Printing part of a drawing with the Print area tool in Vectornation

Printing a whole artboard is simple. Printing just one corner of a large poster at full size, to check how the type or a fine detail will look, is less obvious. The Print area tool in Vectornation by Zaweba is made for exactly that.

With the tool active, drag to move an artboard's printed page over the artwork. The page shows where the printer's sheet will fall. Put it over the part you want, then choose File > Print and that area prints. When you are done, Reset puts the printed page back on the artboard, so later prints behave as normal again.

Why print a part at all

Screens are generous to design work. Thin lines look crisp, small type looks readable and colours glow. Paper is less forgiving, and the only reliable way to judge a detail is to print it at its real size. If your artboard is a large poster, a banner or a vehicle graphic, the whole thing won't fit on a desktop printer at full size. Scaling it down to fit tells you little about the detail. Moving the printed page over the part that matters gives you a true sized proof of the bit you are worried about.

Typical candidates are the smallest line of text on a poster, a fine pattern or texture, a thin outline that might break up, the join where two colours meet, and a logo reproduced small. A sheet or two of these spot checks can save a costly large-format print that has to be redone.

A short routine

Finish the artwork as far as you can. Choose the Print area tool and drag the page to the first area you want to check. Print it. Drag the page to the next area and print again. Lay the sheets beside the design on screen and look for anything that reads differently on paper. When you have finished checking, use Reset, so the next person to print the drawing isn't confused by a page that has wandered off.

It is worth doing the same check after big changes, such as a new typeface or a switch from RGB to CMYK colours, because both can change how small details hold up.

How it fits with the print tools

Vectornation has a full set of print shop tools: soft proofing with a printer profile, separations and overprint previews, PDF/X-4 output with bleed and printer's marks, and preflight. The Print area tool is the homely end of that range. It's about checking work on your own printer, not about preparing files for a press. Use it for quick physical proofs while you design, and use the proofing and PDF tools when the work is ready to go to a printer.

It is also different from the Page tool. The Page tool changes the artboard itself, its size and position. The Print area tool leaves the artboard alone and only moves where the printed sheet falls, so your layout and exports are unaffected.

Things to watch

Check the paper size and orientation in the print settings before you drag the page around, since the page you see depends on them. Don't forget the Reset step, because a moved print area is easy to overlook when you come back to a drawing days later. And remember that a home or office printer's colour won't match a commercial press, so use these prints to judge size, sharpness and legibility rather than exact colour.

Small as it is, the Print area tool closes the gap between how a design looks on screen and how it will feel in the hand, which is exactly the gap that catches people out on large work.