I will try to screen capture some comparable examples and post them in the thread I initiated on the issue. If Bruce's problem is solved, then I do not want to hijack this thread further... Although I have never seen his images, the issue sounded similar.

Then I guess my Adobe Camera RAW and Capture One Pro 7 software is defective then. I can't see the artifacts when I view the same image with that software. Further if I down sample the image with Lanczos, Bicubic, Bicubic Smoother, and then display it in Qimage, the artifacts go away. If I down sample the image with Nearest Neighbor and display it in Qimage, the artifacts are back, and are a good match to the artifacts I see displaying the high resolution image in Qimage. I still can't find any other explanation for the artifacts other than that they are being created in Qimage by down sampling for monitor display with a method very similar to Nearest Neighbor.

I tried the "Antialias When Downsizing" slider in the dialog box. I could see no effect on the screen display image in the Editor between the far left Off position and the far right high position. Any other suggestions?

Fred, that dialog box you have snipped, I gather is the one under Edit, Preferences, Printing Options...? If so, I would expect it would be in play for down sampling of images sent to the Printer or File? If so, that is not a solution for the issue I am seeing. It is the screen display in Qimage Ultimate of a high resolution image that is showing artifacts looking like over sharpening. The printed output is fine. The same issue that Bruce has identified in the original post. And I recall I down sampled in Qimage using Lanczos and the resulting image also displayed fine in Qimage. And further if I down sample the image in Photoshop with Bicubic it also solves the problem. The issue only occurs when Qimage Ultimate displays the image using the high resolution original. That does not leave many places where the problem could be coming from. To my thinking it can only be the down sampling method used to prepare the image for screen display in Qimage.

I can only say what I see when I compare the exact same high resolution image displayed in Adobe Camera RAW, Capture One Pro 7, and Qimage Ultimate. See this thread.

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/downsampling-high-resolution-images/

If you have another theory I wouldn't mind if you posted it in that thread.

Bruce did you ever solve your problem? If not here is a test you may want to try.

1. Display your problem image in Qimage Soft Proof, and measure the width of the image on the screen in inches.
2. Obtain the resolution of your monitor from the specifications in pixels/inch. Most monitors are around 100, but it is best to get the exact number.
3. Calculate the width of the displayed image on the screen in pixels. For example if it is 15 inches then the displayed image on the monitor would be 1500 pixels if your monitor is 100 pixels per inch.
4. Take your high resolution image that is problematic and then down sample it to 1500 pixels in width using the Bicubic method, or if you do it in Qimage use Lanczos.
5. Now take that down sampled image and display it in Qimage Soft Proof.

If that solves your quality problem, it suggests there is a down sampling method problem, potentially in Qimage itself. The testing I have done suggests that may be the case, and in certain high resolution images artifacts appear that resemble oversharpening.

I will try and make a long story short. I have been puzzled for some time as to why high resolution images that have been downsampled by Internet Explorer at times appear to be oversharpened. It showed up most recently in a thread at the DPReview forum where I pushed an image with extra, but to my eye acceptable sharpening. I did the basic development in Capture One Pro 7, and then some pixel editing in Photoshop Elements Editor. In both applications the image looked very good to my eye. Sharp but not too sharp. However when the high resolution image was displayed in Internet explorer with the View Original feature at DPReview, it looked brutally bad - way oversharpened. That prompted me to get to the bottom of it, and I made a post on the issue there.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/54017256

Again, to make a long story short, while I had some trouble accepting it, the answer seems to be that Microsoft is using Nearest Neighbor or something very close to it, for downsampling, and it causes brutal artifacts which look like sharpening (on certain images more than others). To convince myself of the issue I used Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bicubic, Bicubic Sharper, and Bicubic Smoother to make a downsampled image that could be displayed on the screen at the same size without any resampling. Nearest neighbor was almost identical and as brutally bad as the image downsampled by Internet Explorer. There was a small variation in the rest of the methods with Bicubic Sharper being the sharpest ( but quite acceptable) to Bicubic Smoother as the smoothest and still quite acceptable. What I saw in Capture One Pro and Elements would likely have been about in the middle of those -- probably close to just Bicubic.

So now my question about Qimage Ultimate. What method is being used to interpolate high resolution images to display them in the editor? And the reason I raise the issue is that in the process of this investigation I decide to look at this problematic high resolution image in Qimage Ultimate. I have to be blunt. It looked oversharpened. Perhaps not quite as bad as Nearest Neighbor in IE11 or the high res image downsampled by IE11, but frankly not acceptable. It simply did not match what I saw in Capture One Pro or Photoshop Explorer. I did print the image in Qimage using the default DFS at level 5, and it printed fine -- just as I saw it in Capture One Pro and Elements, but not as I saw it in Qimage Editor. I also opened the images I had downrezed using the methods I listed above, so they could be displayed in Qimage Editor without resampling. They all displayed fine with the minor but acceptable variations in sharpness.

I also think back to my attempt to use Qimage Ultimate for image editing a few weeks back, and becoming frustrated with the sharpening and noise reduction. I now think what I was seeing was not necessarily real noise and sharpening, but potentially artifacts caused by the method used to dowrez the image in the editor.

If you want to look at the images, you can find a couple of them in the post at the link below. The second image is my original high resolution variation. The last one is a downsampled Bicubic version. Night and day difference if you view them in Internet Explorer, and Qimage as well...

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/54042200

Have you selected one of the three front feed choices for your paper source in the Printer Setup?

I have a Epson R3000, but have never used the front manual feed tray. It sounds like your printer thinks this tray has paper in it, or a CD tray. I see if you push it in, then it kind of pops out and down. You may want to push it in and out a few times, and check that there is nothing in there. Normal position seems to be that it is fully in and up.

WeTransfer is a free site the lets you upload large files. Pick an e-mail address that you want to send them to, select the files and upload them. You can "send" them to your own e-mail. You will get an e-mail with a link in it that you can post here if you want. See link to WeTransfer:

https://www.wetransfer.com/users/sign_in

I would like to thank everyone who participated in the discussion for all the suggestions. I certainly know a lot more now about the ability of Qimage Ultimate when it comes to RAW development and image editing. I think I have satisfied my curiosity  on how it works, and whether or not it could be a one stop solution for my development, editing, and printing of images. At least for now, I have concluded that for RAW development and image editing, Qimage Ultimate is not a good fit for my camera and my tastes in image editing. However for printing, I still feel it is unmatched and I will continue to be a satisfied user. Still not fully settled, but it is looking like my workflow is going to be Capture One Pro 7 for RAW development, and initial editing to the extent it can be done in that software. Further pixel editing using layers, filters, etc. will be done in Photoshop Elements Editor, and then final printing in Qimage Ultimate.

I must be thinking of ACR where you can save a 16 bit TIFF as long as you do it before you convert to 8 bit mode.

I share your concern about the lack of presets for White Balance. I shoot RAW and set my camera to Auto White Balance. Then when I develop the RAW my first step with white balance if I don't like the As Shot (Auto WB) is to try one of the presets such as Daylight, or Shade. With ACR I would say about 9/10 times if there is an appropriate choice it will improve WB from As Shot. And about 50% of the time I leave it there without tweaking it further. This said, I am previewing Capture One Pro 7. It offers presets for WB. I tried it on an image being discussed in the other thread I started on RAW processing. Daylight gave me a perfect WB with ACR on the image. However the same selection in C1P7 gave me a brutally warm image. It was a total no-go as a starting point. So it does seem to matter how accurate the pre select WB really is. ACR is very accurate in my experience with my camera. Capture One, not so accurate....

My second method if I know the light is going to be difficult is to use a White Balance card (not a grey card intended for setting a light meter exposure). I use one called WhiBal. See link below for more info. It does work well, but is much more convenient to use for close up work. However, if it was a simple daylight shot, I would just take a test shot of the card in the sun.

http://michaeltapesdesign.com/whibal.html

Posterization with 8 bit is going to occur when you make large changes in color where the gradient of the color is very gradual and there is no noise. With ACR I make the big changes while working in 16 bit, and try to restrict changes after that. Yes that is more difficult in Qimage as the RAW Refine too which works in 16 bit has very limited adjustment capability, and most of the color adjustment tools are in the Editor. If you are going to edit in PS or some other software, can you not save after the RAW Refine as a 16 bit TIFF, and use that for editing elsewhere?

I think we are talking past each other.

I've given you two images from my RX100. One was a very noisy available light shot, and I was very disappointed in how Qimage RAW Refine handled it with default settings. It INCREASED noise instead of reducing it and frankly it made the image unusable. In my view the ACR version of it was usable, but not great. It by necessity had large amounts of noise reduction applied and yes that does smear detail. However, in my view with the appropriate tradeoffs made it still can work, and did.

I also gave you a second RX100 image of a beach. That image does not have any significant noise. I used essentially zero noise reduction in ACR. It is not possible that ACR smeared the image. But, on the other hand, using default Noise Reduction settings in Qimage Ultimate, it somehow managed to introduce noise into the image. I would like to learn how Qimage is doing that, so I can avoid it.

I also processed the same image with Capture One Pro 7, and applied no noise reduction. It also like the ACR version shows a nice clean sky with no noise, and again it is not possible to have smearing because no noise reduction was used. See a low res version of it below.

Oops, another brain fart on the Cache JPEG's. Should be MB of course. But, still I don't understand the need to have such large files. It only takes 2000 pixels of width to fill my screen.

I will try the OK button on the Preview box and see how that works.

On the noise, yes there certainly was a lot of noise in that "Day of the Dead" restaurant picture as it was taken in low light. However, I would suggest the beach shot which was taken in full daylight has very little noise. In Adobe Camera RAW I just left the settings at default which is zero Luminance NR, and 25 for Color. Just checked it and I could have backed the Color off to 15, but unless it is a low light shot, I just leave NR at default. My observation is that this image has very low native noise. I am not sure where that noise in the sky is coming from in the Qimage image. It seems to be creating it? Or perhaps it is aggressive sharpening. But, I turned off sharpening for the sky tone.

In the ACR workflow NR and Sharpening is left to the end, which makes sense. However, in Qimage Ultimate it seems to me that one should do the RAW Refine first, which is where the auto NR and Sharpening are located. It doesn't seem to make sense to do RAW Refine last if you want to use the Editor just to "touch up" the adjustments to take care of what was not done automatically.

I don't see posterization in the Qimage edit, but I sure do see noise. As for processing time, I am experienced with ACR and it probably takes me a minute to do this type of image. I don't see Qimage taking less time, and currently takes much more, unless you accept the auto development.

I'm still not able to get the quality of the Qimage image up to that of ACR and Capture One Pro 7. Even your images that you posted look grainy and dirty to me.