Print layout engine for Linux. Fully ICC aware

Based on @ThrillaMozilla 's comments and mine in this thread last week, I made some changes

1. Freehand placement of an image is now possible but for now there is a cost: the image will be isolated on it's own page (mostly because I dont' know how i'd handle accidental overlaps by the user). Once the option is activated, you can drag it around with the mouse or enter a position in inches or mm. This is complementary to the four custom margins I had implemented earlier so that you are able to get an image precisely where you want it on your page

2. We had moved to a single margin entry system to a four sided margin system. I added a button to copy over the left margin to the other sides (the lower limit is the smaller of 4 sides reported by the cups driver). This was mostly for myself. If I use 13x19 paper (A3+). I can enter a one inch margin, copy to all four sides and use "fit to page" option to get a 12x18 image that needs no crop from the original image from my camera

3. I added an option to allow a specific image to remain in it's natural orientation rather than orientated for paper savings like the default engine does (per image setting). It's not a full rotation option but whatever LLM model was tried (GPT, Claude, opensource) they all got it all wrong when I was asking a 0,90,180 and 270 rotation option :) I blew through almost 20$ of credits before I decided to rollback and try another approach

4. the image inner/outer border color can now be changed from black to anything else with a color picker that includes some presets (this was never discussed here, just something I wanted to do).

5. "rule of thirds" lines are now shown in the crop editor (cosmetic change only)

6. I also added an alternative print path for someone who tried the software with a specialised dye sub printer and got a bad result (the printer would spit out blank paper). Rather than sending 16 bit postscript/pdf with embedded ICC profile, there is now an option in the preferences menu to send 8 bit tiff data with no embedded profile directly to the printer. the RGB values sent to the printer are still from conversion from the ICC profile so there should be any noticeable difference in the output. If there is, it would be coming from the 8 bit data but in reality this is hardly ever a problem.. most windows drivers are 8 bits. Qimage image itself didn't introduce 16 bit output until very recently. A side effect of this print path is that it's MUCH faster than the standard path if your printer will accept a TIFF through LPR. There is practically no new code here. I initially designed around 8 bit tiff and the code was simply disabled when I started chasing after every bit of theoretical quality and switched to 16 bit
 
I just found this Vibeprint Studio today and have installed it v 1.5.0. It seems to work well for me. I use Linux OpenSuse and Ubuntu (and currently a Epson Expression XP-4205 printer) and I have got very tired of having to restart and boot into windows to print photos using Epson's Print Studio. I have hunted, and tried, various apps to achieve an easy print of my images - and in standard paper sizes. Linux apps that can print photos are very klunky to set up, and I am really prleased that my 1st trial of this VibePrint Studio is easy to use and gives a good printed image, even in normal print quality.
I haven't looked further to see if there are any updates etc.
Thanks a lot for producing this.
I have also just used AI too produce a python coded flatpak application to be able to alter the panel colours and borders of Thunderbird. Having some eye problems I find the layout not easy on my eyes. I have uploaded my app - Thunderbird CSS Styler v1.0 to GitHub for public use.
 
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I just found this Vibeprint Studio today and have installed it v 1.5.0. It seems to work well for me. I use Linux OpenSuse and Ubuntu (and currently a Epson Expression XP-4205 printer) and I have got very tired of having to restart and boot into windows to print photos using Epson's Print Studio. I have hunted, and tried, various apps to achieve an easy print of my images - and in standard paper sizes. Linux apps that can print photos are very klunky to set up, and I am really prleased that my 1st trial of this VibePrint Studio is easy to use and gives a good printed image, even in normal print quality.
I haven't looked further to see if there are any updates etc.
Thanks a lot for producing this.
I have also just used AI too produce a python coded flatpak application to be able to alter the panel colours and borders of Thunderbird. Having some eye problems I find the layout not easy on my eyes. I have uploaded my app - Thunderbird CSS Styler v1.0 to GitHub for public use.

Thanks for comments! Have you found anything you'd add or change in Vibeprint? For my use, the software is pretty much complete but i've been looking for something to do to use up some prepaid AI credits :)
 
Thanks for comments! Have you found anything you'd add or change in Vibeprint? For my use, the software is pretty much complete but i've been looking for something to do to use up some prepaid AI credits :)
Still trying it out - but here are a few things I notice (most cosmetic)
Using 4"x6" matte photo paper (Epson Expression Xp-4200 series), and a correctly sized 4"x6" image
  • It would be good to have an exit button in the left drop-downs.- not using the top right X.
  • The top left Preferences button doesn't display under a hover
  • Can you float the pop-up windows to allow them to move off the centre while looking at other settings etc - eg for media choice.
  • Selecting between 4x6 and 4x6 borderless doesn't change the footprint of the image on the layout - but using the Image Properties / Border / none or inner , does change the layout.
  • The layout doesn't quite match the 4x6 image (there's a top and bottom line. I would expect that by choosing borderless the image should fill the layout
  • The printed photo for borderless still shows a small border with a bigger border at the top and without using borderless it produces an uneven border.
  • It would be good to produce a user manual even if it's basic at this time - I'm sure AI can set that up for you and even do edits to it as you change things.
  • Having a couple of printers I move the cable to the printer around - Vibeprint doesn't detect the cable being plugged in - this is really cosmetic - But the printer needs to be plugged in before opening Vibeprint.
  • Then as you have mentioned it would be very nice to have more flexibility with multi image layouts.
Hope this helps - feel free to email me if it's easier to discuss things (I think it is) as I love to see this sort of project come up to pro standards to be used in Linux.
 

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