Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi, I'm getting a bit exasperated with Qimage Ultimate and almost getting to the point of giving up on it.

I have a laptop with Windows 7 64 bit OS, HP B8850 printer. My camera is a Canon 550D. I almost always shoot RAW and process the images in PS5 Camera Raw. To allow Qimage to print my processed images I save them as TIF in Camera Raw. I have the latest version of Qimage and I have just reinstalled my printer driver because of the problems I'm having.

What is happening at the moment is the thumbnails of the TIF images are not appearing correctly in the folder as viewed from Qimage. They appear speckly which may be due to them being lower resolution than they should be. When I place them on the printing page, they are still speckly. When I edit the page they are still speckly when I do a HQ view and soft proof. For all of these things, the images are appearing the correct size. If I choose to print, then the print preview from the printer driver shows the image zoomed in filling the page and cropped which is not how I had placed it.

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Sue

Hi Sue,
We should be able to sort it all out.
Let's get some information first.
I see from the screen snaps that your printable area is 210mm x 296.9.
I was trying to replicate that set of numbers, but so far no luck.
What size paper are you telling the printer that you are using? (Is that what you are really using?)

Next question: What is the resolution of the TIF image? 

Next: What size print are you trying to make?

The grain in the two screen snaps that you sent is probably normal since Qimage uses thumbnail size images to make thumbs as well as the preview panel.
It will also use thumb size images for the Print Editor screen unless you change the setting.

You might try going to the EDIT menu, Preferences, Thumb Quality, and select best.

I await your reply.

Fred

I am printing on A4 paper - 210x297mm is A4. I wanted the image to fit the page and so I chose that option first but because the print preview was wrong I tried the 203.2x254.0 size and then edited the page to drag the corner of the image to fill one dimension of the page.

The resolution of the TIF image is 3555x2894.

The thumb quality is already set to best.

Sue

OK Making progress.

Let's say first that 203.7 x 290.5 mm is the Correct printable area of A4 on that printer
So it you say: Fit to page, with crop scissor on, you will get a print 203.7 x 290.5 mm

But your crop scissors are off because you were able to drag the size.
Your image is not standard as you cropped a little, so I can't match you pixel for pixel, but we have to start somewhere.
If I have crop scissor off, and use Fit to Page, I get an intended print size 203.7 x 271.6.
(My image size is 3859 x 2894)  That's close enough, I think,)

At that print size, my print resolution becomes 361 ppi, certainly far more than you need for a good print.

If you click the Tab marked QUEUE, next to the Job Property tab, what does it say?
See my screen snaps.

This way, I will be able to make my print size match yours if need be.

Keep going!
Fred

My printer can print borderless.

I have attached jpeg of details requested.

I tried turning the cropping scissors on but it made no difference - I dragged the corner to fill the page as before.

Sue

OK Sue, making progress.

You stated that you are using A4 paper. We agreed I think, that the printable area of that paper is 203.7 x 290.5 mm.
That, by definition is the largest print you can make on A4 paper on the printer you use.  (No borderless setting)

So something is incorrect, because you show a print size of 210 x 263 mm.
210 mm will not fit on 203.7 mm of area.
Even in the original snaps with the dog, you showed the wrong size printable area, and I said I couldn't find the match to that.

So let's see where the problem lurks at this point.
I'll bet you have borderless turned on in order to increase the size of the printable area.

I can make a print that is 210 x 280.1 mm with borderless on. Then I slide the image to the top of the page to look like yours.
What I cannot get is 1200 x 1200 with borderless on unless there's some special paper selection you are using.

One thing I can assure you. If Qimage reports a print size of 210 x 263 mm, that is what is being sent to the printer driver.

So I would remove the Borderless check. Not needed here unless you have more information.

After removing the borderless, resize the print using Fit to Page crop scissor on.
I am making this assumption based on the fact that you dragged the image by eye, and you didn't have a fixed frame size you needed.

Then go into the print editor, use the cropping tab, and slide the image around using the hand cursor in the little image box until you are pleased.

See second snap. The dog is not edge to edge, and gets no benefit from borderless.


Another topical question.
I can see that your colorspace is Prophoto..... That is an extraordinarily wide color gamut.
If it were me, I would resave that TIF in Adobe RGB.
You can do that in QU if you wish, but you seem to be more conversant with Photo Shop.

Fred

The printable area of A4 paper is 210x297mm, i.e. the whole page.

Sue

Check in the driver screen
You have borderless turned on and uncheck it.
See snaps

I turned off borderless in the printer driver, but now it has given me a print with borders, which is not what I want. I want to be able to use the full width of the paper - which my printer is capable of.

Why do you suggest not using ProPhoto?

Sue

Ok so at least we know why your readings were askew.
So you certainly may use borderless, and then use Fit to Page, and sllide the image to the edge.
All I can say is that whatever QIMAGE reports as the print size, in that Queue tab, is what it is sending to the printer.
Beyond that point, we might hope that Ernst, who is the most knowledgeable in HP printers and their personalities, will read this thread and possibly have a solution.
Have you made a print? Has the print been skewed or wrong?
Cant always go by Print preview or Softproof  views.

Are you sure that the dog image isn't oversharpened by a lot.
That's what the speckles look like!


I tried my best.
Hopefully, someone with an HP B8500 series will chime in.

Fred

Not sure if you would receive notice of my adding to the post. So I will post this extra

Are you sure that the dog image isn't oversharpened by a lot.
That's what the speckles look like!

Fred

Thank you for all of your efforts Fred, especially on a Sunday.

I have tried a print and it comes out exactly as the printer driver preview says it will - which is too zoomed in, it seems to be fitting the horizontal axis properly to the bottom of a landscape page but this has meant that the vertical axis does not fit the page and so is cropped. It does not matter if I choose the paper to be landscape or portrait.

I dont think the dog is oversharpened dramatically enough for it to show up on a thumbnail.

Thanks again.
Sue

I am sorry, but as I mentioned twice before, whatever size Qimage is reporting in the queue, that's what it sends to your HP driver.
If it changes in the print and print preview, your driver has a setting that is over riding the size, like enlarge or scale, which I do not see.
My guess yet another bug in the HP driver.


Try an experiment. Use the same image in PS and save a tif (different name) with no sharpening... and remember ACR adds sharpening too.

Fred

I have turned sharpening off in Camera Raw and saved as TIF as suggested and the thumbnail and image on the edit page do look less speckled now.

Sue

Good...
Now we at least have accomplished something.

Enjoy.
Fred

Hi Sue,

wrt ProPhoto an article by Mike may be of interest - http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/december-2006-hype-or-hero-take-2-16-bit-printers/ and others.

If your printer is not 16bit, then process in Photoshop in ProPhoto, to get smoother gradients, and to capture the nuances of the 12 or 14 bits of your raw image from camera, but for printing convert to Argb (or Srgb is often just as good) would be my recommendation and print from that in Qi. You need to be careful with converting from 16bit to 8 for colours out of gamut but you can check gamut warnings within Photoshop before, or after your conversion. It depends how much you push the image around. If you let the print driver and Qi print from ProPhoto, you may not get what you expect, since I do not believe either will show out of gamut warnings. Of course, it depends on the colour range and saturation that your image contains, most often it works OK, but then sometimes it screws up real bad, and you will wonder what has happened. Of course, you should save the raw file, since you may wish to process it in some other way, or find a better raw conversion processor at some future date, but I see little point in saving large 16bit tifs today.

Best wishes,

Ray