THE PHOTO IMAGE MANAGEMENT

-- A Powerful, Easy-to-Use Tool for Managing Your Pictures --

Thumbnail View

To access the "Thumbnail View" screen, select the "Main" then click on the "Thumbnail View" from the drop-down menu or click on the thumbnail view button of the toolbar. The "Thumbnail View" screen is displayed as following figure 02.

figure 02

Pictures displayed as thumbnails

In the middle of the screen, there are twelve thumbnails providing a quick look for the stored photo images. The thumbnails are ordered in three columns with total of four rows displayed. The current picture / record is highlighted with the red frame that is the cursor. There is a scroll bar at right side of thumbnails used to scroll the rows vertically. On the right-low portion of the screen, it shows the current record / picture and the total of records / pictures with four arrow buttons, called "Data Control". The left most arrow button quickly moves the current picture to the first picture when click on it. The left arrow button moves the current picture to the previous picture. The right arrow button moves the current picture to the next picture. The right most arrow button moves the current picture to the last picture. There are also keys can be used to move the pictures around. The right arrow key moves the current to the next picture. The left arrow key moves the current to the previous picture. The down arrow key moves the current to the next row and the up arrow key moves the current to the previous row. The page down key moves the current one page down and the page up key moves the current one page up. The home key quickly moves the current to the first picture. The end key quickly moves the current to the last picture.

Picture preview window

On the right-up portion of the screen, there is the "Image Preview" window showing the picture of current record. The preview can be turned On or Off by changing the on/off option. Double click on the picture of the image preview window or click on the "View/Edit/Print" button, it will launch the graphics application (your chosen application) to load the stored photo image for viewing, editing, or printing. To choose your favorite graphics application, you use Windows Explorer to open a picture, such as .bmp, .jpg, ... file, with your chosen application to register the file extension. If you made change of the image with the graphics application, you should click on the "Refresh" button that is located at right-middle of the screen to reload the preview image.

Select pictures / records using the Folder Tree

On the left side of the screen, there is the Folder Tree. Pictures / records are categorized under this folder tree. By default, the current highlighted open folder is the "Photos", the root folder, containing all the pictures / records, when the program first started. If your stored pictures are categorized with the folders, you can select the pictures / records of the folder by highlighting it as current folder. For example, if there is a folder named "John" is a subfolder of the "Family" folder. You only want to see John's pictures at this time. You click on the "+" that is left to the "Family" folder to list all the subfolders of the "Family" folder, then click on the "John" folder to highlight it. Or you can type "John" on the "Folder Search" box that is located on the left-up of the screen, then click on the "Go" button. For more information about folders is covered in the Folder Tree section.

Select pictures / records using Query dialog

The program also provides the query dialog to let you input restrictions to select pictures / records. To perform the query on the records, click on the "Query" button that is located at right-middle of the screen, or select "Record", then "Query Database" from the drop-down menu, or click on the query button of the toolbar. It will display the query dialog form on the screen as following figure 02a.

figure 02a

Type in the data on the field(s) you want to set the restriction, then click on the "OK" button. The only records that satisfying the restriction will be show up. Of course, you can cancel to close the query dialog if you don't want to query. The "Clear" button is to clear all the restriction data on the fields. If you click on the "Clear" button, then click on the "OK" button, that will reset the data to display all the records of the folder. After you performed the query, then you want to bring all the records of the folder back, you can click on the "Reset" button that is located at right-middle of the screen.

Search picture / record using Search dialog

To search the picture / record you are looking for, you open the Search dialog form to do the searching. Click on the "Search" button that is located at right-middle of the screen, or select "Record", then "Search Record" from the drop-down menu, or click on the search button of the toolbar. It will display the search dialog form on the screen as following figure 02b.

figure 02b

First, select the field name from the drop-down list you want to use to do the searching, then type in the value you are looking for. Click on the "Find" button to find the first record / picture having the matching value. Click on the "Find Next" button, if you want to continue the searching to the next one. The "Cancel" button is used to close the dialog without searching.

Use mark to select pictures / records

When a picture / record is marked at the "Thumbnail View", it is blued with the blue frame of the thumbnail. There are many functions provided by the program require you to mark the select pictures before you can perform with it, such as cut, copy, and paste records, delete records, get pictures, e-mail pictures, and make web pages. To mark a picture / record, holed the control key down and click on the thumbnail you want to mark. The blue frame will appear after the mouse clicked. You can't directly mark a block of pictures by holding the shift key down as at "Data View" do, you only can mark the picture one by one. If you really want to mark a block of pictures at the "Thumbnail View", you can do it indirectly. At the "Thumbnail View", you mark the first picture as start picture by holding the control key down and click on the thumbnail, then you find the second picture mark it as the last picture. Switch to the "Data View" screen from the "Thumbnail View". At the "Data View", find the first marked picture which showing in the blue, holed the shift key down remark the first picture / record by click on the most left column of the row. The all rows between the first picture / record and the last picture / record are blued. Last, switch back to the "Thumbnail View". If you want to mark all the pictures / records of the current folder, you select the "Record", then click on the "Select All" from the drop-down menu. Holed down the control key and click on marked thumbnail, you will unmark the picture / record you don't want to select. Click on any thumbnail without holding the control key down will unmark all marked pictures. The following figure 02c shows how the marked pictures / records look like.

figure 02c

E-mail pictures

You may select the folder on the folder tree first to display the records / pictures of that particular folder. You may further want to use the query to eliminate the records / pictures you are not going to e-mail them. To e-mail the pictures, you mark the records / pictures (max of 10 pictures each time), then click on the "E-Mail" button that is located on the right-middle portion of the screen, or select the "File" or the "Photo", then the "E-Mail Photo(s)" on drop-down menu, or click on the e-mail button of the toolbar. The program then launches the e-mail system on the computer and already created a new e-mail with the attachments of the pictures you selected. The only thing left you to do is to type in the receiver's e-mail address and send the e-mail out. The following figure 02d shows the new e-mail with the attachments of the pictures is ready to send out.

figure 02d

Make Photo Image List or Photo Image Gallery web pages for web site

There are two kinds of photo image pages can be generated by the program for your web site, the photo image list web page and the photo image gallery web page. To make web pages, you first mark the pictures / records of your selection for the pages, then click on the "Make Web" button that is located at right-middle of the screen, or select the "File" or the "Photo", then click on the "Make Web Page(s)" from the drop-down menu, or click on the make web pages button of the toolbar. It will display the make web page dialog form on the screen showing as following figure 02e.

figure 02e

You specify the name of the web page folder. Type in the title for your web pages if you want to use the title rather than the program provided. Select the directory where you want the web folder to be. Choose one of the options, the "Photo Image List" or the "Photo Image Gallery", you want the web pages to be generated, then click on the "OK" button. The program will make the web pages look like as following figure 02f or figure 02g.

figure 02f

figure 02g

The web pages are Photo Image Gallery like figure 02f or Photo Image List like figure 02g, it depends on your choice of the options. Finally, in order to publish the web pages on your web site, you may need to copy or move the page folder to your web service and add a hyperlink on your web page to link the first page of the photo image pages. The first page of Photo Image Gallery is PhotoImage_pg1.htm and the first page of Photo Image List is PhotoData_pg1.htm, which is located at the web page folder.

Copy photos to disk

The program lets you retrieve the stored photo images and copy them to the disk. To copy the selected stored pictures to the disk, you first mark the pictures you want to copy, then click on the "Get Photo(s)" button that is located at right-middle of the screen, or select the "File" or the "Photo" then click on the "Get Photo(s)" from the drop-down menu, or click on the get photo(s) button of the toolbar. It will display the get photo dialog form on the screen showing as following figure 02h.

figure 02h

The selected files are listed on the left side of the dialog. The right side of the dialog showing the directory and drive, you need to select the destination where you want copy the files to. Click on the "OK" button, all files will be copied to the destination you selected. Of course, you can cancel it by clicking on the "Cancel" button if you don't want to copy the files.

Print report

The "Print Report" repots all the records / pictures of the selected folder / category by generating html files. You can perform a query on the folder / category if you only want to report a portion of records / pictures. The html file looks like very similar to the html file that generated by the "Make Web", but there are some differences. The html file for print report contains the folder / category information you want to reported. It also shows the actual IDs of the photo images that stored in the database. The number order from 1 to the last picture counted are used in the html files of the "Make Web". Not like the html file generated by the "Make Web", the html file generated by the "Print Report" is used for the purpose of printing, it can't be used for your web site. To print report of your selected folder / category, click on the "Print Report" button that is located at right-middle of the screen, then click on the "Photo Image List" or "Photo Image Gallery" menu item, depending on what kind of report you want to print. Or select the "Report", then click on the "Photo Image List" or "Photo Image Gallery" menu item from the drop-down menu. Or click on the report button of the toolbar to print "Photo Image List" report, or click on the report button of the toolbar to print "Photo Image Gallery" report.