Printing pictures

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 23 December 2006 03:54, Ian Rose wrote:
>bryann wrote:
>> On Fri, 2006-12-22 at 20:28 -0500, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
>>> On Friday 22 December 2006 7:53 pm, Michael Satterwhite wrote:
>>>> In Ubuntu / Kubuntu, what program do you recommend for printing
>>>> pictures. e.g. If I have a jpg taken from my digital camera (I use a
>>>> flash card reader) and want to print it to a 4x6 (possibly without
>>>> white margins) on my HP 5440, what is the best package for this?
>>>
>>> Probably the best thing is KPrinter.  Be sure to click the
>>> "Properties" button, and play with the settings on the "Images" tab
>>> to try to get the best results.
>>>
>>> The best isn't that good, in my opinion, but it's better than
>>> anything else I've tried.  Many people recommend using the GIMP to
>>> print, but I've never been able to figure out how to get that to work
>>> for anything that isn't on the list in the GIMP, and it doesn't
>>> include any printer or anything close to any printer I've ever tried
>>> to use, and if there are any clear instructions that make perfect
>>> sense, they're well disguised.
>>>
>>> Printing photos is a bit of a trouble spot for Linux as far as I can
>>> see. Maybe someone will make both of us a better suggestion.
>>>
>>> In the meantime, I do all my photo printing with commercial services.
>>>
>>> --
>>> D. Michael McIntyre
>>
>> This is probably going to get me flamed . The only satisfactory
>> programs I have for QUALITY printing to RECENT pcl3 printers are
>> Picassa2 from google and Corel Photopaint from the Corel 9 suite which
>> runs on Crossover beta. The latter only works on Postscript printers
>> without hacking a bit. The GIMPRINT drivers are woefully obsolete, for
>> many current printers the only working choice is to emualte an HP5xx
>> era printer at 300DPI which is useless.
>>
>> Also I have compiled the full HPILP/HPJIS as the ubuntu version was
>> found wanting.
>>
>> The trick to using GIMP if you so desire is to ALWAYS export it to a
>> Postscript File.  Then print the file. OR use Gimp to set up your pics
>> Gamma Contrast etc.then do your layout with Scribus.
>>
>> for general purpose home use. I recommend googles picassa2 alone or
>> along with digikam.
>>
>> I have been mostly using digikam and GIMP to access and adjust the
>> images. All of our digital camera pics are done 5-10 megapixels. I use
>> GIMP to bring them down to web size resolution etc. for PCL printers I
>> then use Picassa to make the prints. Digikam's cropping and adjustment
>> tools are usally used first though (red eye remover etc) as the pics
>> are ususally downloaded to my iBOOK immediately to check them out on a
>> screen not made for Lilliputians.
>>
>> Bryann  (Melvin Graphics)
>
>I would use GIMP for any touch-up work, colour correction, cropping,
>contrast adjustment etc. The printing from GIMP is hard to recommend -
>for me the quality of its drivers are unusable even for very rough
>drafting. Having tried the range of both KDE and Gnome photo apps, and
>really wanting to use FOSS solutions, I find that Picasa2 is *by far*
>the best solution for printing and managing photos, despite being
>free-but-not-fully-open-source.
>
>Printing to standard sizes is handled so easily it makes you weep - 4x6
>is supported btw, as are contact prints and some basic (but competent)
>image enhancements. (Of course if you want to print to a non-standard
>size, like 7x9, you appear to be out of luck!)
>
>The .debs for Debian/Ubuntu can be found with full instructions via:
>
>http://picasa.google.com/linux/
>
>--
>Ian

Folks come in here and lambast gimp-print-plugin without ever giving it a 
chance & its getting a bit old...

Remove both it and gimp-print, then install gutenprint which is the new 
name for it, then reinstall the gimp-print-plugin.  If you've already a 
decent printer and here I'm a die-hard epson fan, jerk out foomatic by 
any means at your disposal including rm, and use the gutenprint drivers 
when you set the printer up with the cupsd web server at 
<http://localhost:631>.  I think you'll be pleased with the results.

I have a now elderly epson C82, only a 4 color printer, but I have sold 
prints from that printer that were every bit as good as I can go into the 
darkroom and make, and I've been doing exactly that intermittently since 
the later '60's so I know what I'm doing there too, even to the extent of 
formulating my own color paper developer that was considerably more 
stable than the store stuff.

I also have a C88, a 6 color printer but haven't spent the time to 
fine-tune it yet.  The C82 ppd's are of course much more mature and are 
generally pretty well on target.  And in the epson case they are a huge 
improvement over the same drivers in gimp-print-4.2.7.

Maybe, when the distro's get off their duff and start supplying gutenprint 
as the default, things will improve.  In the meantime, send them 
nastygrams asking when they'll switch.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.