MINSULA PRINT LAB / FIELD NOTES

Understand margins, gaps and tile overlap

Three settings create space for three different reasons. A margin keeps the image away from a paper edge. A repeat gap separates neighbouring copies. Tile overlap repeats part of the same large image on neighbouring sheets.

Margin: room for the printer

With A4 portrait and 10 mm margins, the horizontal image window is 210 − 20 = 190 mm. A 12 mm footer is additionally reserved when the verification line is enabled, so the image window is 297 − 20 − 12 = 265 mm tall. Disabling the line still leaves a 6 mm label footer.

The tool cannot know your printer's unprintable border. A 0 mm margin is mathematically possible but often impractical; a warning appears below 5 mm. Check the printer's documentation.

Overlap: room for assembly

At 10 mm overlap, a 190 mm-wide tile advances 180 mm across the original image. The last 10 mm of one tile also appears at the start of the next. Changing overlap to 20 mm makes the step 170 mm; it can increase the number of pages without making the image larger.

Use the 360 × 288 mm botanical example to see the duplicated strips. Dashed lines appear only on later columns or rows where an overlap must be trimmed. A zero overlap setting has no duplicated strip and requires careful edge-to-edge alignment.

Gap: room for cutting

In Repeat mode, two 40 mm-wide images with a 5 mm gap occupy 85 mm in total. The gap contains no artwork. It neither enlarges each image nor adds an extra border to it.

When the verification line cannot fit

On A4 portrait with 60 mm margins, only 90 mm remains across. A 100 mm verification line cannot fit. The studio omits it with a warning instead of shrinking it to 90 mm. Choose a smaller margin or landscape orientation if you need that measurement check.