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Author Topic: Qimage Ultimate: mini FAQ  (Read 24014 times)
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« on: July 25, 2010, 02:57:18 PM »

Some Qimage users have been asking some good questions about the new Qimage Ultimate so let me try to address them in this thread:

Q: What is the cost to upgrade after the first year?

A: We are keeping the cost as low as possible.  When you purchase Qimage Ultimate, you will receive all updates free of charge for one year from the date of purchase.  After the first year, you only pay $19.99 for another full year of free upgrades, making the cost of keeping up with all the latest changes $19.99/yr after the first year.  We've updated our web pages to reflect this information.

Q: Why no free lifetime upgrades on Qimage Ultimate?

A: Qimage Ultimate is a new product that is taking a new direction.  Rather than follow the same path as the old Qimage (Lite, Pro, Studio), Qimage Ultimate is developed and supported in a manner that allows us to better serve our customers.  This requires more staff and resources on our part.  Qimage Ultimate is a new product that caters to a new economy and a more competitive marketplace than the market that existed in 1998 when we introduced the original Qimage with free lifetime upgrades.  To be able to support Qimage Ultimate and be competitive in today's marketplace, we must be able to cover our development costs.  That said, unlike most companies that charge 30% to 50% of the cost of the full product for major upgrades, we have chosen to offer free upgrades for the first year and a full year of upgrades for only $19.99/yr after the first year.  We believe this will have minimal impact on customers while allowing us to move forward on a product that we are passionate about and wish to support more effectively: Qimage Ultimate.

Q: Any price incentives or discounts for existing customers?

A: As above, Qimage Ultimate is a new product that requires new staffing, new support methods, and a higher level of innovation than we could provide for existing Qimage customers.  To support this effort we cannot mix and match Qimage Ultimate with Qimage and give existing customers, some of whom have been getting free upgrades for 10 years, additional discounts into a new product.  We find that we need to be able to support our research and development efforts to be able to survive and offer new innovations in the 2010 marketplace.  As such, we are not able to offer discounts for Qimage Ultimate, however, we do offer a 20% discount to anyone who purchased Qimage Studio in the last 30 days (between June 24 and July 24).  The discount link is on the Qimage Ultimate purchasing page.

Q: Are the "old" Qimage Lite, Pro, and Studio editions dead?

A: No!  We want to continue to reward existing Lite/Pro/Studio users with essential updates to keep those products working smoothly with all the latest technology.  As we work on a fast track to bring all the latest innovations to Qimage Ultimate however, the older Lite, Pro, and Studio editions will not be updated as frequently nor will they see new features like Qimage Ultimate.  That said, we will continue to update Lite, Pro, and Studio several times a year to add new cameras for raw support, fix bugs, and update existing features to ensure they are compatible with current technology.  This means providing updates to things like file formats that might change or become incompatible with some other brand of software, problems that might be caused by changed to anti-virus software, video drivers, additional requirements of new printer models/drivers, and so on.

Q: Can Qimage Ultimate be installed alongside Lite, Pro, and Studio or must I uninstall my Lite/Pro/Studio first?

A: You can install Qimage Ultimate (the demo or full version) without worrying about it interfering with Lite/Pro/Studio.  In fact, Qimage Ultimate was designed to work seamlessly with all the settings and data from your existing Qimage Lite/Pro/Studio without the need for data migration, however, Qimage Ultimate is installed (and uninstalled if need be) as a separate product with a separate icon.  There is no need to uninstall Lite/Pro/Studio first since Qimage Ultimate installs as a separate program and can even be uninstalled without affecting Lite/Pro/Studio.

Q: What if I like the Qimage Ultimate interface but I don't need all the features and just want to print?

A: Like Qimage, Qimage Ultimate is designed to fit a very wide variety of workflows and therefore a wide audience.  You may "only want to print" but you may not realize how much of Qimage Ultimate is actually needed to print efficiently.  Many of the new features in Qimage Ultimate make printing easier such as more accurate previews on the preview page, Lightning Raw which will greatly speed up printing, display, and editing of raw photos, and even the EXIF transfers that will ensure that EXIF info (which you may decide to print on contact sheets) works properly.

I will update this FAQ if more questions arise.  A big thank you to forum  members for your feeback!

Mike
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atodzia
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« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2010, 03:06:05 PM »

Besides what you mentioned in the mini-FAQ is there anything else in the just released version of Ultimate that would be useful for people who are just using it to print? I installed it and haven't seen anything so far in my quick look.

Andy
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atodzia
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« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2010, 03:08:16 PM »

Is it possible to have the print job window show up on the left instead of a tab, like it does in the old Qimage.
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« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2010, 03:32:06 PM »

Besides what you mentioned in the mini-FAQ is there anything else in the just released version of Ultimate that would be useful for people who are just using it to print? I installed it and haven't seen anything so far in my quick look.

Andy

That's a difficult one because "just using it to print" means many things to many different users.  One user may use other tools to prepare the final print and only use Qimage Ultimate to queue up the final JPEG's, TIFF's, or PSD's.  Yet another user might use Qimage Ultimate's built in FlashPipe data downloader to download raws and automatically create an album showing all the images downloaded... and that might be considered part of the process of preparing to print.  A user who utilizes Qimage Ultimate's raw capabilities will find great benefit in Lightning Raw with much faster printing speeds and no delay when opening a raw photo to remove a blemish or correct red eye.  I would think the fresh redesign of the UI would be a big factor regardless of what you do in Qimage!

Is it possible to have the print job window show up on the left instead of a tab, like it does in the old Qimage.

I think you mean the queue?  No.  The queue becomes almost redundant in Ultimate because you can get most of the (important) information that you'd get in the queue by just hovering the mouse over a print on the preview page in Ultimate.  The queue now becomes more of a troubleshooting or "diagnostic" tool.  I think most people won't even look at it any more.

Regards,
Mike
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Jeff
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« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2010, 03:36:08 PM »

Hello

Oh dear, I am only just getting the hang of Qimage after using for a few years  Smiley

A annual $20 update fee seems fair enough.  What gets my goat is PSE charging for a new version and changing enough to make using previous plug ins, instruction videos and forum writings non workable.  PS proper same comments and far too expensive.

Is there a downloadable Ultimate manual yet?  I will be giving Ultimate a run later this week and a manual would be helpful.

Jeff        
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« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2010, 04:09:02 PM »

Does Qimage Ultimate use custom camera profiles? I have an Olympus E-3 custom profile from your company which Qimage Studio uses to process RAW files. Does Qimage Ultimate do the same, that is, use the custom Olympus E-3 profile? The custom profile is excellent: I would hate to lose it.
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Fred A
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« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2010, 05:17:32 PM »

Quote
Does Qimage Ultimate use custom camera profiles? I have an Olympus E-3 custom profile from your company which Qimage Studio uses to process RAW files. Does Qimage Ultimate do the same, that is, use the custom Olympus E-3 profile? The custom profile is excellent: I would hate to lose it.

Good Question.

Yes, Ultimate uses all the best tools that we used in Studio.
It is ready to use without any effort on your part at all. Just open you favorite raw image, and you see the color space is the associated camera profile that you bought!

Fred
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« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2010, 05:22:50 PM »

Does Qimage Ultimate use custom camera profiles? I have an Olympus E-3 custom profile from your company which Qimage Studio uses to process RAW files. Does Qimage Ultimate do the same, that is, use the custom Olympus E-3 profile? The custom profile is excellent: I would hate to lose it.

Yes.  In fact, Qimage Ultimate will pick up the profile you installed with Studio seamlessly, that is, without you having to install it or even move it.  It uses the same application data folder.

Regards,
Mike
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Terry-M
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« Reply #8 on: July 25, 2010, 07:16:07 PM »

A question for Mike:
Will stand-alone FlashPipe work with Q Ultimate? I did un-install FP before installing QU, can I put it back safely?


I quite like to have the auto detect & open FP feature and have Qimage re-naming separate from the flash card naming in FP.
Could that be considered for QU in the future and possibly saved file re-naming configurations.

Terry
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Terry-M
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« Reply #9 on: July 25, 2010, 07:42:48 PM »

Hi Jeff,
Quote
Is there a downloadable Ultimate manual yet?  I will be giving Ultimate a run later this week and a manual would be helpful.
Whether there is or not, I'm sure you don't need it, it's easy.
Some clues to get you going:-
1. Single click on a thumb and the size pop-out appears to the right; this where you select the size, crop on/off, borders.
If the thumb is selected it will go into the queue when the size is selected.
2. Click on an image in the preview and the pop-out appears  to the left so you can change a size etc. while in the queue.
3. The pop-out disappears when other buttons are clicked like the Full Page editor.
3. Double clicking a thumb now opens the Editor (was batch filter)

If I remember correctly you like me are a wise guy and use Qimage for raw  Wink
That is much the same but you now have a White Balance Warm to Cool slider for those occasions where there's not a true grey in the scene or where you want to change the atmosphere of the image.
The thumb quality is now default to the new "Best Quality" which is much better so some re-building is required together with creating the raw cache for speedy processing at later stages. It takes a little longer than before but worth the wait. Those with new quad core processors should not have a problem and will really see the advantage on the large Mpx images from modern cameras.

I hope that helps, get stuck in and enjoy, I've now got a registered copy and don't regret it  Grin

Terry.
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Jeff
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« Reply #10 on: July 26, 2010, 07:35:40 AM »

Terry

Thanks for input.

I will get Ultimate trial later today and give it a go, I am confident it will be fine.

Yes, I do use the raw conversion.  When Qi does such a good job why bother with other converters?  In fact I had a 'grab' shot a couple of months ago that that was way off.  Qi converted it without much difficulty - minor manual adjustments only - I tried it through Adobe Raw and it was so bad that it was difficult to know where to start.

Jeff

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Terry-M
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« Reply #11 on: July 26, 2010, 07:48:59 AM »

Quote
Qi converted it without much difficulty - minor manual adjustments only - I tried it through Adobe Raw and it was so bad that it was difficult to know where to start.
I think that's the star point of Qimage raw, it does that for you automatically every time.
With conventional converters, I found you can fiddle with several sliders to get the the histogram looking right, particularly at the extreme ends, and never be that consistent without a lot of practice. Qimage does that with you even seeing the histogram. It's then just a question of Refinement with a few clicks.
I know that many converters have an "auto" setting, you just have to compare what they do with Qimage "smart" raw processing to see the difference.
Terry
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Thomas Krüger
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« Reply #12 on: July 27, 2010, 07:42:07 AM »

No discount for existing long time Qimage users. I can understand it but I'm not happy with this statement.  Embarrassed

But what about splitting Qimage Ultimate in two editions, one version without raw features, and the other version with raw enabled?

Working with raw files and metadata to retrieve images in Lightroom for me (and probably many other users) it is useless to add another raw converter. With Lightroom 3 we got lens profiles, I use the X-Rite Colorchecker Passport to create camera profiles for various light situations and settings. My output is a 16 bit tiff file that will be refined with Silver Efex or Viveza from Nik Software in Photoshop. And at the same time Lightroom is THE management tool for my image archive. Using Qimage Ultimate as a raw converter I would split another time the archive management from the raw workflow - a no go for me.

So, what about a Qimage Ultimate Print edition without raw features?
« Last Edit: July 27, 2010, 07:44:30 AM by Thomas Krüger » Logged
BrianPrice
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« Reply #13 on: July 27, 2010, 12:47:08 PM »

Thomas

Quote
So, what about a Qimage Ultimate Print edition without raw features?

Its called QImage Professional

Brian
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« Reply #14 on: July 27, 2010, 01:19:11 PM »

What happens if you don't regularly pay the annual subscription? Say, for example, you see no worthwhile improvements for a few years, but then you buy a new camera which is not in your existing raw camera list. Can you just pay that year's subscription?

Best wishes,

Ray

ps = this is sort of similar to Peter's earlier question, which, afaik, is unanswered.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2010, 01:22:00 PM by rayw » Logged
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