Did you try out the "Design & Print" - tool?

[sinus]

Just in case, that you did not try out this "new" Print-modul: maybe you should give it a try!

Basically you can throw some images into this tool, use a system-template and print it out.
But you can also simply create a PDF or a jpg, tif or png.

It could make fun to create a PDF and send it to friends or clients. 

What I personally like, it the possibility to create some dynamics templates and store them.

Then I can every time drop some images or folders or categoris (I use mostly the cats) on the tool, take the template and it is done.
No difference, if you take 1 image or 50, 200 or even over 500, what just I have done. We can use always the same template. Once a bit work, then it is done. 

Give it simply once a try.

Although the help-section of this printing-tool is specialy good, I have attached to show you this here some examples from a user.
The templates are not finnished yet, but you can see, what can be done.

1. attachement (dynamic template)
This is specialy a bit a chaos, but with this I want to show, what can be done. Of course we should here work all better, changes the colors and so on, but we can do really a lot.

2. attachement (standard template)
Here is used only 1 image, but showed with different "cuttings". Sometimes this is helpful to show friends, what can be done.

3. attachement (dynamic template)
582! images (nefs, jpgs, tifs) on 40 pages, all showed here in the preview on IMatch. Now I would simply create from this a pdf. I throwed a main-category with 4 subcats in the tool, the "Design & Print"-modul creates from the subcats socalled groups. IMatch had on my machine 55 seconds to show onscreen, what you see here. This is fast, very fast, my DB is huge (11 GB, 220.000 images, 8500 categories).

4. attachement (dynamic template)
The same, but I have choosed only 12 pages to see onscreen.

5. attachement (dynamic template)
Again the same, but this time 8 pages. You can see here better, I have created a title-page, then a info-page (the second page, with the blue water).
The title page is always the same.
But on the info-page (group-header) I picked out 2 images from the first group and showed them in different "cuts". To change the images, it takes me 10 seconds. 

Then, the third page is the group-header. This pages will be created from each group (each categories). Also here I can choose an image from each group. Because I made this with the help of variables, I can change such an image very quickly.
In the background there is an image with 45% opacity and 15 blurring, the same image is then printed again with the real colors in the forground, smaller.

So each group has a info-page and then a group-header, before the real thumbs are showed. To identify the images for the user each thumb has at the bottom the filename. Headline and Description I did not show here.

Like Mario showed very good in the help, I could no change this template from 4x5 images per page very quickly to, say 5x6 images. Just in case we want not such a lot of pages. But if we want the thumbs bigger, then I would change this on 3x4 images per page. Easy.

So I wrote here basically the same like in the help (I encourage to read it), but if you look at the attachement here, maybe you will become the feeling, that you will also try this tool.
Have fun! 




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[DigPeter]

Thanks Markus - very instructive.

[Aubrey]

Nice Markus,
Some thoughts on my experience, I have not yet read your post in detail...
I have been building a montage of photos without using the grid, arranging the images in a "random" order with titles underneath, generated by the text container.
A few things I would like to see - but maybe its there and just have to explore...
Moving 2 containers together i.e., click on both to highlight and move
Have container to fit image, rather than other way around: when I drop an image there maybe some white space around edge of container.

I may well be using the template in the wrong way - thinking PowerPoint style.

Aubrey.

PS I never bothered learning what LR could do as I knew Mario was coming out with his, and I knew it was gonig to be more versatile than LR!!

[Mario]

Moving 2 containers together i.e., click on both to highlight and move

Works. Shift+click to select multiple containers. Then you can move them with the mouse or the keyboard.

Have container to fit image, rather than other way around:

Right-click container > Fit container size to content. See help for details.

[Aubrey]

Guessed it was there somewhere... I did read the manual, but must have missed it.
now that I know shift click definitely works I'll try it again, I tried but thought it was not implemented!

Mario - you think of everything!

[Mario]

Just in case, that you did not try out this "new" Print-modul: maybe you should give it a try!

Thanks for sharing, Markus

[Photon]

Thank you Markus for the motivation and the impressive screenshots.

To be honest, up to now I never tried anything with printing and related new features from Imatch. To my opinion a photo management tool (DAM) should not do anything with image editing, with printing, with web publishing, with digital-AV-show generation or something with non-image files like audio or video files. This not only because out-of-the-Photo-DAM-box features require valuable capacity. But I understand the motivation of software makers to create all-inclusive tools in order to convince old and more important new customers.

And sometimes we forget after dozens of updates and upgrades, that we really use and appreciate the (initially unwanted) new features. Recently I had to maintain a PC with Windows 3.11. That was a real challenge! Practically all of the current Windows features (like right mouse button commands and all/some network features) are missing in Win3.1/3.11. I felt like crippled or quadriplegic/paraplegic. No, Imatch was not installed on Win3.1. Which version would still run?

The posting of Markus for sure will motivate me to try out the Design&Print tool. Nice coincidence is, that I started recently with Scribus. And I realized very good Scribus results with color managed PDF output files for professional printing service companies. Looking forward to starting this now with Imatch.

Martin

[hro]

Thanks Markus for providing some insights how you use Design&Print. I found it a bit daunting to get started. There is a lot of new stuff to learn. However,  your post got me motivated.

Cheers.  Hartmut

[ColinIM]

Yes indeed. Thank you Markus for this inspirational post.

As an aside:  For her Christmas gifts last year, my daughter asked me to buy her some vouchers that she planned to use with an online photo printing company (PhotoBox).  Her aim is to assemble some of her favourite pictures (she takes beautiful landscape photos) into one or more 'coffee table' books that PhotoBox offers for sale, via their own templates ... and they can be very expensive books to buy!

The next time I speak with her I'll hint that - with a reasonable (one time) investment in time plus a modest upgrade to her existing printer, and a new IMatch license - she could create as many of her own 'books' as she wished - using IMatch Design & Print, of course