Here is a list of software I already tried lately:
- Photoshop itself can get seriously bugged out when you try to manually set crop dimensions. PS is what I am using now and it offers a mostly useful print dialog anyway, so no real need for cropping.
- Gimp allows to set fixed sizes in metric measurements that can be saved as presets, both for cropping and marking. Unfortunately those presets can get confused when print size (rather resolution) is changed. You only can move the marker/crop box around, not the image inside the box, which means a bit more work. But at least it seems less bugged than Photoshop (aka usable at all).
The worse part is that Gimp seems to insist on rescaling the final print to the chosen paper size. I will try to setup a custom paper that corresponds to the virtual oversize used by my Epson 3880 when borderless printing is used. That way a DIN A4 crop should be centered within that virtual oversize. Preferably Gimp should just allow to use paper sizes defined by the print driver (see Affinity Photo below).
Photoshop's print dialog is able to read out the virtual paper size from the printer driver and then allows to set margins. Gimp just relies on the size setup via the Page Setup dialog.
- Paint.net allows to set a metric marker box at fixed size, albeit it cannot be saved as a preset. Unfortunately it uses some Windows printing dialog box that will always stretch the printed image by an uncontrollable amount, so it's out.
- Faststone Image Viewer cannot deal (well, if at all) with images of this large size.
- Affinity Photo only offers basic marker settings, but its crop tool allows to use fixed metric sizes and save those as presets. Like with Gimp you need to move the crop box around, but there seems to be no way to move the image inside the crop box.
Since the marker tool cannot be used I would have to crop -> uncrop for every part of the image I need to print. This is a setback for convenience.
A big plus of Affinity is that it is able to use the paper size defined by the printer driver instead of insisting on fixed sizes like Gimp. It also is able to print unscaled, again contrary to what I found in Gimp (feel free to correct me).
- Paint 3D cannot deal with these large image sizes.
I also checked Irfanview and ACDsee since then, but they also did not come out on top.