Primg improves image printing on Windows
Primg is a free program for Microsoft Windows devices that allows you to print images as thumbnails, individual images, or fixed forms.
I cannot say that I have printed a lot of images in the past ten or so years of computing, but I know several businesses and home users who do print out images regularly.
The default options on Windows for printing images fall short on many levels; most users seem to prefer to use third party software when it comes to that because of those shortcomings.
While you can use a program like Picasa, Paint.Net or GIMP for that, at least some may prefer a lightweight alternative instead.
Primg
Primg -- which stands for Print Images -- is a lightweight program that uses less than 2 Megabytes of storage space on the hard drive after installation.
The program itself is pretty easy to use. It displays a list of folders on the left of its main interface. All you have to do is browse to the folder containing pictures that you want to print.
All images of the selected folder are displayed as thumbnails by default in the program. The program supports bmp, png, jpeg, tiff and gif files as well as zip and rar files containing images.
Tip: You can increase the size of thumbnails either by increasing the size of the Primg window, or by reducing the number of thumbnail columns.
The thumbnail tab is not only used to display all images found in the selected folder, but can also be used directly to print out all the thumbnails listed here. Thumbnails are aligned on pages automatically, and you may navigate through all pages using the prev and next button on the right of the display. Here you also find an indicator listing the total number of pages.
A click on any thumbnail image loads it in the single and multiple fixed form tab as well. The single tab displays only the selected image, so that you can print it out on its own. You get options to resize and move the image on the page so that it fits before you go ahead and print it.
The multiple fixed form tab on the other hand displays part of an image multiple times on the same page. Here you can change the area that you want displayed on the printout, and change its width and height in the preview before you send it to the printer.
Verdict
Primg is an easy to use program that provides you with options to quickly print thumbnails of all images found in a particular folder on a computer's hard drive or a single image.
There is no option to remove individual thumbnails from the printout, other than moving the images out of the folder first so that they are not picked up any longer.
The program may not be the most sophisticated one, but it may certainly make life a bit easier for users who print out images occasionally.
Now Read: How to create posters from images
For me, xnView remains the only tool I need for viewing, converting, printing, resizing (etc.) pretty much any and all images. And, of course, it’s free… in addition to being best-of-breed.
http://www.xnview.com/
But, hey… that’s just me.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
thanks for the tip! i loath the integrated printing function on windows and first putting the image in a word-doc is an embarassing workaround for me as a techie, so i’m glad i can try this out when the opportunity arises.
a lightweight program that uses less than 2 Megabytes of storage space on the hard drive
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I’d like to add some historical perspective to the above statement.
My computing experience predates the first widely available commercial computers, back to the days when computer data was stored on Hollerith cards. Each card was 80 columns wide, and therefore could contain up to 80 bytes of data such as a person’s name and address. Less than a Tweet, whatever that is.
When computers appeared in business offices, the amount of computer memory available to the processor was 12K bytes. Since K=1024, a 12K machine had a total of 12,288 bytes of memory. Into that 12K of memory, a programmer had to fit the computer operating system, the application program you wanted to run, AND the data that the program would operate upon. Larger machines were 16K bytes.
At first, the data were contained on the same Hollerith cards that were used in the days prior to computers. Gear and belt driven card readers would flip through large decks of cards at the phenomenal speed of perhaps 1,000 cards per minute, which is 80,000 bytes per minute. Later on, magnetic tape reels and magnetic disk platters were added to the computers, to reduce card handling. Computer main memory jumped to incredible heights, such as 64K bytes!
Working in such an environment, when computer memory cost a fortune, taught frugality to the programmers of the day. Today’s youngsters would do well to emulate the computing pioneers, and not be so wasteful. Programs run faster and data stores more compactly when you pay attention to what you are doing. Never say in eleven words, what can be said in ten!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollerith_card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360_Model_20
My first computer was a C-64 and it too was very limited in terms of memory and storage capabilities. Programmers had to find ways around those limitations, for instance by using compression.
I agree that in today’s world, less attention is given to a program’s size or how much memory it uses.