Most printers on the market today only print out to common paper sizes. But if you're a scrapbooker, than you know you 12"x12" paper is where it's at. Unfortunately, most printer manufacturers don't know the meaning of 12"x12" so you'll have to adjust your printer preferences to get a decent output. Here's how to do it:

This tutorial is using an HP DeskJet 1220C. (It is a larger format printer and prints up to 13 inches wide so it's perfect for this tutorial.)

Lay out your 12 x 12 page as you want it to print. Select the print option, Normal under the print menu. Select your printer, then click on the printer icon to the right of the printer options for Printer Properties. In the Set up tab, go to Settings and select Paper Size, Custom Selecting Custom will bring up a dialog box where you can input whatever settings you desire. In this case, input 12 x 12. Give your setting a name. This name can be chosen every time you wish to use your 12 x 12 setting. Go to the Features and Preferences tabs and select your new setting by name. You are then ready to print your 12 x 12 page.

( NOTE: Photo Express My Scrapbook Edition will have red lines indicating the printable area of your page. These red lines will not print out onto your scrapbook page. The program does this because it assumes you do not have a large format printer therefore requiring you to paste the sections of a page together. If you do the custom settings preferences, you'll get one complete output onto a 12"x12" paper.)

Once you have the customized setting for your printer, you can select it each time you want to print a 12 x 12 page.

1. Lay out your 12 x12 page.
2. Select print option, Normal
3. Select your printer
4. The setting will either come up by default when you select custom, or you can simply go to your Print Properties menu and change the settings in the Set up, Features and Preferences tabs to your saved 12 x 12 setting.