iMatch Design & Print: Cannot print b&w photos

[are]

Hi,
Printing of color pictures works fine for me. However, when I try to print a black and white photo (8 bit grayscale), it neither shows up in the preview, nor is it printed by my printer. Is this a feature, or do I something wrong? So far I could not find any option to change this behaviour. Any help is welcome :-).

KR are

P.S.: The format is .jpeg in both cases.

[Mario]

8-bit JPEG files are quite rare. Standard for this variant varies greatly between platforms and applications.

However, I have no problems printing 8 and 16-bit grayscale images (and CMYK and l-a-b) in PSD, TIF and JPEG format with IMatch Design & Print.
These files were created some time ago with Adobe Photoshop. I've also creates some new files just for this test, again in Photoshop.

Please attach one of your images which exhibits this strange behavior. I cannot reproduce it with the grayscale images in my test suite.

[are]

Hi Mario,
thank you for the quick reply! While looking for examples, I found out more about my problem:

- The b/w pictures I cannot print were recently scanned with a standard flatbed scanner (EPSON XP-750) as grayscale on a WIN10 computer, saved as JPG. Some others were later modified with Gimp and won't print either. The first attachment is an example of such a foto, scanned in 2016, not modified as far as I remember (Alois_8.jpg). BTW: I can handle these pictures in iMatch without any problem, including face annotation.

- I also found a b/w picture I could print (see second attachment: flower_child.jpg). It was scanned in 2014. I forgot what scanner I owned at that time (it was a photo scanner including a transparancy unit).

- I opened the latter picture in Gimp and exported it to a different file (100%, flower_child_gimp.jpg) - and this version again I cannot print. As above, both versions can be handled the same way in iMatch.

It's not a big problem for me, but I would like to understand why this is the case. Some time ago I did dig into the JPG, PSD and XCF structures for some own programming, but I cannot remeber running into problems with b/w JPEGs (maybe good luck?). Thank you for your help!

Kind regards,

are

[Mario]

I have downloaded the 3 files and they work just fine.
But please attach them again in a ZIP file, because the community may have re-encoded the images.

Attached: The D&P Print Preview and a PDF file I have produced from that.
I've just used a 2 x 2 dynamic template, no changes, just all default settings.

[jch2103]

As Mario says, 8-bit JPEG files are rare. I ran into similar issues a while back when scanning b&w photos. I had thought that creating 8-bit images would help save space, etc., but it turned out to create issues for several programs, so I switched back to just using standard 16-bit scans for b&w.

[are]

Hi Mario,

thanks for your efforts. Attached are the zipped files. I can print the image you produced.

KR are

[jch2103]

Attached are the zipped files.

There seems to be something wrong with the zip file.

[are]

I used 7zip; maybe renaming the extension to .7z will help? The forum tool allows only .zip as extension.

[Mario]

You have to rename it to .7z after downloading.
But I get the same successful result. The images display in D&P and print just as well.

Did you check the preview when you use D&P? When you use a dynamic template, the Designer View will not show images.

[are]

I used the same template for all three pictures. The one that show not not up in the print preview are also not printed on paper.

The IMatch version is 2020.14.2 (64-bit).
Running on Windows 10 Home Version 2004 Build 19041.867

I took 2 screenshots and attached them here (1: flower_child.jpg, 2: flower_child_gimp.jpg). I used the provided "10 x 15 Photo" template, tab: print preview. The problem occurs also with other (self-made) templates.

[are]

Hi,
I dug out some old programs (mostly writen in php) that read the headers of image files to collect metadata and ran them on the three pictures. The result can be seen (very small font) in the attached file. Except for the thumbnail info (column "TNtype") and the list of EXIF sections available, they look quite similar. The middle row marked grey is for the file that I can print, the 1st and 3rd rows are for the files I cannot print.

Anyway, please note that this is not an important problem for me. From my point of view, please do not waste too much time on it. Thank you!

Kind regards,

are

[Mario]

I have tries with 6 images you have provided.
All displayed just fine in Design & Print and also printed to PDF and my printer. No problems at all. IMatch 2020.14.2.
Not sure what else I can do.

[are]

Hi Mario,

many thanks for your efforts! As mentioned earlier, it's not a big problem for me. To preserve the sepia look of old photos I print them mostly in color mode anyway. I like IMatch very much - it is the best tool for handling photos I ever had.

Kind regards,

are