Print at Actual Size on a Mac (100% Scale)

Why prints come out small

A4 paper is 21 × 29.7 cm, but a home printer can’t print the outer few millimetres. Many print dialogs default to fitting the page inside that printable area, which scales it to about 96 or 97%. It’s easy to miss. It matters when:

• sheets of a tiled poster have to meet at a seam
• a sewing pattern has to match your measurements
• a plan is drawn to a scale such as 1:50

Where to set 100% on a Mac

Printing from Page Tiles. Nothing to change. Sheets go to the printer at 100% with no page scaling, laid out to fit inside the margins you set.

Preview. In the print dialog, choose Scale and set it to 100%, not Scale to Fit. If you only see a short dialog, click Show Details first.

Adobe Acrobat Reader. Under Page Sizing & Handling, choose Size, then Actual size. Or choose Poster to tile a large page, with Tile Scale at 100%.

Safari and other browsers. Download the PDF and open it in Preview or Acrobat instead of printing from the browser. Browser print dialogs often scale to fit by default.

Check with a ruler before printing everything

Print one or two sheets first and measure.

• Patterns include a test square, usually 5 cm or 2 in. Measure it on paper.
• Plans have a scale bar. Measure a known length.
• Posters from Page Tiles: use Print Test Seam…, which prints A1 and A2 on their own. Hold them together at the overlap and check the picture lines up, then measure the width of one printed piece.

If it measures right, print the rest. If it’s small, the scale was not 100%.

When the printer cuts off the edge

At 100%, anything outside the printer’s printable area is lost. If a strip is missing on one side, the margins are too small for that printer. Page Tiles starts with 1 cm on every side, which suits most printers. Match a Printer reads what your printer reports and Use Its Margins applies it. Page Tiles warns you if the margins you set are closer to the edge than that printer can print.