I get what you are trying to do but I just don't see this being a useful option at all:

(1) If your printer doesn't clog even after a year, you don't need to try to use random photos as "unclog sheets".
(2) If the printer does clog, you should be using the unclog sheets and not photos.
(3) If you are trying to so something like prevent a printer from printing a cleaning cycle after 24 hours, printing a half sheet unclog on copy paper makes sense.

In the end, no one is going to want to wait 3 days to get the photo on page 3 and you'll end up printing throw-away photos that no one wants, wasting photo paper when you could just print an unclog pattern on a half sheet of copy paper.  The unclog uses WAY less ink (and balanced ink usage) than a photo anyway and you can print them on copy paper.  Then you can print the photos you want when you want them.  Even in a case where you print a lot of the same photo(s) for stock, if you are circumventing a 24 hour cleaning cycle you'd be better off using a purge sheet that balances ink usage, uses very little ink, and uses throw-away copy paper so you can be sure you are doing enough to circumvent that 24 hour cleaning cycle (they put that there for a reason) and just print what you need when you need it.

In addition, you can already print one photo a day using the mentioned spool and cool option which should be adequate for this niche workflow.

Mike

If talking precisely from the unclog perspective, you must be right. However:
1. As far as I understand, the majority of people use this function in order to save ink from a purging process of their printers. At least, it corresponds to Canon printers.
2. Contemporary printers get clogged less than it used to be. My dye-ink Canon Pro-100 didn't get clogged even after more than year of inactivity (the printer was switched off)! And it happened twice! Some users of pigment-ink Canon printers claim that their printers don't get clogged after a few months of inactivity.
3. Even in a BW mode printers use not only monochrome inks but color inks as well. I'm sure that when printing color images printers will use almost all colors. Surely, some colors may be used in a small amount but it still can be enough to avoid clogging.

Now I have a pigment-ink Canon Pro-1000 printer. It is said that if I don't print anything in 24 hours, it will initiate a self-cleaning process that wastes a few ml of inks. So I have to print something every day. At the same time I don't see any point in messing around with everyday unclog printing when I could print my photos instead. Automatically, ofcourse.

That's probably going to cause more problems than it solves.  It prints a purge sheet because that is effective at keeping nozzles exercised so for the purpose of exercising the nozzles, there is no substitute for the unclog pattern.  Printing a batch of "random" photos over time (say one a day) could lead to problems because it won't exercise the nozzles the way it should, some colors may not be accounted for (or not enough) and using it that way could give you a false sense of security thinking you are doing proper exercising of the nozzles when you are not.

Regards,
Mike

I see. Then maybe it's not a bad idea to create a new option in the Unclog menu so that Qimage will print not a color pattern but a pile of photos one at a time. This way it'll be more useful.

The unclog tool will never work for a head that is completely missing a color.  If multiple deep cleanings don't work, there are other options like soaking the head in Windex and other manual cleaning methods.  Best to ask a printer hardware group like the one below since this site is mostly about software:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1915547415436501

Regards,
Mike

Mike-I have a P800 which I haven't used in many months. I have problem which is nothing is printing for the yellow cartridge. Not  a single dot. I have tried your unclog program didn't help. Tried the builtin program heavy cleaning 3 times with a new cartridge but still no yellow dots. Anything else I can try or does it have to go back to Epson. I'm getting too old to wait for Epson to fix it. I assume its somewhere in the tube that goes from the cartridge to the printhead.

Jeff Jessee

I'm not sure it's really a creative frame, it just simulates a 2mm thick card board passepartout. Usually people give me an image and specify the length of one side of the printed image without the frame. Then, to avoid the hassle of precisely cutting a card board around, I was asked whether I could simulate the passepartout by printing this frame outside the image.

Anyway something seems not to work anymore, I haven't figured out what. I created a frame in Affinity Publisher and exported as tif. It worked fine. Then, based on this one, I adapted it to various frame  sizes (square, 1/2) but those don't work anymore. They show up in the cutout list but they are not applied and when clicking Done and saving, the thumbnail disappears in the main window.

Like everything in Qimage, it's a sticky setting so once you set it, it will spool and cool until you turn it off.

Regards,
Mike

Photo mats don't have that problem because they are literally a single mat that sits behind prints.  What you are talking about is not a photo mat: it's a creative frame.  So to use those you have to work within their capabilities and do as you suggest: create then in common sizes.  Most people tend to want common print sizes so you really are matching the print size and not the image aspect ratio so you would only need to match a few common print sizes.

Mike

Will this option be applied to all printing jobs?
If I set up this "Spool and Cool" option, will I be able to print my other printing jobs in an ordinary (quicker) way? Or after setting up this option all jobs will be printed 1 page per day?