Any Forum Member with Experience "Qimage One" for Mac

[thebestcpu]

Qimage Ultimate is for Windows Machines only, and only the much reduced featured "Qimage One" is available for Macs.
Does any Forum member recommend this Mac version of this software for general printing? If yes, what has impressed you? If not, what alternate printing software do you use?
The Epson printer driver on Photoshop seems more complicated than it would have to be.
Thanks in advance for any response.
John Wheeler

 

[The Hat]

The Epson printer driver on Photoshop seems more complicated than it would have to be.

Stick with the best and you won’t go wrong..

 

[thebestcpu]

Stick with the best and you won’t go wrong..

Thanks, @The Hat, yet you may assume I know more than I do.
Your answer reminds me of a math class decades ago when the professor put up a complicated equation on the board, turned to the class, and said, therefore, the answer is "implicitly obvious" - with most in the class with a blank stare. At least, I asked politely, "Could you clarify why that step is obvious? I think I'm missing something."

I have not used Qimage One other than to know it is a much more limited version than Qimage Ulitmate on Windows machines.

I am familiar with the Epson p900 printer driver with Photoshop on the Mac, and it is a bit disappointing. Maybe it just takes getting used to yet:
- Setting Photoshop to manage the printer along with ICC profile, etc., to select the media type requires going several levels deep to the dropdown for paper type in the driver
- Even though I have set Photoshop to manage colors, at the fourth level into the driver, it sometimes has a grayed-out option settings (set wrong), or sometimes it's not grayed out and set wrong. I chalked that up to pilot error at first, yet it happens regularly without root cause explained
- Again, at the fourth level down, you have Printer Settings, and it opens with "Use Printer Settings," even though I indicated that Photoshop should do the management.
- This would be less of a concern if I could save a printer preset and have it stick, yet it doesn't always stick (and other users have reported similar issues and root causes not explained/found (e.g., Photoshop, print driver, Apple OS).

So, if I could find the right combination of steps to solidly set a preset that sticks, and I would not have to double-check every possible option down four levels of panels to be sure they weren't changed, I would be pretty happy without looking for another print path solution. Just not there yet.

So, I have not found "the best" way to "stick with," so I am seeking advice about Qimage One, i.e., is any forum member gung-ho about it? I prefer not to invest in its learning curve if it has the same issues as the Epson Printer Driver.

All I know is right now, if you take a flight and the pilot's name matches mine, you might want to take a later flight

 

[The Hat]

a complicated equation on the board, turned to the class, and said, therefore, the answer is "implicitly obvious"

That implies you’ve got everything covered (Right !), but in your case you’re not sure where the problem lies and where to look.

Is it the print driver, the O/S or Photo Shop ?, my observations are that Photo Shop is static, and both the O/S and print driver are not, so if you ask me.. I’d blame the O/S because it’s the most likely one that’s causing the issue.. Re-examine all the print drop down boxes twice..

Normally when you set your printer preferences you can save these setting in the O/S to use later as a default, but if these set of changes keep resetting then I’d examine the O/S till I’m sure I’m right and the O/S has the problem..

P.S. The Epson driver may have an unknown hidden issue also..

 

[thebestcpu]

That implies you’ve got everything covered (Right !), but in your case you’re not sure where the problem lies and where to look.

Is it the print driver, the O/S or Photo Shop ?, my observations are that Photo Shop is static, and both the O/S and print driver are not, so if you ask me.. I’d blame the O/S because it’s the most likely one that’s causing the issue.. Re-examine all the print drop down boxes twice..

Normally when you set your printer preferences you can save these setting in the O/S to use later as a default, but if these set of changes keep resetting then I’d examine the O/S till I’m sure I’m right and the O/S has the problem..

P.S. The Epson driver may have an unknown hidden issue also..

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @The Hat
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
Given that I have not had any responses encouraging the use of Qimage One, I will stick with the Epson Printer Driver for now and, with your encouragement, will systematically go through the process or all the settings even more carefully and determine what it takes to have a reliable preset that sticks and/or get a repeatable failure that I can report back to Apple or Epson as a bug.

I have used Macs since about 2008, and one of their advantages was in regards to proper handling of the print panels in regards to color management, so one would have pretty high confidence in avoiding common printing errors such as double profiling. It is disappointing that Apple had these problems with their Ventura and Sonoma OSes, as reported by quite a few folks online.

If I determine anything concrete, I will post back on these forums with an updated status.
Thanks again
John Wheeler

 

[GordW]

I use Qimage One on my iMac to my Canon Pro-10. I'm no expert, but find it produces better results that either printing directly from Lightroom Classic or using the Canon Print Studio Pro plug-in for LrC. I'm quite happy with the ease of the workflow.
I don't print from Photoshop as I found it a bit confusing setting up the various settings.
There's even a plug-in for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic that's installed with Qimage One.
Not seeing Qimage Ultimate, I'm not aware Qimage One may be lacking compared to it.
There's always the 14 day trial you might consider...?

 

[Tony4597]

Hi John, are you by any chance the John Wheeler that used to post on Retouchpro? I used to post TonyW

Anyway FWIW as I am not a Mac user anymore and only had a little experience with Qimage on PC a few random thoughts:

• Not sure what the differnces are between the PC and Mac versions. But have you considered running the PC version via Parallels (assuming that is the PC emulator). Perthaps give the demo a trial run?
  
  
• Qimage (PCversion) without doubt is excellent with more features to tweak print quality than Photoshop or Lightroom as it is a dedicated print program. Dare I say it features some degree of AI such as warning if you are setting an incorrect resolution for the print based on print size vs image data. A huge range of Interpolation and sharpening algorithms again warning if the Interpolation algorithm chosen is not optimal
  
  
• Having said that I usually print directly through LR but of course you still have to set the print driver (in Page Setup) for your particular printer and remember to turn on or off colour management in the Adobe application. Most of this taken care of automatically via Qimage
  
  
• Finally have you checked that your version of Mac OS does not have any documented printing foibles with your chosen applications?

When printing from Photoshop this is pretty much the method I used with the exception that I liked to have a split screen showing the desired edited raw file in the left window and the right window displaying the proof view. Also on the PC there was no option to print 16 bit. The video is from Mac Holbert co founder of Nash Editions

 

[thebestcpu]

I use Qimage One on my iMac to my Canon Pro-10. I'm no expert, but find it produces better results that either printing directly from Lightroom Classic or using the Canon Print Studio Pro plug-in for LrC. I'm quite happy with the ease of the workflow.
I don't print from Photoshop as I found it a bit confusing setting up the various settings.
There's even a plug-in for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic that's installed with Qimage One.
Not seeing Qimage Ultimate, I'm not aware Qimage One may be lacking compared to it.
There's always the 14 day trial you might consider...?

Hi @GordW
Thanks for sharing your experience. I did sign up for the 14-day trial. In parallel, I am focusing on the Epson driver, so I know what it offers when I compare it to Qimage One. I had to reinstall the Epson drivers and then got caught in the Black Hole of Apple's version of Epson's driver vs getting it directly through Epson (big difference). Presets now seem pretty stable, though I am double-checking the settings before clicking on Print until I gain more confidence it is now stable. It turns out I discovered that when using the Epson driver with too big of a print file, it has the unfortunate result of proceeding to create a munged-up image, and then the printer driver belly up (software bug IMHO and why I had to reinstall).
If Qimage has all the options and a more straightforward interface (and stability), I will gladly make that purchase.
Thanks again
John

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi John, are you by any chance the John Wheeler that used to post on Retouchpro? I used to post TonyW

Anyway FWIW as I am not a Mac user anymore and only had a little experience with Qimage on PC a few random thoughts:

• Not sure what the differnces are between the PC and Mac versions. But have you considered running the PC version via Parallels (assuming that is the PC emulator). Perthaps give the demo a trial run?
  
  
• Qimage (PCversion) without doubt is excellent with more features to tweak print quality than Photoshop or Lightroom as it is a dedicated print program. Dare I say it features some degree of AI such as warning if you are setting an incorrect resolution for the print based on print size vs image data. A huge range of Interpolation and sharpening algorithms again warning if the Interpolation algorithm chosen is not optimal
  
  
• Having said that I usually print directly through LR but of course you still have to set the print driver (in Page Setup) for your particular printer and remember to turn on or off colour management in the Adobe application. Most of this taken care of automatically via Qimage
  
  
• Finally have you checked that your version of Mac OS does not have any documented printing foibles with your chosen applications?

When printing from Photoshop this is pretty much the method I used with the exception that I liked to have a split screen showing the desired edited raw file in the left window and the right window displaying the proof view. Also on the PC there was no option to print 16 bit. The video is from Mac Holbert co founder of Nash Editions

Hi @Tony4597, it's been a while, and yes, I am the John Wheeler posted on ReTouchpro. I still do on some of the other Photoshop forums. I'm glad to meet you again.

Thanks for your experience with Qimage for Windows. I am a bit (OK, a lot) jealous of that, as its features are pretty enticing yet not available on the Mac. I plan to evaluate the Mac version of Qimage One with the 16-day trial to see if it covers the features in the Epson Print Driver and reliably and productively sets parameters.

Thanks for the tips on the troubles I was having. Things improved after I deleted all the printer software, reset the OS Print system, and reinstalled the Epson Printer Driver Software (Apple's version first by mistake, which does not include access to all the P900 features). I am chalking this up to being a relative newbie to my Epson P900 and its full printer driver features.

Thanks for the link to the video. A good summary. It also points out why Qimage Ultimate has some added value to keep one out of trouble for missing just one of the many steps in the Epson Print Driver.

It was interesting to see the various options for the printer used in the Video. I have different yet similarly unexplained options to select, some of which are paper-dependent on meaning and some, even if the option is available—just part of the learning curve.

Thanks again for your help
John Wheeler