Printing pictures

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 23 December 2006 19:54, Michael Satterwhite wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Saturday 23 December 2006 10:31, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
>>> On Saturday 23 December 2006 8:53 am, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>> Folks come in here and lambast gimp-print-plugin without ever giving
>>>> it a chance & its getting a bit old...
>>>
>>> Reading back over the thread, it is clear to me that all three of us
>>> who responded *have*, in fact, given the thing a chance.  By "without
>>> ever giving it a chance" I think you must mean "without ever getting
>>> it working."
>>>
>>> They're not the same thing.
>>>
>>> I've read back over what I said, and I find that it was calm,
>>> reasonable, and by no means a lambast.
>>>
>>> Thank you for publishing a recipe that might achieve some good result
>>> with that thing.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, I won't be making use of it, because I no longer own a
>>> color printer.
>>>
>>>> as the default, things will improve.  In the meantime, send them
>>>> nastygrams asking when they'll switch.
>>>
>>> Or better still, ask them politely, so your request is less likely to
>>> be ignored.
>>
>> Chuckle, one must occasionally point out that gimp-print is now
>> something like 3 years old, and that gutenprint is still being
>> actively developed by the same very knowledgeable people from the same
>> code base, only the name has changed.
>>
>> Sugar coating may make it more palletable, but the facts ARE the
>> facts. But yes, some sugar is needed in many cases where the packagers
>> aren't particularly interested in quality hard copy.  Robert K. cannot
>> demand they switch, but if enough users ask, it will probably happen.
>
>I'M SO CONFUSED.....
>
>>From reading this thread, it APPEARS that some (or all) of you have been
>able to get 4x6 pictures to print in Linux, but I'm still not sure
>*HOW*. Given that things aren't what they need to be, could one (all?
>I'm easy) of you let me know a way to do it. Then I'll be glad to join
>in the technical discussion of what works and what doesn't.
>
Well, first I'll have to plead guilty to never having printed a 4x6 in my 
life, either in the darkroom or from my C82.  If I want say 4 prints to a 
page then they will be slightly under 4.25 x 5.5, and to do that I either 
have to remember the command line options to make imagemajik compose them 
for me, or just tell gimp-print I want such and such a size and run the 
paper through the printer 4 times, moving the target frame from one 
corner of the page to the next.  Rather cumbersome and time eating.  So a 
print that I want to be a good print, usually gets a sheet of good, 40-60 
pound matt finished paper to itself.

Somehow I've never convinced myself that a small printer that costs 2 to 
3x what the C88 costs today, is a worthwhile investment.  For those who 
are used to the photofinishers biggest prints, and equate that price at 
the finishers against the cost of one of those, then I suppose its a 
sellable item.  But that sheet of non-silver coated paper I feed the 
printer is now selling at 3x what I was paying for the silver based 
glossy color paper from somebody like Unichrome back then when I could 
turn out the lights and do an 8x10 glossy finished color print for a 
total cost of $0.65 if my time was free.  Sadly, those days are 25 years 
in the past, and its taken the digital print business until just 1-2 
years ago to even begin to be competitive quality wise if both were being 
fed high quality source images.  We have had a vast wasteland of wannabee 
stuff foisted off on us in the meantime.  IMO the cameras, if you bought 
the better ones, have been, and are still 2-3 generations ahead of the 
printers ability.  I have an Olympus C3020, 3.1 megapixel camera, $500 
new 5 years ago, and I'm just now beginning to see the chip 
miss-registration it has in the upper left quadrant of the image, but 
even at 3.1 megapixels I can make a usable print out of 20% of its image 
area blown up to 8x10, provided I stay away from that upper left corner 
of the image when I'm doing the blowup and cropping in the gimp.  If that 
gets to be a problem, well there is money to be thrown on the counter and 
a 10 megapixel camera gets bought.  Or put up with it, the choice is 
mine.  By the time I get around to fixing that, 30 megapixel stuff will 
be $149.95 at wallyworld.

>TIA
>---Michael

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