Today I discovered why I sometimes have trouble while printing images. It’s the default Windows settings “Fit picture to frame” and “Fit to page” that are somewhat HIDDEN and CANNOT be changed!
First of all the name of the setting “Fit picture to frame” is misleading for most people. When this setting is checked some pictures are actually trimmed! Below is a double example that I found on this site:
https://www.windowsphoneinfo.com/threads/default-fit-picture-to-frame.282429/
As you can see the whole picture is visible only when this setting is UNCHECKED! The checked setting is usually used when you want to print a real photo that would fill a whole photo frame, but very few people print real photos at home, so they don’t understand the word “frame” as a real photo frame. In most cases people want to print a WHOLE picture!
What’s worse, much worse, you CANNOT change the default setting! It’s always checked! ALWAYS! To print a whole (untrimmed) picture you have to uncheck it EVERY SINGLE TIME!
Even worse, some programs use this default Windows setting without giving you any chance to change this setting even for printing a single picture. It means that these programs will ALWAYS print such a picture in the wrong (trimmed) way! ALWAYS!!!
This problem has existed for over 10 years! TEN fucking years! Here’s an example from 2010:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/turning-off-fit-to-frame-when-printing-a-picture/7d7f6f1f-14dd-481c-9225-963e5ca9aca3
The easiest way to print an untrimmed picture is to print it directly from a file (without opening the file first) – just right-click the file, then select “Print” AND then uncheck the setting. Unfortunately when you have 100 different pictures to print, you have to repeat the whole process 100 times! Are you kidding me?!
Unfortunately printing directly from a file has a downside too. This way you CANNOT print a small picture on an A4 page! By default Windows printing ALWAYS fits a picture to a page! When a picture is too big it is scaled down (which is usually good), but if a picture is “too small” it is stretched (which is usually bad).
Please notice that this hidden default setting “Fit to page” is NOT dependent on the setting “Fit picture to frame”. The hidden default setting “Fit to page” means that a small picture is either stretched to fit a page using the “wrong” side of the picture (with the checked setting “Fit picture to frame”) or it’s stretched to fit a page using the “correct” side of the picture (with the ununchecked setting “Fit picture to frame”).
Below is a four-picture example. You can save the first picture and try it out on your own computer. The last picture shows the real size of the picture on an A4 page (in the program Paint):
Again, the only explanation for this hidden default setting “Fit to page” is printing real photos – a very small photo (a photo in a very small resolution) is automatically stretched to be printed as a normal size real photo. But again, very few people print real photos at home and in many cases they want to print a small picture in its real (not stretched) size!
To print a small picture in its real size you have to use a program, for example Paint (Print -> Page setup -> Scaling -> Adjust to 100% normal size):
Unfortunately, the default Paint print scaling setting is ALWAYS “Fit to 1 by 1 page(s)” and you CANNOT change it! When you have 100 different small pictures to print, you have to repeat the whole process 100 times! Again, are you kidding me?!
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