Shopify labels print too small even at 100%? Calibrate your printer

LabelCraft - barcode labels for Shopify that print at exactly the size you set.

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The guarantees behind every label
Exact to ±0.1 mm

Every label prints at the size you set - measured, not approximate.

Never a silent failure

Overflow or a missing barcode always raises a visible warning before you print.

Whole-dot barcodes

Modules snap to your printer's dots, so codes stay crisp and scan first time.

Your barcodes, untouched

We never overwrite or reassign a product's existing barcode.

You set the print dialog to 100%, turn off every fit-to-page option, and the label still comes out short. A roll that should be 62 mm measures 60 mm on the bench, content creeps off the edge, and the barcode that scanned in preview will not read at the register. The frustrating part is that nothing you change in the print dialog moves the number. That is because the problem is not the dialog at all - it is your hardware, and LabelCraft fixes it with a one-time calibration.

Why 100% doesn't fix it

A thermal or label printer feeds its own stock past a fixed print head. If the feed motor or the head spacing is a few percent off - and on real units it often is - every label comes out a few percent short or long, no matter what scale the software requests. A true 100% tells the driver not to resize the page; it cannot tell the motor to feed a hair further. So a printer that runs 3% short turns a nominal 62 mm label into a physical 60 mm one, and it does that at every zoom setting you try. The print at actual size guide covers the browser scale dialog; this drift survives even after you have that perfectly set.

Calibrate once: measure, then correct

Calibration is a single measurement that teaches LabelCraft exactly how far off your hardware runs, so it can compensate for it on every label from then on.

  1. Open /app/printer-calibration in LabelCraft and pick the printer you want to calibrate.
  2. Print the test pattern. It draws a ruled edge at a known nominal length on your actual roll stock.
  3. Measure the printed edge with a ruler, in millimetres, as accurately as you can read it.
  4. Enter the nominal length the pattern was drawn at and the measured length you read off the print. LabelCraft computes the correction for you.

The factor is simply nominal / measured. A 62 mm edge that comes out at 60 mm gives 62 / 60 = 1.0333, so LabelCraft will render that axis 1.0333x larger and let the printer's own shrink land it back at exactly 62 mm. The stored factor is clamped to a safety band between 0.8 and 1.25: a few percent of drift is normal, but a value outside that band almost always means a mis-measurement - typically centimetres typed where millimetres were asked.

Roll media only

This correction applies to roll and continuous thermal media - Brother DK, Dymo, Zebra - where the printer feeds the stock and the page is the label. On sheet layouts (Avery on a laser or inkjet) the paper is a fixed A4 or Letter size and the grid is locked, so pre-distorting it would only push labels off the Avery cells. For sheets the calibration is a no-op, and LabelCraft leaves the render untouched.

How LabelCraft keeps preview = print

Once a factor is stored, LabelCraft pre-distorts only the PDF it sends to the printer - it renders the affected axis 1.0333x larger so your printer's shrink brings the physical label back to nominal. The on-screen preview keeps showing the true 62 mm label, never the stretched intermediate. That is the point: after calibration the preview equals the physical print on YOUR hardware, which is how LabelCraft holds its exact-size promise of plus or minus 0.1 mm on a printer that, left alone, would have shipped you 60 mm labels.

Install free - 200 labels per month →

More guides: print at actual size, barcode not scanning - or contact LabelCraft support.

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