To add to my question...
I understand that qimage needs to know the paper size so that it can start laying things out in the most effective manor but why can't qimage just go off of the 44" roll dimension, then start adding space as needed to fit whatever images that I have and let qimage tell me what my paper size should be.
I thought that was one of the points of the program...to take out all the thought.

Unless I'm totally missing something, if I have
1-30x45, 2 - 20x20s, a 16x16, a 20x30, 3 - 8x10s, 7-5x7s, 2 - 4x6s
now it's up to me to have to do the math to figure out how big the paper is.  if initially set a piece of paper that's too big, then qimage will just start fitting pictures anywhere on that paper rather than trying to cram them to the top and then letting me know how much smaller my paper size actually could be so I don't waste paper.  Again, unless I'm missing something, the easiest way to figure this out without sketching it out by hand would be to go into photoshop, make a 44x100 sheet of paper and start filling up the 44" dimension first and then when I'm done, just crop off the extra space and see what my paper size actually needs to be.  However, if I'm going to need to do that, what do I need qimage for?

I have to imagine that I'm completely wrong and am missing a very basic feature in qimage...or at least I hope that's the case.
I'm totally confused!!

Qimage will do this for you.
You must set the paper size in the driver so what you are attempting to print will fit, or just make it very long...
Place your images in teh queue, and use Optimal or compact placement.
Now right click the large preview panel and select "Remove White Space at bottom of page" (It's about 3/4 down the menu list)

Make your print, and QU will stop printing and call that the end of the page with (I think) an inch to spare.
A pop up will advise you what to do for your next print.

Fred

I tried that but it's still not working.
Here's what I started with...I just picked a bunch of random sizes.



Then I took the suggestion above and this is what it did for me


Then I moved things manually as this is what I expected it to do and wonder why it didn't do this


In both of the automatic ways it's wasting a HUGE amount of paper.  If it's a 44" roll, why is it fitting everything onto half the paper leaving the other half blank?
I also don't understand why the resolution changed from 300x300 to 600x600 when I did that.
I also don't understand why when doing the auto placement does it not align the images in a way that they will be easier to trim by putting like sized images together.  It seems to jumble them all up along with changing the orientation of some of them so even if you have images of like size, it's going to be a pain to trim them because some got turned sideways.

Hmmm...alright.
I must have done something wrong.
I'll try starting over.