NikonGear'23

Gear Talk => Processing & Publication => Topic started by: Arne Hvaring on February 07, 2016, 11:47:00

Title: Printing from iMac
Post by: Arne Hvaring on February 07, 2016, 11:47:00

Having recently aquired an iMac I am wondering if there exists a similar program to Qimage (only Windows alas) for Mac users. I've been rather dissapointed with the quality of the printing engine from LR/PS.

Title: Re: Printing from iMac
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on February 07, 2016, 11:49:48

I have had little problems printing from PS. You do have to have a firm grasp of colour spaces and profiles, though.

Title: Re: Printing from iMac
Post by: Arne Hvaring on February 07, 2016, 12:52:52

The mnain advantage of Qimage is the finer separation of nearby tones, i.e. distant foliage that frequently turns into undifferentiated mush from PS. Additionally Qimage resolves somewhat finer details and seems to give slightly better microcontrast. Granted som of these differences can be subtle, but I've studied enough side by side prints to confirm the improvement to my own satisfaction. Printer is the Epson Stylus Pro 7900.
Having said that, I haven't printed from the very last iterations of LR/PS, perhaps there has been some improvement to their printing engine. I haven't seen any such claims though.

Title: Re: Printing from iMac
Post by: afx on March 01, 2016, 21:34:43

I've recently seen http://www.printao8.com/, looks pricey depending on your printer model, but reads like it would be a viable alternative to Qimage.

You also could run Qimage in a Virtual machine...

cheers
afx

Title: Re: Printing from iMac
Post by: Arne Hvaring on March 03, 2016, 21:25:29

Thank you Andreas, yes I read about it on LL, will probably look into it. I have never tried virtual Windows, but I suppose it might work as well.