Of all the 20 or 30 apps I use regularly not one has a startup sound. I find Qiamge’s startup sound irritating. I know I can turn off all sounds, but then I won’t have the alert when processing is complete, which I do like to have. It’s been a familiar signal these past 10 years. (I don’t like the new sound, I prefer the old right-speaker ducka-ducka-duck, but I can get over that)

I’ll miss having the Top and Left position boxes on the Printers & Settings tab. I found them useful. Going in to advanced layout to tweak position on a single print is slower. Giving a multi-selection of prints all the same left or top offset is now impossible. How about including conventional Align tools in the main layout space (not in Advanced)? Last image selected is the one that everything aligns to. Qimage’s auto layout features are good, but sometimes I need/want to lay things out manually.

I like that the main layout space maximizes itself to the available space. Finally.

In the Advanced Layout Tools space I find that the page very often disappears off the bottom of the screen, getting chopped in half, or only showing the top third, if it’s a long page. I’ve never had this issue until this version. I want this page to auto-size correctly, like the main layout space does now, regardless of window size.

Please give us more than one pixel to grab when resizing Qiamge windows. Normal Windows windows have a region of about 7 or 8 pixels that functions as a resize grab.

Thanks Mike, that works. So simple.

Yes it's atypical, and I get what you're saying about the whites. My situation is that I have a client with a range of art prints. All the same size, same borders. Some proofed and matched through Relative and some through Absolute. They all have to present together and look similar. If the whites in the borders vary from print to print the client is going to throw them back at me.

MelW: yes, but then I have to measure and cut the borders I need. I print on a 44" roll and need to lay out multiple prints. I set borders as needed for each print and tell Qimage to print cut marks. After printing I trim down.

When printing with Relative or Perceptual rendering setting the borders as white causes no trouble. The printer does not lay down ink in the borders.
When printing with Absolute rendering the white borders get inked, which is what I don't want. Transparent borders would solve this.

This is all actually a follow on from this thread:
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/transparent-borders-absolute-colorimetric-rendering/

This would be only an occasional use, but it would be very useful when I do need it.

I do artwork reproductions and I sometimes need to print with Absolute Colorimetric rendering. White borders do not work in this circumstance as AC causes the printer to lay down ink for pure white, as it is trying to neutralize whatever paper is being printed on.

If I could set borders as transparent then this falls away and I can work in AC in the same way as I do in RC or Perceptual

I like the auto-roll feature and will find it very useful. It leaves a bit more than 1/4 inch slack with my P9000 setup. In Intelli-Centre it leaves about 1/2 inch top and bottom, before the extra slack that my P9000 driver adds by default. In Intelli-Cut/Space it leaves about 3/4 inch at the bottom, again this is in addition to the driver slack. This driver slack is approx 2/3 inch.

I don't need this much slack on my P9000 so my reaction was to set up a layout with auto-roll on, using Intelli-Space, and then turn it off and hit CTRL-W to trim off the extra space at the bottom.

The CTRL-W command behaves differently now in the Intelli-modes. Previously, in V2019.110, it used to just trim off the space at the bottom, and leave the prints as placed. It also asked for yes/no confirmation. But now it removes all excess space and bunches up the prints, without a confirmation dialog. Pretty much the same behaviour as CTRL-L (which still asks for confirmation, btw)

If I switch to, for example, Compact or Optimal then it behaves pretty much as it did before, but it leaves a touch more slack than it used to. It used to happily chop the page down to 4mm from the last print, now it leaves 6.3mm.

Yes, the effect does work the other way too, but for some reason it's not as pronounced.

For the last 7 years I've been using Relative almost exclusively and have only recently started experimenting with Absolute rendering. Relative works most of the time but the whitepoint shift affects all the lighter colours and I tend to loose out on light blues when I print on warm paper. I also fight against BPC, which lightens the blacks/deep shadows a bit too much. I need to have both rendering intents as options and it would be really good if I could use the same workflow for both. I prefer to have no ink in the borders when I use Absolute so I really would appreciate having a transparent border option.

I have other papers but for this discussion I'm working with Epson Cold Press Natural. One of the warmer papers out there so it's going to need a significant amount of blue to neutralize it. Profiled carefully by myself through i1Profiler. White point set to paper white point. All you've seen so far is my screengrab of an Epson Print Preview on a wide-gamut screen. The previews are not colour-managed and are usually very over-saturated. The border doesn't print as blue as it looks in the screengrab.

OK, finally got a chance to test how well the borders worked, as suggested above. Let the inked borders print and then trim right down to the edges of the borders. It works! And under a variety of light sources too - daylight, solux 4700k, tungsten 2800k. It does a pretty good job of neutralizing the white of the warm paper I'm using. The trouble is that it is reliant on your eyes adjusting to the white of the print. If you look away to a different light source, and then look back to the print, for a second or so the print has a blue-ish border until your eyes adjust again. I'll keep using borders without any inking, as it seems to be more consistent. It is also consistent with prints previously produced.

The template border trick: I tried it again this morning and hit a snag. I set the print size to 380x290mmmm and placed an image in the workspace. I set the layout to Template Centered. Then I set the new working size to 446x366mm. Then I selected a dashed line under Cut Marks. Then I shifted the print up a few mm to give the bottom border a bit more space. Then I printed.

The print came out accurately at 380x290mm but the dashed line printed at 445x362mm. 4mm less than specified.

At the moment I can't use this template work-around. I repeat my request, if it's possible, for a transparent border option. This will also enable me to print different sized prints in the same layout, which is not possible with the work-around.

Thanks Ernst. Spectrumviz has been very useful to me over the past few years, but I didn't know about the Lab values! Not paying attention, I guess.

Hahnemühle is readily available so I'm going to see if I can get hold of some PhotoRag Ultrasmooth. It seems to fit the bill.

I wish I could get papers locally (South Africa) that meet these criteria. I can get warm papers without OBAs or more neutral papers that rely on OBAs but not neutral papers without OBAs. I've think I have tried all that are available in our market. What papers do you suggest? (I've played with Canson papers that got pretty close, but alas, no distributors here)

Mike: the template trick works. A little fiddly, but not that bad. I haven't tested the cutting-to-border trick yet.

Mike first:
Your first two paragraphs: Yes. I get all this. I understand what AbsCol is doing. I haven't actually tested what you suggest: cutting the paper at the edge of the blue border. I'll give it a bash. I suspect it will work fine under D50 (or close to it), but not under other light sources.

Thanks for the template work-around suggestion. I try it today/tomorrow.

Fred and others:
My paper profiles were built with white point set as paper white. And I've tried this with a range of different profiles. Mine, Epson driver canned profiles, Canon driver canned profiles. All give the same result, except the border colour is different for each paper - as expected.

Thanks, Fred, for taking the time to help with this.

It's border colour that is an issue for me when I print with AbsCol. My borders are set to white, but they get inked because of how AbsCol works. See my attached print preview, with Qimage in the background. The light blue border shown in the print preview carries through to print.

This is all correct, expected behaviour. Qimage is not getting anything wrong. I am not getting any settings wrong either.

I just want to get around it: when I need to print with AbsCol I want to be able to add borders that are completely un-inked.
For me this means being able to set transparent borders. OR being able to set crop marks/lines with an offset that I specify.

(PS: I can see tone in the borders in the two print previews you posted. Did you set borders to pure white? If so check the print you made through AbsCol: is there ink in the borders?)

Try it with Absolute Colorimetric rendering. Doesn't work.

Edit: I guess this is a feature request. Mr Chaney? Can we have the option of transparent borders please?

Lately I've been running art reproductions through the Absolute Colorimetric rendering intent. I've discovered that if I add white borders in PS or in Qimage around the prints that these white areas get inked. This makes sense when you think about how AbsCol works.

What I would LIKE to do is add transparent borders, so that no ink is put down in my border space, and I can have crops/cutlines beyond this. Does anyone know how to do this, in Qimage, or in PS?

I use the remove white space option all the time. CTRL-W! Sometimes a complex layout gets messed up, though, and I have to rewind and set the larger paper space again.

Which leads me on to another wishlist feature: an undo history that allows me to step back predictably. Little pull-downs like in MS Excel. At the moment I'm scared of CTRL-Z. It sometimes steps back multiple actions to previous job, undoing lots of careful set up.

I get what you are saying, and the new layout is not a BAD workflow but my workflow often requires frequent changes in page size. Which is why I am really happy to see the size controls (and roll/sheet selection) moved out of the driver - a laborious multiclick route if ever there was one. I want it to go further and have these controls available all the time. If the space is available on screen then why put high priority information and controls on a hidden tab? Why have either layout or controls, when you can have both, at the same time?

See attached image. If the media controls were placed in the area I've circled I would be rather happy. But even this would not be as good as having a clear list of pulldowns, switches and text boxes in place on the right hand side of the screen.

Alternatively give me a single-button hotkey that switches between layout and settings at any time (what is the Print Queue? I have never used it). No mouse-fiddling, no CTRL-Tab that works only after clicking on the page layout space, just easy, instant switching.

I will probably get over my initial resistance to change sometime soon and start using the new setup, because, after thinking about it, it is better than diving into the driver menus to change page size. I hope my posts are taken as encouragement to take the new design even further and make it even more efficient.