Software Review: Q-Image Pro 2003

 By Patty Hankins and Bill Lawrence

Have you ever tried to print digital photographs on your own printer?  If you have, you may have run into the printing limitations of many of the standard image editing or image management programs.  If you haven’t run into their limitations yet, read on, because sooner or later you probably will…

 We originally purchased Q-Image (back before it was Q-Image Pro) several years ago for one simple reason – we wanted to print more than one photo on a sheet of inkjet printer photo paper.  This seems like a simple enough thing to do, but at the time, many photo editing programs made printing multiple photos on one sheet of paper a real pain.  Enter Q-Image Pro ( http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/ ):  this program lets us pick a template of the size photos that we would like, and simply double click on an image to get it properly set up on the page.  Need three 4”x6” photos on your page?  No problem.  Set the template for 4x6, click on 3 different photos from a list, and you’re ready to print.  Want a roughly 4x6 print of an image that doesn’t have a 4x6 aspect ratio?  No problem again – simply click on it, and Q-Image will automatically resize it so that it fits within the 4x6 box as large as possible.  Need a total of 200 prints with 4 or 5 different photos for your holiday cards, printed on 4” roll paper, preferably alternating so that you don’t use up only one color of ink in your cartridge and throw the rest away unnecessarily?  OK – a problem, but it’s not Q-Image’s problem – the roll paper and the inkjet cartridges on our printer last for less than 50 photos.

 Warning: for those of you not into jargon, you are about to get barraged.  We tried to at least put the bottom line in English…

 Another great feature of Q-Image is that this program has one of the best interpolation programs around if you need to enlarge your images.  Essentially, most would argue that for a good sharp photo, you should have the printer print at around 300 or more pixels per inch (ppi).  Interpolation lets you “estimate” the data between pixels in your image, allowing you to get a good quality print at less than 300 ppi of actual data from your image.  I have not done head-to-head comparisons, but the Q-Image Pro algorithm compares favorably with (and may well be better than) those of Genuine Fractals or stair interpolation algorithms.  Below, I have some 100% size scans of an 1890’s cabinet card, which is a 4x5.5” photo which I scanned and printed a portion of in Q-Image at the equivalent magnification of enlarging the entire photo to roughly 3 ft. by 5 ft!  One of the advantages of Q-Image is that it can do the resizing and interpolation for you automatically.  You simply tell it what size you want the print to be, what interpolation algorithm to use (basically, you can go for better quality or better speed, and it will tell you which is which), and it figures out the rest.  It does an absolutely superb job of this.  It will do Lanczos interpolation, and recently has added vector interpolation, which they report as better than Lanczos (again, I have not done head-to-head comparisons on algorithms).  For those not into pixel interpolation algorithms, read here that it will do a very good job on enlarging your photos.

 Q-Image Pro also supports ICC color profiles, so if you have color management profiles in place for your monitor, printer, etc., it will handle these neatly and without complaint (another reason we like the program).  If you aren’t using color management for a Window’s based system, there is a good chance you aren’t printing the same colors that you are seeing on your monitor, but that is a topic for a future article (when we’re really feeling brave…).

 Q-Image Pro also has very powerful image editing functions, has a pretty good red-eye removal function for those of you in need of one, and even can do basic file management.  We really don’t use those functions, as we have other programs that we tend to use for each.  If you can use these, then think of it as an extra added bonus, because this program is well worth the price ($39.95) solely for the printing capabilities of this program.  A free downloadable demo is available from their website (http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/ ), which becomes fully functional when a registration code obtained by purchasing the program is entered.  The upgrade policy is also superb – you only have to buy the program once.  We have upgraded for several years without any further fees.  Unfortunately, the program is only available for Windows (95 or later), although it will apparently run on Macs using recent versions of Virtual PC.  We highly recommend this program.

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These photos show an example of using Q-image for enlarging photos.  You can read more about pixel interpolation at our website on restoration of images from vintage photos, the Virtual Vintage Image ( http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~wflawrence/ ).  This is a scan of a cabinet card from around the 1890's.  The scan was done at 300 dpi of a 4x5.5 inch card.

 The highlighted section measures roughly 3/8" by 3/4" - I used Q-image to print this section at 4"x6".  This would correspond to printing the whole image at roughly 38"x58".

The highlighted section above was printed out at the size below - it was re-scanned and sized to show at the print size on a 72 dpi monitor display.  You are viewing a scan of what I actually printed out using the Q-image program.   I used the Lanczos interpolation algorithm to do the enlargement (this was done on an old version of Q-image - now I would use vector interpolation).  As you can see, this program does a very nice job with enlargements, given what we were working with to start.

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