Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I am a long time Qimage and Lightroom user.  I used Qimage long before Lightroom made its entrance onto the sceen.  In those days, Qimage was an application that made print layout and printing top quality.

Now we have Qimage competing with every other RAW converter, and that saddens me a great deal.  It is apparent that future enhancement with Qmage will come in the RAW conversion process at the expense of improving the layout and printing side of Qimage – and they do need some work.

Here’s the problem for Qimage:
The current “non destructive” mode of RAW conversion – which I completely support, presents the problem that different applications do not understand, and can’t process, the editing instructions generated by another application.  That means that Qimage can’t apply any editing instructions for a RAW file edited in Lighroom, and Lightroom is in the same situation reqarding files edited by Qimage.

Since Qimage can’t understand Lightroom instructions, it is necessary to “render” the RAW file in Lightroom before Qimage can print it.  That makes it a one way street and requires extra disk space for the printing.  It gets worse, if any change in the original editing instructions are desired, the whole process starts over again to reprint.  This may not be a huge problem with just one or two prints, but the problem multiplies quickly as files are added to the job.

Users who have embraced Lightroom and all its powerful features will not accept Qimage as a RAW converter and give up any of what Lightroom offers.  This is not a debate, it’s just a fact.  Some may prefer the Qimage RAW conversion model, and I have no debate with them.  I hope you will have no debate with me and others about preferring Lightroom for managing RAW files.

Qimage made its name and reputation on “printing.”  In some cases, it still is alone in what it can do in layout.  But the layout capabilities in Lightroom are coming on fast.  The printing capabilities of Lightroom have increased with each version.  In print jobs where a single image, or multiple images in the same size cell is satisfaction, there is no advantage in using Qimage and some disadvantages – if you do it in Lightroom, the file doesn’t need to be rendered.  You most likely won’t believe me, but Qimage offers no advantage in print quality from Lightroom.  The Qimage advantage is solely in print layout capability.

I am completely comfortable with rendering RAW files in Lightroom and exporting to Qimage for job layout and printing where Qimage provides features not available in Lightroom.

After all this ramble, what do I want?
I really want a version of Qimage dedicated to job layout and printing only.  Some improvements this new version needs:

1.  The ability to provide binding margins for images for a photo book -- different for each job.

2.  Ability to print odd and even pages for automatic printing front and back – similar to Adobe Reader.

3.  An improvement in the text functions to be as good as Photoshop so I won’t have to go to Photoshop for this issue.

4.  Watermark feature to provide a copyright that positions correctly for either landscape and portrait.

I hope Qimage stays alive, and I hope to get some updates for the issues I have raised.  That’s why I paid for Ultimate.

Wil

Hi Wil,
Your requests sound quite specialised for book making but some comments:
You can already set page margins to whatever you like - accessible from the "menu cheater" button. Or are "binding margins" something different?
I think you need to spell out in detail what you mean here.
You can do watermarks already using cutouts. How accurate they are depends on how well you design your cutout. You may need separate ones for landscape & portrait, something I do when making a new cutout or frame for QU.
I don't unless Adobe have stolen Mike's ideas and algorithms.  :o but I don't own a copy of LR to confirm that  ::)  ;D
Terry

Wil

Like you , I use Lightroom for my raw conversion and QImage purely for printing, but I don't agree agree that a separate 'print only' version is necessary - all you are asking for are extra features to the print functions, which Mike has always been, and still is willing to, add. You probably only use 50% of Lightroom and 10% of Photoshop, but should Adobe stop development on the rest of the features? There is room for everything in QI.

A few of your other points -

All raw converters save proprietary instruction files, there is (and can be) no standard.

Lightroom does render the file before printing - it creates a temporary tif file in the LR catalogue and deletes it after printing. This means it does this every time you print a file - clearly a waste of time. However, you can set QI as an 'Addition External Editor' in the Lightroom preferences, and then right-click and 'Edit In'>'Edit in QImage' will open QI with the file already on the page.

Like Terry (and most other QI/LR users) I find the QI prints always clearly better than LR ones.

Your improvements:
1  Book Margins - I think this is already there - Terry or Fred will probably sort it out.
2  Double Sided Printing - This is usually included in the Printer Driver, although the last time I did this I found it easy to select every other image from the thumbnails for odd and then even pages and use separate print set-ups.
3  Text Functions - I'm with you on this one. To be fair QI does things you can't do in PS without writing a script, such as adding the filename and IPTC fields, but I would like to be able to add text boxes which could be re-sized and formatted in a more flexible way.

As I said, Mike is always open to feature requests and doesn't just work on the raw side - the new Fusion interpolation, for example.

Brian