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Mike Chaney's Tech Corner > Mike's Software > Qimage > Unequal borders - again
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Author Topic: Unequal borders - again  (Read 15447 times)
Oldfox
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« on: December 10, 2010, 02:16:41 PM »
Last august I struggled with borders. Well, same thing happend again.

I was printing my xmas cards and printed two images in one A4 sheet. Now I was a little wiser than in august and got me a solution playing with borderless printing and margins.

I have an enhancement request. Maybe not for Qimage, but for Ultimate? Maybe this is not the right place, but here it is anyway:

Why not introduce separate borders for all four borders? For example sometimes you may want to have the bottom border a little bigger than the others. And for my xmas cards it would have solved the problem.

The diagram for my xmas cards is attached.

/fox (older again)
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Oldfox
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« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2010, 04:45:23 PM »
I moved my answer into this thread where it belongs. Mike's diagram in the quote is in another thread: http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage/adding-borders/30/

Quote
Looks pretty simple to me.  In that diagram, you didn't specify any colors but it looks like you have two potential border colors going on: the one that would be showing where the 3's are and another border where the 7's and 10's are.  What I'd do in this case is create an image with the color you want for the outer border (where the 3's show) and a second image for the inner border (where the 7's and 10's show).  Take the outer border and size it to the dimensions shown in your diagram.  Then take the inner border and size it 6mm smaller in both dimensions and place it on top of the outer border, centered.  Now you have your two borders.  Now just drag two templates that are the size you want and place the top template 10mm from the top and the bottom 10mm from the bottom.  Then save that as a layout and you can open that layout and use it any time you like and fill those two templates with whatever images you like.

I created this layout in a few minutes (see attached).  Only hitch I had was that it was difficult to select the templates in the full page editor because there were three images on top of one another.  To make it simpler, you could do the same thing by just specifying a page background color for your outer border and then just use one additional image for the other color.  That leaves only two images on top of each other and makes the toggle-to-select feature in the full page editor work better.

Long story short: I created the attached, saved it as a layout, and now I can load this layout any time I like using "Custom" size and then layout... and I can just add images and they fill the templates.

Mike

Just to clarify, the 3 mm border in my diagram is the margin that the Epson printer "creates" without using the borderless print.

Your solution looks promising.

/fox

ps. the words 'margin' and 'border' seem to have different meaning in Qimage and Epson. English is not my native language, so for me they are the same.
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« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2010, 05:44:28 PM »
Quote from: Oldfox on December 31, 2010, 04:45:23 PM
Just to clarify, the 3 mm border in my diagram is the margin that the Epson printer "creates" without using the borderless print.

Your solution looks promising.

/fox

ps. the words 'margin' and 'border' seem to have different meaning in Qimage and Epson. English is not my native language, so for me they are the same.

OK, so that makes things even simpler since you are doing only one border.  Let me try to help/simplify further then:

- Click the page background color button under the preview page.

- Select the color that you want for the border: the page should now become that color.

- If you want a white border (just spacing), simply skip the above steps and continue below.

- Set your print size to "Custom", "Specific Size", and then enter the print (template) size.  Given that the 3mm margin is what the printer is using, set your print size to 14mm smaller (7 on each side) than the horizontal printable area listed above the preview page for the width.  Then for the height, take the vertical printable area, subtract your 34mm (total borders), and divide by two because you have two prints vertically.

- Using "Freehand" placement (selected under the preview page), drag two templates to the page, dropping them approximately in the correct positions.  They should be the size specified above as long as your "crop" button was on/down when you specified your size.

- Go to the full page editor and click on the top template, click the "Size/Loc" tab on the right, and enter 10mm in both the left and top positions: that'll space the print 10mm from the left edge of the page and 10mm from the top.

- Select the bottom template and on the "Size/Loc" tab, enter 10mm in both the left and bottom positions: that'll space the print 10mm from the left and 10mm from the bottom of the page.

- Click "Done" to close the full page editor and your setup should be complete.

- Click "File", "Save", click the "L" button at the bottom for "Layout", and give the layout a name.

Now when you click "Custom", "Layout", you should see the file name you saved.  Open it and add anything you like and the templates will be filled with whatever photos you use.

Mike
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rayw
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« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2011, 04:39:50 PM »
A few thoughts maybe worth pursuing -

It is relatively easy to position images accurately, since by using the full page editor you can set the margins (although it may be useful to have the option of measuring from the printable area as well as the page). I think it would simplify the multi-border aspects that some folk want, if perhaps the same colour picker idea as used for selecting page background colour could be applied to images. An image could then be placed on the page - originally a plain white image, say - sized and positioned, then its colour changed. Dropping a copy of the image again, repositioned/resized/whatever, and the ability to have a different coloured assigned to that instance of the image, would allow complete flexibility in the number of margins/borders, and their sizes for any image and page configuration that would be needed.

If it was a temporary filter applied to only the specific selected image on the page, then one white image would fit all. The alternative, at the moment, is to previously create a specific colour image for each colour border required, more or less, afaik.

Another way, but I think more complicated, would be to allow an image to be completely a border, and select the colour in the existing border colour tool. At the moment, provided you are placing an image in the centre of the page, then you can make a small image with a huge coloured border, and place your other images as required on top of that, covering the middle non-border-coloured patch. For some reason, maybe because of the B/+B aspects and the method of actually entering the values, it seems easier to deal with separate plain images.

Best wishes,

Ray
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Terry-M
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« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2011, 06:01:37 PM »
Ray,
Just a detail
Quote
since by using the full page editor you can set the margins
You cannot set "margins", ie. page margins in the FPE. You have to do this from Preferences, Page Formatting Menu.
I think one poster here was already confused about the difference between margins and borders!
To clarify, Margins are related to the whole page; Borders are for images to be printed on the page.
Terry
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rayw
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« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2011, 07:02:11 PM »
I didn't mean setting margins or borders in the qimage terminology, but setting the location. However that is related to the page size, which is not the same as the printable area. Basically, what I was suggesting is equivalent to arranging a stack of different sized sheets of coloured paper, any of which which could be either images or equivalent to coloured mount cards. It would simply require an easy method of generating the single coloured sheets on the fly.

And then, we will want graduated tones and patterns  Cheesy

Best wishes,
Ray
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Oldfox
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« Reply #6 on: January 03, 2011, 11:39:16 AM »
Quote from: Terry-M on January 01, 2011, 06:01:37 PM
To clarify, Margins are related to the whole page; Borders are for images to be printed on the page.

Those are Qimage terms, Epson uses Borderless meaning No Margins in Qimage.  No wonder one gets confused!

/fox
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Oldfox
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« Reply #7 on: January 03, 2011, 11:47:29 AM »
Quote from: Mike Chaney on December 31, 2010, 05:44:28 PM
- Set your print size to "Custom", "Specific Size", and then enter the print (template) size.  Given that the 3mm margin is what the printer is using, set your print size to 14mm smaller (7 on each side) than the horizontal printable area listed above the preview page for the width.  Then for the height, take the vertical printable area, subtract your 34mm (total borders), and divide by two because you have two prints vertically.

- Using "Freehand" placement (selected under the preview page), drag two templates to the page, dropping them approximately in the correct positions.  They should be the size specified above as long as your "crop" button was on/down when you specified your size.
- Go to the full page editor and click on the top template, click the "Size/Loc" tab on the right, and enter 10mm in both the left and top positions: that'll space the print 10mm from the left edge of the page and 10mm from the top.
- Select the bottom template and on the "Size/Loc" tab, enter 10mm in both the left and bottom positions: that'll space the print 10mm from the left and 10mm from the bottom of the page.
- Click "Done" to close the full page editor and your setup should be complete.
- Click "File", "Save", click the "L" button at the bottom for "Layout", and give the layout a name.
Now when you click "Custom", "Layout", you should see the file name you saved.  Open it and add anything you like and the templates will be filled with whatever photos you use.
Mike

This worked like a charm. Thank you!

The accuracy is quite good. Because Qimage does not accept size 128.5 mm, I had to use 190 x 128 mm. The extra 1 mm will show between the two images making the gap between the two images 21 mm (instead of 20 mm). This accuracy is fine with me. 

Using Freehand/Size/Loc and Templates were both new to me. I wonder what else is in Qimage that I am not aware of?

/fox
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Terry-M
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« Reply #8 on: January 03, 2011, 11:48:32 AM »
Quote
Those are Qimage terms,
No, not only Qimage, all MS Office Programs and other drawing/DTP programs too.
I suppose printer drivers use the term "borderless" because it's usually a feature for a singe image on a page where the page margin becomes a border  Roll Eyes
Terry
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« Reply #9 on: January 03, 2011, 02:47:54 PM »
Quote from: Oldfox on January 03, 2011, 11:47:29 AM
The accuracy is quite good. Because Qimage does not accept size 128.5 mm, I had to use 190 x 128 mm.

You could always get Qimage Ultimate: it goes all the way down to tenths of a millimeter.  Smiley

Mike
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