Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I am trying once again to print a large format print.  This time 17" x 216".  I have verified that I have enough memory on my computer with Mike.  I have printed this image in the past and have changed nothing since then. 

I am now getting a memory low message and then it closes.  Also I cannot get it to print true borderless.  I don't mean to be glib but this is getting pretty frustrating.  I purchased this program to do precisely this and was told it could do it no problem.  So far it is taking me over 45 minutes to get things half-right to print these images.  By half-right I mean even though I set everything up for borderless, i still get a small margin along the bottom of the page.

Is there a number I can call for customer support?  Is there someone to whom I can email the image and see if they can figure it out.  I am running QI on a MAC with parallels.

I would like to know what printer you are using, and you are welcome to send me the image.
I don't have a Mac, but I should be able to get a borderless image


wathree.ssz@verizon.net

You didn't mention the resolution (size). Will it email?

Fred

A little more information might enable someone to help. What model printer? What version printer driver? Often these small discrepencies are caused by the printer driver, and how it is set up. The fact that it's on a Mac could add other variables too. And any other problems besides the sliver of margin at the bottom? How wide is the unwanted margin? Could be just that you have "INFO" set for the print.  What is the size of the print shown on the main page above the preview? Often a screen capture of the main page can help someone diagnose your problem, which, 98% of the time, is that something is set wrong. Qimage has a LOT of adjustments, so that it can do a lot of things (ie, very large prints), but every one has to be set right. Once it's working, saving a job is the way I make sure I can reproduce previous successes!!
Don't give up yet. Fred or Terry can probably help.

Jeff Jessee

Thanks Jeff  I guess its just frustrating because nothing has changed since I last printed.  Now it is telling me there is a memory error.  Admittedly I am not a computer guy but it doesn't seem like if nothing changes then the result should be any different.

Fred I use MailBigFile to transfer my images due to their size.  I will send it to you.  Thanks for taking a look.  I'd like to stick with QI due to its low cost more than anything but I need to have re-producable results.  I will learn how to take screen shots and get a couple posted.

Thanks

So far no sign of the file.
I use YOUSENDIT which is probably the same type of service.

Again just to be sure, my email is wathree.ssz@verizon.net

Fred

Hey Fred you should have it now.  I am also going to have another 4GB of RAM installed on the computer.  This will give QI 4GB to work with instead of 2GB.  Not sure how big a difference this makes but I need it for another application anyway.

Thanks for taking a look

Thanks, BJ.
I downloaded the file and am about to set it up, but it would be very helpful if I knew what printer you were using.
It is just a tick shy of a Gigabyte in size.

While waiting for your reply on what printer you have, I made a setup using an Epson 4880, and had no trouble at all.
I am going to take a wild guess on your problem, until I hear from you.
In the driver, if you select Roll Paper, Banner mode, you will get a border even with Borderless checked.
If you look at the choices, you will also see Roll paper, Borderless mode.  Problem gone.
That of course is an Epson 4880.
That's why I need to know your printer make and model.
Fred

okay I am using an Epson 4880.  Let me give that a quick try and see what happens

A 4880? Really?

Folks will think this was a set-up.   :) ;D

I just selected the first 17" wide printer in mt stash.

I saved it as a JOB. So I can get it back on my screen in a second.
If you need screen snaps, I can show what you need.

Fred

i guess that might help.  I have tried the roll paper borderless election in the driver dialog.  I set a paper size of 17" x 218".  And then made the print size the 17" x 216" that I need.

It still shows a small margin along the bottom of the page.  For kicks I also tried Borderless in the Custom Fit dialog box as well as fit to page which still resulted in a border along the bottom.

On a 4800, at least, borderless on roll paper only applies to the width of the paper. You get borderless on the length of the print by cutting it manually after you print???

Jeff

yeah that's no problem.  I just did it Fred's way and the border along the bottom is very small.  It would be better if this went away but probably not a deal breaker if it won't.  It does show in the preview though.  I printed a smaller backdrop with this method. 

I tried printing the bigger one I uploaded to Fred but it is now telling me that there is not enough storage capacity for the job.  This confuses me as I have previously printed an image 55 feet long through QI and it worked just fine.  I wonder if my RAM upgrade will help with this? 

I show .01 inches of space at the bottom of the print, the 17" size
Is that what you get? If so, .01 of an inch shouldn't be a deal breaker.
On the other hand, see screen snaps.
Maybe increasing expansion in the driver might help, and MAKE SURE you did not disable expansion in Qimage.

Fred

The file you sent me was 64800 x 5100 pixels at 300 PPI.
That's huger than huge! Far more resolution than you needed.

The 55 foot long print must have been a far lower resolution number.
Fred

yeah it must have been.  I have been having issues understanding resolution to be quite honest.  This business has been a real learning experience.  Which is nice but sometimes I am in a bit too deep.

So, the image is at 250 ppi.  At this size it comes out very sharp. Would 200 ppi be better and more manageable or am I on the wrong track?  Is it the number of pixels that makes the difference?

I know I can reduce the pixels in the image which according to photoshop reduces the size ( I also understand the stated photoshop size is kind of meaningless). So is there a certain number of pixels per foot that I should look at? I.E. one foot should be 1200 pixels or whatever it is?

Is there a digital imaging for dumbies?  I feel like I am wandering in the dark sometimes.

Working in reverse.
There is no book that I know of, but what you need is right here on the forum with many people with a lot of knowledge at your service.
Just start over in your mind. There are no pixels per inch (ppi) until the print is ready to print.
So all you need is the knowledge from experienced Qimage users and large print people that you will be fine, and have a beautiful output at 200 ppi; not being able to see any difference between this print and the 300 ppi.
So you redo your file to 200 ppi x 218   and 200 ppi x 17, and you will get a TIF of about 444.7 megabytes. Far more manageable!
Qimage is going to have to interpolate the file to the native requirement of the printer driver anyway.
So you let Qimage do it's thing.

PPI is nothing more than dividing the print width into the pixels    64800 divided by 216 inches is 300 ppi
Each one of those 64800 number is a pixel of the horizontal of the image. So you can see, dividing them up into 216 inches, will leave 300 pixels in each inch.

You have my email address. If you feel that you have some specific question which I can help answer and perhaps use screen snaps to advantage, please email. 
We are restricted on the attachments to the forum messages.

If you are in the US or Canada, I can call you and we can work live, that way.
Fred

Okay got it printed at 200 ppi and you're right it looks just as good.

I am going to have to look more into that bottom margin.  It is very small so .01" might be what its at for whatever reason.  I will look at it closer tonight.

Thanks for your help I really appreciate the patience.

Make sure you check the overspray expansion settings in the driver.

Glad you are close tp what you wanted.

Fred

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-pixel.htm

thanks for the link, that's a pretty good explanation.

"Backdrop Junction"-

Just looking at your handle, and I'm thinking maybe you are printing backgrounds for model train layouts. Is that the case? If that's what your panoramas are for, you might get by with even less that 2oo ppi. The ppi you need depends a lot on what distance you are viewing the print from. While I try to keep my portraits at 200 or better, in some cases where I had an old, small image to work from, with Qimage interpolation, I have been able to get a decent print from closer to 100 ppi. It won't allow as close an inspection, but from 5 feet away, it looks fine. So depending on your use...of course if 200 solves the memory problem, all it costs is speed.

Glad things are working out, the guys on here are always helpful,
Jeff

Hi Jeff, yeah that's exactly right.  You're right that I can probably get away with less, I guess I just want to have the most detail I can. Kinda figure if I exceed expectations then it beats not meeting them.  I am likely sweating the small stuff.  The forum is pretty good for answers to a lot of my questions.  I am sure I will have more questions in the coming weeks.

Hi Fred,

It has taken some time to re-visit this issue but I am looking into that bottom margin a bit now.  The screen shots on the previous page, how did you get to those.  I know the middle one and did double check that but the one where the margins are defined I cannot find, and also the bottom one.

I did check another page which also talks about margins but I think it is not the one I need.  I also went into Edit-Preferences- and checked that overspray was turned on.

Thanks

Ended up finding everything.  All set the same as yours.  I just did a print with QI and the border was nearly 1/4".  Probably still okay for my use but would be nice to get rid of it.  Will keep fiddling with it.  If business stays good I will likely be upgrading to a 44" printer which will render the point moot on any prints under 44" I guess.

So I am trying tp print another large image using QI. File size is less 701.8MB saved as a Windows style TIFF.  The thumbnail comes up but the image is solid white. Any ideas?

Fred I sent you an email.

Thanks

Dave

So I guess I solved my own problem.  Out of curiosity I opened the file info page for this file and for another larger one I did last week.  The only difference I could find is the problem file had an Alpha Channel.  I don't really know what that is but I am guessing that when I saved the original with the layers still separate, as I was not done working on it, it must have saved differently than normal.  I went in photoshop, re-saved it, unchecking the Alpha Channel's box.  This required saving as a copy for some reason so I did.  And whalla it is now working.

Can anyone shed a little light on this for an uninformed person? 

Oh and I also now seem to be printing borderless.  Not really sure what changed but I'll take it.  Until I undo whatever I don't know I did.

Hi Dave,
As far as I know, Qimage Ultimate now accepts Alpha channels from saved PS Tiff files.

Here's the quote from Mike's release notes.

TIFF support: Expanded file compatibility supports TIFFs in all flavors: with alpha channels, "per channel" pixel order, Mac byte order, etc.


So you must be screwing up something else in Photo Shop, and once again, blaming Qimage Ultimate.

Just for the record, unless you are swapping heads between the people in your photo, or placing a fake moon in the sky for effect, why do you keep shooting yourself in the foot?
You can make a beautiful print with far less injuries to yourself, less hair pulling, etc, if you would practice using Qimage Ultimate properly.

Fred

Hi Fred,

Thanks for the response.  Sometimes frustration gets the better of us and we lash out at the easy target.  In this case a defenseless computer program.  I will try to be nicer in my moments of stupidity.

So in the name of learning something here.  I read the part about Alpha Channels so I guess I had something else wrong.  However, while removing the alpha channel I must have also fixed the underlying problem.  Don't know what was different other than this image had originally been saved in layers while I was still working on it.

I know you have asked me a few times why not just use QI for all my process thereby solving some of my problems.  So here is what I do.  From what I have seen QI cannot do all the things I need.  I have watched most of the tutorials that seemed to apply to my process but I could be wrong on this count. 

I make backgrounds for model railroads.  They are usually quite long with the longest being 55 feet but I hope to do longer. (This is where QI was meant to be used and has with some user error been successful.)  The process starts as any pano would.  I take a series of images across my scene with overlap on each frame, usually about 20%.  I then take these images into Photoshop and use the stitching functions to put them together.  Then there is some cropping to get a rectangular shape.  After that I have to worry about the scale of the objects appearing in the image.  For example, a car is usually about 4-5 feet tall.  Well, if that car appears ten feet tall relative to my customer's trains or other scenery its just not going to work.  So, using the ruler tool in photoshop I adjust the overall size of the image until that car appears the proper scale height.  As everything is generally about the same distance, if I scale one element of the image then all elements change proportionally.   Scale is very important to my customers, an object can appear smaller than scale, suggesting a depth to the image, but never bigger.

Normally this is end of the process.  I now have a scaled backdrop and an enlargement size that results in the equivalent scale.  Thus I know that at 17" x 72" the objects in said image will be to the scale desired.  Sometimes, like yesterday, a client wants more than one image put together and merged.  I can usually do this using the clone stamp and some creative editing.  Often it also results in completely removing  one or both skies and replacing them with another as the shade for each sky is unlikely to match.  Easily done with a smooth horizon but when branches stick up into the sky it becomes a lot more tricky.  Usually these branches get some creative pruning.  Finally when all this is done and the image is the size my customer needs I can flatten it, save it, and print it.

There is likely a better way to do what I am trying but I have not found it yet.  It may well be that QI can do all these things for me but it is tough to change from what one knows.  If it can and it will improve my process I will spend the time learning to do it.  I have invested a lot of time and money in this little business and it may actually show a payoff.  I am actually purchasing an Epson 9900 this week in order to make taller backgrounds and the 4880 can only go to 17".

As far as QI goes it is a good program, even if I do get a bit frustrated with it.  I use it a lot for another side of my business, making small kits of buildings and stuff for cutting out.  QI places these image on the roll paper very efficiently and saves me a lot of paper.  I also use it to print wedding photos for a couple of local photographers.  Works great for this again although they have done their own color corrections and stuff.  I just tell it what size to print their images.  In fact after showing another friend how easy the program was for printing wedding images and similar I think he has been convinced to buy a copy. 

Thanks, Dave.
That's exactly what I was saying.
If you need to stitch together, or replace skies etc, then you are using the right product, Photo Shop.
I was referring to sizing of the image and cropping to fit the print size your customer orders.

Anyway, all OK.

Fred

So re-reading this and some other threads and taking some time to watch the tutorials again I have a couple questions.  One I think I know the answer to already but want to check.  As you know by reading this thread I print some very long images and have experienced some issues seemingly related to file size.  When I adjust the image size in photoshop (I know thats not the actual fact of whats happening) it also changes the size of the file itself.  If I do all my scaling in photoshop, write down what print size equates to the scale I need, and save the original un-enlarged version, this results in a smaller file size.  It seems like I can then take that smaller sized file and use QI to handle my enlarging.  This seems like it would avoid the issues I was causing myself earlier.  Is this an accurate understanding?

Second, I have just purchased an Epson 9900 so I may print backdrops up to 44" in height.  From earlier explanations I am assuming that 200 ppi will still work just fine while keeping file size manageable.  That would be great. 

I am also wondering if more RAM would make any difference in the functioning of the program. So far it has not turned out that RAM was ever my issue in the first place and I think I have seen threads where Mike said it doesn't always make much of a difference.

Thanks

I'm not sure if I follow the workflow you describe, but it sounds like you are going to have multiple interpolations.
After the stitching process, you do end up with a file? Right?
I don't know the file size, but if you can open that in Qimage, then set your print size, like 40" x 72", and let Qimage Ultimate interpolate one time to get the 360 ppi native input for the 9900.

If you want to sharpen or make lighter, darker, more/less contrast/saturation, etc you can do all that before printing which is saved as a filter in Qimage.
... and yes, 200 ppi is plenty for your prints.

Fred

Hi Fred.  Thanks for the info.  I think we are saying the same thing but you're saying it better.  I guess my goal is to have one basic copy of an image just like any other photographer, and from that image be able to enlarge it to whatever dimension I need.  In my case what one client may want as 17" x 72", another client may want as 36" by 400", or wherever the math works out.

I had previously believed that in order to do that I would have to save multiple versions of the same picture at each size increment required.  This uses memory on my computer and using Photoshop at least saving a file at 36" x 400" makes for a huge file.  But if I can simply take that same file and use QI to set the print size to whatever I need it saves some of the frustration I have been causing myself. 

Oh, yes I do get a file.  I generally just save it as an IBM TIFF if I intend to use QI for the print job.  JPEG would be nice but Mike mentioned that over a certain file size JPEG does not work.  Although from what you said previous the type of TIFF no longer matters so that's easier.
Thanks