Requested EASY FIX: borders / canvas increase as percentage

[fyford]

Hi

your program is the ultimate lightweight app and I have found it invaluable, thanks for the hard graft. One thing that is extremely useful is the ability to add borders for printing photos at a shop! Most people do this in your batch job under the canvass size option. Unfortunately you only allow to do this in pixels. So if you have various photos in different resolutions you get variable width borders...

Please could you add a percentage option so we can have evenly sized borders on a batch job!

Thanks a million!

Cheers

Frank

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Say you have a 640 x 480 picture and you added a 10% border, would you want a border of 64 pixels on the left and right and only 48 pixels on the top and bottom?

[dlanor]

I want border control in print dialog instead

Say you have a 640 x 480 picture and you added a 10% border, would you want a border of 64 pixels on the left and right and only 48 pixels on the top and bottom?

I agree with that 'pixel reasoning' though it would be possible to have both methods for calculating the border size, just as many other parameters in IV can be either absolute or relative. But I'm not really interested in that method of applying borders.

The reason for this is that I dislike this very method for printing with visible borders. I my opinion doing it this way is wasteful both in terms of repeated effort per occasion, and in needless storage of both original and converted pictures, for a purpose that really doesn't motivate such storage.

My main complaint is that this is not a print operation but a conversion operation. Instead of taking an existing picture and having it printed with a userdefined border (possibly chosen from a set of programmable presets), the current design forces us to store a separate picture containing that border, even though the border itself is not of graphical complexity to motivate this. It could easily be regenerated at each printout event, at almost no cost even in computing load.

What I would want is for the IV print routine to have additional options for adding extra borders outside of the pixel area supplied by the image to be printed, also autoadjusting the image position accordingly of course, to ensure that the requested borders are inside the paper limits, but in such a way that the specified image size does not include the added border (to ensure proper image scaling), except when stretching to fill an entire page (as aspect ratio is then disabled).

Just like other print parameters, such as picture size and position, the border thickness entry should be given in either centimeters or inches (controlled by the same unit choice in the print dialog), which completely eliminates the problem of relative VS absolute pixel usage. If I want a border with a specific physical thickness, then that is what I should get both horizontally and vertically, regardless of picture dimensions. This is one more reason why border generation needs to be done as part of the printout, since it is only here that the relationship between pixels and physical size is decided.

In addition to this basic border usage, I also think that an additional 'outline' border should be allowed, outside the normal border, to allow clean cutting out of pictures of specified size when printed on larger-sized paper. (This is my own most frequent need.)

Such an outline does not need any fancy settings but it does need to have programmable colour, to ensure good visibility when directly surrounding an image (other border not used == thickness zero), and it also needs to be optional (possibly turned off by thickness zero as well).


So to summarize:

For the print dialog I want two added definable borders:
1: I want a primary border nearest the image, normally used for photo edges and similar needs
2: I want a secondary border outside the first one, normally used for cut-out lines

Both those borders need to be optional, but disabling can simply be done by setting thickness zero, so no extra controls are needed beyond thickness.

The outline border also needs a colour setting, to ensure visibility contrasting against the image edges. Color setting for the primary border is not a priority, considering its normal usage, but it would still be nice, changing it from a simple border feature to a coloured frame feature. And it might even be fun to add simple pattern fills for that frame... (definitely not a priority though).

Ok, so I know I'm asking for a lot here, but I really think these features would be very useful for most IV users. And adding these features to IV should not be all that hard considering that much of the code needed for it must already be present in the current IV design.

Best regards: dlanor

[Skippybox]

Is the Create Contact Sheet dialog a reasonable compromise for you?

IrfanView Thumbnails (File menu):

[dlanor]

Is the Create Contact Sheet dialog a reasonable compromise for you?

Not really. I don't see how that helps me add good photo borders inside a visible cut-out marker border, as required when wanting to make nice photos from normal printer paper.

All the thumbnail stuff does is to allow me to space pictures differently on a large sheet of paper, but it allows no useful border control or cut-out aids.


That is not at all what I had in mind, as I was thinking more of larger pictures filling a significant part of a full sheet, but where the 'left-over' parts of that sheet would not make a satisfactory border. For such cases I'd need some way to define both a main border, with colour selectable (but often transparent as paper-white border is normal for photos), surrounded by another border of selectable colour, to ensure a visible cut-out line.


As far as I can tell the only way to accomplish the dual borders needed for good photo cutouts is to use the batch conversion twice, producing new picture files twice over, and then print the final one of those.

And even then the result is not as well done as it would be in the modified print dialog I suggested, where you could get a preview of both borders before printing, without having to create any new files, and where you could specify the borders in real physical size units, rather than pixels.

NB: I'm not asking for any workaround to approximate this functionality,
but am seriously proposing this as a future feature addition to IV.

Best regards: dlanor

[Skippybox]

I was thinking along the lines of printing each photo as a sheet with a background for a cut line or a border. You would need to figure out the size and no saving is necessary. Obviously, it does not solve the border and cut line scenario. I think you make some valid points about enhancing printing in IrfanView. IrfanView is not really a photo printer since it is a viewer, but considering the options it has already dabbled into, I think this certainly could be added.

I know you said you weren't looking for a workaround, but I thought I'd offer one anyway. If you use the command line and some INIs, you can do your processing in memory and print the results quite easily. Not perfect either, but it certainly helps. Here is a batch file you could drop a set of photos on:

cd "C:\Program Files\IrfanView"
:Process
if %1=="" goto :eof
i_view32.exe %1 /ini="C:\INIs\Border" /advancedbatch /clipcopy /killmesoftly
i_view32.exe /clippaste /ini="C:\INIs\CutLine" /advancedbatch /print="hp40"
shift
goto :Process

Basically, each image is batch processed using settings preconfigured in special INIs. The first process could add your border and copy to the clipboard. The second could paste from the clipboard, add the cutline with the second INI, and print. You just need to make a batch file for each kind of print job you want done, and create folders for the INIs necessary. Feel free to copy i_view32.exe to your folders to edit the INIs through a GUI. You can also change the batch file in case you want more control over each image or settings.

[Skippybox]

2 fyford: FastStone Image Viewer, FastStone Photo Resizer, and XnView offers a percentage option.

2 dlanor: FastStone Image Viewer or FastStone Photo Resizer offers batch conversion with border effects using four configuarable frames and a shadow.

[dlanor]

2 dlanor: FastStone Image Viewer or FastStone Photo Resizer offers batch conversion with border effects using four configuarable frames and a shadow.

Thanks for the tip, I'm sure it was well meant, but I'm afraid you missed the main point of my suggestions, which is that I do not want to perform any conversions at all on the stored pictures. I want the borders to be added as part of the printing operation, so that only the original border-less pictures need to be held in storage (even temporary) on HDD.

Had the batch conversion method been acceptable to me, then I'd probably have settled for the simple 'canvas-size' conversion of IrfanView itself, which was mentioned earlier in this thread.

Edit:
I just considered the earlier method you described, of using custom INIs to make a special border-print batch job that would not require additional picture storage. That method does have some merit, though I think it's a bit awkward to use, and would much prefer something that can be done from within IrfanView, without separate batch launching.

I stand by my original opinion, which is that IrfanView needs to be improved with border-options in print dialog.

Best regards: dlanor

[Skippybox]

OK, so what will you use in the meantime, until your suggestion materializes?

[dlanor]

OK, so what will you use in the meantime, until your suggestion materializes?

Well, the most convenient way to accomplish something like this for single pictures in the current IV version, is to simply use the Shift-V command for canvas size setting twice in a row with different colours, to achieve addition of the dual borders I want and to do it without new file storage (which would be required if using batch mode).

But the convenience of this is limited by the need to recalculate the pixel thickness of the added borders, depending on the picture scaling in printing. And of course, the procedure needs to be repeated for every single picture to be printed, which gets very tedious after a while...

I'm still looking for other ways of doing it more conveniently though, including use of other programs.

Best regards: dlanor

[Skippybox]

Thanks for the tip, I'm sure it was well meant, but I'm afraid you missed the main point of my suggestions

Oh I did not miss your points at all. I merely was offering you some tips in case you were willing to compromise somewhat on the idea. I understand what you are after, but realize that your idea may never come to fruition, or you may not discover another tool to do it. I wish you luck though, as your idea is good. I just don't know how many programs out there make it as easy as you describe.

[Mij]

Just like other print parameters, such as picture size and position, the border thickness entry should be given in either centimeters or inches (controlled by the same unit choice in the print dialog), which completely eliminates the problem of relative VS absolute pixel usage.

I am not sure that specifying your borders in centimeters or inches is going to be much help. The conversion from inches to pixels will be done on the basis of the DPI settings that exist at that time.
Your Print shop will not use those DPI settings. They will just fit the image to the paper size you ask for, so the size of the borders still comes down to the ratio of pixels in the image to pixels in the borders.
It's relative whatever units you use.

[dlanor]

I am not sure that specifying your borders in centimeters or inches is going to be much help. The conversion from inches to pixels will be done on the basis of the DPI settings that exist at that time.
Your Print shop will not use those DPI settings. They will just fit the image to the paper size you ask for, so the size of the borders still comes down to the ratio of pixels in the image to pixels in the borders.
It's relative whatever units you use.

I think you are still confused as to what I want to do here, so let me clarify it again:

There is no 'Print shop' involved, other than the dialog boxes of IV and the printer driver.
(The original poster did mention a print shop, but my suggestion is slightly different.)
I do not want to store any picture file that includes the extra borders, even temporarily.
The extra borders I want will only exist in the print data output by IrfanView itself.
And since the print dialogs include paper size definition, that should be no problem.

Anyway, I thank both you and Skippybox for your input on this issue, even though it might not lead anywhere. For now I guess I'm stuck with the 'double canvas size change' workaround, as the best compromize available in current IV.

Best regards: dlanor

[ChuckE]

...if you have various photos in different resolutions you get variable width borders...

Please could you add a percentage option so we can have evenly sized borders on a batch job!

Having a percentage of size being a border, will always give a varying width border. A 10% border, on a 900 pixel dimension will give a 90 pixel border. If the dimension is 1000 pixels then the border would be 100 pixels. Likewise, a 950 pixel dimension the result would be 95 pixels.

Sounds to me like that is varying, not in percentages, but in actual screen pixels. That is a variable width border.

This does not sound well thought out, at all. Or perhaps it is just not well described.

I like the suggestion, if there were to be a change, to have a selection of one way or the other; to have either a percentage of borders width, or an adjustable, fixed sized. That way, you can get what you want, whoever you are.