Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u

v2012.214    01/03/12

Priority: Low

v2012.214 fixes a problem with *.tiff and *.jpeg files not showing on some systems.

Mike

Hi, I am new in Qimage, just downloaded a registred 2012.214 and start using it. Surprise!!
- Window minimize button does not work, it is still possible to resize and move but no minimize.
- Suddenly while configuring layout (6x6 thumbs per sheet) application becomes unresponsive: it looks like it is out of focus but there is no focused window displayed. Kill in task manager is the only solution?
- Changing printer type after editing layout garbles the work done: switching from online printer to PDFwriter changes the 6x6 to 3x6 thumbs per sheet. I cannot assume what makes the difference, same sheet size, orientation, etc etc.
This is just the opening, probably I will not find more similar problems, wish so. Notice that the features I am testing were impossible to test into demo, a weird flavor appeared in my mouth, 85 USD...
Cheers

The minimize button works fine (upper right, the leftmost button in the group of three) and is certainly something that could have been tested with the demo.  None of the other thousands of users have reported a problem with the minimize button.

As to the stops-working problem, the only thing that can cause that is an image that is corrupted beyond repair or an issue with the computer.  What kind of images are you loading into the queue?  Try to see if it always stops when you load a particular image.  If so, that image may be at fault.

On the number-per-sheet changing when you change printers, I guarantee that the page size changed or it would not have re-sorted them.  Keep in mind that because you use the same *paper* size in two different printers, that doesn't mean you have the same amount of *printable area* to work with.  That likely changed, and the number-per-sheet would no longer fit on the new setup.  Please see the second video on this page to understand paper size versus page (printable area) size:

http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/learn.htm

Regards,
Mike

Hi,

Questions I cannot find answers into help and movies:

- How to batch create contact sheets of pictures stored in a simple filesystem structure? (each folder has many pictures but no nested folders)
- How to add a title on each contact sheet with with source folder name? (and sequence number n/N)
- How to save each contact sheet with source folder name embedded? (and sequence number n/N)
- How to control the flow of pictures added into a predetermined grid? (top-bottom, left-right)
- How to batch switch template on picture aspect ratio?(scanned 120 or 135 film)

My experience on batch contact sheet creation include Image Magick, it has all the mentioned features available in code, some efforts has to be put in place to get the results using pre-processing code and of course it has no GUI interface. But it does.

All other commercial available application does not support batches at this grain level or are cpu intensive. Do Qimage is one of such?

Thank you,

Tiberio

A smallish, but very annoying issue: if QU starts, every time it starts reading the images from the last opened directory. If that's a network drive it takes ages to complete this cache or thumb building thingy. First it takes a long time to get from the splash screen to the main screen, and then the menus don't work until all the thumbs have been read, or whatever.
E.g. a directory with 75 jpegs of app 1 Mb each takes 10 minutes! All the time QU cannot be used.  ::)

Is there a way to improve this?

This is on an Intel i7 W7 64 bit 16 GB Ram machine on a GB network with a Synology DS211.

Thanks

Frank

Frank,
Since the problem seems to be in the network access speed, How about doing this as a workaround.

I sometimes work from images on a thumb drive and when I reopen QU the next time and the Thumb drive is no longer plugged in, QU reverts to a default directory which is one of those buried things (C:\Users\Fred\Mydocuments\,,, blah blah

I hate that
So all I do is click QU back to a previous folder using the history folder before I close...... or my favorite is I use FILE, EXIT QIMAGE WITHOUT SAVING... (settings)
So assuming I was working along yesterday in normal mode off my C drive, but my latest job needed to work through the network, when done, I could do FILE, EXIT Q without saving the settings.
Next time I open QU, it is back at the last C: drive folder I used.

Fred

Frank,
Networks drives are often very slooooow! I use one as a backup drive but rarely work directly from it. I recommend you always work from a hard drive on your PC or a USB drive.
If, when you open Qimage, it starts to read thumbs etc., you have not allowed the thumbs to fully build on a previous occasion.
I have a W7-64 quad core, 3.4Ghz PC with 6GB ram. Thumb build is less than 1 sec per image and thumb plus raw cache build is about 3 secs per image.

As above, avoid using a network drive, copy any images from there to a main hard drive first and work from there.
Terry

Frank,
Re.Network speed
I just did some tests by opening a folder of 31 raw images of about 8MB each from my network drive.
Thumbs took 45 secs to build = 1.45 s/image
Raw cache took another 75 sec s to build = 2.4s/image
The equivalent times to from an internal HDD were
Thumbs 0.93 s/image
Raw cache 2.1 s/image.
After I had closed QU with the network drive folder left selected, QU took 10 seconds to open and be usable with the network folder.
The speeds above are dependant on your processor speed, image size as well as the network speed.
I did some raw refine and image edits from the network drive, although slower than from an internal HDD, it was usable. Maybe it helps to have fewer images in the folder.
Your timings are way out from what I was getting, maybe there is a system problem or the network is very slow. You can you do a speed check by transferring some files with Explorer.
Terry