Qimage Pro for Windows

Digital Domain's Qimage isn't meant to replace a full-featured photo editor or graphics application. However, its combination of professional quality and useful "on-the-fly" tools make it a go-to printing and editing tool. Qimage is available in several versions; we looked at Qimage Pro and the top-of-the-line Qimage Studio. They're basically the same tool, but the Studio package offers more features, chief among them the ability to edit raw, undeveloped images.

Qimage has a stylishly skinned interface that automatically resizes its sections, though you can configure the layout manually, too. Qimage uses the basic formulation common to photo editors, with a browsing pane; thumbnail panel for files and print queues; main window and templates; icon-based toolbars; and some function-specific views such as print and job properties. The program opened with a display of the folders in our Pictures directory. Since Qimage claims to excel at printing images, we selected something hard to get right, namely high-resolution macros of colored glass. Icon-based navigation made it a cinch to build a queue of images as well as select orientation, background colors, spacing, and more; the Print Properties panel made short work of selecting the output options. Qimage even automatically identified and selected our target printer. Final print quality depends on your printer, of course, but we had no complaints with the output. Qimage has some nifty extras, too, like the Menu Cheater, a simple dialog that gives quick access to commonly used commands. It also boasts ICC color management, a "Flash Card" copy/move feature, and wide-format capability, among other features. A 10-minute tutorial, PDF-based online manual, and built-in, selectable Context Sensitive Help make for easy answers to most questions.

Qimage comes with free lifetime upgrades, something we like very much indeed and wish other software publishers would offer. Highly recommended.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of Qimage Pro 2010.209. The trial version is limited to 30 days.