Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I'm new here, so my question my have answered already, but I could not find the answer in this forum.

Currently I'm printing on A-2 size sheets (420 x 594 mm), that have to be trimmed afterwards to fit exactly 400 x 500 mm. This means trimming off 10 mm on both top/bottom sides and 47mm on both left/right sides (or of course 20mm from the bottom and 94mm from right side).

The actual image is A-3 size and is centered on the page/paper.

Is there (in QImage Ultimate) an easy way to print cutting/trimming lines at the exact position of the required trimming?

There are multiple ways to do this and to figure out which one is best, we'd need to know a little more about your workflow.  Do you intend to work with a 400x500mm page and be able to place multiple prints within that area?  Or are you printing one print per page?  What model printer are you using?  One way to do it would be to cut your sheets to 400x500mm first and use a custom 400x500 media size.  Another way to do it would be to pre-print the cut marks for 400x500mm on each sheet first: place one 400x500mm template on the page in IntelliCenter placement mode, turn on corner marks, and print.  Then refeed those sheets that already have the cut marks when you print.  There are other ways to do it as well, but if you can post a screen shot showing the Qimage UI and live view with a typical setup, that might help us guide you to which method to use.

Regards,
Mike

Dear Mike,

Thank you for your very swift and helpfull reply.

I use a CANON ImageProGraf Pro-1000. It does not have a roll-feeder, but works with cut sheets only. I'm preparing an exhibition for my photoclub and that is why all prints have to be 400x500 mm. Only one print (A-3 size) per page, obviously.

Cutting the sheets beforehand would not make much difference: you still have to measure by hand where exactly to trim (I use a Rotatrim Pro M-42).

Your suggestion to print an empty template does do the job, but it has the disadvantage that every sheet has to be feeded twice. So: that almost doubles the time. By the way: corner marks are not printed (on my printer) with an empty template although they do appear on a softproof (is this because they are inside the printed area?), however guidelines are printed OK. But: when cutting the horizontal margin, you also loose the vertical guideline (since guidelines are outside the cutted/trimmed area  :( )

Best regards,

Mees

Any other suggestion?

If you are only printing one (400x500) print per sheet, you should be able to just set the print size to 400x500 and then activate crop or corner marks since they will appear at the edge of the 400x500 print.  If you are printing with auto cropping off so that you get a compatible size based on the image's aspect ratio, you could use Template/Centered placement mode and set your size to 400x500: that will place the cut marks on the 400x500 boundary even if your print inside that has some white space.

Regards,
Mike

Mees

I think trimming the paper to 500 x 400 first would be my choice, it is easy to set up some sort of guide for the trimmer, and you will always have to trim the prints anyway.

Brian P

I would never cut the sheets to the size of the print page you need in the end.  I would use Corner Marks + 0.5mm white Border+ width added to the border width you already will add or not add. After the print is made cut just within the Corner Marks, you will have two short lines remaining up to the last cut to be made. If the cut print edges fall behind the frame or matte in the end you can even forget the additional 0.5mm and cut on the Corner Mark lines themselves.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst Dinkla

https://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken

Ernst, the problem is with uneven borders, 10mm top and bottom and 47mm on each side. I agree that trimming first is undesirable, but in this case I think it may be the best way.

Brian

Alright, my usual workflow is then adding white canvas to all the images in Photoshop with an action. Only to fill up the 37mm at both sides to keep the file size acceptable, 100% JPGs will not grow much then. The 10,5mm border all around added in Qimage Ultimate. Usually  I do not encounter such wide border differences though.

To create unequal borders in printing  in QU is a longer path in my experience. Although Print to File could do something similar automatically too and use the output of that for the print run. Make a print page of 400,5x500,5 mm, print size A3 centrally. Corner marks added later in the print run. Keep an eye on the assigned color spaces though, they may differ as the files are from different sources. I would probably go for the paper profile added in Print to File and have the print run without CM done to avoid double profiling faults.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst Dinkla

https://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken

Thank you all for the tips and answers. I've tried them and they were helpfull. I now understand better how all this can be achieved. But they all have disadvantages: you either almost double the required time (sheet has to be fed twice through the printer) or you have to process the image in PS.

Imho the most convenient way would  be to have in QI the possibility to manually place "guides" (like in Photoshop) to the page/paper. These guides should then also have the option to be printable in full, dotted, coloured, corners only or not at all. And of course: when printed in full, they should not go "over" the image(-s).

Is this anything I can put forward as a request? Because I'm sure many other people encountered this "problem" (and dealed with it by manually placing marks with a pen and ruler).

I think it will not be faster or more reliable if compared to the already existing QU uneven border feature which I find not fast enough. There is a learning video for that one.

If QU had a Canvas like feature in the Image Editor or added to the High Precision Cropping Tool, more or less a crop window that goes over the image size edges then I would favor that. It could be made without actually changing the image file and even on the fly working when added to the HPCT feature. Saved as a filter you can add that 'negative crop' to all the images.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst Dinkla

https://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken

I'm not understanding why you'd need Photoshop for this.  Why wouldn't you just use Edit, Preferences, Print and Page Formatting, Page Margins in Qimage, and enter the margins on each side to give you a 400x500mm printable area in the middle of the paper?  Then when sizing your prints, use "Fit to Page" size because you've made your "page" 400x500mm.  There are a lot of easy ways to do this in Qimage, none of which require Photoshop.  My suggestion to cut the sheets first only applies if you are trying to batch print multiple prints on an "off size" page.  If we're only talking one print per page, it's a lot easier.

Mike

I think the problem with this is that the print size is 297 x 420 mm, not 400 x 500. You can't place a print that size in a 400 x 500mm page and get the corner marks at 400 x 500.
As this is a limited number of prints using canvas size in a photoshop action may be a better solution.

Brian

There are two methods for doing that.  The easiest is as follows:

(1) Click the placement button below the live view and select "Template/Centered".
(2) Add your 297 x 400 print.
(3) Under the print sizes on the right, click "Set as the new working size".
(4) Then in the print sizes, select 400 x 500 as the new working size.
(5) Under Cut Marks, select "Mark Corners".

You'll get a 297 x 400 print inside a 400 x 500 template.  The cut marks will appear at the 400 x 500 size in Template/Centered mode.

Regards,
Mike

I appreciate all suggestions (thank you for this lively discussion), but at the same time: to me (being a newbie here) it is (more than) a tad confusing. So please: excuse me for asking stupid questions (and being a bit blunt), but back to square 1 please. I consider Mike's latest addition as such.

My image (in Photoshop) has dimensions of 4961 x3508. It is cropped in Photoshop to exactly 420 x 297 mm (A3 at 300 ppi). This is saved as a jpg. I now open QI and select A2 as media size (in the Printers and Settings tab). I select as per Mike suggestion (1) : "template/centered"; my screen is now as in Screenshot 1.

What setting should be used to "Add your 297 x400 print"? If I use "original size", I get Screenshot 2. All of a sudden the actual image is now 294 x 210 (A4) size @ 424ppi, but it has a red line around it at A3 size. What am I doing wrong???

Nevertheless: I set this as "Set this as the new working space". Where do I choose 400 x 500 as the "new working space"? As you can notice in  screenshot 2, this is not available. Should I go under "Custom" or where?

Although I selected "Corner Marks" (I can't find "Mark Corners"), in a soft proof, these marks are not visible.

Obviously: I'm missing something (to say the least). Can anyone clear this for me?

Easier to show you... so you can follow along.  So I made a video response.  Watch to the end because I also show you how to add 420x297 and 400x500 as sizes in your print size list later in the video to make things really easy.

https://youtu.be/WtsT-E1AwMU

Regards,
Mike

Dear Mike,

Thank you very much for this video. What an magnificient service you deliver to someone who only uses your program since a couple of months.  I'll spread the word as much as I can. By the way: I was pointed to QImage by watching video's of Jose Rodriguez and Rusty Nelson, so a big thank you to them as well.

Your video explains everything very clearly. I could copy every of your actions on my own computer and yes : it works fine.

However: still a few questions remain:

• Guide lines, guide borders, crop marks do appear on the (edges of the) newly set working space (400 x 500) as shown in your video. But corner marks do not appear on the edges of the workingspace, but on the edges of the actual image (297x420).
  
• When I activate "Center on Physical page"(under Edit -> Preferences -> Print and Page formatting -> Page margins),  guide lines, guide borders, crop marks are a bit off the newly set working space. Corner marks are still on the actual image, like before. Am I overlooking something or did I (by accident) stumble upon a bug?
• In this case: will the image itself now be centered on the physical page, inside the working space or within the guide lines?

Once again: thank you helping me this far. Looking forward to any answer to my last questions.

Best regards from The Netherlands,

Mees

I don't understand why the corner marks would appear on the print.  I was able to get the Pro-1000 print preview to work: I had the port set to FILE and when I set it to USB, I can get a print preview.  See attached: it places the corner marks at the template 400x500 location.  For this print preview, I simply ran through the same procedure as the video and then clicked "Print" with the print preview turned on in the driver.  You are not switching out of Template/centered placement, are you?  Also, I assume you are running the latest version?

For Template/centered placement, don't use the "Center on physical page" option because Template/centered placement centers the print on the "page" within the printable area.  Center on physical page centers the print on the "paper" but the template will still be centered within the printable area.  Since the printable area on the Pro-1000 is not quite centered, that will make the print and template not align correctly.  There's no need to use "Center on physical page" in this instance because you are cutting out the 400x500 area.  If you did need to center it on the physical page, you could use Edit, Preferences, Print and Page Formatting, Page Margins, and make the top and bottom margins equal.  Then both the red template (and cut marks) and the print will be centered on the paper itself.

Edit: In thinking about it, when you tried the corner marks, maybe it's possible that you hadn't set the new working size to 400x500.  That's the only way I can get corner marks on the print instead of at the 400x500 template location.

Regards,
Mike

Aaah, you've got me there. I did not go as far as the preview mode, but now I have. I do see the corner marks on my preview and I actually printed this on my Canon Pro-1000.

We're getting closer to the end but are not there quite (yet). The preview looks good, but... the actual size of the corner marks on the physical print is 395x500 mm (although the working size is set to 400x500). So: there is a difference of 5 mm in heigth, but the width is spot on. What could be the cause of this difference in heigth, while the width is exactly right?

You can go into the full page editor and use the measuring tool to measure the distance between the red lines in the template.  I get 400x500 which means that is what Qimage is sending to the driver.  Are you using canvas paper or a fine art paper?  Those shrink along the length (only) once you print on them: that is, in the direction of the paper feed.  You could precisely measure the paper before and after you print on it to see if the paper is shrinking.  If so, you should be able to use the canvas shrink compensation to counter that.

Regards,
Mike

I think that I may have discovered where the problem lies, regarding my last observation (395x500).

When in "Template/centered" mode, corner marks are apparently placed "relative" to the actual image. When that image is moved in the "full page editor", corner marks will also move. So they will no longer mark the outer edges of the working space. Not a problem persé.

However: they will not move further than the margin of the paper (in my printer that is 3 mm) and hence they can loose their exact distance. Some markers can move freely, some cannot. I wonder whether this is intended behaviour.

So when I moved my image by 11,5 mm to the top of the top (long side) of the paper, the corner marks only moved 8.5 mm. And since I had "Snap" set to 1 mm, I effectively lost 5 mm on the top side (and of course none at the bottom side). That left me with 395x500 mm between the corner marks.

Guide lines and crop marks will stay put, even after moving the actual image. So they seem to be placed "absolute" to the working space. Guide borders seem to behave like Corner marks.

Best regards,

Mees

I wish I knew what you are trying to accomplish.  Why move the print at all and create a freehand page when you are just going to cut a 400x500 rectangle?  Template/centered is designed to allow you to create a template or working size to cut with a print centered within that template.  If you start moving your prints, you are no longer in template/centered placement: you are in freehand mode for that page.  As you discovered, there are some cut marks that are designed to be relative to the print and some that stay at the template edges.  That is to allow some versatility in where you actually want the cut marks as this only applies to the template placement modes.  I will likely make the cut marks visible in a future version so that is more obvious.

But if you explain what you are trying to do (why you feel like you have to move the print), I can advise what to do in order to get the end result you want.

Regards,
Mike

I didn't have time until now, but I made a second video response that shows how to do literally any kind of customization you want to place cut marks and prints anywhere you like using layouts.  I figured if you want to go beyond the usual "easy mode", it's time to graduate to layouts.  :)

https://youtu.be/Fu7VlTia_JU

Regards,
Mike

Dear Mike

Once again an example of outstanding service. And yes: we arrived at the end of this rather long journey. So far I never suspected that one could place templates on top of each other and then move them together. This is a really nice feature.

The second (smaller) template can be placed anywhere (not only centered) inside/on top of the larger template, I found out. And that is exactly what I wanted. My photoclub exposition has been work in progress, so I now decided that inside the 400 x 500 frame, the actual picture has to have 40 mm of margin at the top and both left and right sides. At the bottom there is some extra room for the name of the photographer and the club. Corner marks are clearly visible and can be used for easy cutting/trimming. We’re all set now for “production”.

You’ve made my day and one more time: thank you very much.

Mees

Mike

will you be uploading these instructive video's into the help system? Could be helpful.

Mees

I made one final video to show how to deal with uneven borders around the print.  This video shows how you can edit all 4 borders around the print to be anything you like:

https://youtu.be/qKgL6eFVgl0

Mike

Great work and thanks again!!