I was happy to find that QImage now has a solution for Mac, and purchased QImage One about an hour ago.

After some permissions issues that caused the Photoshop and Lightroom plugins to not install, I am now up and running in both.

The first issue I am encountering is that I fail to find a way to place an image on the page at the size it is set to (my file is set to be 8.625 x 11.125 in, so there is a .125 bleed area for borderless printing).
When I drag the image onto the page, it appears much smaller and I first need to re-scale it on the preview page.

Since there was no 8.5 x 11 page-size in the "Print" tab (why is that? isn't US Letter a standard size, even for photo-paper?), I created a custom size with those measurements for this photo.

Probably since my photo's size is actually 8.625 x 11.125, I got white borders top and bottom when I scaled it to be full-width, but I wasn't able to scale the photo beyond the borders of the 8.5x11 preview page, as I would expect to be able to do for a full-bleed page.

Even when creating a custom size 8.625 x 11.125 page, the photo won't fill the entire page, let alone bleed over the edges by 0.125 on all sides in the preview.

Since I don't want to waste good paper and ink, I want to get this right before I hot "Print"...what do I need to do to get a photo like mine to print full-bleed and to see what I am doing on the QImage One preview page? Is it not possible to place photos beyond the physical edges of the preview page in QImage One? And if it is, how do I do it?

Hope someone can enlighten me.

thanks, Andrew

I was trying to follow your instructions, but ran into some caveats:

> when you say "Click on the QImage One Custom size" you mean *after* I create it, right?

> when trying to create this custom size, I only have the option of entering the width and height of the paper in mm...if I type in 8.625in, it gives me 8.6mm instead...is there a way to change the measurement format between metric and imperial? but to follow along, I did the conversion to metric and created the appropriate custom size, which was then reflected in QImage.

> after some initial glitches (I keep losing the entire photo in the live preview if I drag or re-scale it in some way that QImage seems to interpret as me wanting it gone), I was able to place the photo correctly, to where it now leaves no white space...the print looks just as I wanted it...great!

but why is it not possible to do this in a simpler manner...since paper sizes are pretty much normed, save for a few eclectic but useful sizes that aren't usually part of the defaults (such as 12"x12"), wouldn't it seem most intuitive to let photos run off the printable area and still appear in the area outside of that? are there other RIP's that work like that? I mean, that's how files are placed in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, to name just a few...maybe I am asking about a "feature" that QImage One doesn't have (maybe QImage Ultimate, on Windows, has it?), but I don't see the logical reason for having to first create a custom "artboard size", just to fool QImage into printing full bleed onto a page smaller than the artboard...and even then, I still don't really see which parts bleed off the page...so if I wanted to place, say, 6 or 7 8x10 photos on an A3+ sized paper, with some of the 8x10 photos running off the edge of the A3+ page in different ways, maybe only showing the eyes of a portrait, at the bottom, and only the mouth of a portrait, at the top, I would have no way of knowing where exactly the portraits are being "cut off" (bleeding off the page)...do you get what I am trying to do, beyond just printing single photos, borderless, through the QImage driver?

If not QImage, what RIP allows me to do this? If QImage can act simply as a print driver, then maybe I could do the layout in InDesign and then just print it through QImage. Would that work, or does QImage need to be controlled entirely through its own Live Preview? I thought the beauty of a good RIP is that one can quickly do layouts in the RIP, rather than first having to go through layout software.

Unfortunately, the QImage trial request didn't get the link to me for 2hrs, until after I had decided to plonk down the money, otherwise I may have continued to search for a RIP that allows me to place photos entirely and/or partially on a given page size...if anyone knows of one, please do let me know.

end of rant.

thanks for those clarifications, Mike, and I do get your points, when you put it that way...the issue of excessive overspray is one that I didn't consider, as I should have.

and yeah, for the scenario that I described, I would typically set it all up in InDesign anyway, where I have all the control in the world, and then print from there.

and my bad, regarding the "missing" US Letter size setting...being totally new to Q1, I looked only at the "Prints" tab, where a list of all sorts of sizes is made available, but not 8.5x11...but the US Letter (and Borderless) setting is in the "Printer Settings" tab, of course, where it somehow escaped my awareness when I first set up that first photo.

well, with Andrew's and your help, I think I'm now on my way of burning through some paper, testing this baby...the first print looks visibly sharper than the same print coming from Print Studio Pro, so I am already enjoying this.

thanks for your help, so far, both of you!