Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

As posted on José Rodriguez's Facebook page at Mike's Caney's suggestion:

Qimage-Ultimate 2023-100 and fitting image to paper with different aspect ratios

Often when putting an image onto a paper with a different aspect ration part of the image gets cropped slightly in a peripheral area, and sometimes that part of the image is critical.

Simple resizing, really, to fit a complete image into the printable area of the paper.

I was hoping that the 2023 version of Qimage-Ultimate might resolve this, but apparently not.

So here's my question:

If we know the horizontal and vertical sizes of the image, if we know the H&V sizes of the paper, if we know the H&V border sizes, and we if know the H&V sizes of unprintable margins, why can't a calculation be done to automatically fit the complete image into the available print space, notwithstanding the resulting H&V margins will likely be of different sizes (I can mask in a frame or trim the paper to deal with this)?

The same question applies to automatic centering not giving equal margin sizes, notwithstanding the paper feed mechanism may be off a millimeter or so (I find this to be almost imperceptible on my Pro-100, it does a great job).
If I can do these calculations, and I can, why can't they be applied to the printer settings by some macro or command in the software?

That was my question on José's Aug 7 livestream, but everyone seemed to get sidetracked and fixated on my 4X6 example.  This should work with any size image and paper.  Note none of the solutions proposed on the livestream worked for me with QImage-2023-100, although I could achieve this by disabling the AI and changing some settings in the print driver.
I notice questions of fitting images to paper and centering with equal margins appear quite often and I have other friendly users expressing the same issues to me. I really find the response "why do you want to do this" unhelpful so please don't ask me that.

Qimage-U 2023-100 is a great product and I like its many features, and I am hoping as a printing utility this issue could be addressed with a click of a "fit to-page" button that does what it says.

Well here is what I found:

First I selected "Fit to Page" in the Driver Properties.
That does not work.  Picture gets cropped, with or without AI "Prevent Sizing Conflicts" enabled.

Then I tried "Fit to Paper" in the Prints tab of Qimage, which to me seemed like a more logical choice.
That does not work.  Picture gets cropped

Then I chose "Fit to Page" in the Prints tab and I get what I want.  The entire image fills the available printing area.

NOW:   I opened the AI dialog just to look at the settings, and then closed it without making any changes, and the image was cropped again, and no settings will get it to where I want.

I was using the image "Test Collage.tif" from José's files on his Facebook page.

***********************

UPDATE:  I closed Qimage, and re-opened it, dragged in the image and BOTH Fit to Paper and Pit to Page on the Qimage menu fit the page without cropping.  Something weird is going on or I am losing my mind.

I was going to make a small video response but both Jose and I showed how to do this (the right way) live on Sunday so I'm thinking video is not working so I'll try this with text...

You are asking to do something simple which has a simple solution in Qimage.  You said you want to "fit a complete image into the printable area of the paper".  So let's do that:

(1) Make sure the auto cropping button on the Prints tab is OFF.
(2) Select an image in the thumbnails and then click the "Fit to Page" size option in the list of sizes.

This will do what you are asking every time.  Now, it sounds like you've done it the wrong way so many times that maybe you turned off the Driver AI and you have "Fit to Page" selected in the driver.  That will give you the wrong size every time and may cause cropping.  It also sounds like you used "Fit to Paper" which is also not what you want: if Qimage remembered that selection (it was the last size chosen) and you are just clicking on the + on thumbnails, it'll be using Fit to Paper which is wrong (and will cause cropping - see below).

Fit to Page: The "Page" is defined as the printable area on the paper.  So if you want the biggest print possible without cropping, this is what you would use.

Fit to Paper: The paper is just that: the whole sheet of paper.  If you "Fit to Paper", it fits the image to the entire sheet of paper ignoring the non-printable margins.  What you get is your print fit to the paper but of course it will be cropped: because the portions of the image that lie within the non-printable margins will be cropped off since the printer can't print there.  This sizing option is used primarily for scans or pre-prepared pages: if you scan an 8.5x11 page, you'll have an 8.5x11 image.  To get that to print on another 8.5x11 sheet of paper, you have to fit to paper, ignoring non-printable margins.

Maybe this will help.  If not, it's time to post a screen shot of what you are doing.

Regards,
Mike

That is helpful, thanks.

My problems started when I selected "Fit to Page" in the driver, as I have done prior to using Qimage, as opposed to using the Qimage menu.

I think I have it sorted out now.

Mike, Excellent explanation, however, occasionally even when autocrop is turned off, when I select 'print to page' a small crop icon is visible at the bottom in the image. When clicked on, it says do you want to remove cropping (I think that is what it says).  Doesn't happen all the time, I'm not sure what this indicates or what is means as the image appears correct. There must be a set of conditions that is met that causes this, so is this one more item to keep in mind when fitting to page?

That crop icon on the print means that at some point in the past, a crop for that specific aspect ratio was adjusted and Qimage remembered that and brought it back.  For example, if you use the cropping tool to adjust the crop for a specific image at an 8x10 print size, if you bring up that same image in the future and choose 4x5 print size, Qimage will bring back the same crop you used on the 8x10 (because it is the same aspect ratio).  So that's what is happening with your fit to page: at some point the crop was adjusted at that size (aspect ratio) and Qimage is bringing that back.  Even using "Fit to Paper" in the past when you really wanted "Fit to Page" could cause that: if the aspect ratios line up just right.  You just have to keep an eye out for it if you are really meticulous about it not cropping anything and do as you did if you see crop is on: just click it and turn it off.

I suspect once you get the hang of using Fit to Page instead of Fit to Paper, reserving the latter for scans or prepped copies, it won't happen anymore.

Regards,
Mike

Thanks for the explanation, it really makes sense now. I understand the fit to page and fit to paper may be changing in the wording, I'm excited to see what you come up with to make it easy to remember. I thought of it as 'fit to print size' as I specified the size of the print, and fit to paper was obviously the size of the media that was loaded. When you're using roll paper it's hard to think of pages or paper.