Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi guys,

I work for a small gallery in Australia. We recently downloaded the trial on Qimage and have been very impressed.
Last week I made some contact sheets with all the images we have on file to display in flipbook folders in the shop. They were saved as JPEG files at A3 size.

We print on an Epson 9900. I loaded 61cm paper in the printer. I made sure the paper size in Qimage 61cm across. I put 4 pages onto print, and it placed them perfectly on the paper. There was a 5mm space around the images and the edge of the paper.

When we printed them, there was a mistake the was 6cm in from the left hand side and went down the entire image. See below. This has happened once before when we did a test on a small canvas print. Does anyone know why this is happening?

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40077894/1.jpeg)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40077894/2.JPG)

My first guess would be not enough memory in pc allocated to qimage or page/swap file. My second would be network or cable problems. I expect others may help if you can give details of operating system, etc.

Best wishes,

Ray

I just went Help -> Analyze settings.

It says I have negative page margins. I did what it says and cleared all margin to zero.

Can someone help me understand the 'Fixed' margin of 2.963. My additional margin is set to -2.963, making total margin 0. Is this ok?

I just reprinted the same images with no problems.

I would still like to know if anyone else has had this happen, if so what may have likely caused it.


Where can I find/change this?

Hi "Artscape",
Welcome to the forum.
I'm not absolutely clear what you mean from the images you have shown. I can see a corner crop mark on the second image which is, it seems, a few mm from the edge of the paper - is that what you mean - or ....
In your second image, the print MG_6050.tif has a a rectangular section, top left, that is off-set. Is that what you are referring too as a "mistake"?
If so, that may be a spooling problem (hence Ray's comments) so changing the spooling options in Edit Preferences, Printing Options may help. I can't comment any further on that so hopefully someone else can.

Negative margins are not recommended, set additional margins to zero in edit preferences, page formatting.
The "fixed margin" is the the area of the page that is outside the printable area. The dimensions shown above the page preview (main screen) show the printable area and resolution as reported from the driver.
You mentioned using 61cm wide paper and a ("paper") page width of 61cm; you will not get a 61cm printable width unless borderless mode is used.
I suggest you watch the learning video on this subject "Paper Size and Printable Area" and all will be revealed  ;)
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=gMzUxDP_JwM&vq=hd720

I hope that is of some help.  :-\
Terry

I would love to help if I can.
But I am not able to understand as well as Terry and Ray what you are doing.


There doesn't appear to be 61 cm or 610 mm sheets offered. Do we assume you have roll paper?
If so what size page did you define?
61 cm wide = 24.0157 inches.   For the moment, I will assume you have a 24" roll, and set the width to 61 cm.

610 mm wide gives you 604 mm of printable area, unless you set borderless. Did you set borderless?


I don't understand this either.  Did you want to make prints that are A3 size?   


How long was the paper you described to the driver?

I would need more information to try to assist. See my attached screen snap. 

Fred

Thanks for the responses guys.

To clear a few things up:
- we are using roll paper - in this case 61cm wide
- margins have been set back to default, so not negative
- I made the 'contact sheets'/images in ifranview and saved them to A3 size, so in qimage i just printed at original size. This fits 2 images side-by-side on the 61cm roll paper.

We have just printed several long sheets of these images, and have noticed it has happened again to some of them, but not all.

Spooling is set to 'Spool all pages at once', format "EMF - Fast Printing"
Should this be changed to RAW - large image?

Here are two screenshots, the second showing the wrong area hightlighted.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40077894/example.JPG)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40077894/example2.jpg)

Possibly not related to the problem but why do this with Irfanview when Qimage s specifically designed to do such things easily!

I've just checked the Help on this which says;
"Trouble that includes an error message could indicate problems with corrupted images or memory: see above. Trouble like partial prints, not all prints printing, blank pages, or anything that deals with missing information in prints (with no error message) is usually related to a data bottleneck in the operating system. Due to its print optimization, Qimage sends more data to your printer than most software, so you may or may not see issues with other software while at the same time experiencing trouble with Qimage. The suggestions below will help eliminate printing problems caused by improper Windows configuration:
In Qimage, click "Edit", "Preferences", "Printing Options" and set the spool "Format" to "Raw - Large Prints".
If your printer is on a network and has a print queue, make sure that the queue size limit is large enough to accommodate the data being sent by Qimage.
If problems are still present, try increasing your Windows virtual memory to at least 2 GB."
It sounds as though your Irfanview images could be large and therefore the the problem related to the above Help information. Try setting to raw.

Next time, save yourself time and problems, use Qimage to layout the page with individual images.  8)
Terry

I too would love to help, but I am not understanding your information.


The screen shots say TIF

Nothing shows 4 prints side by side as you say in the first quote.

Is that red line something you did or the print?

You should have the print options set to RAW in Qimage. It says RAW for large prints.

Sometimes that helps with large prints missing pieces .

I have most of the print drivers and would like to simulate what you are doing.

Unfortunately, I cannot seem to get a grip on what you are posting.
Fred

Hi Artscape
What is causing confusion is you said "screen shots", if that really is the case then there's a problem with your Irfanview created images, not the printing.
Also, it's actually quite difficult to spot the fault on those images that show on your post.  ::)
I assumed they were in fact photographs of your prints so my post above is relevant and because your "A3" images are probably large in pixel terms, as Fred said, setting the print option to RAW, is likely to solve the problem.

It does not solve the problem of your work flow for these "contact" sheets though. Set a page size of A3 in the driver (from Qimage) and layout the "contacts" in Qimage. Use the Page Editor  to assign files names in Floating text.
If this is a repeating requirement, spend a little time making a template to make the work flow really efficient. There are samples of contact sheet templates in Qimage, for smaller a page sizes, but they'll give you the idea of what can be done.
Terry

Right before you print, check your margins again.  My bet is that your negative margins crept back in either through loading a printer setup or prior job.  If you've got any saved layouts/jobs/setups that have negative margins, you have to fix the negative margins in those saved files, otherwise every time you open them, the negative margins will come back.

Mike