Keep Preview from autoresizing print output

previewprinting

Whenever I want to print a PDF file from Preview, the print dialog defaults to shrink the page to fit the bounds of the page. I have to manually select scale: and enter 100 into the text field. Is there a hidden default or other way, to tell Preview to always default to 100% print size?

Using a saved print setting as suggested below does not work in this case. I'm using Preview 5.0.2 (504) and Mac OS X 10.6.4, perhaps a bug?

When I save the setting I want to have, open another PDF file, select print, and select my saved settings, the scale: setting jumps to some arbitrary value around 100% (90%-105%) and the radio box stays at "scale to Fit:".

Best Answer

I would use Terminal commands slightly different from @Bart's above, although those work just fine.

To disable Preview's default print scaling:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode -bool false

To restore Preview's default print scaling:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode -bool true

That way, the default stays in Preview's plist, so I don't need some external reminder about that default if I'm poking into it next year when I've forgotten I did this.

Incidentally, the first time I started up Preview after disabling its print scaling, it seemed to hang on launch, so I force-quit and then tried again and it was fine.

Hmm. Tried to edit to make the code lines show...

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How to print an image across two pages

Here is how to use Safari to print an image to span multiple pages:

1) Open the image to be printed in Safari. If it is a local file, then choose File -> Open File.... Or if you already have the file open in Preview, you can drag the icon of the file from the title bar of the Preview window onto the Safari window or Safari icon in the dock. Otherwise, load the image from the Internet however you usually would.

2) Go to File -> Print... and then change the Scale (%) so that the image is the desired size. If you do not see the place to change the Scale, you may need to press the Show Details button. Safari will show you a preview of how the image will appear on each page, so you can see how big the resulting image will be. For the example, you can get the entire width on a single page, but the image will span 2 pages in length.

You may want to choose borderless printing if your printer supports it. For instance, for my Canon inkjet, I set the paper size to US Letter (borderless). However, I was not successful in achieving borderless printing in my one trial; Safari still left white borders around the image that I later had to trim.

3) Click print. Collect your prize from the printer. Trim away white space and then combine the different pages using tape, etc.

PDF from pdfLaTeX doesn’t print correctly

Indeed, the whole problem was rooted in the generated PDF file having letter paper format.

After configuring MacTeX to use default a4 paper

texconfig paper a4

Everything is printed as expected.

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