Hello

I'm finding Qimage to be very good - although the interface takes some getting used to. One thing I am not clear in my mind about is the following situation.

I have my page set up as landscape. I add a 5x7 that is also shown as landscape. Now I add a photo, which should be in portrait format. Qimage changes the orientation to landscape, which is fine.

Now, however, I want to rotate the photo by 90 deg so that it is orientated the correct way and clearly it will need to be cropped (a lot) to do this. I have crop on - but when I rotate it, it does not crop. What I have is a FULL portrait photo in landscape format (I want it cropped but no cropping occurs).

I can go into edit page and rotate it there and it does what I want i.e. rotate AND crop. Why does the step above not work directly i.e. when I have crop on and rotate it - it crops? Could someone explain the logic here?

Another thing I find a bit odd is the "Edit" menu, which only contains two options (undo) + preferences. I find myself using preferences quite a lot (there are lots of useful options), but I have to go through 2 menu choices to get there. It seems strange to bury all those options - why not put all of them directly under the edit menu?

Anyway, the more I get into Qimage the more I appreciate the capability, but some things remain elusive!

Thanks

David

Printer: Canon inkjet Pixma 5300
Page size (A4) 11.376 x 8 in (landscape)
Autocrop: on

The print orientation lock is useful. So if I use that and add a print it remains portrait (what I want), but it is NOT cropped (big gaps either side). I must be missing something, but I thought with auto crop on it would crop the portrait photo to fit a landscape template? Once I've added a photo like that, how do I crop it to fill the landscape frame? See attached photo where I want to crop the portrait photo to fill the red frame...

The menu cheater is useful, but it still seems be be a strange organisation of menu items.

Thanks
David

OK. I see what you are doing, using Template Centred position - that will fit the image within the template.
Just use plain Centre Print Placement
Set the orientation lock off
Add the image to the queue and then open the page editor - crop tab
Tick the rotation box under the zoo slider and adjust the crop as required
Right mouse click the image and set the rotation to be as required.
See screen shot attached

Terry

David,
I am filling in for a moment for Terry.
He emailed me that he had to go out for a while.

Let's sort some things out.   (Leave auto crop on for the moment. Leave it on as a default) Set Print size to 5 x 7.

Image editor is the place you do image cropping. You draw the box to artistically crop the image.
If you want to crop to a particular size, you simply make sure there is a checkmark in CROP LOCK  (If auto crop is on, the checkmark will be there in CROP LOCK)
Now any crop you draw with the mouse will maintain the 5 x 7 ratio.

Now when you print that image at 5 x 7 or 10 x 14 or.... everything within your crop will always be there.

Let's change the scenario.
Let's say the image needs to be cropped, but you want to crop what you want to crop, and you will decide on the print size later.
Uncheck Crop Lock!

Let's say now, you want to print the last example at 5 x 7, but now the crop is a different shape, or proportion.
You simply select 5 x 7 as your print size like you did above, and with auto crop on, you get a 5 x 7.
If you turn off auto crop, you get whatever you made with your artistic crop.

So you must have autocrop on to fill out your 5 x 7 request.

Change the scenario again!
All is fine so far except, the auro crop cut off the top of a head.

Time to go into Page Editor and use what Terry suggested.... in Cropping Tab, use the mouse hand on the smaller image, upper right, and slide it so the head is not cut off anymore.

The next thought is how and why and when do you use Print Cropping as opposed to image cropping.

Suppose you wanted to make 8 x 10, and some 5 x 7s, and some 4 x 6.... of the same image.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier for you to use Print Cropping?   
Don't crop the image unless there's junk in it that you just want out,   instead place the image into the queue with print size set at 8 x 10.   Go to Print edit in the Page editor, and slide the image and zoom the image to exactly what you want to print.
OK time for a 5 x 7.   Tell Qimage to make a 5 x 7. Add your image, go to Page editor and using the zoom bar and the hand, move the image in the box to exactly what you want to print.
Same exercise for the 4 x 6.

Now here's the answer to your next question that you were going to ask.

What happens if I want to make more 5 x 7s. How would I make them exactly as I did last week if the image wasn't cropped?
Qimage is so smart that if it sees that image in the queue and it sees 5 x 7 again, it will apply that same crop.
Even easier, is to click FILE, open Automated job log and find the last time you made that 5 x 7 in Print Log. Open that, and it all returns as it was including the Print Crop.

Here's some of your answer....
Fred

You might have missed this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pgHp45B1QXo&vq=hd720

Fred

David,
Coming back to a point you raised earlier in Reply #5:
I think the orientation lock is what it says on the can: a portrait image will remain as a portrait print when the lock is on whatever you do with a rotation control. Leave it off for complete freedom.
With the lock off, you can rotate to landscape from the page preview in Print Properties.

Another approach is to crop the portrait image in the image editor. It needn't be too precise as long as the area you want to print is inside the crop and the horizontal size is larger than the vertical size. The print crop will set the precision although the Crop Wizard in the image editor can do that too.
Using this method with the Orientation Lock on, you'll get a Landscape print on the page.
See attached screen shot of Image Editor view, note the read-out of pixels size and aspect ratio.
Terry