Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Questions on certain printers and applications
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fortiernor
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:08 pm

Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by fortiernor »

I've been printing from Gimp where the Turboprint dialog is great. However Gimp 2.9 no longer builds on Arch (this is a recurrent problem), so looking for another way to print a 16bit tiff that uses Turboprint.
I installed digikam but the print dialog does not offer the options that are shown in the Turboprint manual. Could someone share how to access the same Turboprint options from digikam (or another program!) that are normally available through Gimp?
Thank you!
EdoNork
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2017 9:35 am

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by EdoNork »

Hi,

I can print with Turboprint on GIMP 2.9.8.
digikam is now based on qt5 (KDE5), and it's missing the qt4 printing dialog. This is for all programs based on qt5.
fortiernor
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:08 pm

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by fortiernor »

I've been trying to debug this for a while, using lp, lpr or gtklp (great, simple but seemingly complete ui frontend!).
I can print a jpeg image, but not a 16 bit tiff image (which is a problem for photographs); such 16 bit images print fine from turboprint/gimp 2.9.

When I try printing a tiff file using lpr or lp, for instance with

$ lp -d SureColorP800-TurboPrint -o media=Letter -o fit-to-page -o InputSlot=TopFeed ./20180117_0014.tif

I get the error message "Unable to open image file for printing!".
Can anyone offer any help?
EdoNork
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2017 9:35 am

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by EdoNork »

fortiernor
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:08 pm

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by fortiernor »

My question is how to print using turboprint, without the gimp. Because gimp-git does not build reliably, for me anyway, and because it is kind of silly to have to maintain such a large program on my computer just to interface with turboprint, which according to the manual, can print from the command line and therefore should print from gtklp, which seems just as good as the turboprint gimp plugin. Thanks!
fortiernor
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:08 pm

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by fortiernor »

After debugging, here is what I figured:

- When lp or lpr is executed, cups processes the image through 2 filters: imagetopdf and pstoturboprint (according to /var/log/cups/error_log).

- imagetopdf only accepts tiff images with 8 bits (or less) per channel
https://fossies.org/linux/cups-filters/ ... age-tiff.c

- if I export the image from Darktable as 8 bit tiff instead of 16 bit, printing works.

So I guess my question becomes:

Does Turboprint send the image data to the printer as 16 bit per channel when used with the gimp plugin?
If so, how does one reproduce that behaviour when printing from the command-line?
fortiernor
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:08 pm

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by fortiernor »

I found a solution, at least with export from Darktable: export as pdf 16 bit and then use gtklp to print. The only downside I've found is that the pdf file is roughly twice the size of the tiff file.
broadstairs
Posts: 85
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 11:50 am

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by broadstairs »

Not sure exactly how many printer options you are looking for in Digikam but on my system you can see the options I have in the attached image. OK it is not quite the same layout but I believe has all of the necessary options. I am using Digikam 5.8 and my system has the fix for QT which allows correct paper selection (a QT bug).
Screenshot_20180131_082331.png
Screenshot_20180131_082331.png (144.42 KiB) Viewed 12607 times
Stuart
EdoNork
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2017 9:35 am

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by EdoNork »

On KDE 5.11.5 and digikam 5.8 I don't have the tab named "Advanced"
broadstairs
Posts: 85
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 11:50 am

Re: Unable to print from digikam or gimp...

Post by broadstairs »

That image was digikam 5.8 with KDE 5.11.95 on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I've always had that advanced tab.

Stuart
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