This is my first post here. I have been using Qimage some time now.Basicly I am happy with the product. However a couple of times I have torn my grey hairs. My knowledge of Qimage is still far from good, so some of the problems have been caused by this.

Here is one problem which I encountered the other day and I have not found a solution to it. The problem will probably pop up for me some day again and maybe somebody else has had too.

The other day I printed some photos with my Epson 3800. I planned to print four images to A4 sheet and then use my trimmer paper cutter to cut one sheet to four photos.

Because I had quite many photos I planned to make it easy. So I planned to use the paper cutter only three times per A4 sheet (one cut to halve the A4 and then same again with the two halves) ending with 4 photos from one A4.

I like to have white borders in my photos. I knew that Qimage has option to include white borders "automatically". This is where the troubles came. No matter what I tried I did not get even borders to my photos, so I ended up using the paper cutter a lot.

Afterwards I examined the task more closely, and I found out that it was not easy at all. There are a lot of variables involved (basically in two pieces of software: Qimage and the Epson driver).

Here is what I wanted to do:



The size of A4 is 297x210 mm. That makes 148.5x105 mm per image. Using 10 mm border in each side leaves 128,5x85 mm (ratio 1.511765) for the image itself. The originals were 1.5 in ratio, so I had to crop them a bit to get ratio 1.511765.
I used Qimage Professional Edition (version 2009.268) with :
- Custom size 2 col x 2 rows
- Auto Cropping: Off
- Print Orientation: Unlock
- Borders: B
- Border 1: 5mm
- Border 2: 5mm
In the Epson driver I had:
- Source: Sheet
- Borderless: Yes
- Size: A4
- Page Layout: Layout: Output Paper: Same as Paper Size

This is the best I could produce. The borders are not the same in each side, however.



The borders shown in the output from Epson Print Preview are exactly the same as in the actual print (the colours are not).

Here I used different colours for the borders to show the problem. In the final print the border colors are all white.

As you can see the borders are not the same:
1) In the top there is a small white border (0.5mm).
2) In the center there is a white border (1.5mm).
3) The bottom border is cropped (1mm).
4) In the left there is very small whiter border (less than 0.5 mm, hardly visible in the screen)

There is an option in Qimage I also tried. Page Formatting -> Borderless Overspray/Expansion -> Disable. This seemed to cancel the borderless option in the Epson driver and result was worse than above.

It is possible to change to the Amount Enlargement for the borderless print (Main -> Paper Settings -> Expansion). Changing the Expansion from Max (factory setting) to Mid or Min, gave also worse result in my case.

So that leaves the question: Is it possible to have exactly the same borders in 4 images in one sheet?

(I would not like to start calculating and including the borders in actual images itself).

I don't think the problem is anything to do with that, it's related to the fact that Oldfox is using borderless and the expansion affects the sizes.
He's also got cropping off so the images will not fill a quadrant (4 images per page), hence the extra white space.

Sorry Oldfox, I've not time at present to look in detail and simulate here but will try later on today. There may be some clues in what I said above but using borderless is always dodgy for accurate sizing, even with expansion disabled in Qimage.
A screen shot from Qimage would be helpful too, right hand side of main screen and the full page editor.
Terry

B1 = B2 = 5mm as you figured. (there should be colons in my text, maybe they show up different in your screen).

Anyway, thx for quick answer(s), I'll have to study them more later this week.

/old Fox

ps. the same post has been in Steve's Digicams' Qimage Support Forum two weeks now, no replies, 184 views (now)...

Hi

I think you are asking a lot of the 3800 to expect millimetre perfect paper feed. It's not the best printer I've used in this respect, although in most other ways it's fantastic.
Given that you are using white borders I don't think a mm would be noticed, and you also have the problem of trimming to a 1mm tolerance.

Brian

Ernst

I can work in either without too much trouble. I suppose I think in inches but measure in millimetres. In the 'old' days when we were totally Imperial we didn't use tenths of inches, just 1/8ths, 1/16ths, 1/64ths, etc.

Brian

Ernst et al,
Here are some real facts.
I printed the white images with different set borders shown attached below, the numbers are the set mm border sizes in QU.
I measured each one with a hand held measuring microscope  and, (within the limitations of a hand held device resting on the print), each ones measurement matched the number on the print.
I can even see the differences on the print - that comes from practice at looking at small differences in the engineering industry.
Conclusion, Qimage in metric mode is VERY precise, is at least 0.10 mm, 2 hairs' width, good enough?
End of story
Terry
(edited)

Hi,

You are right about the distortion with borderless. Thinking the way borderless is achieved, this is obvious.

I tried your suggestions (no borderless, print cropping on) and got the same result as you. However, there are the Epson physical margins which should be cut away.

I found out that there are also Page Margins within Qimage. So I changed the right margin to -8m giving total right margin -4.966mm. The result was promising (attach 1, qimage11.gif).
Next I changed all four Page Margins to -8mm. The preview in Qimage looked still promising. See the white lines indicating the boundary of "image" to be printed (attach 2, qimage12.gif).
However the Epson Print Preview looks nearly the same as with default Page Margins. (attach 3, qimage13.gif).

Even more puzzled

/old Fox

I suppose my problem should be possible to solve with Qimage. Qimage "knows" the Epson physical margins. All it has do is to include them when calculating the final output.

Hi Oldfox,
These are the same as the driver produces; Qimage is just reporting what they are, not a separate or additional value - until you edit in Qimage.
Just to say, Page Margins are not the same as Image Borders!
I don't think you can use negative values when using a normal page set-up, it only works on borderless. That's why the print preview looks the same, It tried it once.
Yes, it does that already.
Yes, you'll have to live with that I'm afraid.
Your Qimage 11 attachment, did that have negative margins? I can't see why some border should be missing on the rhs. This should all be very straightforward
I wonder if Brian could try to simulate this set-up on his 3800 and see what the preview looks like; I can't see why your preview should not look like mine on an R800 - reply #3, second attachment, above.
Terry