Printing a low-res image...

[JSR]

Mine is a Ricog 3300 so I dont think it does borderless...?

You could use Letter size TruPix. Some suppliers still sell it, such as: http://www.listawoodtradesupplies.com/i ... id=&pgnum=. It's a little more expensive, but it might be worth you trying it out.

[Lee]

Thats a great idea - if it will let me print 3 per sheet - and its actually a bit less than BMS standard size

[JSR]

Thats a great idea - if it will let me print 3 per sheet - and its actually a bit less than BMS standard size

It depends how big you print, but you should be okay for 3 per sheet (I always did 3 per sheet, but then I don't do top-to-bottom printing).

Letter paper is a little shorter than A4 (11" rather than 11.7") and little wider (8.5" rather than 8.26") - the longer length of A4 is great, but the narrower width isn't, which is why I say it'd be great if suppliers would stock Legal size (that's 8.5" wide by 14" long) but they won't do that because it'd be too expensive.

[Lee]

...just to check....if I want to increase the size of this low res image from approx 8cm x 3cm - to a proportioned wrap I assume I need a high res image because the quality will suffer...? I have tried to increase it does go crappy (to use a technical term!)

[JSR]

If your mug wrap is typically 8"x3" (20.3cm x 7.6cm) then you'll be enlarging your 8cm x 3cm (3.1"x1.2") image by a factor of 2.54.

If you increase the size of the image by a factor of 2.54, then you're decreasing the dpi by a factor of 2.54.

So, if your image was 92dpi at 8cm x 3cm, then it'll be 36dpi at 8"x3". That's pretty low-res (hence the "crappiness" of the result).

If your image was saved as a JPG then chances are there's also a quality loss because people rarely set minimum compression on JPG, so that'll make things even worse.

[Lee]

Thanks for that JSR Its good to try to understand the mechanics of these things!

[JSR]

Thanks for that JSR Its good to try to understand the mechanics of these things!

Personally, I print using Qimage. I tell it what size I want, and it tells me what the dpi* would be. It uses certain algorithms in printing to improve the print whenever possible (although it can't work miracles).

*Actually it talks in PPI, but the discussion of dpi vs ppi is probably a bigger discussion than you'd want to get into right now.

[Lee]

Not heard of that - is it free? I know pixels per inch and dots per inch but you're right, I fear my head is set to 'colour pop' itself!

[JSR]

No, Qimage is available from: http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/features.htm

It used to be available in three versions from $35 to $80 (about £20 to £50 at the time) with all updates free. Those versions are still available but the version they're working on these days is a single price with an additional price for yearly updates. I'm using the old "Studio" version and have been for years.

It's not a graphics app, it's a printing app, although you can do the usual levels/colour tweaks prior to printing (Qimage uses filter files for these so the original image is never altered).