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Printing Problem: Print preview looks fine. Image not scaled when printed

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I am trying to print shipping labels from Amazon and a third-party web app running Firefox 103.0 64-bit.

Text prints just fine but images (barcodes, etc) that need to be scaled down do not do so causing them to be truncated on the page.

I have cleared print settings and tried two different printers to no avail. The documents/images print correctly from Chrome. I have tried using the system dialog to print but this also does not correct the issue.

Any help is greatly appreciated as I currently cannot use Firefox for the essential daily task of printing packing slip / mailing labels.

I am trying to print shipping labels from Amazon and a third-party web app running Firefox 103.0 64-bit. Text prints just fine but images (barcodes, etc) that need to be scaled down do not do so causing them to be truncated on the page. I have cleared print settings and tried two different printers to no avail. The documents/images print correctly from Chrome. I have tried using the system dialog to print but this also does not correct the issue. Any help is greatly appreciated as I currently cannot use Firefox for the essential daily task of printing packing slip / mailing labels.

All Replies (13)

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Hi, in the More settings section, under Scale, are you using "Fit to page width" or manual percentage scaling?

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jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said

Hi, in the More settings section, under Scale, are you using "Fit to page width" or manual percentage scaling?

I have it set to "Fit to page width".

The issue isn't even with the entire page unless the whole page is an image. For example, if I print a packing slip that has a logo embedded, all of the text will print just fine, the margins will be correct, but the logo will be oversized and cropped in the location when it prints. The print preview looks fine. It's like the images are not responsive to the container they are in. In fact, when I inspect the webpage I can't find the image objects at all. They have no in the html.

I should also note that these are pdf documents and saving them locally to print makes no difference.

Thank you for your help.

EDIT: Printing using Scale at 100% has the same issue.

Modified by gschertz

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gschertz said

The print preview looks fine. It's like the images are not responsive to the container they are in. In fact, when I inspect the webpage I can't find the image objects at all. They have no <span> in the html. I should also note that these are pdf documents and saving them locally to print makes no difference.

The way Firefox renders PDFs as web pages involves converting the PDF to a giant image on an HTML canvas. The other parts of the HTML in the viewer are mostly transparent strings of text for searching/selecting. So I'm surprised that the image isn't proportional in the actual printout. I wonder what is going wrong there.

What if you open the PDF in Apple's "Preview" viewer or in Adobe Acrobat? Can it print correctly from there?

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Printing from Apple Preview and Acrobat has the same issue. The problem persists even when opening the pdf in Chrome and printing from there which tells me the issue is in the way Firefox creates the pdf.

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Oh, I didn't realize this was a PDF created by Firefox I thought it was a PDF you downloaded from the web. You may want to change your print destination to Apple's PDF printer instead. If that doesn't appear on the combined preview/setup overlay, you could use the "Print using system dialog" link at the lower right near the Print button.

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Another Mac user is reporting a similar issue with image scaling in printouts: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1384481

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Print using system dialog exhibits the same errors. All text is formatted and prints correctly but images do not scale even when embedded in page with text around them.

The pdfs I'm trying to print are generated from websites while using Firefox. Chrome doesn't have this issue.

To clarify, I am using a webpage to generate packing slips. The site generates the slips as a pdf document which is opened in Firefox pdf viewer. It is from here that I either attempt to print them, use the "print using system dialog" option, or save locally and attempt to print from Viewer or Acrobat.

Where text is generated it prints fine, where an image is embedded it does not scale to fit the page or container which ever is smaller.

Unlike the other user, I am unable to save and print these pdfs from any other program. They appear to be misformed when they are fed into the Firefox pdf viewer.

I have the same issue when trying to print UPS labels generated from Amazon.com. Other browsers have no problem.

I cannot verify if this was the case with other Firefox versions as I just started trying to use Firefox yesterday.

Modified by gschertz

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The "spam link filter" thought Amazon . com might be a spam link. A moderator should be able to release your reply soon.

I'm going to search in the bug tracking system to see whether I can find this issue in there.

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I appear to have the same problem. I am running MacOS 11.6.2 with Firefox 103.0

When presenting a UPS shipping label in EBAY, it prints out (or in Preview or download to PDF) scales off the page so only a fraction of the label is visible.   Printing a shipping label presents the finished shipping label page in another tab of Firefox.  Then you print it from that page.  All of the parameters look normal, shrink to fit to page, 8" x 11" paper, etc. etc etc. Unchanged for months. 
There's been no change to the printing subsystem for weeks.  I cleared the printing parameters in Firefox to no avail.

Yes, I tried it in Safari and Chrome. It works fine. Just Firefox is messed up.

I had to print the shipping label by doing a screen capture and printing that image.

This used to work for years. In any system, there are many components each with its own update cycle, but in this case. It's FIrefox.

Has a defect ticket been logged with Mozilla?

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Derek Dokoto said

Has a defect ticket been logged with Mozilla?

Yes, Firefox 103 has a bug printing PDFs with embedded images or consisting of images. There is a bug report on file, and fingers crossed for a fix in a few weeks in Firefox 104 (but no patch is in testing yet).

Until then, I suggest that Mac users print any PDFs containing images through Preview or Acrobat or Safari. If you want to change your default handling because there are a lot of those, this article has the steps: View PDF files using Firefox’s built-in viewer

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Lovely.

I changed the PDF application parameter "to ask".

Chose Preview.

Now I can print shipping labels again. YEA!

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On a MAC even selecting Adobe to open the PDF file does not work. FF still appears to open with its built in reader and does not print correctly.

Modified by rfm

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rfm said

On a MAC even selecting Adobe to open the PDF file does not work. FF still appears to open with its built in reader and does not print correctly.

Is the PDF opened as web content (address bar shows the web address) or after download (address bar shows a file:/// address to the local system)?

If it's web content, please double-check the setting: View PDF files using Firefox’s built-in viewer.

If it's a download, open that in your system viewer by opening the Downloads list (click the toolbar button or Command+J), right-click (Ctrl+click) the download, then use the option there to open the file outside of Firefox.