Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi,

We are trying the demo before buying.
Im trying to print something but I need to turn off auto cropping, its not where the website says it is.
There is no 'edit page' button below the preview pane ?

99% of our prints will be full size and we would not need any cropping functions.

Please can you help ?

Thanks,

Mick

There are  many ways to turn the crop on and off.
Here's just one
There's a zebra button with stripes on the lower right of the image in the preview panel. See snap 038
The second screen snap shows the on/off button.

Fred

Thanks for your reply.

Ok ive found how to turn it off, thanks.
However im finding it a bit difficult to do something quite simple, I have an image which is 1830mm long and 610mm wide and I have set
qimage to a page size of 1830 long and 610mm wide - for borderless printing but, the image opens as a tiny thumbnail in perview and I
cannot resize it fully with the crop handles ?

I just want qimage to open it full size and let me print it ?

Thanks in advance.

Just open that print property box and select fit to page with crop on
You just have to have a bit of learning patience.

Fred
.

Thank you so much.

I now have the job set up and saved.
Just one last question - why is it taking qimage 14 minutes to process ?

Thanks

Well, that's an odd question in terms of all the factors that contribute to time of processing.

1) Your print is 6 feet long (I don't do mms very well) x 2 feet wide.

2) How much processing power do you have available?

3) What printer, and what is the input ppi?

4) If it's an Epson, you certainly do not need 720 ppi for a print that large.

5) The Fusion interpolator is the best on the planet.  It is making a print file to send to the printer in chunks of data.

6) What is the ppi of the image in the queue?

7 Was the image diddle with in another program before you put it in Qimage to be printed?

... and do you really consider 14 minutes to process that size print to be a long time?

Fred

Hi Fred,

You may find this odd but, we have always printed banners as pdf's direct from acrobat pro. The results have been excellent and processing speed very fast but, there is an image length limit with printing pdfs to our epson which is why we are looking at qimage.

Im still learning qimage, maybe I have some settings wrong to cause slow processing.

I will be printing this banner today and will let you know how I get on.

Thanks again for your help.

 

Hi Micky,
I thought I'd do some timings here to get an idea what I'd expect.
I do not have a large format printer but an Epson 2000 A3+ printer.
Your print size is 7 x an A3+ print so I placed 7 different fit-to-page images in the queue to simulate the QU processing of your image. I think this is a reasonable way of doing it.
I used 7 x 18M pixel raw files, a total file size of about 190MB
The results were as follows:
At 360ppi, 2m:07s
At 720ppi, 5m:25s
My thoughts are that either the image pixel size you are using is much larger than necessary or your PC is slow for some reason.
I have a PC with a 3.4GHz Intel i7 processor that is now a few years old (newer versions are faster); 6GB of RAM and QU is set to use all 4 cores.
Hope this helps but please answer Fred's questions so we have the detail.
Terry

Thanks Terry,

I think I have much to learn.

I meant to ask, whats the max length of banner I can print with qimage to my Epson 9600 ?
We need qimage for just one purpose, to overcome the standard length limit which appears to be about 6 foot (1830mm)

Thanks

Qimage doesn't consider pdf to be image photo quality so it does not print a pdf.
There is no attempt to entertain quality when printing from acrobat.  So it will be faster.


The only limit to your banner length would be your own computer vs your file size.
Terry can fill you in on details...
Fred

I think it is unlimited.
Go to Help, Contents, Learn by Example and ...
Example 6a: Using the poster feature to overcome your print driver's maximum page length limitation.
Terry

Hi all,

Many thanks for all this help, unfortunately I am having problems:

I have followed all the instructions including the whole of section 6A
I do not get asked the question "do I want to span multiple pages",
the software keeps re-processing the image at 14 minutes per time and
the final print preview shows my banner not filling the whole page and cropped on one side ?

I run a print business and I offer quick turnaround so I need fast results.

Sorry but, this is not looking good.

Any further help would be great, I just wish acrobat pro would overcome the print drivers length limitation.

Mick

Do it this way and I guarantee it will do what you want
Set roll paper size as shown
Set print size as shown
Crop on
Optimal spaced selected.
Print

Fred

Thanks Fred,

I printed the banner last night from acrobat pro, because I had to get it done.
I now need to wait for the next banner order to test qimage again, unfortunately the demo may have expired by then.
Maybe qimage can extend the demo when I next need to test it.

I have also asked in the adobe forums, they say a pdf can go up to 17 feet long, so it must be the Epson print driver causing this limitation.

Mick

Mick
This is how I printed panos when I was working:

Set the page length in the printer driver to a conveniently small size - I used 24".
Add your print to the queue - when you are asked to 'Span Multiple Pages' click 'Yes'.
QI will divide the pic into 24" chunks, and the printer will butt them together seamlessly (as long as Auto-cut is off  :))
There is no limit to the size you can do this way, and it reduces the risk of crashes due to spooler problems.

Brian

(http://secalis.co.uk/Files/ScreenShotQI.jpg)