Pic Print Readme

Purpose

PicPrint is designed to print out a number of image files (jpg, gif and bmp) into a formatted grid layout, scaling them down to fit into the grid.
Usually, it would be used together with a PDF printer (recommending PDF24 here).

Usage

• Select the image files with the "Select" button. Minimum number of files is two.
• Remove any unwanted file by clicking on it and pressing the "Delete" key
• Select a printer from the menu - recommending to use a PDF printer at first even if a paper printout is planned, to test the layout.
• Define the basic layout by setting the number of columns and rows per page. The page size is derived automatically from the selected printer.
• Adjust the Picture Border (the space between two pictures, both horizontally and vertically) and the Page Border (the additional border around all page sides)
• The "Background" colour does only refer to the area in which the image is positioned, not to the border areas. The hex value (&Hxxyyzz) of any colour can be inserted in addition to black and gray.
• If "Print Filename" is checked, the filename of each image will be used as title for the picture. "Filter Name" removes underscores and capitalizes the first letter.
• If required, set a Page Title (always centered) and a Page Footer (always aligned to the right). For the footer, you can use #P# and #T# as placeholders for current page number and total number of pages, e.g. "Page #P# of #T#".

When all is ready, press "Print" - calculate about one second per picture. The program might seem to hang up at some point, do not worry.

If the printout result is satisfactory, you may save the current settings with the "Save settings" button. The settings are saved to registry, there is no separate selectable settings file.

Issues

Depending on the printer, even if PDF printers are used, the standard scaling may have to be adjusted. As I understand it, the printing sheet size data returned by the printer drivers is not always correct. Therefore, if the resulting printout is too large, going over the sheet rim, you would use the "Scale" setting at the top right to reduce it eg to 90 percent.

Sourcecode

The sourcecode is based on Visual Basic 6. The package was created with the Inno Setup Compiler and the Inno Script Toolkit available on Sourceforge. Contact me if you have ideas for improvement and / or would like to join the "project".

Hope you will like this small tool! Juergen Schwarz, Berlin

2022.01.09