Quick way to print standard photo sizes.

[rgdudley]

Just wondering what is the best way to quickly print standard photo sizes from iMatch.

Do I have to create an appropriate template first, or is there already a collection of standard templates for standard photo paper sizes?

Thanks, Richard

[Mario]

Standard image sizes... Mhm, there are about 50 or so I know. Depends on your country of course. Whether you print at home, in the shop or delegate to a professional print service like Whitewall or similar.

IMatch ships with print templates for both A4 and US Letter paper sizes. With different image sizes each. These can be used to quickly create your own templates by "Save as...".

To print whatever you consider a 'standard photo size' depends not only on the actual image size, but also on the paper size you use for your printer or external printing. And of course physical aspects like hardware margins etc. These differ more or less between printers.

Since it is so easy to create your own template, IMatch does not try to ship with templates for all thinkable paper sizes in combination with all 'common' image sizes.
It would be too time-consuming to setup and maintain such a large collection.

IMatch Design & Print is super-flexible and makes it very easy to setup one or a few templates for the typical pager sizes you print on and the image sizes and arrangements you use with those. And once you have them, you can reuse them anytime.

[RainerG]

I think rgdudley wishes a dialog like the 'printing-form' from photoshop or another one.

I'd like that too :-)

[Mario]

1. I think it is safe to assume that about 120% of all IMatch users have Ps, Lr, or another image editor which can print files on paper.
No need to re-implement this functionality in an asset management system (!) as well.

2. The philosophy of the Design & Print feature in IMatch is geared towards broschure or book printing, contact sheets, leops, posters and similar. Different approach. Printing one image on one piece of pager can be done easily in any image editor. Even Windows has built-in features (albeit limited) to do this.

3. I've made a quick test (Assuming US media, 5 x 7" photo).

- Select photos in file window
- Ctrl+P
- New Standard Template with options
+ 5 x 7
+ Landscape
+ Unit: Inches

Set Page margins to the hardware margins of my printer for this pager: 0.1 inch all around.
This gives me a template to print photos at 5 x 7. Maybe 20 seconds to create it and reusable forever.

I have added a 5 x 7 and a 8 x 10 system template (one photo per page) for the next release. I think this covers the most often used sizes?

[RainerG]

...
3. I've made a quick test (Assuming US media, 5 x 7" photo).

- Select photos in file window
- Ctrl+P
- New Standard Template with options
+ 5 x 7
+ Landscape
+ Unit: Inches
...

It is possible (for me) to make an an App that can do this?

[Mario]

Creating a print templates from an apps?

Theoretically yes.

I designed D&P to use XML for the print templates. XML is an open format, easy to read and edit for humans.
All the controls and dialog boxes in the Design & Print module just manipulate the template XML file.

It would be easy to create an app which produces an XML file.
The problem is, I never bothered to document the XML schema for Design & Print templates. So far there was never a need.