Yes we always cut to 70x50 since that's the size of our frames. The logic behind the size of the print depends on the picture itself. What's the aspect ratio, orientation an what size of matte the author desires himself. Some like more whitespace around their photos others less.

Thanks for the explanation, this is indeed what I was looking for.

The downside for me with this is that I have to calculate the borders for each different picture because of the different aspect ratios of all the pictures. Ideally  it would be interesting to be able put the picture on the layout board at desired size (45, 50, 60cm...) and then be able to tell the software to grow a matte around it to the exact dimension I want, with the pictured centered inside that matte (70x50 in my case). A bit like in photoshop where you can choose the expand the canvas to a fixed value, or relative to the existing size.


Perhaps a video is worth a thousand words  :

This is a videoclip from our exhibition last year.
You can see how we present our work. All our frames are 70x50. And we insert a 70x50 cardboard with the photo fixed to it in those frames.

This is a videoclip where I explain a little bit more

For the exhibition we have 100+ photos to process, that's why I'm looking for the most efficient way to do this.

D

Hi Mike,

The monitor is a calibrated EIZO CS2730, so I suppose the issue is not here.

I'll follow you advice and start from scratch. I'll buy some epson sheets and try them out with the Epson ICC profiles.

The custom profile we use now was made by the company who sold us the printer. I sent them one of those color checkers printed with our printer on permajet oyster paper and they sent us an ICC profile back. Unfortunatly, our prints came out too dark. To solve that issue, I fiddled around in the printer driver and found out that by setting the gamma to 1.8 our prints came out perfect. So yes, as you mention it's double profiling to correct what I suppose is an ICC profile that is not correctly made. It always bugged me that I had to set that gamma setting, but since we didn't have the need to change papers and the results were very satisfying I just left it like that.

The issue somehow resurfaces now, because I'm experimenting with other papers types. I bought some Permajet Matt Plus paper, that I use with the ICC profile from their website but the results aren't satisfying.

Their profile only mentions "EAM" which is Epson Archival Matte (which according to some is equal to "Ultra Premium Paper Presentation Matte" and "Enhanced Matte", the driver doesn't list Epson Archival Matte in the media types). There's many information on their website, so perhaps I missed something regarding the driver settings.

I'll do some more test and eventually get back with some results.

Cheers,
Dimitri

Hi Mike, thanks for you reply.

I realise I didn't express myself clearly. I'll try to do better now (not a native english speaker).

Our photoclub uses 70x50 frames. For our annual exhibition, our members send in their photos in full resolution, all of different aspect ratios. Those photo have to be printed on a sheet that has a 70x50 size. Those 70x50 sheets are then fixed onto a 70x50 'adhesive' card board. That cardboard is then inserted into the 70x50 frame.

We don't fill the 70x50 sheet with the photo, there's always a white border around it, with the photo either perfectly centered or slightly shifted up towards the visual center if needed.

What I do at the moment, is the following. Let's say I have a landscape photo in 3x2 aspect ratio. I open it in photshop, I set the width of that photo, using image size to let's say 50cm (no resampling). Then I expand the canvas to exactly 70x50cm. My photo is now 50cm wide and 33.3 cm high and has a white border around it (10cm left, 10cm right, 8,3cm top and 8,3cm bottom). I then save the image as a tiff, and print it with qimage using crop marks so we know where to cut the paper.

I've made several actions in photoshop for different photo size and photo orientations, so the operation is fairly streamlined but I was wondering if something similar can be done in Qimage?

Our photoclub frames are all 70 cm x 50 cm. What we currently do is that we place a mat around the photo in photoshop at that that exact size, center or place the photo within it how we like, and than print that photo with crop marks so we can cut the paper afterwards.

I tried fiddling aroung with the photo mats option in QImage, but I can't get it to have a perfect sized photo + mat of 70x50cm.

Can it be done?

Hi all,

Our photoclub has been printing on an Epson SC-P7000 for a few years. The only paper we have been using so far is the Permajet Oyster with a custom ICC profile. After tweaking the profile it gave us overall great results. Initially I tried the Permajet ICC profile but the colors on our prints where always too blue. We then had a custom profile made (by the company who installed the printer) and while the colors were much better, our prints where consistently too dark. I resolved that issue by setting the gamma to 1.8 in the driver (setting under color controls). I never quite understood why I had to do that though. So I guess my main questions regarding that are:

1. Is it common for the ICC profile provided by the paper manufacturer (for that specific printer) to give poor results?
2. Is it normal to have to activate color controls and set the gamma to 1.8 in order to get a correct brightness in our prints (while using a custom made profile)?


Further on, recently I wanted to experiment with some Matte Paper and bought a roll of Permajet Matt Plus 240. For lack of a custom ICC profile I downloaded the provided ICC profile from permajet, and switched the ink to "Matte Black" and the results are really bad. The colors seem to be ok, but the prints, especially in the dark parts are very faded, lacking overal contrast. I'm not sure what is happening exactly and what I should be looking for.

• Would it be better to make a custom profile? (we are thinking of buying a profiling device, colorchecker studio or the one from spyder)
• Do I need to adjust something on the photos (curves, levels)?

I did not soft proof before, but afterwards when I did, I actually noticed I have the same result on my screen, (very faded and lacking contrast) and when I check the gammut, it seems that the darkers parts are consistenly out of gammut with that paper/ICC profile. I guess I'm looking for some tips and advice and perhaps a methodology on how to tackle this issue.