Yesterday I spent 2 hours, and ultimately failed, trying to put 8 images on a 16x20 sheet without cropping any of the images. It also decided that all my images had to be arranged in a grid, and lord have mercy I could NOT get rid of that grid until I removed all images from the queue and started over.
You might say that if I knew how to use the program I wouldn't have these problems - but why is it so painful to learn how to use the program? Once you figure something out the program always does a great job, but why is the figuring-out often so painful?
With the crop scissors off there's no cropping done on your images. They may get a varied scaling but not a crop. It obeys the rules of stacking rectangles in 2D, and doesn't know an aspect ratio scaling per image (I wouldn't want it otherwise). If you want anything possible within that limitation, you can get it.
Yes it is often easier to unload the print queue for a new lay-out then trying to deal with it with a loaded queue. That is nothing unique to Qimage, try the same with other print applications that nest more images on one print page. Including RIPs with less features on nesting and border control than Qimage has. The order of placing the images on the print page, the aspect ratio of the images and/or the different scaling of the images on that print page make it very difficult to rearrange a page on the fly that it suits your expectations better. There are some general choices like a paper economic stacking, a centric lay-out, compact, template based, etc.
If you are going into freehand arrangements of the images on the print page you better get a DTP program, it isn't meant for instant lay-outs. But in case you want to make templates like that to use them for repeating jobs, today or later, it can be done, you can save them as the job, a session, a template/lay-out, options or just the printer settings and recall them whenever needed. That interactive logbook also informs you of the jobs done, size, paper choices, color management. etc. Years later if needed.
Then there is the active Qimage forum. Two devoted veterans there who love to give practical solutions for issues like you described and many others who will join in if that doesn't solve it. On occassion Mike joins in for a final word. I liked the old Qimage mailing list better as it was even more active and easier to follow but nevertheless it works. Features are also requested there, bugs reported and one of the frequent, free upgrades will have the bug removed (99% of the time) and a sensible feature may have been added.
Yesterday, I checked LR3's printing side again to see what I could have overlooked on its features. There is just less of it and by that a simpler tool to use. For some that is what they need but for me it is no contest to what Qimage does for my printing workflow.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
spectral plots of +100 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
