Printing Photos - cropping in gimp 2.0
Hi All,
Thanks for the input I recieved here, I've bought an Epson R300 color printer for making photos. Once I figured out that the debian package for libcupsys has the permissions borked for the files in /usr/lib/cups/backend so that they aren't executable, all is well. I've been happily browsing images in 'gqview', then loading them into gimp 2.0, then printing them.
But I'm having issues with scaling images. I have to guess how/where to crop the images so that I can get the maximum amount of the picture onto the paper. It's a real pain, with lots of back and forth.
Is there a tool out there, or a gimp plugin, which allows me to take a picture, select a paper size and gives me a template to crop/scale the image to fit that paper size nicely? Any hints on what tools/packages I should be looking at for this type of work?
For example, I've got a picture of my nephew and son which I wanted to print out. I also wanted to zoom in a bit (or crop the image down to get closer to them) so that when it printed, I maximized the use of the 4x6 stock. A real pain in gimp 2.0, but since I'm just using the standard Debian install, maybe there is a plugin to help with this?
Thanks, John
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On Tuesday 28 September 2004 10:38 am, John Stoffel wrote:
Hi All,
Thanks for the input I recieved here, I've bought an Epson R300 color printer for making photos. Once I figured out that the debian package for libcupsys has the permissions borked for the files in /usr/lib/cups/backend so that they aren't executable, all is well. I've been happily browsing images in 'gqview', then loading them into gimp 2.0, then printing them.
But I'm having issues with scaling images. I have to guess how/where to crop the images so that I can get the maximum amount of the picture onto the paper. It's a real pain, with lots of back and forth.
Is there a tool out there, or a gimp plugin, which allows me to take a picture, select a paper size and gives me a template to crop/scale the image to fit that paper size nicely? Any hints on what tools/packages I should be looking at for this type of work?
John,
I believe that the gimp-print plugin will do what you want. It should be accessible via the File...Print menu from Gimp. It shows a rather rough thumbnail image within boarders to give you a feel for where the image will be printed.
Try it and let us know what you think.
Andy
- -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org
From: Andy Stewart andystewart@comcast.net Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:08:50 -0400
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On Tuesday 28 September 2004 10:38 am, John Stoffel wrote:
Hi All,
Thanks for the input I recieved here, I've bought an Epson R300 color printer for making photos. Once I figured out that the debian package for libcupsys has the permissions borked for the files in /usr/lib/cups/backend so that they aren't executable, all is well. I've been happily browsing images in 'gqview', then loading them into gimp 2.0, then printing them.
But I'm having issues with scaling images. I have to guess how/where to crop the images so that I can get the maximum amount of the picture onto the paper. It's a real pain, with lots of back and forth.
Is there a tool out there, or a gimp plugin, which allows me to take a picture, select a paper size and gives me a template to crop/scale the image to fit that paper size nicely? Any hints on what tools/packages I should be looking at for this type of work?
I believe that the gimp-print plugin will do what you want. It should be accessible via the File...Print menu from Gimp. It shows a rather rough thumbnail image within boarders to give you a feel for where the image will be printed.
This is actually something folks have been requesting, but we (Gimp-Print project) don't have anyone to implement. The plugin really needs to be rewritten anyway, since it's such a mess, but that's another matter.
If anyone wants to volunteer to do this, I'd welcome it.
"Robert" == Robert L Krawitz rlk@alum.mit.edu writes:
Robert> This is actually something folks have been requesting, but we Robert> (Gimp-Print project) don't have anyone to implement. The Robert> plugin really needs to be rewritten anyway, since it's such a Robert> mess, but that's another matter.
Robert, I wish I had the time/knowledge to do this. I can hack small projects, but I'm not a strong programmer, I'm a SysAdmin! :] Mostly, I have a small attention span. :]
From what I've seen on the tool, it really just needs to have some way
of taking the image that's sent to it and scaling it up higher than 100% of original size. Does that make sense? Or maybe if you started out at 75% scale, filling as much of the paper size as possible? And then you can let the user scale up for down to get the cropping they desire.
Or maybe I'm just missing the issue here. Thanks for the quick reply though, I do appreciate it!
John
On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 11:47:40PM -0400, John Stoffel wrote:
From what I've seen on the tool, it really just needs to have some way
of taking the image that's sent to it and scaling it up higher than 100% of original size.
Have you ever used one of those Kodak/Fuji Photo Maker dealies in WalMart? That's totally what I want.
Basically the tool locks the aspect ratio to what can be photo printed. (Either 3:2, 7:5, or 5:4 are the most common, for 4x6, 7x5, or 8x10 prints.) You can rotate and scale the printed region, but the aspect ratio stays locked, so that no matter what you do, you don't get any letterboxing on your printed photo.
I don't know if that's what y'all were talking about, but that's what I need more than anything.
-Chuck
"Andy" == Andy Stewart andystewart@comcast.net writes:
Andy> I believe that the gimp-print plugin will do what you want. It Andy> should be accessible via the File...Print menu from Gimp. It Andy> shows a rather rough thumbnail image within boarders to give you Andy> a feel for where the image will be printed.
I've been using this and I think it sucks. Mostly because the images are considered to be at a maximum scale when you goto the plugin, which makes it hard to scale up or down to crop it nicely. But I have to say, I'm still very happy it is there, since it's let me print some nice pictures on my Epson printer.
It's just not as good as I think it should be. All they would really need to do is let the size scale start at 100% and allow you to move it up/down as you like (within reason of course!) since the paper size you select determines the area that will print.
Am I being clear here? Hopefully so. I guess I should look to see if there's a better version of the tool out there.
Thanks, John
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 23:45:18 -0400 From: "John Stoffel" stoffel@lucent.com
"Andy" == Andy Stewart andystewart@comcast.net writes:
Andy> I believe that the gimp-print plugin will do what you want. It Andy> should be accessible via the File...Print menu from Gimp. It Andy> shows a rather rough thumbnail image within boarders to give you Andy> a feel for where the image will be printed.
I've been using this and I think it sucks. Mostly because the images are considered to be at a maximum scale when you goto the plugin, which makes it hard to scale up or down to crop it nicely. But I have to say, I'm still very happy it is there, since it's let me print some nice pictures on my Epson printer.
The basic problem here is that the Print plugin isn't designed to crop at all. That's what we need to do with it.
Hi All, this is followup to my original question posted way back in late September of 2004 about printing photos from Linux and finding a good tool crop photos.
Gimp is good, gimp is great. It (version 2.2 lately) still sucks for locking down the aspect ratio and scaling the picture up/down to fit on the paper the way you like.
But I did find a neat new piece of software, which isn't perfect, but does a pretty good job:
photoprint-0.3.0
http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/PhotoPrint/About.shtml
The other trick was that I went back to using 4x6 as my paper choice, not "Epson 4x6 Photo Paper", since I could *never* get gimp-print to work properly with it.
All in all, it's been a bit frustrating trying to find a tool to allow me to crop photos and print them easily to the printer.
John
"Andy" == Andy Stewart andystewart@comcast.net writes:
Andy> I believe that the gimp-print plugin will do what you want. It Andy> should be accessible via the File...Print menu from Gimp. It Andy> shows a rather rough thumbnail image within boarders to give you Andy> a feel for where the image will be printed.
Robert> I've been using this and I think it sucks. Mostly because the Robert> images are considered to be at a maximum scale when you goto the Robert> plugin, which makes it hard to scale up or down to crop it nicely. Robert> But I have to say, I'm still very happy it is there, since it's let Robert> me print some nice pictures on my Epson printer.
Robert> The basic problem here is that the Print plugin isn't designed to crop Robert> at all. That's what we need to do with it.
Robert> -- Robert> Robert Krawitz rlk@alum.mit.edu
Robert> Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Robert> Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@uunet.uu.net Robert> Project lead for Gimp Print -- http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net
Robert> "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." Robert> --Eric Crampton Robert> _______________________________________________ Robert> Wlug mailing list Robert> Wlug@mail.wlug.org Robert> http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
participants (5)
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Andy Stewart -
Chuck Homic -
John Stoffel -
John Stoffel -
Robert L Krawitz