Hello all,
I apologise for such a long first-posting.
I've added my query below, but as this is my first posting I'll offer you some background about me, and about my intended use (at least in the short-term) for my happily installed and working Qimage Ultimate (QU).
I'm new to Qimage, although I've known about it since my days on the ImageKind Forum (circa 2006 and later) where it was cited many times as the "essential & definitive" printing tool. I'm still discovering wonderful new QU subtleties every time I consult its excellent built-in Help, and I've watched 22 of the 33 superb video tutorials
My setup here is: Windows 7, 8GB RAM and acres of free disk space, with a superb NEC colour-calibrated monitor, hopefully to do justice to my Nikon D700 photography. I "went digital" in 2005, and I use Capture NX2 and/or (as needed by the image) DxO Optics Pro for all my editing. (I have no plans ever to buy PhotoShop.) I've already used QU to take a handful of photos completely through from .NEF to 'final product', and I look forward to learning and employing QU's strengths on those photos that simply
must be printed!
The majority of my photos exist only as digital images, so I can't (yet) justify the cost and enlarged desk-space needed for a fully-specified colour printer. When I do need to print something I'll use an online printing service - and Qimage's ability to
Print to File was the key feature that tipped the scales on my decision to buy it.
For my occasional "arty" work on high quality papers I'll send my photos to my preferred "serious" printing-company in south Wales (UK). For less demanding stuff such as 10 x 8's or A4 prints for my camera club competitions etc., I'll (typically) use the fast and cheap PhotoBox UK, and suffer their small colour inconsistencies. And finally for "office" type work I've got a 4-ink-only "utility" printer (an HP OfficeJet), which I don't plan on using for any serious photo printing.
The great news is that - once I've tapped into it's huge potential - I can use QU to improve all three of these printing scenarios
Now to my query, and sorry for the long preamble ...
I've noticed that
all of the EXIF and IPTC data has been stripped from my QU
Printed to File images. EXIF gone! IPTC fields empty! Yes, I can understand that the only metadata that my online print-company actually
needs from me is the image's embedded ICC colour profile (which is still comfortably in place), but Drat! I don't want to send my images off to any 'external' agency without at least some of my carefully managed metadata on-board!
If I'm doing something wrong then please help me fix it, thanks - or, if this is
by design in QU, then please Mike, re-interpret this "lost metadata" query as a new "feature request"
(Qimage reports that the files do still contain their embedded ICC colour profiles, but because the QU
Printed to File images appeared so bereft of metadata when checked with ExifTool, or with my copy of Picture Information Extractor (version 6.40), I took the liberty of verifying that the ICC profile was really 'intact' by using the excellent GNU-licensed
Argyll CMS utility called "extracticc".)
I've got a long-established workflow based around my Imatch database, and I
can use IMatch to re-inject the EXIF and IPTC metadata into my QU
Printed to File images, but this would become awfully tedious for more than a few images at a time.
I tried this Forum's Search facility to see if this (lost metadata) has been mentioned or 'acknowledged' previously, but on the contrary, the vibe that I'm picking up is that Qimage strives to protect and to propagate all metadata in the files that it processes. So I really hope that I'm goofing somewhere, or that I've met another "Windows 7" quirk!
Thanks in anticipation.
Colin P.