how not to highlight a reply to quote
so as usual my lack of patience made me believe i was doing something wrong
Carl, talking to myself

Sometimes i'll put put two 5x7's on a 8x10 paper and print them.  It sure is a great feature, i dont use it much though.   

 I bought qimage because everyone over at dpreveiw was going on about the sharpening.  I accepted the old school idea of only printing once and only as the very last step, so it made sense to sharpen in the program that you use to send the file to the printer.  I'm more of the new school three step sharpening system now.  Sharpen by USM once at the beginning to undue the softness created by the camera's anti aliasing filter.  Add  "creative" selective sharpening to specific area of photo ( that would require studio version I think), and output sharpening that will overcome any blurring caused during printing (easily done with smart sharpening). 

I dont really print much, i'm going to try to change that and print something at least every couple of weeks. Nothing is more frustrating than making a print and finding the inks dried up and clogged something because the printer has sat idle for months.

Carl   

I hope i dont sound disappointed, its more like somebody let me in on a secret. 

After reading the article about the equalizer function that Terry linked, it makes sense that black and white should have much better resolution than color.  I looked at a few images using the predefined "black and white" filter and think i do see more 3d effect in them, but i dont see greater resolution. 

It made me curious if i could push the iso higher than I normally would and get better resolution by converting to black and white?   Would it matter what interpolation settings you use for B&W prints? 

Carl

Seems as though SS doesnt show up in any preview, just quietly does its thing in the prints.  Also seems to be directly related to the amount of USM you use so its hard to say just how much SS adds, saving that experiment for the next time i want 2 8x10's of the same photo.

Funny thing is in the older version of qimage i have the SS is not identified in the job options tab.  Its just a number on the same line as the interpolation adjustments, so i figured it was the level of interpolation.  I toggled it between 3-5 usually leaving it at 5 because that was labeled as default level.  I didnt think it had anything to do with sharpening, i wasnt using qimage for sharpening, it was just the best way i know to send a file to the printer.   I do know the prints are coming out great and now i think SS might be a big part of that. 

Not real sure about the equalizer and whether or not there is a big benefit to resizing/resampling in qimage because of interpolation functions, but my eyes are open.

Carl

Fred,

I see the added detail to the soft feathers and a little  of that 3d pop you spoke of more clearly in one of the pics. 

In the other one (with the tall grass and gazebo in the background), I see more detail everywhere, had you asked me to guess which one received the eq I would have got it backwards.  Same amount of USM and SS in the examples?

Carl

I see it now, just didnt use near enough strength before.   Ran out of ink with all my experimenting. 75% on faces is nice and subtle, with a lot of equalizer it really smooths it out.  Its kind of tough to tell on the monitor though.  Is it common to use 70-80% on the equalizer?

And you dont need to push smart sharpen to 10 when you actually use enough usm.  So, radius 2, strength 130% (75% faces), equalizer 70%, smart sharpen 5, interpolation Max / High / Vector. would be a good place to start for a 4x6.  Slowly getting there, its all starting to make a little sense at least.

Carl

   


 

Terry,

You were right about the blemish tool causing the weird blur.  I do think i errantly clicked in the preview trying to move the image.

  So it turns out i've been using qimage smart sharpen and never knew it.  A little bit of smart sharpening and the unsharp mask i typically used in gimp give excellent results.   I notched the smart sharpening up to 10 and now i'm seeing results in the prints without gimp sharpened photos. 

Definitely dont see any qimage USM changes in the preview, no matter how much or how magnified. Its just going to take some trial and error, settings right now are radius 3, strength 5, equalizer 20.  Interpolation is set to vector, cant find "hybrid" setting available, is that outdated info? 

Figured out cropping issue.  However crop scissors setting is set going into the queue is how it remains, cant be changed without deleting file from the queue.  I tried removing from  "delete associated filters" option.  its just stuck however it goes to the queue. 

Thanks, probably wouldnt have muddled through this without the help.  Now printing jpegs without saving a print file.  yaahoo.     

Carl

Thanks for all the great help so far

I'm just shooting blind trying to use the USM function.  Preview window doesnt show the changes, I'm actually getting decent results anyway but how do you know whats happening without a preview?

The "sharpen" tab near the top of the full edit window does show the results in the preview window.  Is that whats known as "smart sharpening"?   

The rotate function in full page editor is great.  I used it to take a big crop off a small jpeg, taking a vertical slice out of a 4x6 file.  This is the first time i ever found an easy way to do this. I didnt really expect it to be printable and looking at the preview it looked terrible. But i clicked on the "HQ preview" and it looked good.  Print came out real soft but much better than expected.  Anyway, what is "HQ preview"?

Carl

 


   

"process photo in gimp"   I was referring to levels, white balance, saturation, etc., all those things you find when you click on "create associative filter".   Thanks for the quick reply, thats what i was searching for. 

Processed a photo real quick and its sharp, good colors, very nice except I somehow created a big smeared out smudge on the subject.  When I was done on the full edit page i just clicked done and printed, deleted the photo out of the editor, and the smudge remains.  I was glad you pointed out that the file remains intact, but how come that smudge doesnt go away? Its about the size of a nickle on a 4x6 print. Maybe i have to close qimage and reopen and it will be gone?  It hasnt effected the original file I'm looking at in the Lightstone viewer.

Also cropped the top off the subjects head, its an olympus 4/3's file cropping to a 4x6 print.  I dont find a quick easy way to move the photo around on the paper to crop.  Thats really why I started using irfanview instead of cropping in qimage in the first place.  Thanks for any help, i'm sure this software is powerful, but really i bought it two years ago and never use it, just not intuitive for me.

Carl

I'm trying to print some out of camera jpegs in one quick step, just open in qimage and print, but i cant find the unsharp mask function.

Probably right in front of me but i cant find it anywhere.  I see "sharpen" plainly marked on the quick tutorial, but my interface is a bit different.

   Normally I:
1. process photo in gimp,
2. resize in irfranview,
3. copy resized file back to gimp and apply usm
4. save sharpened file,
5. open in qimage and print.

I was also looking for a way to copy and paste the sharpened file into qimage without saving it, if its possible to eliminate my step 4 above.

Thanks, Carl