Mike Chaney's Tech Corner
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Author Topic: Simple cropping  (Read 11453 times)
info@mystarphoto.com
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« on: March 29, 2022, 09:41:12 PM »

I can't seem to understand how Qimage crops.

We do all our editing outside of Qimage. The only print size we use is "Orignal Size"

I'm trying to print an artwork that has a large white border. The image is 16x20 and the paper size is 16x20. This is not going to be borderless. I know that the printer can't print the entire image when the page size is 16x20. All I want Qimage to do is print the image the way it is sized and let the extra bleed off. Is that what the little crop tool icon on the image means?

Sometimes we get a dialog box that says:

Selected print size is larger than one page.
Do you want prints to span multiple pages?

Answering "Yes" will cause image to be printed across
multiple pages. answering "No" will reduce
print size to fit on a single page


I don't want to do either of these. All I want to do is print the image the way I have it sized and allow the sides of the image that are too large to bleed off the edges.

Isn't there a simple way to set Qimage to not resize the images?

I googled quite a bit before posting here and I can't find a straightforward explanation of how cropping works.
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« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2022, 02:10:11 AM »

The problem here is not the cropping but rather the fact that you've tagged your images as 16x20 and then you are trying to print on a page that cannot print 16x20 inches.  So you are asking the printer to do something it cannot do: print a 16x20 print on 16x20 paper without using borderless.  There is no way for you to specify "borders that don't print" in your 16x20 image so all Qimage knows is that you are trying to print a 16x20 print (when you choose original size) on paper that can only handle, for example, 15.266 x 19.766 inches.

In your case (image defined as 16x20 on a 16x20 media size) the answer is to select "Fit to PAPER" as the size.  This will fit the image onto the physical paper (which is 16x20) and the non-printable margins will simply be ignored.  This is the method that is used to tell Qimage that you want the image to cover the entire physical sheet of paper, knowing that non-printable margins will simply not be printed because the printer cannot physically print there.

Regards,
Mike
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info@mystarphoto.com
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« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2022, 01:18:36 PM »

Thanks for the quick reply Mike.

It was the "Fit to PAPER" wording that was confusing me.  

We do commercial printing on a digital press as well as other types of printers and generally, the printing software does not resize the image. In fact, in the commercial printing world, we always add extra to the border that will be trimmed off. In our world, this is called "bleed".

"Fit" sounds like it will resize the image. We just have to remember what that setting does.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2022, 01:25:32 PM by info@mystarphoto.com » Logged
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« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2022, 05:38:47 PM »

I understand.  Qimage is a printing tool first, so it won't just accept a print size that won't fit on the page, not tell you, and print the wrong size.  This leads to all sorts of issues.  You know what you are doing and operate that way but in general, it is not a good idea to specify a size (either directly or via "original size") and end up with something different.  Other tools allow that and it ends up in surprises.  The majority of the time, people have a photo that they want to be printed at a specific size, they'll enter a size of 16x20 for example, the software accepts it like it is printing a 16x20 and then they'll wonder why they actually got a 15.25 x 19.75 print with some of the image cropped on all four sides.

For you, you're taking care of the bleed manually and you've created an image that includes some amount of bleed that you know won't get printed.  In that case, we have to specify that you are fitting the image to the physical "paper" and you don't care that non-printable areas are getting cropped out of the image.  So "Fit to Paper" is simply a method of telling Qimage that you have done the work manually, the physical paper size is the driving factor, and you know that some of your image is not getting printed on all 4 sides.  Simply put, without borderless you are never printing a 16x20 on 16x20 paper so Qimage will not operate as if you can: no software will print 16x20 on 16x20 non-borderless paper.  What it is actually doing is printing what is allowable (smaller: minus the non-printable margins) after the image is sized (fit) the physical paper.

Regards,
Mike
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