I use both Mirage v3.1 and QImage and I wouldn't be without either. There's no need to choose one or the other. They're quite different in their approach and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
If you're comfortable with QI keep using it, the support from Mike is great.
As always, I'd be interested in your take on what you feel Mirage does that QU cannot do (or does better than QU). I couldn't really see how Mirage could even be used for any reasonable batch printing jobs, but if you have the time, maybe you can set me on a path that I can actually get it to work (or see what you are using it for). Maybe if you give me an example of what you are using Mirage for, I'll see some benefits that I can use to improve QU. Would be great to get some insight from someone who uses both!
Regards,
Mike
QU is great for jobs where a large number of files have to be printed to a uniform size and with standard parameters. Or when we've been supplied with low-resolution images - after a little pre-treatment, I can usually get astonishing results using QU's on-the-fly interpolation and sharpening.
When working from image files that we've produced (we're fine art printers), Mirage handles the very large file sizes (anything from 300Mb to 3Gb) faster and more reliably than QU; setting up individual margins, crop marks etc. is much more straightforward than with QU. Mirage replaces the standard Epson driver, and all the settings you're likely to need are immediately to hand. If you have more than one Epson printer, Mirage will control them all using the same interface (it's simple to jump between printers).
Our non-fine-art services are fairly standard poster and display printing, for which clients typically supply us with PDFs, and this is where Mirage comes into its own: it looks like they've added a PostScript interpreter in the latest version because it will now handle even very complex PDFs quickly and accurately. If you have to handle PostScript, Mirage is worth considering: as well as the Photoshop plugin, you also get plugins for Illustrator and InDesign.
So Mike, you're right, doing large batch jobs via Mirage would be a pain - certainly not impossible but QU is the tool for that.
For jobs where there's a mixture of different sizes with varying margins and different types of crop marks on the same sheet, that's very straightforward with Mirage and considerably less so (or maybe impossible) in QU.
QU's interpolation and sharpening doesn't have a counterpart in Mirage. Mirage's PDF ripping ability doesn't have a match in QU.
These applications represent two very different approaches to making high quality prints, and I'm not sure that one should be considered a direct competitor to the other. From my point of view, having both at my disposal means I can do everything a stupid-priced RIP ($1500 - $2500) would do and a whole lot more. Even better, I can use the same ICC profiles with QU, Mirage and the standard Epson drivers.
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