Hi, Noel,
I have been researching this Printing problem for a week now (and using INK and Paper) and in many cases I have heard of the QImage print option. I notice that they have a trial period .. it looks an option .. do you find it easy to use?
Yes I do, but it is very complicated and has an enormous range of capabilities, so of course one has to put some time into dealing with it. There are many ways to do almost any given thing. And of course there are a number of idiosyncrasies in the user interface (I tell the developer/publisher he is a mad genius).
The first step is to realize that Qimage takes a completely different outlook than the printing functionality of many image editors. It does not deal at all with the (wholly spurious) notion of an "inch size" of an image (which of course is an artificial set of dimensions involving the totally arbitrary image resolution indicators) and printing the image at some percentage of that size.
Rather, it deals with printing the image (whatever its pixel dimensions) at a certain desired printed size. (Fancy that!)
Once you choose a "frame" size for the print, you can initially emplace the image in it one of two ways:
• Scaled so that it all (just) fits the frame (thus leaving white space at top/bottom or left/right if the aspect ratio of the image is not the same as that of the frame - the default being to evenly distribute the white space, but this can be easily changed).
• Scaled and then cropped in the least aggressive way that allows the frame to be filled (the default being that the crop is centered, but both the size and location of the crop can then be easily changed).
These crop parameters may be saved, and even associated with the file so that they will be recalled when the file is again printed. (There is even the possibility of saving, for each file, several sets of crop definitions, one to be used in the case of each of several frame sizes.)
And the entire description of a job (including, if you wish, the specific files to be emplaced) may be saved so that the entire job may be rerun in the future.
There is never any need to "resize" the image before submitting it for printing (in fact, doing so is generally counterproductive). When you commit to print a certain image file at certain printed dimensions, Qimage does all the necessary work to mediate (optimally) between the pixel dimensions of the image and the interface resolution of the printer driver (and you have your choice among numerous very sophisticated interpolation algorithms to be used for that, if you are an interpolation maven).
The program will apply printer profiles. It also allows the user to make
ad hoc modifications of each image, including changes in brightness and contrast, or the application of sharpening only for printing.
None of this dealing with individual images results in the writing of modified image files (unless of course you wish to do so). It all works by saving "recipes", which direct modification of the images "on the fly" when printing is about to be done..
I'm sure that with an unregistered version you will be able to do the "sniffing" I mentioned. And you may find that Qimage is the way you should do all your photo printing.
I'm hardy an expert, but I do use its basic features daily, and if you get involved, I'd be glad to give you some hints and tips. (And there are many real experts on Qimage on this forum.)
Best regards,
Doug