Printing images

From the “Review” page you can print photos. Depending on which edition of CaptureDent™ you“ve licensed, you may be limited to printing just one photo per page, or you may have access to various multi-image print layouts.

Suitable printers

For best results, we recommend using a photographic-quality printer with CaptureDent. Better grades of ink-jet printers can produce usable output, particularly when special photo inks and paper are used.

In general, any color printer capable of printing good everyday photographs should be capable of producing acceptable results with CaptureDent. Low-end printers will probably be unable to make satisfactory printouts for serious work, but many mid- to high-range printers can be used to good effect.

Printer settings

Before printing from CaptureDent, your printer should be configured for photographic-style output. Most printers provide a “control panel” program that lets you adjust their settings. Good, modern printers are often able to detect the kind of output being sent to them and adjusting their own settings accordingly.

The range of printers that can be used with CaptureDent is very broad and each model has its own software, so we can”t give specifics here of how to adjust your settings. Consult your printer’s documentation for full details.

If you have to set your printer’s settings manually, we recommend using a stochastic dither (the kind that looks like fine spray paint, without the “grid” lines shown by pattern dithers). 300 dots per inch is a good resolution for printing on ink-jets; specialized photo printers will use other values for print resolution.

How to make a printout

To begin a printout, first select a patient of whom you’ve taken one or more images, then go to the “Review” page. (Alternatively, conduct an image search that returns some photos to work with.) You should see a thumbnail for each image.

Choose a print layout

Click the “Print” button in the toolbar on the left side of the CaptureDent window. The “Select print layout” dialog box will appear. Which print layouts you can choose from depends on the edition of CaptureDent your practice has licensed.

• Unregistered (demo) edition: Single photo per printout. A demo notice will be displayed across each printout.
• Standard edition: Single photo, side-by-side, top-bottom, quarters, single photo plus inset.
• In upcoming editions, additional print layouts and more powerful printing options will be provided.

Tip: If you click a layout button not available in your edition of CaptureDent, a message will appear telling how to upgrade if you’d like to do so. To continue, dismiss the message box, then choose one of the layouts that is available in your edition (see bullet list above).

Tip: Layouts are available in both landscape (wide, horizontal) and portrait (tall, upright) orientations. Take care to pick a print layout in which the proportion of the image slots, not the overall page, matches the orientation of the images you wish to print. Putting a wide photo into a tall space results in stretching the image to fit, usually an undesirable distortion.

As soon as you click a valid print layout button, the dialog will vanish. Your mouse cursor will change — a miniature icon representing the print layout will be attached to the pointer arrow.

Pick the photo(s)

Now you must pick an image to put in each “slot” of the selected layout. You do this by clicking a thumbnail for each slot.

Your mouse cursor shows which image slot your next click will fill. One of the rectangles in the colored mini-icon will be “lit up” in a bright color, while the remaining slots will be in a dark color. Each time you click a thumbnail, the same icon that was shown on the mouse cursor will appear over that thumbnail’s photo, so you can keep track of what goes where.

If you chose a single-image layout, the first click is all it takes, and the “Print preview” window will appear (and you may skip the next paragraph).

If you’re using a layout with more than one image slot, after the first thumb you click gets marked with an icon, the mouse cursor will change — the next slot rectangle in sequence will “light up” in place of the previous one.

Proceed as before, clicking the thumb for the image you want to put in that slot. Each time, the thumb you click will gain an icon and the cursor will change to show the next slot to be selected.

When you pick an image to fill the last slot in your layout, CaptureDent will bring up the “Print preview” window. The mouse cursor will change back to the familiar arrow.

Change your mind?

If, partway through filling the slots, you decide not to proceed with the printout, just press your keyboard’s “Esc” key. CaptureDent will stop prompting you to pick images, the mouse cursor will change back into a plain arrow, and you can proceed with other review activities.

Leaving the “Review” page before all slots are filled will likewise cancel the printout without sending a job to the printer.

Print preview

If you finish filling all slots on your layout, you’ll proceed to a preview stage before the printout is sent to be put onto paper. CaptureDent will show you a preview of the printed page and give you an opportunity to adjust several aspects of your printout from the “Print preview” window.

Tip: This window can be resized by dragging any edge or corner, just as CaptureDent’s main window can. Make it any size you like, from small and unobtrusive to large and fully detailed — the next time you bring the “Print preview” window back up, it will appear at the same size (and in the same position) at which you left it.

For each slot, you can choose whether or not to print the photo, the annotation markers and captions (if any), both, or neither — just a blank area. To do this, right-click your mouse in the preview of the photo you want to control, then pick the appropriate choice from the small pop-up menu that appears.

Tip: Why would you do this? You might want to print two copies of an annotated image, side by side or one atop the other, one with all annotations and the other without them. This way you could see both the marked-up version and an extra with no shapes or text obscuring the photographic image.

You can also turn the faint background markings in the margin area on or off. These represent the edge of the paper, your printer’s physical printing limits, and the symmetrical margins CaptureDent has calculated based on those limits. (This doesn’t affect the printout. Users who find these marginal markings distracting can hide them; those who think they are useful can show them.)

Send the job to the printer

When you’re satisfied that the printout looks right, click the “Print” button to send the job to your printer, keeping the preview window open (so you can print more copieknows how tos, with or without making adjustments), or the green check-marked “OK” button to send the print job, then close the preview window. The red X-marked “Cancel” button abandons the print job without sending it out (you can try again later if you choose).

You can prepare one printout while another job is printing. CaptureDent and Windows will queue the print jobs properly. It’s a good idea not to queue up too many jobs if your printer, computer, or both are slow.

You may also close the CaptureDent program while one or more print jobs are in the queue. As long as you don’t exit CaptureDent while it is actually sending a printout to the print queue, your jobs ought to print in the order submitted.

When printing in Windows — using any software — you should never turn off your printer or computer until all print jobs have finished printing. The only exception would be if you’re a power user with experience in controlling the Windows print queue.