http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/getting-the-big-picture-from-phone-photos/

Yes, Qimage fans, it's yet another article on how you can spend up to $250 on a Photoshop plug-in and get good prints from your low-res photos (although Genuine Fractals is only $160, it says here).

After I wiped off the coffee I spewed all over my monitor, I added a comment mentioning Qimage to the story.  Also emailed the author politely suggesting that if he ever wanted to do a follow-up, he should take a look at Qimage.

All joking aside, it's frustrating to read articles like this, and I'm just a Qimage user.  I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for Mike--unless he's learned just to laugh, shake his head, and then move on to the next Qimage improvement.

Okay, here's my contribution.  Not a biggie, and nothing exotic.  But fun & easy.

First of all, see this link: http://bighugelabs.com/motivator.php

Give it a try.  "Make your own motivational poster online" pretty much sums it up.

I've used it several times to make gag gifts for family members.  Works well, but the downside is that you have essentially no way to control the quality of the image you use to make the poster.  You can download and print the job, but that's about it.  Give this a try & you'll see what I mean.

Right after I used it to make a Christmas gift for my niece (something she could hang in her dorm room), it finally occurred to me, "Hey, I can do this in Qimage."

Easy as pie.  First of all, do whatever editing is required for the photo you're going to use.  Set page size (in my case, 13x19) and your (probably custom) image size.  Locate the image on the page as required to leave space for the text below the image.

If you want to duplicate the appearance of the typical motivational poster, set page background color to black.  Set a white B+ Qimage border to get the white line around the image.  Add the desired floating text.  Print from Qimage, as usual.

Pardon me for not posting the finished product, but there's no way I'd put this young lady's picture on the internet.

Thanks much, Terry.  I've been intending to experiment with those settings.  Sounds like this will solve my problems with "expanded" borderless prints.

Good post, Dennis, very thorough.  I tried this for the first time a few months ago and got a knockout 18x24 from an 8 mp P&S.  Sharp as a tack even on close examination.  And I did indeed take a break while Qimage cranked out the 18.8 mb file.  Didn't have to touch the original image with any program but Qimage.

You've summed it up in a nutshell, Ray.  A few months ago, thanks to a thread on this forum, I started printing greeting cards & note cards with Qimage.  It might take me 45 minutes, including a bit of editing and cropping, to set up a 4-card batch exactly the way I want--but calling up & reprinting the job is child's play.

But when all I want is the best possible 12x18 print, Qimage makes that child's play, too--at least compared to all of the manipulations described in the thread Ernst cited in his post.

Thanks much for the link, Ernst.  I gave it a quick read.

I can hardly believe what these non-Qimage users are going through to get a good print.  "Jumping through hoops" comes to mind.

There was a time when all I did was open an image in Qimage, set the paper type & print size, hit "print," and then go drink coffee until the printer spat out a better print than I could get with any other program on the planet.  I use more of Qimage's capabilities now, but if there's another program out there which will allow you to produce a drop-dead 18x24 enlargement from an 8-megapixel P&S, I'd like to know what it is.

Thanks for this info, Mike.

In the situation you describe, would this also be a good time to dial the Sharpness Equalizer to the max?  I've read your article on the subject, but I'm still not 100% clear on when and how much to use this feature.

Speaking of which, here's a question (not too far OT, I hope) for Qimage users: When was the last time you "tested" Qimage by printing an image with NO interpolation?

I did, recently, by accident, when I was setting up a new printer.  The last setup step was a test print.  I stuck some of the sample 4x6 paper in the photo tray and picked an image (about a 15% crop) which I had previously printed 8x10 on the old printer.  At a quick glance, looked okay.  So I printed it 8x10 so I could compare apples with apples...and was absolutely horrified at the result.  Nowhere near the quality I had gotten from the old printer.

After 10 minutes of holding my head in my hands, I realized that the last thing I had printed from Qimage had been on plain paper, no interpolation, just to verify position.  Re-printed using Hybrid SE and got the quality I had expected.  The new print also confirmed that the HP B8550 was a distinct step up from the old Deskjet 9650...from which I got pretty good prints, using Qimage.

The difference between the no-interpolation print and the Hybrid SE print is painfully obvious.  I then went back and took a closer look at the no-interpolation 4x6 test print.  The difference doesn't jump off the page, as it does with the 8x10's, but it's easily visible upon close examination.

I've printed full-frame images at 8x10 with and without interpolation and have been hard-pressed to see the difference.  But if you're printing large, Qimage's interpolation makes an easily-visible difference.  Easy to forget that until you print without it.

"...my printer driver (HP B9180) can't handle large images at high resolution."

Please tell us more.  How large is the image?

Good article, Mike, thanks much.

Based on your description, the B8850 driver has many of the same quirks as my B8550.  For example, if I regularly wanted to print with a "Borderless" setup using other than the default paper and resolution settings, I'd have to create a special "shortcut" with the desired settings and save it as "Borderless-1" or something similar.  Then I could choose it in the driver and the special settings would snap into place.

Or--thank heavens!--I can just use Qimage.

Just FYI, the following is what I did first off with my new laptop:

1.  Uninstalled Norton.
2.  Installed Avira.
3.  Installed Firefox with NoScript.
4.  Installed Qimage.

I started using Qimage soon after I got my first digital camera--a Sony Mavica, 640x480..."sub-megapixel," as it was tactfully called at the time.  Qimage was the only way I could print an acceptable 5x7.  Wonderful program.

Here's the solution for the Mac users:  Go to Wal-Mart.  Buy the $300 Toshiba Windows 7 laptop they have currently on special.  (I did.)  Install Qimage.  Print stuff.

Great tip.  Never occurred to me to create two text boxes.

Here's a slight variation: I've often wanted to do just one line of text in a smaller or different font, and now I see that I can, because you can overlap the two text boxes without any problem.

Just create the first block of floating text, leaving room at the appropriate place for the "special" line.  Then create the second text box with the special line and simply overlap the two boxes.  Slick.

But I agree with the OP that being able to use different fonts and/or font sizes in floating text would be a convenience.

Just a quick add about Christmas-card print media...

In addition to the cardstock from Desktop Publishing Supplies I mention above, I recently printed some cards on matte (but coated) greeting-card stock from Avery.  Great results, but retail at the local Staples is nearly $24 for 60 cards & envelopes.

Okay, it's just something hinky with the particular font I was using (Tempus Sans).  Tried a different font and it worked fine.

Alt-0169 rather than Alt-169 is correct, my mistake, but in some word processing programs I get the same symbol without using the leading zero.

Fred, I should have mentioned that to key in symbols like this, you have to enter the numbers using the numeric keypad.

Incidentally, I wanted the © to appear in floating text because it's part of the info I print on the back of my photo note cards.

Thanks much for the prompt, helpful replies.

Please feel free to nominate this question for the "most trivial matter--ever!" award.

Is anyone else using the copyright symbol (Alt-169) in floating text?  When I do, it prints as a superscript...so tiny it's barely visible, at least in the 10-point type I'm using.  I'd prefer that it appeared in-line at normal size...just as it looks when I'm typing it into the floating text box.  Any suggestions/workarounds?