Borderless printing edge loss - normal?

A quick question about borderless (full-bleed) home printing: I'm using an Epson Artisan 1430 (which replaces the Stylus 1400, Epson's "low-end" 13x19" photo printer). If I select the Borderless option when printing to letter size 8.5x11" photo paper, I am losing about 1/4" from each of the 4 sides of my image. (Example: Image is set up for 200 dpi printing: 1700x2200 pixels, and I'm losing 50 pixels on each side.)

I know there is always some "over spray" when these printers do full-bleed, but is 1/4" normal? It seems a lot to me. I'm wondering if it might be a driver issue, or if that is just how these printers do it.

What software are you printing from?

In Lightroom there's a slider to choose how much bleed you think you might need.

When I print at home on my (don't laugh) HP printer I have custom print profiles set up in Lightroom that add just a tiny bit of margin to my images that allow me to get full bleed with almost no loss of image. For example, for a 4x6 print I found by trial and error that adding 0.06 inch to the top, bottom, and left, and 0.13 inch at the top gets the image centered on the paper and goes from edge to edge.

Thanks, that is helpful. 0.06" and 0.13" seems a lot more reasonable than 0.25".

I am printing from Gimp, using Epson's Linux driver for CUPS, with the printer connected to a little network print server. But that is a whole other story. It works, more or less, and I consider that a win. Here is one of my recipies, for 5x7 printing: Crop exactly to 27:19 ratio, set print size to 6.75x4.75, centered. Result is perfect 1/8" border on each side. But I have less success with borderless, unless I don't mind how much gets discarded.

I think it differs with different printers. I'd say figure out the specifics of your printer's behavior and adjust to "fit".

Costco actually issues a "guideline" for full-bleed prints, for various print sizes, giving image size "adjustments" in pixels rather than fractions of an inch.