[Digikam-users] Printing - Death by 1000 paper cuts...

[Conta SoLixo]

Let's see if I can explain more or less what's going on, because this is starting to get expensive in ink and photo paper... 

I've an HP printer, namely the HP 309G, connected by wired network, and using the latest HPLIP software. So far so good. I can print, scan, and access the onboard card reader through the network without any issues, and the print/photo quality is superb.

Let's see what's is killing me...

Now on the HPLIP systray application, so out of Digikam application, I set my printer settings, namely, photo paper 4x6 without border, upper photo tray, photo quality and PORTRAIT mode.

If I go to Digikam and choose an image shoot in vertical, so if I do Image->Print Images, a Kipi plugin printer dialog shows up, and I just say ->Print<- and the picture is printed in the A4 paper tray, normal quality... Not good.... It just ignored my settings, BUT it showed them as the default values on the properties button... Weird...

Let's try again, but this time, at the print dialog, I choose the properties printer dialog, and then I just choose like paper type from 4x6in and choose again 4x6in without changing anything, but only messing around with the dialog. Result -> perfect print. So it seems that changing something on the dialog makes settings "stick".

If I choose a horizontal shot, a "normal" photo, then I'll have to say on the printer dialog, that the orientation is Landscape... Because I've made a change, the settings "stick", and so the print comes out ok, but, it's annoying because 99% of the photos are on landscape mode and I need not to forget to make this change. If I go to the HPLIP systray settings, to make the default mode Landscape, I don't need to change it anymore for horizontal photos (I print them in portrait mode), but my Portrait pictures now need to be printed in Landscape mode....

So I think there is a bug and a wish here. 
   Bug: settings don't stick
   Wish: printer mode portrait/landscape could be chosen based on photo orientation.

As it can be seen, I've already destroyed a lot of paper finding this... 

But if I need to print a series of photos on a row, well I need to use the Print assistant...

And I really don't know where to start.... First documentation is lacking: http://docs.kde.org/development/en/extragear-graphics/kipi-plugins/printwizard.html

I'll be more than happy to make the documentation for this, and contribute to the community, but first I need to understand it... 

I understand most of the interface, and settings, except three things: 

The first screen has a printer dropdown box and a properties button. Ok, this maybe for setting up my parameters... but at the end of the print wizard, again the print dialog box appears.... So what is the purpose of the first one? And if on the last print dialog box I don't change anything, then I'll just get large normal A4 paper printings...

On the second step I can rotate the images, but in this case the crop area stays the same, but if I move to the second image, the crop area follows the rotate... 

So I'm lost. Can somebody see what's going on with this? 

Thanks again for a great product !

(Note: I've not yet leaved Picasa due to the non destructive editing.... Go GoSC for this!)




      
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