DxO PhotoLab 3 Elite printing

[jemadsen]

Hi
Any suggestions or ideas as how to most conveniently and effectively print in the highest possible quality in a setup of:

Windows PC (apparently with a load of RAM), DxO 3 Elite and Canon imagePrograf 1000.

Is any 3.party print application neccessary or indeed very good to have. Printing in "Enthusiast" mode, not heavy production quantities.

Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

[IanSeward]

Hi
Any suggestions or ideas as how to most conveniently and effectively print in the highest possible quality in a setup of:

Windows PC (apparently with a load of RAM), DxO 3 Elite and Canon imagePrograf 1000.

Is any 3.party print application neccessary or indeed very good to have. Printing in "Enthusiast" mode, not heavy production quantities.

Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

If you are serious about printing and your printer choice suggests that you are :-) Then investigate Qimage Ultimate. Apart from all of the other print aspects it takes care of it automatically optimises any print size for the native resolution of the printer, Canon and Epson are different:

http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/

Ian

[jemadsen]

Thanks for information. By the looks of it I must stick with the stand alone version, and thus add a kind of export from DxO to use the Qimage application.
This leads me to the next question. Would I need som sort of DAM application as well as the printing software.

Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

[IanSeward]

Thanks for information. By the looks of it I must stick with the stand alone version, and thus add a kind of export from DxO to use the Qimage application.
This leads me to the next question. Would I need som sort of DAM application as well as the printing software.

Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

To print with Qimage you just need to choose the option "Export to Application" and DXO creates the Tif or jpg and Qimage opens showing the file for printing.

Personally, if I have an image I am going to print, it means it is of some significance and therefore I want to keep a separate copy as it represents a keeper :-)  Therefore I send my prints to a "Printing" folder and as Qimage remembers the last folder used, simply open Qimage and the files are there.

Do you need a dam?  I used LR from V1-6 and although I did use the dam originally, because that is what you are supposed to do, but didn't get much use out of it as I use a year / shoot folder system on the OS (Win File manager) and found I was just using the LR file system to go to the images I wanted.  YMMV.  DXO-PL 3 has a very basic dam where you can find folders or files by folder name etc, or keywords if you have entered them.  A keyword dam only works if you commit to entering keywords in every image without fail.  This is a lot of work if you don't make full use of the dam.  it just a matter of what you actually need.

Ian

[jemadsen]

Once again thanks for the reply.

I have used the LR Library, Develop and Print modules from 3.3 and till now 6.15 - the very last perpetual release. Through all the years I have used keywords and capture on every image, used SmartCollections based on those keywords as well as Collections for the yearly calendar, book projects, exhibitions et cetera. So I may not live happily without a DAM solution for long.
I have had a brief look around, and PhotoMechanic and IMatch both seems to do the job. Although both are pricey for "just" a DAM solution at $139 / $119 respectively, about half the price of DxO PL 3.

Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

[jemadsen]

Hi again,
a little update. I have been working uphill with adaptation to PhotoLab 3 Elite but am getting there.

One of the easy things is, that to my surprise a PL3 Export to application with QImage Ultimate (trial version) as recipient actually works. A TIFF file is sent over and available in the in-queue. For reasons I don't get PL3 also saves the TIFF file in the same folder as the original raw and .dop file, but that is under investigation in the DxO Forum.

Also one must learn that QImage does not reset (empty) the input queue when you press the Print tab. It adds up the images and prints the whole queue if you don't remember to specify print of page 1 to page 1 (the newest).

Not all things on earth can be easy - or even logical.