Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I try to prepare for having test strips printed by an online service.
In the List Of Major Functions, I find an entry "Test Strips" and try to follow that:
"From the main window in Qimage, start by adding the photo you wish to print at the desired final size (20x30 inches for example).  Then click the "Edit Page" button below the preview page, select the print on the page, click the "Cropping" button on the right
--there is no Cropping button in this window;
and the "Test strip" button will be visible under the small crop window."
--it is visible to begin with.
"The test strip button can be used in any of the following ways:"
I'd like to use way #3:
-"You may select a smaller paper size (4x6 for example) and add your large print to the queue, specifying that it is OK to create a poster larger than one page." 
--Where would I do that?
Learn By Example #6a may sound like it contains the info needed:
"1. Click the "Printer Setup" tool button and select "roll paper" …"
--there is nothing called "roll paper" in that window, there are entry fields for page width, height, and resolution, and 3 buttons: Use Current Printer Stats, OK and Cancel.

Well, I had to choose the latter for now…

How would I  do what I want: making multiple test strips of a larger image, strips to be printed with different amounts of sharpening? (QU)

Hi,
I should say click the cropping TAB on the right.  ::)
No, that example is not relevant, the title is "Using the poster feature to overcome your print driver's maximum page length limitation" and that relates to very long prints on roll feed paper.
Two ways:
1. Make multiple copies of your image each with the different amounts of USM/TTS set in the image Editor. Place them all on the page at a suitable small size and then on each one use the cropping zoom in the Page Editor to zoom in to get the print ppi that your full size print gives. The tool gives a read-out of the ppi as you zoom in. Set the crop position on each and print the page.
2. Use the Test Strip feature with just one image. This will mean passing the paper through the printer for each USM/TTS setting.
Use what is described in Help, quoted for convenience:
Starting from your full size print on the page, open the Page Editor and click the Test Strip icon once.
1st attachment - before Test Strip clicked.
Back to the main screen, set the page as Free hand and set a suitable small size for the print and position (drag) in one corner of the page.
In the Page editor, set the zoom position in the crop tab.
See 2nd attached -
Print.
Re-set USM/TTS for second sample, move the image across the page to clear the 1st position (use page editor for accurate positioning)
See 3rd attached and print again on the same page.
And so on .... zzzz  ;)
I hope you don't want to do this very often but the quickest is method 1 with multiple images.
Terry

PS. Just realised you want to use an on-line printing service - in that case, method 1 must be used and Print to File. See Example 25a

Hi Terry,

thank you for your advice. It is first now that I see that you have answered on sept. 03rd already, I got no notification e-mail, maybe I forgot to click the Notify button. - Anyway, I'll try your description ASAP - not sure when that can be: Trying to calibrate my monitor, ColorEyes has rendered my desktop Mac, which contains the Windows partition and QU, non-starting… but that has nothing to do with QU… (I write this from my MacBook).

Thanks again - Hening.

Hi again Terry

Now I gave the thing a first try.
The cropping in Qi is not to my liking, so I tried to modify the procedure a little: I prepared a couple of cropped images in my editor and loaded these. However, the Sharpen in the Job Properties pane (0..20) can only be applied to the page, not the image.
There is also sharpening available in the Image Editor: USM (Radius and amount in %) and a scale from -9 to +9. How do these latter 2 relate to each other? And to the sharpening in Job Properties?
A third place where sharpening can be adjusted is Edit/Prefs/Printing Options; USM can be adjusted in about 4 steps, and in 2 ways: Smart or Normal.
How do all these adjustments relate to each other??

BTW what is TTS?

Kind regards  - Hening

That is because it is Smart Print Sharpening.
Help says:
Final Print Sharpening - Qimage offers the ability to apply different levels of unsharp mask to the final print. This unsharp mask is applied after all interpolation has been performed (after your print has been resampled to the DPI of your printer). Since this setting affects the sharpness of your prints, a setting should be used that makes your final prints match what is displayed on your monitor with respect to sharpness. The type of printer used and the print driver version can affect apparent sharpness of prints. It is best to leave this setting at the default slider position unless you prefer softer or sharper printed images. To make images look sharper, slide the slider to the right. To make images appear softer in print, slide the slider to the left. The following are notes that apply to the two different types of final sharpening available in Qimage:
Smart sharpening: Smart sharpening uses information such as resolution of the original image, the printer driver PPI, and the final print size to set the parameters of the sharpening algorithm to produce consistent, vibrant sharpening in every print.  Smart Sharpening is the preferred setting.
Also see the information in the Interpolation settings dialogue, (Preferences, Printing Options: click the Help button. This is the same as when you click the blue button in Job Properties.
Some of what I said above should clarify some of your questions about PRINT Sharpening, but answering these questions is as follows:
"Interpolation settings dialogue" is the same as in the Job properties - blue button, all about final print sharpening. Smart sharpening is the recommendation as quoted above from the Help.
Sharpening in the Editor is for IMAGE sharpening, get that to look right according to your taste. Then Smart Print Sharpening gets the print right and looking the same as the screen view wrt sharpness, what ever its size. That is the relationship between them.
More about the EDITOR, most people would use USM rather than plain sharpening I think, for basic USM there is also the EQ slider to compensate for the variation of apperent sharpness with colour caused by the different proportion of RGB sensor sites in your camera.
TTS or Tone Targeted Sharpening is a terrific and unique refinement of USM.
See here http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-tts.htm and ....
There's a Learning Video about it here http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=xn7Ipw8IAhQ&vq=hd720
More here:, search the forum on TTS
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/qu-tts-helps-a-grey-heron-to-overcome-a-cheetah/
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/tone-targeted-sharpening-with-macro-images/
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/another-perfect-use-for-tts-macro-shots/

There's a bunch of samples from the early days here: http://www.pbase.com/tjm04/qutts

I hope that gets you under way - you've been asking about the really special features of QU and very much worth the effort to understand them.
Terry

Hi Terry

thank you very much for your extensive answer. There is something to study.
I start right away.
I had looked under Qimage (List of major) Functions for an entry "sharpening", but there is none.
Clicking the Search button in Help and entering "sharpening" returns 4 results ranked 1 to 4:
Qimage Functions
Learn by Example
Overview
Trouble Shooting

Double-clicking these entries, or clicking the Display button, returns the respective start pages, but nothing about sharpening.
First using ctrl-f and entering "sharpening" returns a match, but only one, the occurrence in "smart sharpening" in the last paragraph of Example 25a. The Previous and Next buttons are dimmed and don't work. ("Highlight all matches" is checked).

So your quote is my first and only source.

I believe to understand from it that IMAGE sharpening (in the Image Editor) is what also is called CAPTURE sharpening, as opposite to output/print sharpening.

> Sharpening in the Editor is for IMAGE sharpening, get that to look right according to your taste.

That sounds like the image in the Image Editor should show the changes in real time? My image does not respond at all.

Will Qimage "understand" image sharpening done in a different editor, say Focus Fixer or Photo Kit Sharpener?  I mean will Qi translate THAT sharpening to Smart Print Sharpening?

So much from my first lesson on sharpening…

Ceterum censeo that this software needs a systematic documentation, and a Help that works.

Kind regards - Hening.

Using the display button with Qimage Functions and then CTRL F after clicking on the right hand side, I got everything.
It does, much is contextual Help and uses the standard Windows F1 for the quickest access.
I think that "capture" sharpening is what is applied in camera to a jpeg image or that applied by a raw converter.
Click the View menu and make sure Auto Preview and High Quality Work Image is ticked. When editing, the preview window opens and with sharpening you see a 100% view of the image. Nothing will show in the preview below that.
Terry

I missed this question
If the "different" editor has some sort of supplementary file to hold the edit settings like sharpening, then Qimage will not recognise those settings.
Qimage works like this so edits are non-destructive and saved in a Filter file alongside the image.
If the "different" editor changes the original image as you make edits or when you close the image, then Qimage will "see" that change. Otherwise you must save the image such that the edits are included.
The above is related to IMAGE sharpening. Smart PRINT sharpening is not directly affected by image sharpening and occurs as the data is sent to the printer, the amount being determined by your settings in Qimage printing options - as stated in reply #4 above.
Terry

Hello Hening,
Terry has to be out for a while today, so he asked me to lend a hand if I can.
I was out the past couple of days too.

The problem appears to be that you  have 6 questions intertwined with erroneous assumptions all rolled up into each paragraph.
So the best way to handle it is to break it up and stay on topic until that one topic is resolved.


Let's take cropping first.

I implore you to play this video to show you the various ways to crop in Qimage. To say, "The cropping in Qi is not to my liking, so I tried to modify the procedure a little"
Doesn't explain what you were trying to accomplish and it is likely you are not familiar with the variety of cropping tools in Qimage.

Please view this: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pgHp45B1QXo&vq=hd720

Then, please explain what you want to do, and why Qimage Ultimate is unable to do it easily.

You can crop the print, or the image or both, or do auto cropping to fit print size, or set the crop ratio first, and let Qimage constrain your image crops as you drag the crop box.
Let's take this one and sort it out.

OK?
I will be here, except for a lunch with local photographers, all day.

Fred

This is another topic on Sharpening.

Let's keep this reply separate from the cropping.

The Sharpening that has the scale  of -9 to +9 is never or rarely used.
Why? Not because it doesn't work, but because it is somewhat obsolete in terms of sharpening all as opposed to selecting parts to sharpen.
I use it as a quick sharpen on a scan of some magazine article.

The Smart Sharpen that uses the 0-20 scale is a wonderful tool that fills the gap between what we see (satisfying sharp) on our screen, ready to print, and what we get on the paper.
Different size prints, from large to small will require a different amount of Smart Sharpen to make the print appear as sharp as the screen image.
It removes the idea that you have to over-sharpen the image in order to make the print sharp.

Different types of paper print sharper than other types. (Glossy vs matte for example)
So Smart Sharpen has a default of 5, usually pretty good for most, but allows you to select more or less depending on your requirements, and which you can save as a print setup for the particular paper.
Smart Sharpen is called Smart because it adjusts the amount of print sharpening while checking the print size you chose and the resulting ppi, (pixels per inch)
See the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ulsHxq-K-l4&vq=hd720

Set it for 5 and leave it there until we get everything else sharpening related sorted out.

TTS (Tone Targeted Sharpening) is so powerful that you need to watch the videos, and then practice using it.
It allows you to do selective sharpening based on tone or color.
For a start, think this way, you have an image with a lot of shadow area that contains noise in the shadows. The subject could use some sharpening but YUK, it also brings out the noise in the shadow area.
You can use TTS not only to refuse to sharpen the noisy areas, but you can tell it to minus sharpen the noise, thereby reducing the noise without softening the image.

You can select by color, widening or narrowing the width of the shades of the selected color for sharpening, to the point where I can sharpen eyes without the wrinkles in the face, or sharpen cheeks and not the chin....or
I can sharpen the whole image.... very complex, but worth the effort to get the hang of it.

If you have a certain item that is confusing, or not doing what you wish, let me know, and I can make a video and sent it to you.
Where do you live so I can know your time zone.?

Fred

Hi

Many thanks to the both of you for your extensive replies.

(Concerning the Help)
> Using the display button with Qimage Functions and then CTRL F after clicking on the right hand side, I got everything.

So do I when trying today. Maybe I had a system error of some kind.

(Concerning preview in Image Sharpening)
> Click the View menu and make sure Auto Preview […] is ticked.

That did the trick.

(Concerning sharpening done in other editors)
I understand that Qi will "see" all (sharpening) changes done in other apps if they are saved into the image, but (of course) not if they are stored in sidecar files.

I think I understand the relationship between the different  access points for sharpening now. E.g. I understand that the Final Print Sharpening scale in Edit/Prefs/Printing Options is so to speak just a coarser edition of the 0…20 scale in Job Properties. Worth noting.

I understand the theory behind Tone Targeted Sharpening - my question referred to the abbreviation TTS.

> it is likely you are not familiar with the variety of cropping tools in Qimage.
That is for sure. I will have to look into that later, re-viewing the video you linked to. For now, it was faster to do the cropping in an editor I am familiar with.

My residence is in Oslo, Norway, so the time zone is CET.

> If you have a certain item that is confusing, or not doing what you wish, let me know, and I can make a video and sent it to you.

Thank you! I will most likely need your help with Qi, but there is no reason to make a video - I am in fact more happy with a verbal description like the one you have given here in the forum.

Thanks again! - Hening.

You'll love cropping in Qimage once you get used to it, especially when you're cropping to match a standard size like 5x7 or 8x10.  Impossible to make a mistake unless you turn off Crop Lock.  But it's equally easy to turn off Crop Lock and make a custom freehand crop, too.

and Owen,
I even forgot to mention the Crop Wizard button in the Editor screen.
Thanks for wake up.

Fred

Multiple ways to do things in Qimage, no doubt.  Often, when I'm in a hurry for a quick print, I will "crop" by zooming in the Full Page Editor, especially when I'm just trying to find out if I can crop an image to include elements A, B, & C, but leaving out elements D & E.  For me, that's the easiest way to do it.  I just zoom in & out and drag the image around to see if my "test crop" is going to work.

And sometimes I'll zoom to the max in FPE and make a test print when I just want to give someone a quick example of what QU's interpolation algorithms can do.  You could call it a "rough cut" test strip, I suppose.  Most people are impressed when they see the printed result.

I still can't believe what users of some high-end programs have to go through just to crop an image in a specific aspect ratio.  Glad I'm a Qimage user.