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.

Thanks Fred,


Ah! An excellent point!! And I admit that - because my use of QU so far has been to operate on one image at a time - I hadn't considered this! I now see that some key elements of the original EXIF cannot logically (nor legitimately!) be 'passed on' to the new image!  I also know from other contexts (such as in ExifTool's amazing complexity for example, and in the sparsity of EXIF data provided by most film scanners) how difficult it can be programmatically to regenerate and inject new EXIF data into "new" images!

So I accept that the EXIF data can't survive the Print-to-File operations, but - I wonder if Mike would consider giving us an option in some future QU version to let us "copy across" the IPTC info from the original image (such as my Copyright string and my Keywords) for when I know that they're still relevant to the "File" version of the image?


Hmmm! I'm intrigued by your question, and I notice that you'd asked the same "why print to file" question in another post (on a different topic). Given my inexperience with QU, I wonder what I've misunderstood from the "Online Printing" Tutorial video? (That's the link to the 720p video, or here's the 480p version.)  I'm intrigued because this enhancement for "Online Printing" is (I think!) one of the QU features I expected to use the most in the short term! But maybe I've got it wrong?  See also my reply to your next point ...


Yep! This is how I've been working for years with my online print services, namely, sending them high-quality .TIFs in AdobeRGB colour space (for the arty pictures), or sending first-time-saved / max quality .JPGs in sRGB colour space for everything else.  I've spent a lot of time and money having test prints made through some of these companies, with varying degrees of sharpening applied to my test images. And then, in order to negotiate their presumed PPI values and the dimensions of the non-printed borders around my (essentially bespoke) 'arty' prints, I've held many long telephone conversations with (for example) the helpful people at The Dot Foundry or at Digitalarte - just two of the services I've used.  In all these cases I've crossed my fingers and hoped that I'd "guessed" a good-enough degree of sharpening, and that I wouldn't need to cut yet another new cardboard mat to fit my (too often mis-calculated) 'final' printed area on my new prints ...

But now ... by using Qimage's Print to File feature (if I understand it correctly?!) - after a bit of normal trial-and-error - I hope to be able to send off repeatable, reliable, correctly dimensioned and "bordered" final-versions of my images, with an appropriate ICC profile embeded, and always optimally sharpened (thankyou 'Fusion'!) - and to save money on cardboard mats too!

Is one of us up a "Print to File" gum-tree Fred   


I've very likely skulked around on a Qimage-related Group    but I've never registered on one until this "Home Port" for Qimage.  Perhaps we've metaphorically met in one of my other much-enjoyed photo-Forums - ImageKind? Nikonians? RedBubble?, or Luminous Landscape (hardly been there recently), or even the hugely inspirational Martin Bailey Photography? (which again I've neglected recently.)  I'm on some others (e.g. IMatch) but those are the ones where I'm registered as "KolinP".

Thanks again for your feedback Fred, and I'll watch out for some nudges about my Print to File presumptions!

Colin P.

Hi Colin,
your original post:
If you really need to have EXIF data on a PTF created image it is possible by using ExiftoolGUI: http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/foto/exif/exiftoolgui.htm
This uses Exiftool: a command line program http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ which you will have to download and copy into the ExiftoolGUI program folder.
With ExiftoolGUI you can copy EXIF data etc. from one image to another and edit many of the fields.
See screen shot attached below.
ExiftoolGUI is now "frozen" but Exiftool is regularly updated for new cameras etc.
Terry

Thanks again Fred,


Thanks for the reassurance. I was afraid I'd missed a key point somewhere.


Not exactly a "complaint" ... rather, I'd hoped it was a pragmatically-presented question     but I probably over-egged my query - as I'm inclined to do!!


Now we're hitting the nub of my original question, because (as I'd mentioned) my Printed-to-File (P2F) images contain absolutely no EXIF or IPTC data.  So - based on what you say - I'm now deducing that there's something askew on my system that's (apparently) blocking QU's intended "metadata" behaviour.  In my P2F images there is no new EXIF data relating to the (new) file's genesis in the P2F stage of QU ...


... and - to paraphrase my original query - none of my existing IPTC data has been carried across.  (I populate a set of IPTC fields in all of my images as I extract them from my camera or memory cards.)


I tried it multiple times too, but (of course) my results don't match yours, so I'll detour here and compile a quick matrix showing the files, the formats and the different pre-QU steps that I've used in my tests, and I'll report back.


I'm an optimist too Fred    but clearly our "mileages" differ here 

Thanks for your help so far, and I'll come back soon.
Colin P.

Here is a screen snap of the NEW EXIF that Qimage writes to its new file

I did misspeak on the IPTC though. I forgot I had the original JPGS lounging around in the same folder. That is not carried through.
Sorry,
Fred

Hello again.

As promised, here are some results from tests I made on a collection of what I hope are representative images. I attach a one-page PDF-rendering of my hurriedly-made spreadsheet, showing my tabulated results (so far). The table in the PDF/spreadsheet shows a number of permutations of original .JPGs and RAW files from different cameras, and the editing steps I took on them prior to asking Qimage Ultimate to make Print to File versions of them.

I admit the test results will only interest someone (if anyone at all!) who asked themselves this same question about retention of EXIF or IPTC data in QU's Print to File process!

On my setup here (on Windows 7 etc.), I see a clear pattern for when Quimage Ultimate (version 2012-221) embeds the EXIF metadata into the new files it creates in the Print to File (P2F) phase, and a quick summary of my results would be -

1. When QU makes a new P2F image in .TIF format, then in addition to the standard .TIF header information plus the User-specified ICC profile, QU embeds a small and logical sub-set of EXIF data relating to that file's creation by QU.

... however, on my setup here, so far ...

2. None of the .JPG files made by QU's P2F phase contain any EXIF metadata. They contain only the standard JPEG header information plus (again) the User-specified ICC profile.

So I was wrong when I said earlier in a previous post that "there is no new EXIF data relating to the (new) file's genesis in the P2F stage of QU ...". I'm sorry for that. I simply hadn't looked close enough at the one or two .TIF files that I'd "Printed-to-File" at the time.

On the principle that I'm aiming just to "get to know my tools" while I work with QU, I'd be glad to know whether this is "simply how it is" in QU ... at least in this version   

Best regards for now.
Colin P.