of the picture.

So what to do? Well for something of a similar size I can turn to A6 10.5x14.8cm. That gives me a ratio of 1.4 (close to the square root of 2). That would a smaller border or a loss of only 5.4%, half that of the 'photo-sized' paper. But I'm still losing something. I could head for the photo size 6R, but at 15.2x20.3cm it's a trifle too large. So I must turn to the transitional paper sizes PA6 in particular at 10.5x14cm is perfect.


R6 (yellow) contains 6x4" (cyan), contains C6 (orange), contains PA6 (magenta)

So can you buy PA6 photo paper? Seeing as it's an Epson printer I'll try them first.

Not counting the rolls, which I'd have to cut by hand, I'm left with a choice of one a 1.4 ratio similar to A6, but 13x18cm still too big.

I've used Canon paper so let's try them. Okay firstly they don't want to just see their paper, they want you to pick which printer you using first. I can understand that, just annoying for me. Right... hmm cross-referencing with Amazon there's a 6x4 listed as A6, sounds petty but half a centimetre can mean that Uncle Bob is chopped off the group photo, nope can't tell. Carry on to 13x18cm again. I note they do an 10x18cm which is nice to know.

HP next. 10x15, 10x15, yawn, oo 10x30cm, 13x18, A4, A3. That'd be a no then.

Kodak, same again. Lexmark? Even less choice. Google also shows nothing

I give up, you'd think that people who make photo printers that can feed directly from cameras would produce paper that matched the ratio of the photos those same cameras actually took.