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The advantage of QimageUltimate. Recommendations from expert users
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Qimage Ultimate photographic print quality: |
Many people are not aware of the complexity of the photographic printing process. To get optimal quality, you must ensure that the final print is sharpened and color managed properly. Did you know that a different level of sharpening needs to be applied to a 5x7 print than the same photo printed at 8x10? Qimage Ultimate does! Do you remember what printer driver settings and which ICC profile you used the last time you printed to your 8x10 borderless paper? Qimage Ultimate does! Can you stretch that 640 x 480 cell phone pic to 5x7 or even 8x10 and get a decent print? Qimage Ultimate can! Your prints are a "permanent" record of your photography. Don't leave it to chance: leave it to Qimage Ultimate and always get the best prints possible!
To photo editors, image database tools, and even online printing services, printing is an afterthought. They were not designed with efficiency or quality in mind because those attributes are deferred to the user (you). If you notice that your 4x6 prints look sharper than 5x7 prints of the same photos, the other tools just fall back on the excuse "it's your fault: you could have sharpened more". If you can't stretch that cell phone pic to 5x7, you hear "you can buy XYZ resampling plugin". But do you know what the relationship is between image resolution and final print size, and how to resample to your printer driver's native resolution? Do you want to pay more than the cost of Qimage Ultimate to get a plugin that you have to apply manually each time just to try to match the results of Qimage Ultimate, a tool that has a decade of experience optimizing print quality under every imaginable situation automatically, with no user intervention? Let's not even discuss the hoops you'd have to jump through in your photo editor or image database tool should you wish to print a 5x7 and 4x6 on the same page, something that takes about 4 clicks in Qimage Ultimate!
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Qimage Ultimate photographic print quality:
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Reference and credit:- http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/quality.htm
Printing Technology:
The World's Smartest Photo Printing Algorithms
Benefits:
Maximum detail: Qimage knows the native resolution used by every Windows printer driver and will automatically resample using the highest quality interpolation and antialiasing algorithms to ensure that prints of any size have the maximum detail possible! Bypassing the printer drivers' rudimentary scaling algorithms provides maximum quality for small and large prints alike!
Consistent sharpness: Qimage's smart sharpening takes many factors into account when producing final prints to ensure that your 13x19 photos look as good and have sharpness equivalent to your 4x6 snapshots! All calculations are performed transparent to the user. There is nothing to adjust on a print-by-print basis!
Data handling: Smart data management means sending image data to printer drivers in smaller chunks rather than overwhelming drivers by dumping the entire image at once. Qimage's proprietary printer driver data streaming not only ensures more reliable printing, but it also allows Qimage to succeed in printing gargantuan prints where other tools fail. In addition, Qimage can overcome printer driver length limitations entirely if the driver offers a roll paper/banner paper selection, allowing Qimage to go far beyond the 44 or 127 inch limit of your driver! It is not uncommon, for example, to hear from Qimage users who have printed one contiguous panoramic print 20 feet long when their Epson driver stops at only 127 inches!
Eliminate job-to-job setup errors: Qimage's automated job log and its ability to save/recall jobs and printer settings ensures that once you get all the variables just right for your setup, you'll never have to set those parameters again! Do you use multiple printers or just multiple papers with different ICC profiles that require specific printer driver settings? Just set them once, save, and recall at any time.
Reference and credit:- http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-prt.htm
QUltimate Sharpening:-
Two sharpening options are available - USM and the superior propriority DFS, dfs can and does produce nearly halo-free results.
Tone Targeted Sharpening - Qimage Ultimate takes Qimage's sharpness equalizer concept to the next level with tone targeted sharpening. Simply stated, tone targeted sharpening is a special unsharp mask that can be targeted to sharpen (or soften) only your primary subject. Now with just the click of an eyedropper on your subject, you can sharpen or soften only the important parts of your photo. Make your subject pop right out of the photo by sharpening it without affecting other colors or even go the other way and soften only the skin tones in a portrait to reduce the appearance of wrinkles while keeping eyelashes and hair razor sharp.
Referenceand credit: http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-dfs.htm and http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-tts.htm
Like most other third party raw photo tools, Qimage Ultimate uses DCRAW as it's base raw developing engine, but we've gone beyond the capabilities of DCRAW by adding features and improving performance. The following are some of the differences between Qimage Ultimate and standard DCRAW raw processing:
Custom profiles: We've developed our own ICC profiles for many cameras to improve color accuracy.
Lens profiles: We have lens distortion correction profiles for a number of mirrorless cameras.
Black levels: Qimage Ultimate intelligently calculates black level for each camera.
DFS: Qimage Ultimate uses Deep Focus Sharpening to produce halo-free razor sharp results.
Smart color: Smart color is used to produce outstanding color without adversely affecting hues.
Multi-threaded: We use up to 4 CPU cores to develop 4 raw photos at once!
Sony WB: Qimage Ultimate reads and uses the camera white balance for all Sony cameras.
Reference and credit:- http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-raw.htm
Raw Development:-
Qimage Ultimate - Fusion Interpolation
Most "over the counter" interpolation methods like bicubic spline will work fine for small to medium size prints. Fact is, if you have a 6 MP or larger image and you never print beyond 8x10 inches, you may not see (or need) more than the bicubic interpolation found in your image editor. But what if you crop your image? What if you want to print one photo at 24x36 inches or beyond? For these more demanding tasks that require more extreme resampling, you need a "prescription strength" interpolation algorithm like the new Fusion interpolation found in Qimage Ultimate. Only Qimage Ultimate offers interpolation of this quality and speed.
Reference and Credit:- http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-fus.htm
I have used this Program for a number of years.
Features I particularly like.
The image qualtiy and speed of the Raw processing.
Works direct on the RAW data, all adjustments are recorded on “side car” files alongside the Raw data file. The actual RAW DATA is never touched, your original file is never changed. It is therefore almost impossible to loose or mess up an original.
“Flash Card Copy Move” Used for all file admin. loading from camera memory card to pc's hard drive (both a 'working' and a back up drive. Also used for subsequent back ups including of course the side car files and any other file versions (tiffs web size copies etc.)
“Convert Images” Used to create Tiff/jpeg/BMP copies of images, (for editing in other programs such as PS etc)
“Create Email/Web copies” this function lets you create a Email/Web size copy of an image. There are six standard resolutions to select plus custom, Jpeg quality 0 to 100%, Honor print crops, convert to sRGB, and send via email when done. If a 'save location' is not selected the prog saves in a sub folder under the original folder. All that with a few initial clicks, it then takes about 15 seconds to create the jpeg and then asks you if you want to send via email direct from Qimage.
Another very handy tool is, left click and hold on a thumb brings up a larger image, right click this larger image gives options to 'lock window'/ 'view full screen' / image examiner. A very quick method of viewing images to decide which ones to add to queue for futher work.