Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

The subject of printing is popular when talking to other photographers about making images. I've used QImage for years, but I have trouble explaining exactly what it does in such a way as to convince other photogs to try it out. They print directly from PhotoShop and Lightroom, etc, and sometimes have no idea that they can use a 3rd party solution. So ... my question is ... if you had just a few minutes with someone, how would explain what QImage does? I looked at the product web page, but couldn't really find that succinct sentence or two that provided the clarity I'm interested in. 

Jon

I gave up a long time ago.

I have still to find anyone who will accept that there is anything other than PhotoShop and I mean anyone.

I just get a blank look.  The lengths they go to to create a simple web size image :) create new blank image size this or that and must be 72dpi. then import the image into this blank file.  Probably not that difficult but that is the way they do it.

Jeff

Maybe you could pick something out of Mike's article here:
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/march-2010-smart-photo-printing/
Eg. "dumb printing as the photo printing process used by all photo applications other than Qimage, including high end photo editors"
and
"other applications that offer photo printing just were not designed with optimal print quality in mind.  Whether you are an amateur or professional, printing is the culmination of your photography.  It is the end result of why you carry that camera!  Why trust this final rendering of art to anything but software that was designed to make the most of it?  Qimage printing quality exceeds that of any other application available."

Terry

Great link to Mike's article. I hadn't seen that before.

Let's ignore for moment that it lets you print multiple images per page, optimize paper use, make incredible collages, montages, and photoarrays on a single page, let's forget for a moment all of the recent features related to raw imaging, zone targeted sharpening. Here is what Q-Image does. 

It lets you print a 4 MP image as if it were 20 MP.
It lets you shoot at a shorter focal length and get a sharp image, and then you can edit and enlarge the image section as if you had shot at a longer focal length.
It lets you print images that seem to come alive in their realism and detail, even when printed to poster size.
It lets a so-so amateur photographer - such as me - create really stunning images

And I could go on. I've used this line in this forum before.  I have 3 equal components in making a print in terms of importance.  1- Camera and lenses, 2 - Computer and printer, 3 -Qimage. Of these 3 equal components, one of them, one of them represents about one and a half percent of my total $ investment.

Wonderful stuff, Mel. Thanks.

I just show all the Adobe Lemmings the 20x 24 canvas wrap I have hanging on my wall in the store, that I printed from a 500 kb file.

One picture is worth a thousand words,  No elevators necessary ;)

Yes you could say all that, but they are not listening!

You could say only $90 + $20 per year after 1st year.  For that you get all the above plus, a big plus,  access to this forum and chief programmer - but they will not be listening.

In their defense you have got to realize where they are coming from, if a new member joins our club he hears nothing but PS this and PS that, about half the member come in this group.

I started in digital imaging before joining the club so escaped the brain washing.  In fact if found Qimage from dpreview.

So I cannot see how you could present them with a 'sales pitch' that they would hear.

jeff

Mel,
Your post was one of the most well written pieces I have read in a long time.
Thank you.

The problem is that Jeff-G has a strong point.
I just recently resigned from attending meetings at a local camera club about 20 miles from here. I was a guest for a few meetings, and I was so impressed with the photographic ability of so many of the members that I joined. I was sure I could learn a lot.

Everything went along fine for about 6 weeks. (The club meets every Monday; weekly). Then a different person became the one who seemed to set the agenda for the meetings, and the tenor changed to a Photo Shop contest.
Part of the meeting is devoted to people like you and me bringing in thumb drives with images we shot during the week.
That's where I saw the talent and abilities of these photogs.
Now the thumb drives contained, "The Topaz Filter"/
A surreal type of filter that made every picture look like it came from Count Dracula's photo album.
Each meeting got deeper into arcane virtually useless, specialized features of Photo Shop. There were no more weekly camera shots for me to admire.

By the way, this club goes under the heading of the ******* Camera Club.
That seems to imply a camera should be involved. No so.

I cannot voice any complaint to the club because I am new to the club. So I can only resign from attending, but I must say that Jeff has a strong point.
It is a shame in many ways.
First, to go back to the topic, so many brainwashed people are missing out of getting the best of the best by ignoring Qimage. (I have even heard it said, "It can't be any good. It's too cheap")
When CS5 hit the streets, the pressure was on these guys to upgrade.
They connived copies of Student versions by "buying it for their grand daughter, if they had one". They would have sold their first born, if they thought that would get a CS5 into their house.
If you had CS4, you better step up, or your days were numbered.

The shame of it all is that this group of men and women in the club are warm and friendly, and I would drive the 40 miles round trip to spend two hours a week with them if they would only split the time between Photo Shop and photography.

Fred

I agree, I shall save that text and keep a copy to take the my photographic club as a crib sheet  ;)

A couple of years ago, I gave a presentation and demonstration of Qimage and as a result a few of my club members purchased Qimage in one form or another but they are still stuck in the Adobe mode for anything else but printing. Most members, like Fred & Jeff's clubs, are just stuck full stop! :o

Tomorrow is a "critique" evening where members bring along prints and projected images for members to comment and you can explain the background to the photograph. The prints are looked at in small groups and everyone sees the projected images. I have a cunning plan to take one of my A4 albums which contain various size prints and a couple of images for projection. The prints will demonstrate Qimage print quality and 2 of the projected images are 1600 iso macro shots which show the results of using TTS and the other "scene" shows QU raw processing and HDR ability.
Wish me luck that I can get a few words in to say how these images were made and processed.  ::)
Terry

I've always found it interesting to follow the trends to see what boost sales and I think a lot of the reluctance you talk about in this thread is related to learned helplessness on the part of the consumer.  There is SO much garbage on the market these days that people simply stick with what they know.  Unfortunately that helps to feed the big companies like Adobe who have the resources to keep themselves at the top of the heap.  At the same time, it hurts the smaller companies like mine who have a good product but one that is buried in a mountain of junk that many consumers just aren't willing to wade through to even find out if there's a good one in there somewhere.  Qimage is a diamond in the rough, but consumer trust is at an all time low.  We all buy things and we see declining quality.  I'm sure you all see it just like I do.  Buy a product, go out and get a meal, whatever, and you see the declining quality and it's obvious companies are cutting corners.  Add to that the fact that everybody and their brother and their sisters friend's cousin is taking a stab these days at creating some type of software to bite off a small piece of the pie... and it's like a needle in a haystack out there.

If someone handed me a shoebox full of hay and told me there was a $250 gold needle hidden somewhere in it, sure, I'd take the 60 seconds to carefully search for it.  Even if it wasn't real gold, I've only lost a minute fooling with it.  These days, people are trying to find the same needle in a football stadium filled with compost... and they have it in their mind that even IF they find it, it'll probably be a fake that ends up being a regular needle spray painted gold.  So in the end, not worth the trouble to even try any more.

Anyway, that's a problem I see with people like me trying to survive in the world of software.  So many mediocre to flat-out-bad programs out there that people are turned off by the thought of even searching for something good any more.

Mike

On the Qimage studio start up logo it says  'Professional Photographic Printing Software', I'm not sure if it is the same on ultimate - perhaps it should be -'Proud to be Different'. I think printing is what you should concentrate on. Most folk wishing to manipulate their images to produce their version of art will be happy using ps, or other software they are already familiar with, which has already laid the framework on how this has to be done. (Think of the 'qwerty' keyboard - it has set the standard 'cos it was first, although other layouts are known to be better). They are used to that interface, they have no need for the editing side of Qimage. They would like a more usable printing interface, I guess by 'more usable', it would mean something more akin to photoshop (but as we all know ps is very light on the printing side of things).

If you are a sports/wedding  or similar mass producer of images, then it may be that qi batch processing is faster than ps, or whatever these folk use, but there is nothing, afaik, that can handle the printing side of things as well as Qimage. The video tutorials on the printing aspects  perhaps could be burned to a cd for giving to the doubters. Concentrate on the advantages of printing, 'cos that is what photoshop does not do. If someone creates a photoshop plugin for printing, then folk will buy that, no doubt - cf on-one's genuine fractals http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/perfect-resize/ which is pathetic in comparison to qi capabilities but you would never realise it from that web page. The web page is important - it is where a prospective customer first meets the company. Mike's is very messy, and even this forum page 'technical topics in digital photography' has items completely unrelated to photography. Folk see that, and form their own impression of professionalism - 'Jack of all trades, master of none', etc. It is a fact of life, that Adobe has set the standard in photo editing and other arenas, for good or bad. Professional folk will be reluctant to forsake that safe established place and rely on a very small, relatively unknown business for their livelihood, and of course, the non-pro photogs will want to be like the pro's, they want the same cameras, lenses, so why stop at the software? ???

If you want to convince folk on the image editing benefits of qi, then get a copy of Vincent Versace's 'welcome to OZ 2.0', download the images, etc., and rewrite his chapters showing how you more quickly/easily get identical results in Qimage. If Mike wants to make some real money, then I reckon he could if he were to write the printing side of qi as a ps plugin, and charge three or four times the price - folk will probably put up with the tardiness of the software in the java-like language required. ;)

Best wishes,

Ray

Funny is,t it?

A couple of days ago our club decided to run a series of tutorials for new members of which we have a few.

No messing this is the works, straight into PhotoShop, they did not even ask what standard the new members were at, but they are starting at the bottom instructing how to put images on the computer.

It had to be PS proper, not even Elements was considered, no course material for them to refer to when on their own at home, they may not even have PS or willing to pay.

This is not to say that PS is not a good program but it is a bit over the top to start out on.  It's Like learning to drive on an F1 at Silverstone.

This is all because our Chairman is just taking up Digital after being an advanced film and darkroom worker.

Just think of QUltimate, $90 + $20 per year, the PDF help file with it,s learn by example format, coupled with the new videos and you have got all the class room course material thrown in all for much less than £100 this side of the pond.

But, I was referred to at the same meeting as "oh he's the one who does not use PS"  In fact I do use Elements, mainly for touching up glamour portraits , but their instructions will be PS proper and I would have to convert them to Elements.  You only need a small deviation to through you off course.  So, I will not be attending.

Jeff the Grumpy One

Nice set of blog posts....

http://blog.kasson.com/?p=527
http://blog.kasson.com/?p=537
http://blog.kasson.com/?p=548

John

Funny, I was immediately interested in ddisoftware because the website was not a collection of hyperbole, rather it displayed the characteristics of a technical mind, not a marketing one. To me the embedding of marketing in capabilities descriptions, manuals and technical support is a sign of a marketing company using products as vehicles. It is also extremely irritating when looking for answers. Now as I start using Qimage and Profile Prism it is obvious the products reflect a focus on thoughtful and highly-functional software probably at the cost of market share.

As I build familiarity with the product I am quite certain it will be natural to promote the product when possible. It will also be natural to remember many conversations with other 'IT professionals' who were convinced Windows connected with the file-sharing flavor of the day was superior to Unix. Sometimes it is just a little easier and less painful to bang your head against the wall.

He does not seem to have caught on to, or at least say, the fact that Qimage automatically re-samples to the native printer resolution. For  his Epson  with finest detail checked it's 720ppi so there's no advantage to go any more otherwise the driver is then having to downsize and thus mess with the pixels.
I'm wondering too, because he talks about 1440 and 2880 ppi, he's confusing image ppi with printer dpi related to the nozzle spray pattern.

Of course us Qimage users already know all about the print quality that Qimage produces and how easy it is to make a specific size print but it's good the hear of others beginning to appreciate QU virtues.
Has anyone made a reply to the blog?
Terry

http://blog.kasson.com/?p=487

Thanks for the link.
I find it a little amusing that the issue of image resolution continues to cause people to experiment and discuss what is the optimum value is. When I first heard about Qimage, the concept of interpolating to the printer native resolution was a "no brainer" once I understood what happened in the printing process.
Terry

I find it interesting that with all the complaints about the shortcomings of Photoshop Printing function, and the fact that Adobe is aware of it through their own consultants and employees, they still refuse to correct it. 

When Lightroom 1.0 arrived on the scene in February 2007, and I attended a NAPP Photoshop World in Boston in March 2007, all the zealots at NAPP (Schewe, Evening, Eismann, Kelby, Davis, Caponigro etc.) couldn't voice loud enough that they never print from Photoshop once they sampled the features in the Lightroom module, since Lightroom was much more batch and template oriented when compared to one-at-a-time Photoshop, and the potential for screw-up when one of the setting was missed. Even PS Elements offered batch and Picture package layouts before Photoshop got around to it.

Now, 4 years and two Photoshop versions and two Lightroom versions later, PS is still in the dark ages, Lightroom has enhanced their print module significantly with each version (with the help of PixelGenius - Jeff Schewe's company), but, it seems an upgrade to Photoshop's old school approach has been either rejected by Adobe Project Managers, or they just don't think enough people want it to make it to the final to-do list. 
Lightroom's soft proof seem's to be in that same arena, even though some third parties have brought out a limited plug-in that tries to fill the gap. Schewe has said it will either make it to version 4 or heads will roll. Since QImage already has it, so I don't care!

In terms of an Elevator pitch, the new Qimage video tutorials are great if someone wants to sample the potential of Qimage flexibility without even laying out a cent.

As an aside, it would be nice to know who belongs to the voices in the videos!

It's no secret: Mike, Fred and me. You've just got to work out which voice belongs to each name.  ;D
Terry
PS. 2 new ones were posted yesterday  8)

Really?
I thought it was George W., Bugs Bunny, and Prince Philip.  ??? :'( :-\

Fred