Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I am creating vertical strips of, say, six prints. Today's was about 40cms by 10cms.

Several of the images have a white line between them which is around 1 mm deep.

I cannot see this when I do either an HQ preview or a Soft Proof. Why?

Yes I could slightly overlay one print over the other, but that sounds too unscientific an approach to be using around here!!!

Is there a better way of safeguarding it does not happen again?

Tony

Hi Tony,
If your page size is large, it may not show, only guessing!
First check you haven't got a border set accidently.
Second, go to the Page Editor, select say, the left hand image, use CTRL right arrow to ensure it is exactly butting to the adjacent one. Then go through the remainder using CTRL arrow to butt the others.
Terry

Thanks Terry,

Page siz is A3+ so I guess that should show it.

And, yes, I do the control joggle to the left and right to get the column straight.

And control up and down to get the closeness.

Ah well. We'll have to wait for the others to respond.

Tony

Terry,
You might want to ask Tony if he has any borders turned on in white.
That shows up as a space between smaller prints.

Fred

Tony,
Can you give more info so I can try to simulate/emulate what you are doing?

A few screen snaps of the main screen  (placement selection, print size, printable area size) and some of the Page editor showing the placement, page orientation, and the gap.
Fred

Will do Fred.

I've got another question about templates - but let's see if we/you can spot where these lines are coming from.

Bye for a mo (bought the new Ricoh GR on Wednesday and still absorbing the manual - it's a cracker and has a much larger sensor than the old ones had).

Tony

Just looked it up. That's quite a glowing review....  Large sensor and a sharp lens...

Good luck with it.
Fred

Hi Fred,

Sorry about the delay. Got too involved in taking photographs and consequently less time on the PC.

My screen shots were too large to attach here. I think the titles explain them.

http://www.tonygamble.org/proofs1/full%20page%20editor.jpg
http://www.tonygamble.org/proofs1/hq%20preview.jpg
http://www.tonygamble.org/proofs1/main.jpg
http://www.tonygamble.org/proofs1/printer%20properties.jpg
http://www.tonygamble.org/proofs1/soft%20proof.jpg
http://www.tonygamble.org/proofs1/_1590344.jpg

Maybe they will give you  a clue.

Out for an hour.

Bye for now.

Tony

Sorry, Tony.
There are random size images on the page. The one that is selected is 4" x 3". The others are different sizes. I can only see the 00 borders for that image. I cannot tell what is set for the other images. 
So I cannot add up the sizes either since they are all different, unless you want to report the size of the images.
Did you size by hand or by Print Properties. 
It looks like you just need to move that bottom image up by using CTRL UP ARROW as Terry said.

What would work is either a step by step description of what you did from opening Qimage to the point you are now, or best bet is a video for me...
(I have sent you a number of HOW TO videos in the past)... Can I see one from you? That would make it easy peasy.

Fred

Thanks Fred,

Firstly I am working in metric.

For my notice board I need two columns of images that are 10 cms wide and 60 deep. I cannot get a 60 cms column out of my A3+ paper so I am working with two columns - 20 cms and 40 cms. If the resultant column is not exactly 60cms it does not matter. The one I did on Friday came out closer to 70 cms when I taped together the two shorter components.

What is critical is that all the prints making up the column are 10cms wide.

I have a mixture of horizontal (10 by 7.5) and vertical (10 by 15) shots.

I go through my selection and I put all the verticals on my two sheets of A3+ and I make sure each one is 10cms by 15 cms.

I then go through my horizontals and add them to the A3+ sheets and make each one 10 cms by 7.5 cms.

I then move them around in Freehand mode so I can build up my four columns. I make sure they align vertically by using the Ctr Left/Right cursor.

I then move them up and down so that the top of one image is abutting the bottom of the one above. You will see in my screen shots that they do.
I use Ctl Up and down to get them to abut perfectly - or so I think

The soft proof and the HQ proof confirm there are no gaps - and yet they occure in my print.

I have looked in the Print Queue and every shot is either 100x75 or 100x150 in mms.

The bottom image was not intended to fit under the man in the red sweater. I agree that I could have pushed up with the CTR Up arrow but I left it as a stray as I wanted to use it on another column and sellotape was quicker than moving it to another sheet.

On my screen shots it might suggest that the image of the lady (above the man in red) is the rogue image in that it has white at the top and bottom. But it looks normal in the queue so I am a bit stuck as what to look at next.

Does this help? I don't mind doing a video but there will be a learning curve there first.

Tony

OK That's fine... If I get messed up in metric, I can call Terry. :) :D

First question:
I get a printable area of 323 x 477 mms.
You show, 324 x 474 mms.  WHY?
I have Super A3 or A3+... according to DPreview, both the same size paper.
Why is the size different.
Have a look in the driver screen to see if it is making any changes.
See Snap attached

OK See my attached screen snap.
This took 3 minutes....
I am stopping here so I don't go too far astray.
Other than I made two columns so far, and the fact that you didn't mention how many prints to add, HOW DOES IT LOOK?

Prints 75mm wide and 100 mm tall if portrait orientation.
Horizontals are 100 mm wide and 75mm tall

Let me know what is missing and how  many prints and columns.

Fred

Thanks Fred,

Reply One is suggesting I look at the Print Driver. OK, I'll do that first thing tomorrow.

Reply Two. No the idea is as per my screen shots. The column should have a constant width, namely 100 mm and the height of each image should vary so that the vertical is 150 mm and the landscape is 75 mm. That was what was happening in the screen shots I posted - not images that had varied widths.

But allowing for that difference of approach my screens look the same as yours. My problem is that when I make a print I get the occasional white line between images - not every time, just ocasionally.

I'll look at the Printer Driver and report back tomorrow.

OK, here they are at 150mm tall and 100mm wide.
No problem again!!

Fred

Great Fred,

I can do that.

Mine have gaps between several of the images when I print them.

I am trying to find out why.

Tony

I am making a SUPER A3+ print right now... of course on the R 2000, but if it prints fine here, then we check your driver settings
See why you get a different printable area. same paper.

Fred
Should have the report in 5 minutes

Perfect print from the R 2000
No gaps, and I actually used a 13 x 19 sheet.
The measurements are identical WRT printable area and paper size, and all of your specs.
There is no problem that I can detect at the moment.

See if your driver is "optimizing" something.

Fred

Will do.

Thnks

If you used Ctrl-up and Ctrl-down to butt the prints against each other, the prints themselves will be exactly aligned down to the individual printer dot (so imperial/metric will have no effect since it is actually aligning them on the printer canvas).  That means if there's a gap, the gap is coming from the image itself (or a print border but I think you ruled those out).  HQ preview or soft proof isn't high enough resolution to show a gap that tiny so it may not show up on screen views if there is just one line (or a few) of white in the image on the top or bottom.  Take each of the images you are printing and bring them up one by one in the image examiner.  Zoom in a couple times until you can see pixels and then scroll all the way to the top of the image and all the way to the bottom of the image: look to see if there are any white rows of pixels on the top or bottom.  That is the only way you'd get gaps in this scenario: if there are a couple lines (rows) of white pixels at the top/bottom of the actual images.

Mike

Thanks Mike.

Not the solution but a good clue - I think.

I looked at the image of the lady and then realised I was not printing from jpg but from raw. There is no sign of white at the top or bottom of the raw.

I then double clicked on the image on the made up page and I saw my crop lock was ticked and read 99.9 and 74.9. When I had called up the raw image to place it on the page and in the queue I had asked for a 100 by 75 image.

I altered the 99.9 to 74.9 (to 100 by 75) and saved the image. When I called it up again it had returned to 99.9 and 74.9.

My verticals are all showing 99.9 and 149.9.

It is odd (to me anyway) that sometime the 'abut' works and sometimes not.

You may have another suggestion but in the meantime, when I go down to my studio next, I'll try asking for 99.9 by 74.9 images instead of 100 by 75 ones. I'll then stack them into a column and see if that is the cure. I'll let you know what happens - but do let me know if you think I should be trying something else.

To be honest, having seen some shots touching the others and some with a white line I may go for putting a white line in with a border every time. But it would be good to solve the original problem if possible so that we all have more control of the way things print.

Tony

Tony,
I note from you screen shots that you have TWO columns on the page an d the images in one column do not necessarily align to those in the other.
You may have some in the other column that are very close in alignment so when you select an image in one column and use CTRL up or down, it may be aligning to an image in the other column and thus leaving a gap.
When you do CTRL up/down to abut the image, look at the other column and if any doubt do an extra CTRL Up or Down click on the arrow to check. If it does not appear to move, it probably has a minute amount.
Seems like something else is going on, I get precise values from QU! However, this should not affect CTRL up/down alignment.
Where are you setting the size?
Fred asked you to check the driver, no report on that yet!
Terry

Thanks Terry,

I had not thought about the vertical alignment being influenced by the other column.

I can easily shift that. It is simply a matter of trying to get the best use from the paper.

I am entering the image size in the box that appears when you hit the equal sign in the thumbnail. Print properties it is called.

No I have not checked the driver yet. I was focussed on Mike's comments about lines of white pixels.

Back later.

Tony

And the Oscar goes to......................................

(long pause)

Terry Mann.

(long applause).

Yes, it was the left hand column that was fooling the Ctl Up and Down. I removed the two pix from the left and the spare one at the bottom. I pulled the column apart and pushed it back together in Editor mode with the Control keys and I have a perfect print.

I am not totally sure of the way forward now. You say that the second click may be impercetible. It is boring to have to waste a sheet of paper to find out whether it worked. I guess I need to revisit my work flow and maybe keep columns to one a sheet. I am not sure what element of the left hand pair was causing the confusion to the right hand column.

Any thoughts, guys?

But thanks for all the help and ideas so far. Between us we got there.

Off to lunch (UK time Floridans).

Tony

Tony,
I think I found the problem...thanks to Terry
Terry's idea made me try placing all the images out of place to start and then if you use CTRL ARROW, the image that you want to butt to the top stops short as the first alignment marker it sees is the opposite column. If that opposite column image is a skinch (in metric it would be a skournch) lower, and the image aligns with that, you can be off enough to make a small white space.

You would need to hit those keys again, or better yet, manually position the lower images closer to the mate of the abutment image and then CTRL ARROW. This will avoid the image finding an alternate marker.
Pretty sure that's it.
I was able to do it once. I was lucky in that the right side column was off spaced compared to the left.
Since you say it didn't always happen, that makes me even more confident that has to be it!!

Fred

Tony,
There's no need to waste any paper  ::)
I said in my post "if any doubt do an extra CTRL Up or Down click on the arrow to check."
If say you are moving the image up, an extra CTRL Up will either move a the image a small amount to align or move completely out of position. In the latter case, CTRL Down to align perfectly again. It only takes nano seconds to do that  ;)
Nothing in QU is confused, CTRL Up/Down aligns to the NEAREST image boundary on the PAGE. That's the way way it works, how else could it?
Terry

Thanks Terry for realizing that the images in column B were not the same size/alignment.  Now that we know the cause, the solution is as Terry suggested: when working with "odd" sizes that vary by a small amount on the page (and hence will align slightly differently), you should always just click an extra Ctrl-Up to check alignment.  When using Ctrl-Up to align an image to one above it, click Ctrl-Up until it looks like it aligns and then click Ctrl-Up again until you see it jump too high (to where it overlaps the one above it that you were aligning TO).  Then click Ctrl-Down once to ensure it aligns with the bottom of the print it just overlapped.

Obviously the same goes for Ctrl-Left, Ctrl-Right, and Ctrl-Down.  I've always done this "check" even though I don't typically have sizes on the page that vary by a fraction of an inch.  A leftover from the days when I used to adjust carburetors I guess.  ;)  It's a common way to find limits with just about anything.  Dial it in until it just goes over, then dial it back one notch to get it just right.

Mike

Thanks guys. Three posts to read after I got back home.

Terry. You say "Nothing in QU is confused, CTRL Up/Down aligns to the NEAREST image boundary on the PAGE."

Is it not aligning to the FIRST image boundary it finds? :-\

My error was because when I was moving an image up the first boundary it found was on the other column. A second click finds the bottom of the image in the appropriate column which was NEARER when I started but not the FIRST.

Mike suggests doing another Up Click. The lower image will probably overlap the upper one. So a Down Click will refind the bottom of the upper of the two images.

No big deal as we all seem to be in agreement with the solution - but worth noting for those who dig out this thread from the archives sometime in the future. :)

Same thing isn't it? Obviously it applies to the direction you are moving, say,  (in mathematical terms) moving up or down the "Y" axis, it's the nearest regardless of the the "X" position of the boundary.
cough ... so did I  ;)
Anyway, we are very pleased it's sorted  8)

Ah ... I remember then well, twin carbs were fun  ;D
Terry

It seems only fair to report I needed to do another two strips of images today. All 100mm wide and ideally 600mm tall.

I dropped my selected images on some A3+ pages and then moved them around to create the columns. Final positioning was with the Ctl and cursor arrows as suggested above. They worked a treat. Not a single white line between frames. One of my columns was a bit jagged as I must have made a mistake with the CTL Left/Right. But that was no big deal and easily cleaned up with the trimmer.

Thanks again folk.

Tony

Always good to hear that the results were worth the effort.

Thanks to you too for your patience in answering all the questions to make it work.

Fred