Qimage or LR for printing?

[davidedric]

Hi,

A year or so ago I bought Qimage Ultimate for printing. I was using either PSE9 or PictureWindowPro (!) for PP, and after getting the profiles sorted have been pretty happy with the results (Qimage does have soft proofing).

A few months later I bought LR4, which of course comes with its own printing module. Again, after getting the profiles sorted it seems to give good results, and though they seemed a little different from Qimage, I did find it quite hard to decide which I preferred.

I can't decide whether to persist with Qimage or cut over to LR.

Qimage seems to have more options and flexibility, and I understand the basics. However, obviously it's not integrated so I have to export from LR to use it, and is a very different user interface.

LR would allow me to just use the one product for the great majority of my workflow, and there are probably lots of features embedded that I haven't explored.

At some point I will have to do the work myself, and do some proper comparisons, but that is a pretty expensive process in paper and ink - and there is obviously no point in doing it at all unless I use my target paper and ink.

I'd be grateful for any comments, observations or advice.

I should add that I am an amateur, and printing up to A4 for my own enjoyment, and occasionally for family and friends.

Thanks for any ideas,

Dave

[Shadowman]

Have you synched your printer profile to the editing software? That would be the place to start before you make comparisons.

[davidedric]

Have you synched your printer profile to the editing software? That would be the place to start before you make comparisons.

Yes, I have synched the printer and paper profiles in both packages (and disabled profile management in the printer!)

Dave

[Simon Garrett]

I used to use Qimage, as I sometimes find I needed to lighten prints a bit (yes, my monitor is calibrated to a suitable light level). However, with LR4 you can lighten prints in the print module, and I rarely use Q.

I did some comparisons between LR3 and Qimage, and found the results pretty similar to LR, but preferred Q then because of the ability to apply filters (usually "brighten"). I found the UI to Qimage a bit clunky and non-intuitive, but I don't have Ultimate, so don't know if that's better.

However, if you do use Qimage, easier than exporting is to set Qimage as an external editor in LR, and then use "Edit in..." to open in Qimage. This creates a Tif file stacked with the original, which you have to delete when you've finished printing, but I found it slightly tidier than exporting.

[Shadowman]

Yes, I have synched the printer and paper profiles in both packages (and disabled profile management in the printer!)

Dave

Does your printer have "exif printing" capability? The review below references Canon printers but I have it on an hp printer as well.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2002/2/25/exifprint