Epson R220 CD label printing in Illustrator/Photoshop in OS X
Over the past 2 weeks, the Epson R220 my company bought has worked intermittently. I called Epson and their technical support said that they would only support the printing of CD labels from their vastly limited and color distorting printing program, Epson Print CD.
Sample File
This PDF has the correct offsets on a US Letter page setup to print directly to the CDs.
The actual offsets are 0.661 in (X) and 0.3621 in (Y) from the left top of the page. That’s negative Y axis in Illustrator, by the way.
Instructions
The secret to making the printer work everytime from Illustrator is to reset the paper size in the Print dialog. To do this (and you’ll need to do this everytime you print), deselect Size: “Defined by Driver” in the print dialog (File>>Print…) to another setting like “US Letter.” Then, close the print dialog. Re-open it and select Printer…>>Printer Settings>>Media Type: CD/DVD from the drop down menu. I recommend saving the Media Type as an OS X printing preset (Printer…>>Presets>>Save).
One one other necessary piece of information. The front CD tray must be open before the file is sent to the printer. Otherwise, the file will just be printed from the regular paper tray on letter size paper.
Color Settings
The color printed will not match those on the screen either (at least in CMYK). The closest Color Setting (Edit>>Color Setting…) that I have seen to the monitor’s color is “North American General Purpose 2.” I believe this is the default for Illustrator CS2 on install.
I hope this helps. It took over five hours to narrow this down. Thanks a lot, Epson. . .
NOTE: The above might work with the Epson R330, but since I do not own a R330, I cannot test this.
–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com
A note about the author
I love working in a field that changes every day. I am a web developer/designer with an agency background. I have empathy for the user first, then developers, then machines. I follow web standards, coding conventions, then, I do whatever it takes to make it work. Visit my contact page, even if you would just like to say hello. To stay in touch, follow me on Twitter
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February 9th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
This saved me a lot of time. I checked the details for european settings and I used PhotoShop in stead of Illustrator.
Using A4 paper, the offsets in millimeters are:
- 12 mm from the left
- 4 mm from the top
Hence your centerpoint would be 72mm, 64mm (x,y).
March 7th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for the tips…
I can’t understand why…but the CD/DVD options are greyed out in illustrator CS. They’re available in all other applications, just not in CS. And it looks like in the printer settings dialog, it always reverts to SHEET FEEDER.
March 7th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
gilzoo,
Yeah, that doesn’t sound like there’s an easy explanation. I have CS2 here are work and it’s on a Mac. I have CS at home on a PC, but not the printer to test it on. I know that the Printer setting dialogs are different between the two OSes.
If you figure out, please post.
–Stephen
March 31st, 2006 at 2:24 am
For Illustrator CS, I found that the solution is to edit in Illustrator, but print from Acrobat. Funky. But it works.
-B…
March 31st, 2006 at 3:03 am
But don’t forget to set the page size and printer in Acrobat Reader’s Page Setup. And set Page Scaling to none in the Print dialog box.
-B…
April 12th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Bruce,
I have had color shifts in CMYK documents from Illustrator or InDesign to Acrobat Reader.
–Stephen
August 18th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Thanks for this information…good to know I’m not the only one cussing at my printer! Turns out, I found another screwy error that I fixed. I still couldn’t get Illustrator to print the document, but when I saved it as a PDF, opened in Preview and printed, it seemed to work just fine. Also, the printer wants you to align the triangles, but I found that the only way the printer will “accept” the tray is if you push it in as far as it goes. And shockingly, everything is aligned correctly.
August 18th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Whoa, just realized this is Stephen James. This is Jason Parmer. How goes it sir?