How to print images?

[ChrisMatch]

Hi

Today I wondered if there will be any possibility to directly print one or more images with iMatch.

In the help I can find the description of how to prepare and export images with the Batch-Processor. This is the 'professional way' to use this images with an external printing solution or give them to the lab.

But there is also the 'Print Setup' dialog and the feature to define a "visual proxy for printing".
So what should I do if I have already a selection of well developed images I want to print at home/office?

Is this a still missing feature from the beta version or is there another recommended way to do this?

thanks
chris

[Mario]

Printing, and the Contact Sheet Feature, is still on my to-do list.

[sinus]

Printing, and the Contact Sheet Feature, is still on my to-do list.

Ah, this is great!

Only to mention this: 
In 3.6 the Contact Sheet Feature was great ... but we could not use it with Word.
I tried this in the beginning and had REALLY a lot of phones with journalists... they could not write into the image-format (like jpg), the contact sheet was not handy for them.

Hence I wrote (well, cut and pasted, wrote some lines and so on) a script, called "Wordkontakt".
With this script in 3.6, I can choose the rows, can choose some nice things like "shadows" or darker and so on and specialy handy: I can choose, to add under each image the headline, caption and so on.
The scripts opens word and does in fact almost the same like the contact sheet feature, but with WORD.

In the daily life, I select, say 100 images in 3.6, let run the script and end with some sheets of pages in the format xxx.doc.
You would not imagine (and I was and am still really surprised), how many journalist mentions something like "it is great, that your "overview of pics" is in the word-format, so I can simply change or add some sentences under each image (Legenden) and pass the word over to the newspaper".

Maybe, Mario, you could think, if you would also support the word-format (instead only image-formats), because word is really handy and a lot of people does use Word.

Thanks for listening, I thought, my post does fit here into this thread.

[Mario]

Markus,

I considered this a while ago while thinking about a printing feature for IMatch 5.
I'm sure there are also users who would like to have PDF output.
And others maybe HTML pages.
...

The problem with things like automatic Word is always the purpose-built vs. generic approaches.

You could create your script to do exactly what you needed. This is usually fairly easy.  it is waaay more complicated to make something generic, which is able to handle the Export to Word requirements of the majority of users. Every user will want slightly different outputs, different arrangements and layouts, different page sizes, portrait or landscape, different fonts and so on.

While 'printing' to a printer or a bitmap (like the contact sheets in IMatch 3) are quire similar (it all starts with painting on a vector surface), an export for Word or HTML would have to be written specifically. Of course I can do this, either built-in or via a dedicated export plug-in. The question is how many users would benefit from a Word Export feature? 50? 500? I may post a poll for this when it's time to decide.

If there is sufficient demand, a Export to Word plug-in could be written as a script. IMatch 5 allows scripts to fully integrate with the Import & Export Panel.

[sinus]

Markus,

I considered this a while ago while thinking about a printing feature for IMatch 5.
I'm sure there are also users who would like to have PDF output.
And others maybe HTML pages.
...
I may post a poll for this when it's time to decide.

If there is sufficient demand, a Export to Word plug-in could be written as a script. IMatch 5 allows scripts to fully integrate with the Import & Export Panel.

Thanks, Mario, for your detailed answer. The poll could be a good idea!
Your are of course right,  a lot of users want different things.

I wanted only mention my experience with JOURNALISTS, and people, who must deliver my images with some text: they love to have a word-doc, because they cannot write usually into html, pdf, jpg and so on, and THIS is the only thing for them (and the can easy delete a pic from the word).

I MUST have such a thing, but I work now still with IM3.6 and there I have my script. So I can wait, and if you decide to support this not native, what I do FULLY understand, then I will search for me a solution, and IM5 gives me some possibilities, I could try to convert my (complicated) script into the new "script-engine" (like in the help explained) or I could try to write on new one or I make it manually ... and so on.

No problem, I am happy, that you have it in your mind. Do, what it the best for IMatch 

Thanks!

[Gerd]

Hi,

I also would prefer a format, that gives the most freedom, and I think, it might be WORD (97-2003) as .DOC. From here I can save/print as PDF and as mentioned before, add some additionals.

It is much more easier to convert from .DOC into another format than from PDF.

Regards
Gerd

[ChrisMatch]

Not that I would need this feature, 
but talking about freedom and a widely usable format, I don't think that a single Microsoft product should be the way to go.
If at all, I would have a look at the 'Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF)' which is also supported by Mircosoft Word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument (German version: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument )

[Mario]

Uh Oh... 

Creating an ODF file from scratch is like building a rocket. The documentation is several miles long.
Much easier to just automate Word or OpenOffice Write from an IMatch script and let it produce one.
I'm not aware of programmer libraries which allow to produce ODF files without a several month study period.

I know a fairly good and not too expensive (500 US$) PDF library. If I will go this route (likely) IMatch 5 will have the ability to produce

+ PDF files, including PDF-X and PDF archival variants
+ Print directly to any connected printer
+ Export all or individual 'pages' as image files (which covers the IMatch 3 Contact Sheet functionality)

This covers a lot of ground and guarantees optimal quality on all devices. From individual "one image per page" to "mix freely text and images in any layout" to different odd/even pages, covers and backs, all will be possible with such a system. And I could concentrate on the core aspects of IMatch and linking them with the PDF engine (e.g. making variables usable anywhere in the PDF, layout engine etc).

Also important: Many of the web-based print services support direct upload of PDF (-X) files. An IMatch user could thus just send the output of the IMatch "PDF Printer" to his favored on-line service to order physical prints. Or send the PDF files to friend and clients.

Since PDF files can contain forms, I could even tackle typical pre-press workflow problems like annotations. The resulting PDF file would contain input fields below each thumbnail file where Markus' reporter colleagues could fill in text and then send the PDF to somebody else. This is a pretty common workflow nowadays.

A printing module will come after the initial release of IMatch. Need to keep something interesting in my to-do list for the versions following the 5.0 

[ChrisMatch]

+ PDF files, including PDF-X and PDF archival variants
+ Print directly to any connected printer
+ Export all or individual 'pages' as image files (which covers the IMatch 3 Contact Sheet functionality)

My needs would be more than covered with this and I like the idea to not add more functionality at this point. Let's just try to get the existing functionality as stable and bug-free as possible 

[Gerd]

Hi Mario,

these functions are great, that's all I need!

Regards
Gerd

[sinus]

Need to keep something interesting in my to-do list for the versions following the 5.0