Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I am a Qimage Studio (& Profile Prism!) user, and use Qimage for 98% of my printing. A few people I work with use a program called Genuine Fractals when printing large (13"x19") prints. I am thinking that Qimage provides a similar function on larger images, and was wondering what any of your experinces may have been if you tried the program. I would be printing 13"x19" glossy (sometimes matte) prints using my good old canon i9900. Most of the images would be made from ~ 10megapixel raw images from my canon xti. I assume most of the folks on the forum are Qimage coverts, but would appreciate any comments.

Thanks,

HI GeekDad, welcome to the forum.
There was a post yesterday on another subject where the writer also commented on Qimage & GF
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/profile-prism/is-this-a-calibration-issue/30/
That says it all really, free upgrades with Q, easier to use, very flexible for printing any size with multiple images on the paper in any position and excellent quality.
Qimage does have what are regarded as the "best" algorithms for re-sizing images and because it  sends an image to the printer at the printer's native resolution, whatever the print size, excellent quality prints are the result as I'm sure you know. You don't have to think about "what resolution shall I use", Q does that for you once you decided on the linear size of the image.
No apologies for that  ;D
Terry.

I have been printing 13 x 19 for many years, using a large HP, then and Epson 1280, and now an Epson R1800.
I have 2 friends who bought GF. After purchasing Qimage (even before the refined Hybrid and Hybrid SE interpolators) they let the GF collect dust.
The friends print larger than 13 x 19.
GF does a good job, but Qimage beats it.
Another factor to consider is the extra step of an extra interpolation.
Why? It certainly cannot be beneficial.
As Terry said, Qimage takes any size image and interpolates it to your printer's native input. The Hybrid twins so far have never been equaled for print quality

Fred-
First, a disclaimer.  I quit using GF years ago.  That's because images are larger to begin with these days.  However, it has its place.

Do not confuse interpolating an image up for printing with enlarging a cropped area before editing and refining it in an editor.
Nobody, except Mike (and somebody that may have reverse-engineered it), knows if he is using multiple interpolations.  It was shown years ago that multiple interpolation in small steps is (generally) sharper than a single move when making extreme increases--under certain algorithms.

The operative phrase is 'years ago'
That was before the leaps of progress made by experts who wrote better and cleaner interpolation routines.
That was before Lanczos, Vector, Pyramid, and certainly before Hybrid and Hybrid SE.

So we have years ago, and now we have (generally) sharper and we throw in 'under certain algorithms' 

Give it up! Qimage is the "bomb" for printing the best prints.

Fred ;D :D ;) :) 8) :-*

 ::) I appreciate all of the comments thus far on the subject. As I said, use Qimage for almost all of my printing- I believe it it less expensive than GF as well, plus Mike has responded to any of my tech support questions very quickly. Plus the update process is great. I had downloaded GF and tried it on a picture that I had taken with a Sony Mavica years ago- where it stored images on a 1.44MB floppy (those were the days), and printed it out on 5x7 paper. I printed the same image out using Qimage (hybrid interpolation and sharpen=11). I thought that the Qimage  picture looked slightly better, ignoring the GF watermarks in the demo version. Hopefully I will be able to contribute every now and then and don't always ask questions.

Posts and comments always welcome. 
Sharpen 11 sort of got me! You mean the Smart sharpen?
If so why not play with /learn the Unsharp Mask and Equalizer function in Qimage before printing. It might improve the prints.

Again, Welcome.

Fred

They're two different animals with two different purposes.  Yes, Sharpen 11 is extreme but he is obviously doing an extreme blow-up (considering the original) and the Smart Sharpen/Interpolation are a final print issue w/o artifacting.

Hi again- I've been using the Sharpen at 11 since it's about midway and seems to work pretty well. Most of my printing lately is done on 8.5"x11" Ilford Galerie paper I purchase at Sam's Club. I've profiled it using PP with my Canon I960, and the results are pretty good. Right now I'm editing and printing photos from a High School Swim meet my son is on- first time I've shot at a swim meet. I give kids 8.5"x11" pictures of themselves of the ones that turn out good. I save the canon i9900 for the few 13"x19" prints I make....

Back to GF- Today at my workplaceone of the guys asked one of our co-workers if he could take his image and use GF on it to create an image that could be printed decently at 16"x20". He used Costco and was uploading an 8M jpeg to be printed at 16x20, and was getting a warning saying that the image did not have enough resolution for 16x20. So that may be a use for GF- will have to see if it works for him....

GD,
I still think that Qimage is the way to go if you ask here HOW to: and get the hang of Qimage.
First of all, I placed an 8 meg image into Qimage and set the size to 16 x 20. Qimage reads out at 147 PPI.
From long experience, I can promise you that 147 PPI would be far more than Qimage need to produce a perfect 16 x 20. (It's all in the interpolation)
But you apparently do not have a printer that will make a 16 x 20 for your friend and Costco will make it.
Qimage has a feature called Print to file. To find it, click FILE and PRINT TO. and select FILE.
Set the PPI to whatever Costco says is optimal, set the size to 16 x 20, and you can set the color space to either RGB or ADOBE or whatever Costco says is best. If they will supply a copy of their printer profile for you, you have the ability to create the print file with their printer's profile.

Regardless, Qimage's interpolation will make a print file for you that is superior, and you need not purchase other help.

Try it! You will be amazed!
Fred

Thanks for the input Fred- I have never had a need to do that, but know know how to do it (I think). I may ask my friend to have him send me the image and I will use qimage and generate a file and he can compare the differences- my guess is that he would need to have both printed out, and I don't know if we would want to do that, but I will check and report back... Two questions- what type of file does it save to when you tell it to print to a file, and where would be the default directory that it would tore the file- I tried doing a test of "print to file" and could not find where the file when. Maybe I should finish my coffee before I do any more..

I am attaching three snaps to give you the idea.
One of the boxes that appears after you click PRINT is snap 21. There you select the file type you wish to create.
The next box that appears is "the where do you want to place the image.
My choice by default is to let it appear in the same folder that I am working from.
Click OK and Qimage will process that image and produce a print to file image which will appear in the same directory having a QP prefix.
See last snap.

Fred

Thanks Fred- "You be da man"

I'm running Studio 2008.213 and just reinstalled on a new configuration. I didn't remember the Lifetime Updates part, and since I'm still breathing I thought to drop by. But my interest is in print-to-file. What I'd like to do is up-rez an image for article on software comparing the output of various programs. Doc McHugh wrote a similar piece on resizing for his site but didn't compare Qimage output to the other programs and I'd like to do that for the piece.

So the question is: Any advantage to upgrading for this purpose?

Maybe I should add that I'm happy as is and have been printing my old stuff (3.3MP) on 11x17 Ilford Pearl, and 6 & 8 MP on 13x19 and it's all looking good.

Probably not but just do it, there have been many other improvements since 2008 including raw processing.
There's no contest with that other program of course, you'll put it to shame  ;D
Terry.

I'll chime in with some recent experience, since I just used Studio's Print to File function for the first time.

Staples was (and perhaps still is) having a half-price special on prints 18x24 or larger...$12 instead of $24, so I decided to give it a try with one of my close-up flower pictures.  Decided to take the file out to the local store rather than uploading.  After printing a test strip, decided to settle for an 18x24, although quality would have been acceptable even in a larger size.

Qimage took my 2.8 MP 3264x2448 file from an 8 MP camera and turned it into a 19.8 MP jpeg which Staples printed with no problem.  The resulting print will knock your socks off, even if you're holding it in your lap and examining it as closely as you would an 8x10.  What a great program.

GeekDad, I was shooting with a Mavica when I first got Qimage.  It does indeed allow you to get an acceptable 5x7 from those 640x480 Mavica files.

Those were indeed the days.  Every computer came with a 3½ floppy drive, and the Mavica was the camera to use if you were selling on ebay, or doing anything where you needed to get a photo on the web asap.