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Mike Chaney's Tech Corner > Mike's Software > Qimage Ultimate > Automatically Print and Position Captions from Metadata??
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Author Topic: Automatically Print and Position Captions from Metadata??  (Read 6848 times)
PaulInWA
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« on: June 25, 2017, 07:54:19 PM »
I have resisted buying the newer versions of Qimage for many years because I have disliked the interface so much but now Qimage Ultimate and the Lightroom plugin may motivate me to finally upgrade.  But I have a very specific need/question and I cannot do this printing from Lightroom's print module.

1) I want to print photos on a Canon iPF8400 on 11x14" sheet paper.  This paper does not permit borderless printing.

2) I want the area the photo gets printed in to be 9 x 11.75" and I want a left margin of 1.25" and top, bottom, and right margins of 1".  I want the longest side of the photo to reach the top/bottom or left/right of this print area and not have the image otherwise resized or cropped.

3) I want to be able to automatically print a caption taken from a field in the metadata BELOW the 9 x 11.75" area the photo gets printed in and I want to be able to print it in the left or right side in a consistent position relative to the bottom of the page.  In other words, I don't want the caption to print immediately below the image.  I want it to print about 0.25" below the image print area.  I don't care that much whether the caption is printed in exactly the same position on each page or whether it aligns with the side of of the image but I do want it to be a consistent distance from the bottom of the page.

4) I want to be able to specify the font and ink color/density of the text.

5) I want Qimage to do this automatically for the 50-60 photos I need to print.

This functionality approximates features that are available from the Book module of Lightroom but of course you can't print directly from there or specify your page sizes with any flexibility and it turns out that trying to print the JPEGs or PDF pages Lightroom can export also have limitations given the oddities of the iPF8400 when it comes to minimum margins and/or borderless printing.

So if any Qimage experts can confirm that the program can do just what I want I'll buy it and struggle with relearning the hopefully simplified interface.

Thanks.

Paul
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BrianPrice
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« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2017, 03:13:09 PM »
Paul

The 'Template' function in QI will do exactly what you want. You add the blank 'Template' image which is at the end of the thumbnails to the page, then add your caption using 'Floating Text' in the 'Edit' page, and save it as a 'Layout'. You call up thelayout/template using the 'Custom' option on the 'Prints' tab then drag as many photos as you require onto it.

I'm not an expert on templates but there are people here who are Smiley

Brian
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Terry-M
The Honourable Metric Mann
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« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2017, 07:27:47 PM »
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I'm not an expert on templates but there are people here who are
Here is a starting point, Mike's tutorial video

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1TjdBbj-r2E

Terry
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PaulInWA
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« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2017, 05:07:12 PM »
It appears the functionality I was looking for is probably available in Qimage Ultimate.  I have been traveling so I have been limited to using the demo to "print" pdf files using doPDF (a program I would recommend).  The most important thing to know if you are trying to do this is that the functionality in Qimage is called "Floating Text", or "Text Annotation" if you want an option with no flexibility.  The next most important thing to know, and in my mind a nasty "feature" of Qimage, is that unless you know that you have to "link" the "Special Text", i.e. the symbols that refer to various metadata fields, to the current page or selected print or all prints in the queue no text will appear when you print the page. 

Finally, the Template/Layout function allows you to save a page configuration, including the Floating Text so that you don't have to manually do this for each print job.  Bizarrely, you recall a saved layout by going through the Custom page size functionality which I find very unintuitive. 

Bottom line, the functionality I wanted appears to be available in Qimage so Kudos to Mike for providing this capability.  I will be buying a copy assuming it prints to my iPF8400 the same way it is printing to a PDF file.

FWIW.

Paul
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Terry-M
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« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2017, 06:27:09 PM »
Hi Paul,
Quote
The next most important thing to know, and in my mind a nasty "feature" of Qimage, is that unless you know that you have to "link" the "Special Text", i.e. the symbols that refer to various metadata fields, to the current page or selected print or all prints in the queue no text will appear when you print the page.
"nasty"!! It's logical and essential when you need to print multiple images per page with meta data.
Quote
Bizarrely, you recall a saved layout by going through the Custom page size functionality which I find very unintuitive.  
Think about it, when you recall the layout, that is for editing it. By Recalling via Custom you avoid messing up the layout.
Quote
Bottom line, the functionality I wanted appears to be available in Qimage so Kudos to Mike for providing this capability.
Yes, Mike does a great job. This functionality is not new to QU, it's been there for several years. I think it would b difficult to find any printing software that  has the functionality of QU  Cool
Terry
« Last Edit: June 28, 2017, 06:29:41 PM by Terry-M » Logged
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