http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u

v2017.108   Nov 7, 2016

Priority: Low

v2017.108 includes UI optimizations and enhancements plus F10 to switch between Live View/Settings tabs.

Mike

Mike, thank you for the UI optimization and the F10.

Peter, snappy enough here, even with multiple images in Live, both on tabs and F10.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
July 2016 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

Tattle tale
Fred

Ernst,

Of course, you are free to use an old version if you like.  In the mean time, we will continue to move forward.  I've received dozens of emails thanking me for the new setup with examples of how it has made workflows much easier, mostly from wide format users, so I'm afraid finding two people who have yet to embrace the new workflow is not an indication that "the old way was better".  The fact that I've gotten so many kudos on the intelligent printer setup actually surprises me since you tend to get more complaints than compliments in this business as most people who like something usually don't offer feedback.

I wish you had elaborated because I would have preferred a long post since I can't make sense of anything you said in your post above.  Here's what I mean:

• Driver access: You still have the same driver access as before.  Click the "properties" button and use the driver to set any settings you like.  If you don't like setting media type or size outside the driver, ignore them and click properties and set them in the driver (as before).  At least primary settings like media type and size are visible without opening the driver.  You also still have the same save/recall functions and even those have been further refined to allow you to show setups for the current printer (if you have more than one printer).
• Speed: The driver properties open the same way as before.  There may be a half second delay for it to open the helper window but I can't imagine any scenario where a half second affects workflow.

Simply put, you have the same features as before and you could use the same workflow as before if you choose to do that.  The only difference is that the important settings like media type and size are duplicated where you can see them without opening the driver and once you've set them up once, you can recall setups by just selecting a paper type.  So maybe the longer post you referred to would clarify your position but as it stands, I can't make any sense of your post above.

Regards,
Mike

Ernst,

Thanks for the breakdown as that helps me to understand how you are using the features.  A few comments:

First on the topic of verification, in your case, you should be using the verification as a "flag" to indicate that you have verified the driver settings: QU wants to know that you know they are correct.  If you change to a new paper type that has not yet been verified and you know the driver settings are correct for that paper type, just click the Properties button and then click "OK" on the driver dialog.  It will then show forever as verified for that media type.  Remember that QU is written for all printer models and most printers will alter driver settings when you change media type.  For example, if you are using a Canon printer and you are on an already-verified media type like semi-gloss where you know you have already set quality to 1 (finest) and turned color management off, and you change the media type to Luster, you'd think that you would just have to change the profile.  In reality, when you change paper type in a Canon driver, the quality is reset to 3 (medium) due to the media type change.  This happens inside the driver and you'll need to click "Properties" and drag the quality slider back up to highest.  Drivers make these changes internally when you change media type primarily because not all media types offer the same options.  Epsons are similar.  If you know that your driver keeps all its settings (or recalls proper ones) when you change media type, you can just click "Properties", "OK" and that tells QU that you have verified the settings.

Your other observations (remove white space choosing a strange size and not working on the PCL3 driver) stem from the fact that the HP Z drivers have some non-standard behavior.  Specifically, the HP Z drivers have no user defined size like every other manufacturer offers!  Every other manufacturer offers either a "Custom" or "User Defined" size as part of the media size list.  HP does not.  Sure, you can create custom sizes inside the driver but they become presets, so there is no actual user size option.  Even though the driver reports DMPAPER_USER (user defined size) to Windows as a valid option, when you use that option (needed to remove white space), the driver instead just picks a preset... presumably one that is the closest to the size you picked.  I wish HP would fix this non-standard behavior and other non-standard behaviors such as requiring that the page length be longer than the width, and no print preview available in the PCL3 driver... but I'm not holding my breath.  I regularly work with Epson 7xxx, 9xxx printers, Canon Pro-1000, Pro-2000, and Pro-4000 printers and none of them have a problem with the remove white space option because they have a user defined size available and they don't make restrictions like the length having to be bigger than the width.  Only HP Z printers have those problems.

Oh, and your observation about the reset button not updating the Live View size is a bug that has been fixed in 109.  I hope to get 109 out today or tomorrow.

I do like your idea of showing the maximum "used page length" on the Live View BTW.

Regards,
Mike

Hello Mike and everybody else.

I just found two bugs on 2017.108:

1) Canvas Mirrored borders using "B+" works fine as long as Qimage doesn't need to rotate the image to fit the paper. When it has to rotate the image it works like "B", including the border in the specified size instead of adding the border to the specified size. I am using metric system in case it matters.

2) Some big, high resolution files that I printed just fine with 2017.104 are no longer usable and display "Image Read Error" on the thumbnail. Reverting to 2017.104 solves the issue, reinstalling the 2017.108 the problem comes back again. A Tiff file with 14173x9411 pixels is the example I have at hand, but I noticed it with some smaller images (but bigger than 80mp).

Thanks.

Edit: The first bug (borders) is intermittent, sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't, I am trying to identify a pattern but without success. The second bug about the high resolution files is constant.

Hello Mike,

Here is what I found so far:

(1) I can't make it happen again, but I am sure it wasn't the case of it reverting to B due to lack of space. There was plenty space left and the only way I managed to make it work was rotating the image previously on Photoshop so Qimage had no need to rotate it. Than it worked just fine, but even after that I managed to replicate the issue with the original file. I can't replicate it anymore because I uninstalled and reinstalled Qimage several times (108 to 104 and back to 108) and the problem disappeared.

(2) Some big images had the "image read error" on the thumbnail on my original installation of the 108 even after rebuilding the thumbs. Reverted to 104 and everything was fine. Went back to 108 and there was the "image read error" again on the same files.  But... when I made it rebuild the thumbs everything was fine again. I can't understand why the 108 was displaying "image read error" the second time before rebuilding the thumbs, but what matters is that it is working now.

I guess something was wrong with my first installation od 2017.108

Thanks for looking at it.