Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

IMO, Qimage would really benefit from a way to constrain the cropped subset of an image file to be printed to the actual image area. That can be tough with, e.g., images that were rotated a degree or two, and then rendered and outputted without a crop. To explain: as I do my raw conversions (most often in DxO), it's not unusual for me to rotate the horizon a degree or two, or sometimes make other geometric adjustments (e.g. simulating front rise on a view camera). The result is saved as a TIFF where the actual image area is some irregular (e.g., trapezoidal) shape within the rectangular TIFF. The simple case is a horizon rotation, where the file is mostly the image, but with black triangles along each edge. I don't crop it in the raw converter because I may choose different image areas depending on the aspect ratio of the final print. An example is attached.

When I go to print the image with these black triangles (or whatever), I have to adjust my crop so as not to print any part of then. Sometimes that's not easy, especially when you're trying to get as much image area as you can without getting any of the non-image (black irregular border) area. It would be great to have a 'constrain my crop to the image area' checkbox, which would then bump a crop that would be outside it just to the edge of it.

Good day to you.
Difficult for me to follow all your steps, but the end seems to be the need to print the image cleanly after a roration /crop,
In Qimage, this is a feature that is clean, flawless and easy to use.
In the image editor, on the right side are the tools. Find ROTATE with a yellow stick /straight edge. Now you simply click once at the beginning of your crooked horizon or even a vertical flag pole that is leaning, and that starts your alignment string.
Now drag it to the end of the needed area to get a decent sample.
The alignment is done. The crop is done and it prints cleanly without the ""triangles"".

I am constrained by bye size so try to bear with me/
064 shows the leaning masts and the slanted horizon.
 065 shows the straightened masts and includes one triangle corner.
067 shows that same area with triangles gone and it will print cleanly
068 show the tool
Fred

I found the video for you. Shows a lot more clearly,

https://youtu.be/yn2-MB-eI10


Fred

Hi,
QU already has this feature in the image editor.
See screen shots below, it's the Straighten Horizon Button.
It automatically crops the image when used.
Terry

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, but I guess I was not clear. The rotation / geometric fix would have to be done before the image file gets opened in Qimage. Typically I do this in DxO PhotoLab with ViewPoint. Horizon rotation is most common, but sometimes multiple other adjustments are made. I used the horizon rotation example just because it is simple.

Attached is a more complex example. What I want is to be able to tell Qimage: 'I want to crop this photo to a 5:4 aspect ratio, and be able to increase or decrease the size of that 5:4 crop box and move it around the image area, but don't allow any of that black border region to be included in the area to be retained after the crop.'

Hi again,
RE.
OK. I get what you want I think
There are 2 ways to do this in QU.
1. Use the image editor and set Crop Lock with a specific aspect ratio and the adjust the crop to suit your preference in size and position. See first 2 screen shots. You can move the crop and change it's size (same aspect ratio) to whatever you like
2. Use the Full Page Editor after placing the image in the Queue for printing at the desired print size (any 5:4 ratio say) with "crop on". Use the cropping Tab to Zoom and position the crop as desired. See the 3rs and 4th screen shots. Again you can move the crop and change it's size (same aspect ratio) to whatever you like.

As you see there's usually a way to do it in QU, two choices in this case  ;)
Terry
PS. What I normally do in cases where I've done some perspective correction like your example is to the crop the image in the Image Editor to it's maximum possible size. and then adjust as required in the Print Editor. However, often in such cases I would have print crop off and use the full area of the image.

Please note I made some edits to my previous post since posting so check the web page.
Terry