Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hello,

I have been forcing myself to learn and use Qimage ultimate more often as I really like the results and some features of it, but this is something that keeps taking me back to other applications.
Let me explain:

My printing studio receives work from a great range of artists, not only photographers but painters, illustrators, digital artists... you name it. A lot of them create their work with a fixed size in mind (usually ISO A sizes) and they bring their work ready to be printed on a sheet of the desired size (A4, A3, A2... whatever). I always insist on the minimum margins and they take it into account when creating their work.

But my problem is: If an artist bring a work already sized to an A4 sheet with white margins big enough to avoid problems with the minimum page margins requested by the printer, how do I place it on the queue without shrinking the image?

When I face this problem I have two options:

A) I take the image to Photoshop and manually crop the minimum margins from the white border, save it, return to Qimage, adjust the new cropped image to fit the printable area and print.

B) I take the image to Photoshop, open the Canon print Plug-in, set the page size (A4), set the desired image size (also A4 21x19,7cm) and print. It would automatically crop the image beyond the minimum page margin witch is totally OK as it is only white space anyway. Everything is exactly on the desired size and position.

I also tried setting negative numbers on the page margins to make it zero and it worked on the screen, but when I print the driver adds another 5mm (the minimum margin) on the top and on the left pushing the image down and to the right.  

I would love to be able to do something like option "B" on Qimage, fit the desired size on the page ignoring the minimum page margins and when printing crop off the page margins before sending it so the driver does not push the image down and to the right.

If there is already a way to do it, please tell me!

Thanks in advance.

Not sure how your customers create their images, but you can bring the images in by setting the paper size to A4, and then use  FIT TO PAGE, or try ORIGINAL SIZR

What happens in Qimage that disturbs you?

Fred

Hello Fred,

Thanks for your quick answer.
My clients way to create their images is irrelevant, the point is that a lot of times I get images already sized to fit specific sheet sizes with more than enough white margin to be able to print properly but I can't do that easily on Qimage.

With the page size already set to A4, if I try to load an A4 sized file to the queue I face two options as you said:
- Fit to page: will shrink the image to fit inside the printable area, no good.
- Original size (or custom size setting the original size manually): It will say that the image is bigger than the printable area and offer to shrink to fit or span on multiple pages. No good also.

As I said before I would like to have an option to automatically crop off anything beyond the printable area.

Well, we are getting somewhere.
If you use A4 paper, and your customer sent you an image that they made and is purported to be able to fit on A4, and Qimage shrinks the image to fit, that tells you that the image was sized for something other than for the printable area of A4 which is 11.458 x 8.033, or.... explain shrink.
Do you mean you get white margins, or the print is smaller than 11.458 x 8.033.

Does any of the two attached images look like what you see?
The third attachment is teh Original size box. Any checkmarks in yours?

Fred

Not necessarily, you need to use a print crop in the Page Editor, access with icon below preview or double click in the preview area outside the page.
Use Fit to page, go the the page editor and in the crop tab and zoom to remove the excess at the edges. Use precision crop (+ icon below crop preview) for accurate cropping.
See attached screen shots where I've used an image with wide borders which I've then print cropped to remove them and enlarged the actual image to fit the A4 page.
Terry

Hello Terry,

Thanks for joining and for having a look on this issue. I think you got the general idea about the problem and what you suggest seems to be the closest thing to a solution inside Qimage at this moment. Unfortunately it is not precise enough and not as simple as it is on other softwares.

To give you a deeper understanding of the scenario let me show you an example. I will use ISO A4 size on this example but it would be the same with any other sheet size.

A client, a conceptual artist, sends a file to print (attached below). His work is A4 size and has plenty of white margins, way more than what the printer requires.
As the sheet size is A4, the image size is A4 and the borders are white, on other softwares I would simply set the image size as A4 on the A4 sheet and print. The image beyond the minimum required borders would not print but that is OK because it is white space anyway.

On Qimage it is very hard if not impossible to do it precisely, even cropping manually with precision crop as you told is no good because we do not have a visual reference due to the wide white margins of the file.

I think it should be easy and precise as everything else on Qimage. A matter of placing an A4 image on an A4 sheet and simply ignoring what goes beyond the printable margin. As "Fit to page" option is really a "Fit to printable area", it could have something like a true "Fit to page", fitting to the entire page size and simply warning that the image beyond the printable area will not be printed. That would help a lot.

As I told you before, we can simulate this applying negative numbers to make the page margins go to zero, it works on the screen but not when we print.

As you can see on the previously posted image the wide white borders makes hard to know where to crop on Qimage and the client (always) demand precise placement and size.

Just to help on thin example I created another version of the image with a red outline just on the edge of the printable area of my printer (attached at the bottom).

Looking at this file inside Qimage on an A4 sheet we have this:
(http://geraldogarcia.com/provas/QiScrSht1.jpg)

But we should have this with a true "Fit to page" (not "Fit to printable area") selected. (Example made with the unprintable negative margins setting) :
(http://geraldogarcia.com/provas/QiScrSht2.jpg)

I am certain that those who print for others will find a feature like that quite useful.

By the way, that is not really a file from a client, just something I made to resemble a recent case, but we get a lot of formated work like this and is quite frustrating that Qimage can't handle it easily.

Thanks again.

Geraldo

I'm not sure about your printer, but could you set it to print 'Borderless' and turn Borderless Expansion off with
Edit>Preferences>Print and Page Formatting>Borderless Expansion>Disable

Brian

Hi,
Using negative margins is the wrong approach and not recommended. Negative margins do not increase the printable area.
This is nothing to do with QU, all this data is from the driver which QU reads. Fit to page and fit to printable area are the same thing!
As Brian has said you need borderless set in your driver to increase the printable area.

I have downloaded your image and loaded into QU.
I have downloaded your image and put in into QU. See 1st screen shot with Fit to page set with crop on. See 1st screen shot.
I noted immediately that the red line rectangle is a different aspect ratio from A4 so it will never be possible to remove the excess white on the bottom short side.
Using borderless would not change the aspect ratio of the red line rectangle of course
In the page editor I zoomed in to eliminate as much white as possible but still see the red line, see 2nd and 3rd screen shots below.
The 4th screen shot shows it with borderless set in the driver.
Terry

Another approach would be to crop the image in QU image editor.
See screen shots below of editor and page preview with crop scissors off.
Terry

Let me see if I've interpreted the scenario...

Someone created a layout for A4 paper so they have an image that is formatted to A4 size.  They may have started with an image formatted to exactly A4 dimensions and then placed some things/images on that A4 size image.  Now you want to print on A4 paper in QU but QU realizes that your printer can't print to the whole A4 sheet (without going borderless) because your printer has non-printable margins on that A4.  The conundrum is, how do you print their A4 sheet exactly like they laid it out on that A4 image, when the printer can't cover the whole A4 sheet?  There's a feature specifically for that, but first...

I know I don't have to tell you, but the above is just generally bad practice.  When people do the above, they have no idea what printer you are using or the paper/settings you might use, so it encourages people to make mistakes like moving images too far to the edge (outside the printable area).  Obviously, the layout should be done in the program you use to print (the one that knows the printer capabilities), but given that you can't always do that, here's how you handle that situation.

Someone hands you an A4 formatted image and says "print this on A4", so you:

(1) Add that A4 image to the queue at A4 size by using the "Custom" sizing option, Specific Size, and enter the exact A4 dimensions.  Or, if you already have an A4 size that you created in your size list, just use that.

(2) If QU tells you that the size is too large for one page (because your printer has margins on A4), just tell it "YES"... it's OK to print a poster.

(3) The image will show up as (most likely) a 2x2 poster.  Now go into the full page editor.

(4) On the cropping tab, select that image on the page and then click the little test strip button (table vice icon) and you're done.

Regards,
Mike

Hello Terry, thanks for the attention.


Sure, as I said it is clear it only works on the screen and that is perfectly understandable. I used it only to show what I would like to have.


No... unfortunately that is not an option because "borderless" would increase the image size a bit beyond what is necessary, rendering a slightly lager magnification of the image. Very small for sure, but unacceptable. Besides, large format Canon IPF printers do not allow borderless on cut sheets, so that is not an option.

Just to clarify, I placed that red line inside the printable area so it should be visible on the edge of the printable area, still inside of it but touching the unprintable margin. Have a look on the second screenshot I posted, the one made with the negative margins. That is what it should look like when perfectly cropped.

My post right above yours shows you how to crop it perfectly with one click.

Mike

Hello Mike, thank you for joining in and for heraing your clients needs. That is what makes Qimage such a great tool.


Sure, but we should keep in mind that I am not the artist and my clients create their pieces to fit standard paper sizes. Obviously we would never be able to print anything that goes beyond the minimum required margin and I warn them about that, but asking them to provide their files already cropped to fit our printable area is not a viable option, specially because we work with different printers with slightly different requirements. As long as they provide a file on the desired page size with enough margins to be "cropped" by the printer I can't ask for more and is up to me to adequate it to the needs of our equipment, which is fine and I am just wanting a way to do this inside Qimage as fast, as easy and precise as I do on other software. I was hoping that my lack of knowledge of the software was the problem, but it seems that is simply not the way you think it should work.

Your last suggestion does not work either, at least if I am doing it properly. After going to the full page editor ad clicking on the test strip button I get this:
(http://geraldogarcia.com/provas/QiScrSht3.jpg)

The placement is not correct (for what I need) as you can see by the red line on the bottom, sure I could correct the placement manually with precise crop on this image because of the red lines, but the real image does not have that visual reference. Have a look on the second screenshot I posted before (the one with the negative margins) to see the desired placement.

Please know that I am aware that this is not a Qimage "problem", I am just stating that other softwares have a much easier approach solving it and helping me with this real life problem and I am asking/suggesting that a solution/alternative to this (non-Qimage but common) issue inside Qimage would be a great improvement. At least for me and I am sure to some others and it would make me use Qimage a lot more. As it is today I have to go to Photoshop to adjust the images quickly and precisely and I really believe that it is (should be) possible to do it inside Qimage.

The whole idea is: An option to fit the image to the whole page (not to the printable area) and let the area beyond the printable area go blank.

Thanks again for your time and attention and for all the effort you put on this great software.

It's working and it is creating the exact size crop, but...  there's an extra step with your setup because I notice that your printable area is not centered (the test strip crops the center of the page).  If you had a "centered" option in the driver, it would work without this step but for you:

Do things exactly like you did, using the test strip button.  When done, click the high precision cropping tool and click in the middle of the already designed crop area and drag that up until it exactly covers your red outline.  Alternatively, you could go to Edit, Preferences, Print and Page Formatting, Page Margins, and click the "Center on Physical Page" button.  Then do the test strip without any extra steps.  That method would work as long as you don't have something close to the top margin of the printable area and the alignment will be exact.  The only down side is that this second method decreases your printable area (at the top) by about 1.5cm: a consequence of creating the centered printable area.

In the next version, I'll update the test strip function so that it can handle off-centered printable areas and take them into account.  For now, the above two methods should help.

Mike

What I like about the automagical functions of Qimage Ultimate is the feedback you still get on dimensions etc when in doubt about their function or of my choices made. It is a transparent box most of the time. Sometimes I suspect that too many steps to solve a task and less feedback given on the result may be less handy than adjusting the dimensions manually. The more when the mistake shows in the print itself and not before. I agree that one should start from the image without surrounding white, in whatever form, but shop's practice is different. One of the things I miss in the crop function of image editing is a metric feedback of the crop, only pixels are shown. I know digital images have no dimension and what is described as Original Size in Qimage's menu is only what Photoshop etc adds as a label to that image but those virtual dimensions come back every day in my work. It makes communication with my customers way easier. If the cropping tool in image editing would show the metric or imperial sizes of the Original Size as well it would be a major improvement for me. It would be the way I would solve what Geraldo mentions as a (recognisable) problem but also many other things on sizes, white areas, print margins and paper waste economy can be adjusted that way. I am sure that Fred, Terry etc wil have or find a way already present in Qimage Ultimate but I also know that the fastest route for me often is a crop in Photoshop to get this done. One that means an extra image saved as it can not be a temporary filter on the image like Qimage would allow. I recognize a software design approach in QU where any virtual size is banned from the image editing tools and only available in the print menu tools. Maybe one little inconsistency can be allowed.

--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
April 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.

Hi Ernst.
Well it is there but in a different form. In the crop section of the image editor, enter the print dimensions directly in the boxes, tick crop lock and draw your crop.
Alternatively, use the crop wizard which picks up a pre-set size. NB. only a limited number of sizes show in the wizard.
Doing either of those will give you the exact aspect ratio for the size.
You can do something very similar in the Page Editor size tab (which I would prefer); enter the print dimensions directly (crop scissors on), click Apply to Selected and then adjust the crop in the crop tab.
That MUST be easier than messing about in PS and creating yet another image  ;)
Terry

Terry, the first does not more than setting a custom aspect ratio of the crop. That does not add anything to the pixel numbers we have already available there for that task.  So it does not matter if I specify that in pixel or metric numbers and QU looks only at the aspect ratio anyway there, not the type of units.  I use that for other tasks and it is good.

It is not about the aspect ratio. It is about the metric sizes at Original Size and getting the metric information back of the XY spot of the crop and its sizes. Like the crop tool shows in info of Photoshop. The second suggestion you make is not different to what Mike offered and I find it elaborate with little feedback on what the output actually will be.

For Geraldo it would be logical with more A4s imported to select an A4 sheet size, center the print margins in QU preferences and use the scissors when nesting at Original Size. But Qimage does not scale the image to the selected A4 size + cutting off excessive white then. Other software would. In Qimage you have to go one step further to the test strip crop to get that effect, more or less. That works when the file has that Original Size tab and the image is in the center.

I see some logic when Qimage is set to Fit to Page that is uses the print page area without print margins but at Original Size with scissors on it should crop the print margins off. In fact even when the print margins are not symmetric. But with assymetric page margins the route I gave with test strip as the last step does not deliver. The naming of the functions like test strip crop does not reveal what it can do for the user either. In a sense this thread reminds me of a MAD cartoon where the character starts with customising a screwdriver to another tool that needs to become yet another tool and at the end of that tale becomes a screwdriver again, shorter of course.

--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
April 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.

Other software would also let you print a 4.25 x 6.25 inch photo on borderless 4x6 paper, and never warn you that it is going to crop off all 4 sides.  You'll see that part of your photo on all 4 sides is missing only when it comes out of the printer.  We need to be a little more precise than the "other software".  Sometimes you'll want to crop that off, and many times you won't.  You're focusing on one particular example but you are leaving out one undeniable fact: If you have an A4 image and you try to print it on A4 paper (non-borderless), you cannot print the image at Original Size.  You can print part of the image original size, but that decision (whether or not it is acceptable to cut off significant portions on all 4 sides) should be left to the user: and that's what the test strip function is for.  As I said, that function is going to be expanded to allow you to crop off the non-printable margins in the next version so it shouldn't be an issue.

Mike

Hello Ernst,

Thanks for joining in! I was hoping you would because I am sure you face this problem yourself as it is a reality for all the commercial printing studios that work beyond the photography world. We do get page formatted work and the artists usually state that the white area is not only a "margin" but part of the art piece, sometimes even more important than the printed area. They simply do their work and ask us "Can you print this exactly as it is?". It is up to us to find a solution... and we do! We just would like to do it (easier and more precisely) inside Qimage. As it is today we have to make a run to Photoshop for the sake or our time and sanity.

As I said before, I think that the current "fit to page" should be renamed to "fit to printable area" because that is exactly what it is, and a new option "Fit to the whole page" should be added behaving exactly as we described: fit the image to the whole page size and crop away what is beyond the total margins (fixed+additional), than automatically fit the remaining image to the printable area. A warning should pop stating what is happening. That would be an elegant and precise solution. Of course saying is way easier than doing and we don't know if it is possible for Mike to do it, but I would love if he could and I really think a lot of other people would like it too. What bugs me at this moment Is that he seems to think that is "wrong" or "unnecessary"... Trust us, Mike: It is NEEDED!  ;D

Best regards.

Hello Mike,
Thanks for keep looking into this. I hope the change you are planning improves things, because at this moment it does not work for me. See, that red line I placed was to show you the problem, the real file does not have that so we don't have a visual reference to adjust the crop manually. That is a big part of my (surely other's also) problem: I cannot rely on visual reference and manual dragging, I need something more precise and fast than that.
If your change improves that, it would be great, but I really think the best approach (from the users point of view) would be what I and Ernst suggested. Sure we don't know how hard/possible would be to implement it.
Thanks again.

No, the "page" (size listed above the preview) is defined as the area of the paper to which you have access.  What you are looking for it "fit to paper" which I can see being useful as well, but only in the specific circumstance that the print size you specified (or the Original Size if you're using that) is equal to the current paper size.  Obviously if you specify 13x19 as the size and you are using A4 paper, you probably aren't trying to print at the paper size in which case "fit to page" (scaling) is probably the most common solution.

I think more common than the scenario you mention is the case where someone scans A4 media and they end up with an A4 scan that they now want to replicate on A4 paper.  In that case (in addition to your example), a "fit to paper" option would be useful.  That's what the test strip function was designed to do but isn't quite filling the bill due to it not taking into account non-centered printable areas.  So I'll see what I can do about that.

To be honest, if your printer can do borderless on the paper size you are using, that is the best solution because then you know you can print the image and you don't have to worry about whether or not your printer is going to cut off portions of the image.  You can turn off size (borderless) expansion in QU preferences if your printer driver doesn't offer a "no expansion" option, so that's not an issue.

Mike

Ok. I will not turn it into a semantic debate, "fit to page" and "fit to paper" would be just as good as "fit to printable area" and "fit to whole page". But that circumstance is not as rare as you may think, your example below shows one typical scenario but it happens quite often.


Thanks! It would be a usable feature.


Unfortunately most large format printers can't do true borderless. They can do what they call "borderless" printing on roll paper, but it is not a true borderless because you still have to trim the top and the bottom. On cut sheets most large format printers can't do it at all because the paper traction demands a huge trailing edge, so the manufacturers disable that option on the drivers. HP Z3xxx drivers have a neat feature in their margins setup called "Clip contents by margin" that reports zero required margin to the softwares and let the contents clip during printing at the minimum required margin, the downside is that you have no visual reference on the programs so you must know very well the true size limitations and pay attention to what is happening.

Thanks again.

I've added a "Fit to paper" selection in the sizes in 2015.101.  Should be out later today.  It'll also automatically fit to paper if the size you choose (either manually or via Original Size) is the same as the current paper size.

Mike

OK, 101 is out with the "Fit to paper" option.  We've tested it on a number of cases including various sheet sizes created from another app, scanned images, etc.  If you scan an 8.5 x 11 page, for example, and then print the scan with "Fit to paper" sizing, you can place both the original and the printed scan on top of each other and look through the 2 pieces of paper in front of a strong light and they align perfectly, to the point that they look like one page.

Give it a try.

Regards,
Mike

Mike,

I have not tested it extensively (yet) but from three quick tests with different sizes I can tell you this:

IT WORKS!!! :D

Thanks a lot. Qimage is a great piece of software, no one would question that, but this level of support and dialog is unique.

Best regards.   

Mike,

Thank you. It looks like you made the fastest function possible for Geraldo's task. I did not go through all the possibilities yet but it works fine on the ones I tested.

If possible could you look into some metric/imperial feedback on the crop function in image editing of an Original Size file?  There are still jobs where I would go to Photoshop for certain crops while it could be better done in QU.

--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
April 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.

That is true, it would help a lot on some jobs and, as a side effect, would give a pleasing sensation to control freaks like me! :D
About the "fit to paper", the first job today was a typical scenario with 10 pieces of artwork made on A3 paper. It already saved 10 minutes of my day during my first hour of work.

Thanks!