Brian,
I would like to do all this within QU but I need a way to crop, adjust exposure and zoom.
But you can do all this in QU!
"Zoom" is the same as crop in effect and QU has 2 types of crop: image crop and print crop.
You may find Print crop more to your liking as there is a zoom slider.
With images in the queue,see to the print size required and the crop scissors on, open the page editor and click the crop tab. See the screen shots below.
The red lines on the first shot show the crop from a 3:2 image to a 4:3 ratio. The second shot shows the crop zoomed in; the crop position can be adjusted by dragging or opening the precision crop (magnifier + icon).
... and adjust exposure, sometimes adjust white balance.
This can be done too in the image editor - all adjustments are non-destructive and no additional adjusted images need be saved because the adjustments are saved as a filter file with the image. Double click the thumbnail to open the editor for an individual image, or, with images in the queue, double click the first one on the page preview to open the "batch" editor and work through the queue images.
Nothing could be easier
Edit:
Here is the learning Video on Print cropping, it explains in detail what I said above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pgHp45B1QXo&vq=hd720and here is the video on basic editing that covers all you need:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=I3Eu2JLbTwo&vq=hd720Terry