Purpose

Print Setup and Preview prepares the Studio canvas for a selected printer. It lets you choose the paper size, margins, and page arrangement, then inspect individual sheets before submitting a print job.

Printing uses the same clean canvas composition as exporting: visible References, Sample Strips, and applicable visual guides. **Selection outlines, resize and rotation handles, on-screen rulers, and the application interface are not printed. The current Studio Zoom level and window size do not affect the physical scale of the printout.

Unlike exporting an image file, printing must account for the physical sheet size and the selected printer’s actual printable area. The artwork may fit one sheet or require several.

Opening Print Setup

1.  Open a project and prepare the composition on the Studio canvas.
2.  Before opening print setup, show only the References, Sample Strips, grids, and sample-location markers you want in the output.
3.  From the main menu, choose Output → Print Preview….
4.  The Print Setup dialog opens. Settings appear on the left, and a preview of the selected sheet appears on the right.
5.  Choose a printer, paper size, orientation, printing mode, and any additional options. Changing a setting recalculates the preview and page count.
6.  Inspect the preview. Select Print to submit the job, or Close to leave without printing.

Although the menu command is named Print Preview, you can print directly from the same dialog. You do not need to export a PNG, TIFF, or JPEG first.

Printer and Paper Settings

Printer

Choose a printer installed in Windows from the Printer list. When the dialog opens, ARS attempts to select the Windows default printer. If it is not present in the list, the first available printer is selected.

You may also select a virtual printer such as Microsoft Print to PDF to produce a multipage PDF and check the layout without using paper. In that case, Windows prompts for the PDF destination.

The printable area differs between printers. ARS asks the selected driver’s capabilities for the actual position and size of the area in which the device can print. If the driver does not return usable information, ARS reports an error rather than assuming arbitrary margins.

Paper Size

The Paper Size list shows the formats reported by the selected printer, such as A4, A3, or Letter. Physical dimensions in centimeters are displayed next to each option.

Changing the printer refreshes this list. ARS initially selects A4 when available; otherwise, it uses one of the formats reported by the driver. The available choices depend on the printer and its driver.

Orientation

Choose the paper orientation:

• Portrait – a vertically oriented sheet.
• Landscape – a horizontally oriented sheet.

Changing the orientation changes the usable width and height and may affect the required number of sheets. ARS checks that the printer driver accepts the selected orientation.

Printing Mode

The Printing Mode list provides three options:

• Actual Size (1:1) – prints the canvas at its original physical scale on a single sheet, provided it fits.
• Fit to Page – fits the complete canvas on one sheet, reducing its size proportionally if necessary.
• Tiled Printing (1:1) – preserves the canvas’s physical scale and splits it across multiple sheets when necessary.

See Printing Modes and Tiled Printing for how the three modes handle cropping, overlap, and crop marks.

Margins

In Margins (mm), enter each of the four margins independently:

Values are expressed in millimeters and initially default to 10 mm on each side.

ARS considers both the user-defined margins and the device’s nonprintable areas. Only the region allowed by both constraints is used. For example, setting a 3 mm left margin will not force a printer that cannot print within 5 mm of the edge to print closer than 5 mm.

Larger margins leave less space for the artwork. They may reduce the scale in Fit to Page or increase the page count in Tiled Printing.

Additional Options

Page Overlap

Page Overlap applies only to Tiled Printing (1:1). When enabled, neighboring sheets contain repeated portions of the same artwork to help with alignment. Specify the width in millimeters. The initial input value is 5 mm, but overlap is applied only when the option is checked.

Crop Marks

Enable Crop Marks to print short cutting guides outside the artwork area. This option is independent of overlap: crop marks may be enabled even when overlap is disabled.

Space is reserved for the crop marks outside the artwork. As a result, less of the printable area remains available for the image, which may change the fitted scale or page count. See Printing Modes and Tiled Printing for more detail.

Page Preview

The right side of the dialog displays one selected sheet. The summary above it shows the total number of pages and their column-by-row arrangement.

Use Previous and Next to move between pages. The text Page X of Y identifies the current page. At the first and last pages, the corresponding navigation button is unavailable.

Two guides are shown in the preview:

• A gray dashed outline indicates the effective printable area after accounting for user margins and printer limits.
• A blue dotted outline, shown for multipage layouts, indicates the suggested trim boundary.

The gray and blue outlines are preview-only and are not printed. If enabled, the black crop marks are part of the actual output.

The preview and the print job use the same page-layout plan and drawing implementation. Use the preview to check which parts of the canvas will appear on each sheet.

Printing and Job Status

1. Check the number of sheets and inspect the page previews.
2. Select Print.
3. While the job is being submitted, ARS shows Sending to printer…. During submission, you cannot change the settings or close the dialog.
4. When Windows accepts the submitted job, the message Job submitted to the print queue. appears.

Submission to the print queue does not mean that every sheet has already been physically printed. Further processing depends on Windows and the selected printer.

If submission fails, ARS shows an error message in the dialog. When using Microsoft Print to PDF, make sure an earlier PDF with the same name is not open in an application that has locked it; alternatively, choose another file name.

Important Notes

• Printing does not change the project canvas dimensions, Reference positions, or Studio Zoom.
• The output is a clean rendering of the canvas, not a screenshot.
• The physical scale depends on the selected printing mode. For dimensionally accurate prints, use a 1:1 mode and check a known measurement with a ruler when testing a printer for the first time.
• Changing printers or paper sizes can change the page count because nonprintable areas vary between devices.