Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Mike:
While your test strip function sounds logical, it doesn't work the way I have been used to printing test strips out of photoshop.

I work with an HP Z3100, and usually print from rolls. Sometimes when printing large images I of course would like to print a test strip at the size, but of only a small portion (usually a 3" strip, since this is the minimum width the printer prints. Also, I would like to be able to move the 3" strip to a section of the file that has the most critical detail. I don't see how I can do this with your program. Printing out of PS using the HP driver, all I do is select let say a 3" x 24" piece of paper, and I can move the image to include what I would like the test print of.

Is there some way I can do this with Ultimate, that I am missing? Or is this a function that could be put in a future version?

John Nollendorfs

You just have to put it in test strip mode and then you can enter any size you like:

• Add your print at the actual size you want to print (let's say 24x36).  This tells QU what size the full print will be.
• Click "Edit Page" to go into the full page editor and click on the "Cropping" tab top right
• Click the test strip button (vice icon): this puts it into test strip mode
• Now right click on the print on the full page editor and select "New Size", "Custom", "Specific Size" and enter the size of your test strip (let's say 24x3)
• You can drag the location around in the small cropping window or click the "High Precision Crop" button on the cropping tab to drag the box around there, specifying what portion of the image to print

Note that once you've established your test strip, you can then adjust your page size via the printer driver to make a smaller paper size or reduce the length so you don't have to print a long page on the roll.

So the key is to add the print at the full size so QU knows what size to work with, then click that test strip button.  After that, you can set the size to any (reduced) size you like.  You could choose 2x3 if you like and it'll just be a 2x3 portion of the full image and you can use the high precision crop tool on the cropping tab in the page editor to move that crop around and get any 2x3 chunk you want from any portion of the image.

Regards,
Mike

Ahhhh! Not intuitive on moving the image around, but  now I get it! Thanks Mike!

Great explanation, thanks!

Yeah, I agree.  I'm going to redo that in the future where you can pick "intended size", size of the strip, etc.

Mike