(Getting Started) HOW DO I USE THIS HELP?

This help window allows you to view all of the help associated with Photo Jockey. You can flip to the tab for "ALL TIPS INDEX". This shows you all of the help topics available. You can then CLICK the mouse to view the help item you are interested in. All the topics are shown in a tree outline fashion. So of course you can click on the "+" or "-" to expand or collapse a section of the outline.

You can click "< Tip -1" to go backwards in the list of help topics, or "Tip +1>" to go forwards in the list.

You can search the tips for certain words by clicking on the "FIND" button.

If you are looking at a tip you want to print, just click the "PRINT TIP" button.

TEXT LINKS:

You will notice that most of the text is black lettering on a yellow background. In addition, there are 2 types of links that are used (Jump Links and Action Links). These links display the text in ITALICS. And the color of the links are GREEN or BLUE.

Jump Links
When you click on a Jump Link, the help window shows you a new tip based on the link you clicked on. Example: Click here to learn more about the Program Options Screen.

Action Links
When you click on an Action Link, Photo Jockey brings up the actual window that's being discussed. Just as though you had clicked the appropriate button in the program yourself. Example: Click here to bring up the Program Options Screen.

Forwards & Backwards buttons
At the top of the help window, you will see 2 buttons that look similar to a web browser's forward and back buttons. These buttons do just that. So, as you bounce around in the help by clicking on various links of interest, you can later use the Backwards button to take you back where you came from.

When you are done with the tips, just click the "CLOSE TIPS" button.



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Tip # 2
(Getting Started) WHAT IS PHOTO JOCKEY?

This program allows you to view in a slide show fashion any folder of images that you have. You can also PAUSE the slide show in order to view the images individually. So, in essence, it's a nice image/photo Viewer AND Editor AND Slide Show program all built into one. Photo Jockey can view many graphic image file formats and movie files.

Here are some of the cool things you can do in addition to the standard slide show features that you would expect.

Mouse Wheel Support: If you have a mouse wheel on your mouse, then you can use it to advance to the next picture or go back to a previous picture. It's like a slide show controller..

Screen SnapShots: You can get a quick screen snapshot with one click. After you get the screen snapshot you can Drag & Drop it onto your email attachment area so you can email your tech buddy an image of your screen. This way he might be able to help you out on whatever problems you might be having. Click here to learn how.

Rotation memory: When you view an image that needs rotating, you can click to rotate it. Then, as long as you are in the program, it REMEMBERS the images you rotated. This way when you go back to view those images, they will STILL appear rotated :) The rotation is done in memory and does NOT modify your actual image files. See "Program Options".

Rotate/Mirror/Flip: You can rotate or mirror or flip any photo. Then later you can click the "SAVE" button to save the new photo to disk.

Print Custom Layouts: This allows you to design a print layout. For example: You may want a whole page of wallet sized prints. Or maybe you want to print 3 photos each of which are 4x6 in size. You pick the layout and simply drag/drop photos onto the layout and then print. Of course you can print single photos full page as well. Click here to learn how.

CD-ROM Burning: You can burn a folder of images or you can burn a Web Gallery that you have created with Photo Jockey. Click here to learn how.

Search For Duplicate Images: You can find all the duplicate images in your system. Even if they are not identical files. You can search by image "appearance". Click here to learn how.

Database integration: You can store keywords, notes, categories and more for each of your images. You can later search the database and do batch operations on the found files.. Click here to learn how.

Slide Show Play Lists: You can create play lists that can controls what files are displayed and in what order. Click here to learn how.

Photo Quilting (Mosaics): You can create an image that is composed of a series of thumbnails of various photos. When viewed from a distance, the quilted image looks like another photo that you have selected. It's pretty cool!. Click here to learn how.

Contact Sheets: You can Print Or Save contact sheets of your images. These contact sheets look like a grid of images (thumbnails). You can select how many rows you want. Also there are many features that make this function amazing. Click here to learn how.

View Text Comments: You can view/add text comments for any image. Then when you view that image later, you will see the comment that was entered. See "Program Options"' and "Add/Edit Text Comments". You can also Import/Export these text comments.

Play Voice Comments: You can also play/add voice comments for any image. Then when you view that image later, you will hear the voice file that you had made. See "Program Options" and "Add/Edit Voice Comments". Click here to learn how.

Search Comments: You can search an entire folder of images' text comments for a specific text string. Then you are shown all the files whose text comments contain the text string you searched for. So, if you wanted to search for any comment that had "Paris" in it, you could do that quickly! Use the Tools Menu. Click here to learn how.

Play Music while showing slide show If you burn a CD ROM with photos on it and the Photo Jockey program, you can make the CD ROM play music while it's showing you the slide show of photos. Click here to learn more about the "Music Playing" option.

Recent History: This is a handy feature that allows you to go back to a folder, that you went to recently, quickly without having to browse to the folder again. See Recent Functions.

File Copy/Move/REname/Delete: You can perform file operations to help manage your files. You can copy files to a new folder, or you can delete selected files, or you can REname in very cool ways including SEQUENTIAL renaming! Click on the appropriate buttons on the Quick Tools panel.

Image Format Conversion: You can convert selected files to either (.bmp, .jpg, .gif) files. You can do this on multiple files all at once by using the BATCH mode feature. Click here to learn how to do format conversions.

Unique Sorting Ability: You can sort you filenames list by the standard ways, PLUS you can sort by "Camera EXIF Date Taken" info. You can sort by image dimensions. You can sort by PARTial filename as well which can come in handy.

Drag/Drop: You can drag a folder from your file manager into the Photo Jockey program window. Then the program will have all the images in that dropped folder loaded and ready to view. Or you can drag a file(s) from this program onto the file manager so that you are effectively copying files to the selected folder where you did the drop. This drag/drop is intelligent and allows you to copy the associated text comment and voice comment files as well. You can also drop onto your email program if you wanted to email someone a photo. You can also drop onto a graphics editor if you wanted to edit a photo. You could also drop onto ICQ if you wanted to ICQ someone the photo.

Photo Size Reduction(On Drop): Let's say you want to reduce the size of your photos that you drag/drop onto your email attachment area. This is useful if you have a bunch of LARGE photos and all you want to do is to email your buddies smaller versions of the photos AND you don't want to waste time and space making smaller photos on your hard drive. When you drag/drop you are given the opportunity to make the photos smaller. Click here to learn how.

Easy Browse: You can easily browse from folder to folder without having to go through the standard Windows' browse dialog window. The Folders List panel on the right side shows you what sub-folders exists. So, you just do one-click and poof you are looking at the images in that folder you just clicked on. EASY!

Thumbnail Memory: When you view a folder, a list of thumbnails has to be built. This takes a little time (not much). But as you browse around your system, all the thumbnails made are remembered, so if you go back to a folder that you had viewed just a little while ago, the thumbnails will appear super fast. Keep in mind that this cool feature is limited by your available disk space. So, if you get to where you have only 80MB left, then the thumbnail memory is turned off. Also, when you exit the program, the thumbnails are then forgotten so that you get your temp disk space usage back.

Web Page Gallery Generation: You can automatically generate a web site thumbnail gallery for all the photos in a folder. You can select how many thumbnails appear on a page etc. It generates all the HTML pages and thumbnail files. In addition, you can have the Text Comments that you may have entered for your images also appear on the web pages. Very handy indeed. All you have to do is to upload the folders to your web site, or you can burn them onto a CD ROM to view with any Web Browser (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.). Click here to learn how.

BATCH Web Page Gallery Generation: Web Page galleries are nice to have. But BATCH mode is very helpful if you have a lot of folders that you want to create into Web Page galleries.With just a few clicks you are making web page galleries for lots of folders at once. Click here to learn how.

Puzzles: You can turn any photo into a fun Puzzle to play. From the main menu, you can click on "Puzzle Fun". There are 3 games you can play. Click here to learn how. Click here to Play Puzzles.

Preview Comparison Windows: You can take any image and open it into a Preview Comparison Window. Then if you have at least TWO comparison windows open, you can do a tiled side-by-side comparison of the images magnified. That way you can tell which of the two images are of the best quality. Then you delete the one of lesser quality. Click here to learn how.

Dead Pixel Locator: You can take a black photo from a digital camera and locate any dead pixels if your camera's image sensor is bad. Click here to learn how.

Photo Scanning: Photo Jockey supports any TWAIN compliant scanner. Most scanners are TWAIN compliant. So, you can click a button in Photo Jockey and your scanner software is automatically loaded. Click here to learn how.

Image Editing: These features allow you to improve the image by editing/adjusting certain portions of the image.

Color Adjusting: This allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and more of the entire image or just a portion of the image. Click here to learn how.

Color Swap: This allows you to change a red car to a blue car. Or to make a green sweater darker. Very powerful feature to allow a narrow color range to be adjusted. Click here to learn how.

Gray Scale, Negative, Sepia: This allows you to adjust the photo so that it looks like a Black & White photo, or a negative, or an old style sepia colored photo. Click here to learn how.

Cut/Paste Image Portions: This allows you to cut a portion from an image and then paste it into another image Click here to learn how.

Rotate/Flip/Mirror: This allows you to change the orientation of the image by either Rotating it, or Flipping it, or Mirroring it. Click here to learn how.

Text Boxes: This allows you to add text box overlays to your images. Many options like Shadowing, vertical text, outlined text etc. Click here to learn how.

Image Overlays: This allows you to add company logo image overlays to your photos. You can also do DOUBLE-EXPOSURE effects too. Click here to learn how.

Sharpness: This allows you to enhance the sharpness of the image. Click here to learn how.

Smoothness: This allows you to enhance the smoothness of the image. Click here to learn how.

3-D Perspective / Shear / Special Effects: This allows you to correct perspective problems with photos (tall buildings looking tiny at the top), or to ADD perspective to photos for neat effects. You can also shear, which is similar to TILTING. Also special effects like Emboss and Twist. Click here to learn how.

3-D Appearance: This allows you to enhance the photo's 3-D appearance. Click here to learn how.

Resizing: This allows you to resize the image larger or smaller. When enlarging, Digital Zoom is an option. Click here to learn how.

Crop: This allows you to crop unwanted portions from the image. Click here to learn how.

Red Eye Reduction: This allows you to remove & fix the RED-EYE (humans) or GREEN-EYE (animals) in photos. You can then save your fixed photos to your hard drive. Click here to learn how.

Batch Adjusting: This allows you to take many of the above image adjusting functions and apply them to a whole bunch of images in one step. You select the images you want the batch process to use. Click here to learn how.

External Editors: Photo Jockey has a lot of the common editing capabilities that you would normally want to do. If you have some specific things to do with an image that only one of your favorite editors can do, then you can allow your editing software to work hand in hand with Photo Jockey. Click here to learn how.

This program displays a single folder's worth of images at a time. You can of course easily click on sub-folders to switch the folder you are viewing.



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Tip # 3
(Getting Started) WHAT CAN PHOTO JOCKEY DO FOR YOU

Photo Jockey can do a lot of nice things for you. Some are pretty standard and some are pretty unique. Instead of learning the whole program and then deciding what it can do for you, we have compiled a list of common tasks that people like to do. They are grouped by types of tasks. This list then has a link you can click on to see just how Photo Jockey can do it for you.

BATCH Functions:
Web Page Gallery Functions:
Database Management Functions:
Image Editing Functions:
Red-Eye/Yellow-Eye Removal Functions:
Contact Sheets Functions:
3rd Party Image Editors Integration Functions:
CD-ROM Burning Functions:
Finding Duplicate Images Functions:
Filename Management (Renaming/Sorting) Functions:
Cool Misc. Functions:
Other Misc. Functions:

BATCH Functions:

I would like to rotate and resize and sharpen a whole folder of photos all at once.
Click here to learn how (batch mode).
Click here to learn how (rotation).
Click here to learn how (resize).
Click here to learn how (sharpen).

I like the web page gallery feature, but I have MANY FOLDERS of images that I would like to turn into Web Page galleries. I don't want to have to create them all individually. Can I create all the web galleries for hundreds of image folders all at once?
Click here to learn how.

I have a bunch of files by different names that I would like to rename SEQUENTIALLY. For example: Paris_001.jpg, Paris_002.jpg, Paris_003.jpg etc..
Click here to learn how.

Web Page Gallery Functions:

I have a bunch of pics that I would like to put into a Web Site that would have all the pics as thumbnails to click on and HATE doing it manually.  Sometimes I have a hundred or so that would span 4 or 5 HTML Pages. I want to be able to create all the needed stuff (HTMLs & thumbnails) in about 1 minute!
Click here to learn how.


Database Management Functions:

I would like to keep information about my images in a database, so that at a later time I can search the database to find these images.
Click here to learn how.

I'm a realtor and would like to keep pictures of the houses I'm dealing with and information about the houses for easy lookup and status checking.
Click here to learn how.

I just started using Photo Jockey and would like to import my comments from my old software into Photo Jockey so that I don't have to type all the comments all over again.
Click here to learn how.


Scanner Functions:

I would like to use my scanner to scan in a document or photo directly into Photo Jockey.
Click here to learn how.


Raster Printer Support:

I would like to take a relatively small image and print it on a huge print plotter for a large banner. When I do this with most print software, I get a blocky and jagged output. Can Photo Jockey produce a better looking image?  Answer
Click here to learn about print image resizing.


RAW Image support:

My digital camera supports RAW images. The software that came with the camera is slow. I would like to view the images in Photo Jockey. Can I do this?  Answer . I would also like to adjust the images as they are decoded from the RAW image. For example: I would like to adjust the contrast and brightness BEFORE I go into any of the Photo Jockey image editing tools.
Click here to learn how.


Image Editing Functions:

I would like to use the COLOR SWAP concept of Canon cameras so that I can change a red car into a blue car WITHOUT changing the color of the blue sky or green grass that the car sits on..
Click here to learn how.

I would like to adjust several items, like Contrast - Brightness - Gamma - Saturation. And I understand that in OTHER editing software, I would have to change ONE item at a time and that each time I apply a change, I can lose detail on the bright end and on the dark end. For example: Clouds could get burned out(solid white) when I increase the brightness.THEN when I adjust the contrast to bring the brighter areas down a little, then the WHITE areas DO NOT get their cloud detail back ;( HOW can I apply multiple adjustments all in one shot?
Click here to learn how.

I would like to SHUFFLE my Red/Green/Blue channels to produce interesting effects. For example: I want to make all red look green and all green to look blue and all blue to look red.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to FIX a perspective problem in my photo of a building. I don't want the top of the building to look smaller than the bottom.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to FIX a Fish-Eye problem with a photo. I took a photo with a super wide angle lens and it appears very distorted. You can remove fish-eye effects easily.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to auto color balance some indoor photos that look a little orange.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to cut a region from one photo and paste it into another photo.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to sharpen or smooth a photo.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to take an image and texturize it so that it looks like it's painted on a canvas, or on bricks, etc... This function is found in the photo quilting feature.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to add a copyright notice to whole bunch of my photos all at once.
Click here to learn how (batch mode).
Click here to learn how (text boxes).

I would like to have an image's "Text Comments" added to the bottom of a bunch of images (like a caption) without having to edit each image..
Click here to learn how (batch mode).
Click here to learn how (text boxes).

I would like to add a company logo to a whole bunch of my photos all at once.
Click here to learn how (batch mode).
Click here to learn how (image overlays).

I would like to take two photos and do the old fashioned DOUBLE-EXPOSURE type of effect.
Click here to learn how (image overlays).

I would like to add a 3-D appearance to a photo.
Click here to learn how.


Red-Eye/Yellow-Eye Removal Functions:

I would like to remove the red-eye from a person in a photo.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to remove the yellow-eye from a dog in a photo.
Click here to learn how.


Contact Sheets Functions:

I like to produce CONTACT SHEETS / CATALOGS of my images so that I can send the contact sheets to my friends without having to send a bunch of big files. Great time saver.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to print a contact sheet that shows all of my photos so I can give my customer a printout of a series of photos that they may circle and give back to me.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to control the ORDER in which the Contacts are produced in the contact sheet.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to have custom text notes printed at the bottom of each contact image on the contact sheet.
Click here to learn how.


3rd Party Image Editors Integration Functions:

I would like to integrate my favorite editors into Photo Jockey so that I can edit from within Photo Jockey.
Click here to learn how.


CD-ROM Burning Functions:

I would like to BURN A CD/DVD with photos from a folder or folders of photos.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to BURN A CD/DVD with Web Galleries that I created using the Auto Web Page Gallery creation tool..
Click here to learn how to make web galleries.
Click here to learn how burn CDs.


Finding Duplicate Images Functions:

I would like to find all duplicate images in my system. I am trying to regain some disk space and deleting the duplicates will help me.
Click here to learn how find duplicates.

I have a place on my hard drive where I keep all my photos. It's called G:\MyPhotos   and it contains many sub-folders. As I move files into this area, I want to make sure I don't move in duplicates of what is already there. The files I want to move in are tagged.
Click here to learn how to find duplicates of tagged files.

I have some photos that look the same, and I want to delete the one of lesser quality. How can I easily see which one is of lesser quality?
Click here to learn how.


Filename Management (Renaming/Sorting) Functions:

I would like to sort my filenames list by the date in which I TOOK the photo. This is important because as I edit my photos the date on the files change, then sorting by file date doesn't give me the sequence in which I actually TOOK the photos. I don't want to use the filenames because I used several cameras to take the photos and the filenames wouldn't sort by time taken.
Click here to learn how.

I have several groups of files by different photographers and would like to do a SEQUENTIAL rename, WHILE keeping the information about WHICH photographer took the photo.. For example: Paris_001_D.jpg, Paris_002_D.jpg, Paris_003_K.jpg etc.. Where the _D would mean Dave took the photo and _K would mean Katherine took the photo.
Click here to learn how.


Cool Misc. Functions:

I would like to drag some photos from Photo Jockey into my email attachment area so my buddies can see my wonderful pics I took. BUT I DON'T WANT to send the full sized images. I want smaller images sent. When I do the DROP, I want an option to change the size of the photos.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to produce an image that is formed from a mosaic of thumbnails from a selected folder of images. This mosaic should look like an original photo that I choose. This is called photo quilting.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to have FUN with my pics. I like turning them into PUZZLES to play with.
Click here to learn how.

I just bought a new digital camera and am wondering if I have any dead, hot, stuck pixels.
Click here to learn how.


Other Misc. Functions:

I have a photo that I would like to make as my Desktop Wallpaper background image.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to make business cards that have several text boxes and maybe a photo on them. I would also like to be able to edit it later in case I've made some typos.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to convert a bunch of files all at once to (.bmp, .jpg or .gif) files.
Click here to learn how.

I have a lot of various image types (tiff, bmp, png, psd etc.) and would like to convert them all to JPG files with just a couple of mouse clicks.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to make a Lesson / Tutorial / SlideShow system that would display a series of pictures along with a series of sound files that talks about each picture. And optionally display some text comments along with each picture.
Click here to learn how.
Click here to learn how (text comments).

I would like to make Photo Jockey the default viewer for *.bmp and *.gif and *.tiff files.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to create a slide show that contains a sub-set of files from a folder of files. I would also like to control the ORDER of the files without having to rename my files. Just create a Slide Show Play List.
Click here to learn how.

Sometimes my system blows up or some of my programs don't do what I think they should and the tech people keep asking me for SCREEN SHOTS so they can see what my screen looks like at certain points in time so that they may help me.
Click here to learn how.

I have some BIG images I want to shrink to have smaller dimensions.
Click here to learn how.

I would like to Print several photos onto a single sheet of paper and do special cropping and maybe add some text and color adjustments for the printout(without having to save the adjustments).
Click here to learn how.

I would like to digitally zoom in on a section of a photo.
Click here to learn how.

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Tip # 5
(Getting Started) HOW TO UN-INSTALL PHOTO JOCKEY

File Associations Need To Be Un-checked:
Before you un-install Photo Jockey, you should make sure that you don't have Photo Jockey associated with file extensions. In the "Options" menu, you can setup file extension to be associated with Photo Jockey. Make sure you go into that setup screen and UNCHECK all file types so that Photo Jockey is no longer associated with any file extensions. Otherwise, after you un-install Photo Jockey, if you dbl-click on any file associated with Photo Jockey will result in Windows not being able to load and display the file in Photo Jockey. Because Photo Jockey is no longer on your system. When you un-check all the file types, the previous owner of the extension is smartly restored.

Click to learn about setting up file extensions for Photo Jockey.

Other files you may want to remove from your system:
Photo Jockey keeps track of thumbnails and fingerprints and other database information. These files are kept in a seperate folder so that other products from us can make use of these databases. They are kept in your Window's drive in the
\Program Files\Common Files\Smatters folder. Windows VISTA users will find them in the
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Smatters folderYou will see a "DatabaseV1" folder and a "ThumbnailCacheV1"l folder, you can remove these. NOTE: If you remove these, and you later decide to re-install Photo Jockey then of course your database entries are gone. So, only keep these around if you plan on re-installing Photo Jockey.



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Tip # 4
(Getting Started) WHY REGISTER PHOTO JOCKEY

We developed Photo Jockey so that users such as yourself could enjoy using it. Of course if you don't feel that it's of any value to you, then there is no need to register it. If, however, you feel that it's a nice tool to use and you would like to use it past the trial period, then you need to register it.

There are 2 levels of registration currently. Below is a description of the differences between the different levels of registration.

BASIC:

No Nag-Screens and start and end of Photo Jockey

Continued use with no expiration

Remembers last used program window size

Help Tips won't pop up when program loads

Print Full Page

Auto-Run registered version when older version is loaded from a burned CD-ROM

NOTE: The PRO features are NOT available in the BASIC version.

PRO:

All the BASIC features plus the following features

Red-Eye Removal tool

WallPaper Creation

CD/DVD Burning capability

Print Multiple Photos Per Page

Print Contact Sheets

Sharpening / Smoothing Tool

Text Box Overlays

Image Overlays

Batch Processing (Powerful)

Auto Web Page Gallery Generation

Image Editing

Photo Quilting using Photo Mosaics

Slide Show Play Lists to control ordering of images

Search System for Duplicate Images, even by appearance

These features may change at any time in the future as we are always updating and improving Photo Jockey.

NOTE: If you choose to register as the BASIC version, all of the features of the PRO will still be available up until the end of the trial period has ended. At this point, your Photo Jockey will be limited to the BASIC features only. This is so that you can register early and NOT lose the ability to continue checking out ALL of the features of Photo Jockey.

HOW TO REGISTER:
If you want to register Photo Jockey, then click on the HELP main menu item. Then choose the "Register Program" item. This will step you through the process needed to register this software. Simply put: After you click the "Register Now" button, you then have the choice to "Enter Registration Key Code". Then you enter your registration information:

Full Name

Email Address

Registration Key Code

After you have entered the above information, then click the "Register" button. You are then registered.



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Tip # 6
(Getting Started) PROGRAM WINDOW PANEL-SECTIONS

By default the program shows several areas.

Thumbnails Panel: This is the panel at the TOP of the screen that shows you a list of thumbnails of all the images in the current folder. You can click on a thumbnail to view the image. There's a "View" menu option to change the size and shape of the thumbnails displayed.

Button Bar Panel: This is the panel that shows below the thumbnails panel. When you RIGHT-CLICK on the button bar, it contains a list of all the useful functions that a user would want to use. You can select Large or Small icons and you can show or hide their captions. You can also configure the Buttons that appear on the button bar.

NOTE: When you load Photo Jockey from a CD-ROM, then it's assumed that you are going to view a slide show of photos. For this reason, the button bar will have a DIFFERENT set of buttons displayed that can NOT be configured.

Files List Panel: This is the panel on the RIGHT side of the main Photo Jockey window. It shows you a list of files that are in the current folder. You can click on a file in the list to view it. This panel has two parts. The TOP part is the Folders List which allows you to browse to other folders. The BOTTOM part contains the Files List of files in the current folder.

NOTE: This panel also contains:

"Quick Tools" checkbox: This displays a floating tool bar panel with most of the cool functions.

Red/Green button: Temporarily disable auto pop-ups of various kinds

Slide Show button: Start/stop a full screen slide show.

Funnel Filter button: Allows you to control what file types (extensions) are displayed in the files list.
NOTE: For a complete description of the folder options, click here.
NOTE: There is a tiny green pyramid button above the filenames list that controls the SORT ORDER of the list.
NOTE: There are Backward and Forward buttons that work much the same as your web browser buttons work. They take you through the previously shown files in the exact order they were viewed. You can go backwards or forwards.

Comment Panel: This is the panel at the bottom that shows you any text comments that may have been entered for an image. If no comments have been entered for an image and your comment panel is in auto-display mode, then you will not see the comment panel.

Slide Show Controls (VCR Buttons): This panel is shown or hidden by your mouse movement. It intelligently decides when to view the panel. So, if you move your mouse into one of the 4 corners of the Image Display Area, you will see the slide show control panel (VCR Buttons). It's pretty neat and makes it so that you don't have stuff on the screen that you don't want.
TIP: If you have mixed files of pictures and movies, then the "forward" and "backward" buttons will take you forward or backward to the next picture. It will skip over non-picture files.
HINT: There is a minimize/maximize button on the window that toggles between Normal, Medium, and Small mode. This is so that you can control the size of the VCR Buttons.
NOTE: You can turn OFF/ON the auto showing of the  "Slide Show Controls (VCR Buttons)" by using the "View" main menu option and selecting the "Confgure Tool-Tips, Novice Hints, File Properties & VCR Buttons". Click here to learn how to turn it off.

Image Display Area: This area is where the images appear. Unlike the other panels, you can NOT HIDE this area.

You can HIDE or VIEW any or all of these panels. SO, if you were to HIDE all of them, then any images you view would basically be viewed in full screen mode.

HINT: You can GRAB the splitter bar to make the files list panel wider or narrower. You can also use the splitter bar to control the size of the folder-list and files-list. These splitter bars are a medium green in color. Just drag them and you will see what they do!

TIP: If you click on an image that is HUGE and is taking too long to load and you want to move on to another photo, you can cancel the loading of the current photo and load another just by clicking on another photo.



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Tip # 7
(Getting Started) TOOLS MENU (HOW TO GET IT UP)

The TOOLS MENU accesses most of the cool features of the program. There are three ways in which you can bring it up. First, you need to be at the main Photo Jockey program window.

Right Click: You can right click pretty much anywhere in the program window. This brings up the tools menu.

Click Hammer: You can click on the HAMMER button on the Slide Show Controls (VCR Buttons) panel. It's the right-most button.

CTRL-T: You can use a keyboard shortcut by pressing CTRL-T.

HINT: You can see the Slide Show Controls panel by placing your mouse in the corner of the photo display area in the program. Unless of course you have turned this feature off using the "Configure Pop-Ups like (Tool-Tips, Novice Hints, File Properties & VCR Buttons)" function.



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Tip # 8
(Getting Started) MAIN MENU (HOW TO DISPLAY IT)

Although most of the commonly used features are accessed by buttons on the main screen and items from the tools menu, there is also a Main Menu that has all of the functionality of the program.

HINT: The main menu is the list of standard pull downs at the very top of the application window.  It shows items like "File   Edit   Tags   Comments   View   SlideShow   Print   Options   Help". Just click on one of them and you will see a list of further choices you can click on.

NOTE: If you move the mouse away from the main menu, it will go into AUTO-HIDE Menu mode. Just move the mouse back to where the main menu WAS, to bring up the main menu again. From the main menu's "VIEW" menu, you can disable/enable the auto-hide feature.

TIP: As you scroll thru the various menu items, you will see a status bar at the bottom of the program window that shows you helpful information about each menu item you are passing over.



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Tip # 9
(Getting Started) AUTO-HIDE MAIN MENU

The main menu provides a way to access all of the features of Photo Jockey. Since 95% of the time you don't click on the main menu, it's best to keep it hidden so you have more screen real estate available. Photo Jockey implements a technique called Auto-Hide for the main menu.

NOTE: If you move the mouse away from the main menu, it will go into AUTO-HIDE Menu mode. Just move the mouse back to where the main menu WAS, to bring up the main menu again. From the main menu's "VIEW" menu, you can disable/enable the auto-hide feature.



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Tip # 13
(Getting Started) POP-UP NOVICE HELP HINTS

These are hints that pop-up and stay on the screen until you close them out. They display helpful information about the action you are doing. You can close these hints by clicking on the "X" in the upper right corner of the hint window. There is also a "?" button. Clicking this button brings up this help topic you are reading.

HINT: Some of the novice hints may display a round green action button and or a checkbox. You can use the action button to perform the action described in the hint. This is a shortcut for the user. So, instead of the user using the menus to get to a particular function of interest, you can click the action button to do the function with one click.

There are 3 types of pop up help hints:

Hints that display ONCE per session
These novice hints will only appear once while you are running the program. When you run the program again you will see the hint again only once. There are only a few of these types of hints.
Informative Level: LOW
Border Color: GREEN

Hints that display until you checkmark it (you don't want it displayed again)
These novice hints will appear as many times as needed while you are running the program. The only way to get them to turn off, is to check the checkbox inside the novice tip window. When you re-run the program, these tips will appear again. Most of the help hints are of this type.
Informative Level: MEDIUM
Border Color: BLUE

Hints that display ALWAYS
These hints will always appear when needed. There are only a few help hints of this type. There is no way to turn them off.
Informative Level: HIGH
Border Color: RED

Although these hint tips are very valuable to the casual user of Photo Jockey, they can become sort of annoying after awhile. So the advanced user might want to turn off the optional help hints.

TURNING ON/OFF POP-UP NOVICE HINTS:
You can remove the pop-up help hints if you are an advanced user and don't want to be bothered by them. Just go to the "View" main menu, and select the "Configure Pop-Ups like (Tool-Tips, Novice Hints, File Properties & VCR Buttons)" menu item. This brings up the Tips & Hints configuration window. You can turn ON and OFF the various pop-ups. Click here to learn more about the "Tips & Hints Configuration" window.

NOTE: The third type of help hint (Hints that display ALWAYS) are NOT affected by turning the pop-up hints on or off. This is because these are more of an important informative type of hint that is needed for the user to see.

TIP: You can MOVE these novice hints by dragging them with your mouse.



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Tip # 14
(Getting Started) CONFIGURE POP-UPS LIKE (TOOL-TIPS, NOVICE HINTS, FILE PROPERTIES & VCR BUTTONS)

Click here to show the Configuring Tool-Tips, Novice Hints, File Properties & VCR Buttons screen.

Let's say you've used the program for awhile and there comes a time that you want to disable the pop-up helps that appear from time to time. This screen allows you to enable or disable the various types of pop-ups.

HINT: If you want to quickly disable all pop-ups with the click of ONE button, click on the Disable/Re-enabled pop-ups button. This is a red round button located on the files list panel.

There are 5 types of pop-ups that this configuration screen can enable or disable:

Novice Hint Boxes: Click here to learn about Novice Hints

Slide-Show-Controls (VCR Buttons): These appear in the 4 corners of your image viewing area.

Tool-Tips: Tips that pop-up over buttons, checkboxes, pulldowns, sliders and other controls. Usually a sentence or two.

File Properties: These appear under thumbnails as you pass the mouse over the thumbnails list at the top. They can also appear to the left of the files list as you pass the mouse over the files list filenames on the right panel.

Folder Preview Properties: These appear next to the Folder Tree View window as you move the mouse over each folder's folder name..The preview can contain handy thumbnails and info about the number of files and disk space used in the folder.

Temporarily Disable all pop-ups
Checkmark to turn all the following tips & hints off at once. This becomes unchecked when you re-run the program.

Novice Hint Boxes (Default-enabled)
Select one of the 3 choices:

Enabled: Normal mode. When you run the program all novice hints are displayed as needed After viewing, they won't reappear until you re-run the program again.

No Repeats: Novice Hints that you've seen before will NOT appear. Only the ones you haven't seen will show up. Then after you've seen them, they will NOT appear again.

Turn Off: No Novice Hints will show up. Not even after you re-run the program.

Slide-ShowControls (Default-enabled)
Select one of the 3 choices:

Enabled: Normal mode. When you run the program these VCR buttons appear in the 4 corners of your image viewing area.

Disabled: The VCR buttons will NOT appear again, until you re-run the program.

Turn Off: The VCR buttons will NOT appear again, EVEN AFTER re-running the program.

Enable Tool Tips (Default-on)
Checkmark to enable tool-tips.

Enable File Properties Info Boxes (Default-on)
Checkmark to enable the File Properties Info Boxes.

Folder Preview Properties

For more information about the Folder Preview Window, click here:

Show Folder Preview Properties
Select one of the 2 choices:

Show Folder Preview: Default mode. As you move the mouse over folder names in the Folder Tree View window, you get to see an information Pop-Up window about that folder.

Don't Show Folder Preview: No folder preview window shows.

TIP: Click the following link to re-activate the Folder Preview Pop-Up window now.

Thumbnail Size
Select one of the 3 choices:

Small Thumbnails: Default mode. The folder preview window shows 4 small thumbnails.

Medium Thumbnails: Default mode. The folder preview window shows 2 medium thumbnails.

Large Thumbnails: Only ONE large thumbnail is shown in the preview window.

NONE: The thumbnails are not shown in the preview window. This is handy for SLOW computers where the time it takes to generate the preview is too long for your liking.

ACCEPT:
Once you have the settings the way you want them, click "Accept" and your settings are made.

CANCEL:
If you decide you don't want to change the settings, then click "Cancel".

DEFAULTS:
If you want the settings set to default values, click "Defaults". This is useful if you think you have goofed up the settings and want to start from scratch.

NOTE: Even though you may have disabled stuff on this screen, all the tool-tips and novice hints will STILL APPEAR for this screen. That way you don't get into a situation where you turn all the helpful stuff off, and then you can't figure out how to use this screen ;)



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Tip # 19
(Getting Started) LOADING IMAGES INTO PHOTO JOCKEY

When you start the program you will typically want to do some things with photos, otherwise why load the program :) So, you may say, "How can I load a folder full of photos into the program so that I can play a slide show?" Well, you can load photos by many different ways.

Browse For Folder. Just click on the Browse button and then go into a folder where you know images are located. Then click on any of the images and then click "OPEN". Once you click "OPEN", that folder gets loaded into Photo Jockey for viewing purposes. The specific image that you had clicked on will be the photo that is displayed once the folder is brought up.

See the section on "Drag Files/Folders into Photo Jockey"

See the section on "How Can I Load A Folder That I Went To Recently"

See the section on Send To And How To Use It

NOTE: If you want to FILTER the file types that are displayed in the files list, you can select which file types are loaded by Photo Jockey by using the Filter File Types option.



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Tip # 11
(Getting Started) STARTING A SLIDE SHOW

Let's say you have loaded a bunch of photos into the program and you want to start the slide show going. You can start it in one of three ways.

CTRL-P: You can press CTRL-P from the keyboard and this will start the slide show.

Tools Menu: Use the Tools menu and click on the "Play" menu item.

Play Button: Move the mouse to a corner of the image display area and the Slide Show Controls (VCR Buttons) will be shown. Then click on the play button.

NOTE: If you want to start a FULL SCREEN slide show (no program title bar, no border around the program window, no side panels), just click on the Green Film Strip that is located on the Files List panel. You can also start it from the main menu's Slide Show menu.



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Tip # 89
(PlayLists) CREATING A SLIDE SHOW PLAY LIST

If you decide you want to create a slide show play list, then click on the "Slide Show" main menu, then click on the "Create / Edit Slide Show Play Lists" menu item.

WHY USE THIS FEATURE?

Let's say you have a folder of a 100 files. And let's say they are of different topics. For example: Birds, BDay Dinner and Buildings. Typically, you would create 3 sub folders and move the appropriate files into the appropriate folders. Then when the user clicks on the appropriate folder, they get to see only the files that you wanted them to see. So far so good. NOW let's say you want a couple of more folders. For example: Best Pics and Funny Pics. You would then create 2 more sub folders and then COPY the best files from all you folders into the Best Pics. Then you would COPY the funniest files from all your sub folders into the Funny Pics folder. Also, let's say you wanted to control the ORDER of the files, you would have a tedious time renaming all the files to produce the correct filename order. These are the common PROBLEMS.

Wasted Space For Copies: Since you have COPIES of files, this means you are now taking up more disk space. If you are burning CD-ROMs, this can turn into a problem of not having enough space on your CD-ROM to hold everything.

Text Comment Syncronization: Let's say you added some text comments to your files. If you LATER change a text comment for a file, you now have to change the text comment in the Best Pics or Funny Pics folder as well (if the file was in more than one folder).

Display Order: Since all the files by default are shown in filename order, you would have to RENAME all your files to produce the desired showing order. Renaming would be tedious for large amounts of filenames.

All of the above problems can be solved by using the Slide Show Play List Creator. This allows you to have all your files in ONE folder, so the "Wasted Space For Copies" problem is solved and the "Text Comment Syncronization" problem is solved too. The play list creator allows you to control the order in which the files are displayed so the "Display Order" problem is solved too.

The play lists are saved into a play list file. All play list files have the extension of *.plylst. Once you have created some play lists, the user can then Choose which play list to view as they load the folder or refresh the folder or as they browse to a folder.

HOW TO USE THIS FEATURE

The following shows you how to use Slide Show Play List Creator to create play lists.

NOTE: If you have some files tagged in the main Photo Jockey window, then you will be asked if you want to use those tagged files for your play list. You can either include them in the play list, or you can make them the only files in the play list.

DEFINITIONS:
Checked: When you click in the box for each thumbnail you will see a checkmark.
Tagged: Same as checked.
Selected: When you click on a thumbnail, it turns a different color. This is selected. Also, if you drag your mouse around a bunch of thumbnails, then a bunch will be selected.

TOP SECTION:
At the top of the window, you will see a pulldown that contains all of the available play lists in the current folder. If none exists, then the pulldown will be empty. Next to the pulldown is a "DELETE" button, that allows you to delete the currently showing play list.

There is also a "ThumbNail Size" selector. Just pick how big you want the thumnnails.

MIDDLE SECTION:
This portion of the window contains all of the thumbnails of the images in the folder. You can drag them around to control the order you want. You can select multiple files by using the CTRL key, or you can drag boxes around multiple files to select multiple files. Once selected, you can drag the group to where you want them.

As you SELECT/DRAGyour files with the mouse, if you are draging your selection rectangle larger to make more files selected, you can control the SPEED at which the files list scrolls. As you move the mouse PAST THE EDGE of the window, the files list starts to scroll slowly, the MORE you move past the edge of the window, the scrolling goes faster. This is standard functionality with all windows applications.

BOTTOM SECTION:

Status Indicators: This tells you how many files you have tagged & selected. It also shows you how many files are in the list.

Preview Comparison Window: This allows you to open a preview window so that you can see the image in more detail and also adjust the image like, red-eye, rotate etc...

Sort List: This button allows you to select the sort order in which the files appear in the thumbnail list. There are many sort options to choose from.

Show File Properties Hint: This allows you to control if the File Property tip appears over every file you move your mouse over. If you find it annoying, then un-check it.

Tagging Operations:

Tag All Files: This tags every file in the list

Flip All Tags: This tags all files that are NOT tagged, it also un-tags all files that are tagged.

Un-Tag All Files: This un-tags all files.

Tag Selected: This tags all the files you have selected

Un-Tag Selected: This un-tags all files you have selected

Tagging files is great because, you can control which files are part of the play list. All un-checked (un-tagged) files are removed from the play list. They are NOT REMOVED FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE. The above 5 buttons gives you complete control over which files are included in the play list.

Slide Show Play List Properties:

There are a few properties that you can use so that when the user is choosing which play list to view, they will have a good idea of which one to pick.

Play List Files: ###: This shows you how many files are in the play list currently.

Import Tags(#): This options allows you to merge checked(tagged) files from the main Photo Jockey window so that you can do all your checking from the main window, and then transfer them into a play list. The # shows how many files you have tagged in the main window. There are 3 choices:

Only Use Play List Tags: This restores the play list so it doesn't include any of the tagged files from the MAIN window, in case you had chosen one of the following options.

Only Use Tags From Main Window: This basically forces the play list to contain ONLY the tagged files from the main window.

Add Tags From Main Window: This keeps the current play list tags and ADDS any tagged files from the main window.

NOTE: In order for the "Only Use Play List Tags" to work efficiently, the list of play list files are kept in a temp area. Then as you tag and untag files in the play list, the temp area is updated to indicate what files the user wants in the play list. Then when the "Only Use Play List Tags" is selected, then basically only the files in this temp area are in the play list.

Title Of Play List: Enter a title describing the play list.

Selected Image As Preview: Select an image from the list and then click this button. The selected image will now be used when the user chooses which play list to view. The preview thumbnail is displayed along with the title for the user in the choosing window.

SOME HELPFUL NOTES:

NOTE: If you move or rename your folders, there is NO problem. This is because the *.plylst files do NOT contain the path and filename of each file, it only contains the filenames.

NOTE: If you RENAME your files in Photo Jockey, any play list that references the renamed file will be updated so that the play lists will now reference the new filename. If you rename your files OUTSIDE of Photo Jockey, then when the play list is loaded, it will indicate to the user that some files couldn't be found in the play list.



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Tip # 16
(PlayLists) CHOOSING WHICH PLAY LIST TO VIEW

Let's say you have some Slide Show Play Lists in a folder of images. In order to load up a play list so that the files in your files list contain ONLY the files from a play list AND IN THE ORDER of the files in a play list, then all you need to do is to click on the "Slide Show" main menu. Then pick the "Select a Slide Show Play List" menu item.

If any Slide Show play lists exist in the folder, you will be presented with a list on the screen. You can choose which play list you want to view. Once you've selected the play list, the Photo Jockey main screen will then show only the files from the play list and in the ORDER that the play list didctates.

Slide Show Play List Options

Show Sub Folder Play Lists:
By default this is checked. It allows not only the play lists from the current folder to be displayed, but it also includes any play lists found in any sub folder of the current folder. Sub Sub folders are not checked, thus only ONE level of sub folder is searched. If you un-check this, then any play lists in the sub folders will be removed from the play list selector. If you then re-check this, then those play lists will appear again.

Show this screen the next time you select a folder:
Every time you select a folder to display, by using the browse for folder method or using the recent folders method or using drag/drop method, this screen will be presented to you IF there are any play lists in the folder or immediate subfolder. If you un-check this option, then you will HAVE TO use the "Slide Show" main menu option to bring up this Slide Show Play List Selector screen.

View Slide Show Play List:
Use the arrow keys or mouse to select which play list to view. Then click this button. The Photo Jockey main screen will then show all the files in the play list and in the ORDER of the play list.

Edit Slide Show Play List:
Use the arrow keys or mouse to select which play list to edit. Then click this button. The Slide Show Play List Creator will be shown. You can then edit the play list.

Exit:
This exits without doing any particular function.

Help:
This brings up this help screen.



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Tip # 17
(PlayLists) LOCATE ALL SLIDE SHOW PLAY LISTS IN SYSTEM

Let's say you have created a bunch of play lists and a few months later you want to review them. Well, you may have forgotten where you put them, or you may have moved the folders where they existed to some other folder. In any case, this is the function for you.

Just click the "Slide Show" main menu, then click on the "Locate All Slide Show Play Lists In System" menu item.

This will scan all your hard drives for the play list files. Once found you will have a selection window appear that allows you to pick which play list to view.

NOTE: This search information is kept (cached) as long as you are still running Photo Jockey. That way when you go to search again, you can do a much quicker search for play lists.



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Tip # 12
(Getting Started) FULL SCREEN SLIDE SHOW

Sometimes it's nice to have a slide show of your photos playing while in full screen mode. This way, the only thing you see are the photos. There are no program title bars, or program side panels.

Just click on the Green Film Strip that is located on the Files List panel. You can also start it from the main menu's Slide Show menu.

TIP: You can press the ESCape key to quit the full screen slide show mode. You can also quit it by clicking on the Main Menu's "Slide Show" menu item. And then selecting to STOP the Full Screen Slide Show.

NOTE: While in the Full Screen slide show mode, the mouse cursor will vanish after about 3 seconds unless you move the mouse. This is so that you can see JUST THE PHOTO and not be detracted by the mouse cursor.



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Tip # 52
(Options) SORTING OPTIONS

Sorting Folders List
Also, you may want to sort the Folders list in a specific way. You can choose between sorting by foldername or sorting by folder's creation date. You can click on the main menu's view menu. Then click on the "Sort Folders List" menu item. OR, you can click on the green triangle right above the folders list.

Sorting Files List
There may be times when you need to sort the files list by something other than filename ascending (default). You can click on the main menu's view menu. Then click on the "Sort Files List" menu item. OR, you can click on the green triangle right above the files list. Or, you can bring up the Program Options Screen. All of these methods allow you to select a new sorting option. Below is a list of all the different sorting options.

This controls the order in which the files appears in the files list. You can sort using any of the following methods:

Random File Order: Sort the files in a jumbled up random order

Checkmarked Files To Front: Sort all the tagged files to the TOP of the list. The rest of the list remains unchanged

Checkmarked Files To End: Sort all the tagged files to the END of the list. The rest of the list remains unchanged

Filename Ascending: Sort the list upward by filename; ex: from A .. Z

Filename Descending: Sort the list downward by filename; ex: from Z .. A

File Extension Ascending: Sort the list upward by extension; ex: from *.bmp .. *.tiff

File Extension Descending: Sort the list downward by extension; ex: from *.tiff .. *.bmp

PARTial Filename Ascending: Sort the list upward by certain columns in the filenames: See note below!

PARTial Filename Descending: Sort the list downward by certain columns in the filenames: See note below!

File Date Ascending: Sort the files upward by date modified; ex: from 01/01/2001 .. 12/31/2005

File Date Descending: Sort the files downward by date modified; ex: from 12/31/2005 .. 012/01/2001

File Size Ascending: Sort the list upward by each file's size on disk; ex: from 128KB .. 900KB

File Size Descending: Sort the list downward by each file's size on disk; ex: from 900KB .. 128KB

Image Dimensions Ascending: Sort the list upward by the images resolution; ex: from 640x480 .. 1024x768

Image Dimensions Descending: Sort the list downward by the images resolution; ex: from 1024x768 .. 640x480

Camera EXIF Date Ascending: Sort the list upward by date/time photo was taken with camera; ex: from 01/01/2001 .. 12/31/2005

Camera EXIF Date Descending: Sort the list downward by date/time photo was taken with camera; ex: from 12/31/20005 .. 01/01/2001

Camera EXIF Make/Model Ascending: Sort the list upward by the Make & Model of the camera that took the photo.

Camera EXIF Make/Model Descending: Sort the list downward by the Make & Model of the camera that took the photo.

NOTE: If you sort by Extension or Checkmarked, then the previous order of filenames STAY intact, except they are GROUPED by Extension or Checkmarked. That way if you had sorted by Size, then by Extension, then the filenames will be grouped by Extension and within each Extension the filenames will still be ordered by file size.
Detailed explaination:

If you perform a sort that is NOT UNIQUE, then the "previous order will remain". For example: Let's say you sorted by filesize:

IMG_0001.jpg   1024KB
IMG_0003.jpg   1129KB
IMG_0006.bmp 1398KB
IMG_0004.bmp 1598KB
IMG_0007.bmp 1700KB
IMG_0005.jpg   1850KB
IMG_0002.bmp 2000KB

Then you sorted by something not completely unique (like extension). Your list would look like this:

IMG_0006.bmp 1398KB
IMG_0004.bmp 1598KB
IMG_0007.bmp 1700KB
IMG_0002.bmp 2000KB
IMG_0001.jpg   1024KB
IMG_0003.jpg   1129KB
IMG_0005.jpg   1850KB

See how each file did NOT have a unique extension. There were only 2 extensions (*.bmp, *.jpg). Therefore there are multiple files with the same extension grouped together. AND NOTICE that the file size within each extension grouping is STILL SORTED BY SIZE (previous order remains). Most other sorting utilities jumble it up again so that maybe the output would be like this:

IMG_0002.bmp 2000KB
IMG_0004.bmp 1598KB
IMG_0006.bmp 1398KB
IMG_0007.bmp 1700KB
IMG_0001.jpg   1024KB
IMG_0003.jpg   1129KB
IMG_0005.jpg   1850KB

See how the *.bmp files are grouped, but within the group, they are NOT sorted by size. Photo Jockey does not have this problem.

PARIAL FILENAME SORT:
When you sort by "PARTial Filename", you are given the chance to specifiy what section of the filename that you want to sort by. For example: Let's say your list looked like:

IMG_0001_Davie.jpg
IMG_0002_Davie.jpg
IMG_0003_Katherine.jpg
IMG_0004_Davie.jpg
IMG_0005_Davie.jpg
IMG_0006_Katherine.jpg

And let's say the name at the end of the filenames indicated "who" took the photo. Using normal sorting means, you could NEVER get all the photos Davie took grouped together :( That's why Partial Filename Sort is so unique. You can specify to sort on column 10 width of 5 and then poof, the list would look like this:

IMG_0001_Davie.jpg
IMG_0002_Davie.jpg
IMG_0004_Davie.jpg
IMG_0005_Davie.jpg
IMG_0003_Katherine.jpg
IMG_0006_Katherine.jpg

As you can see the photographer's names are now sorted :) Being able to specify where the column starts and the column's width is very useful.

CAMERA EXIF DATE SORT:When you select to sort by "Camera EXIF Date", all images need to be scanned to get the date/time the camera actually took the photo. If there is no EXIF camera date info in a file, then the standard modified file date is used instead. You can tell if the photo has the EXIF info by clicking on the main menu's "File" menu. Then click on "Properties" menu item. If you see the EXIF Info show up in the properties page, then that file has the needed date/time information. This is generally pretty quick. It can scan about 30 files per second. So a folder of 100 photos might take only 3 seconds. If you cancel the scanning, then a default sort of "Filename Ascending" will be used instead.

NOTE: When you select to sort by "Image Dimensions", then all of the images need to be scanned for resolution information. If you have hundreds of files in a folder, this could take a little time. If more than a couple of seconds are used to scan the image files, then a CANCEL SCANNING window pops up to allow you to cancel the scanning operation. If you cancel the scanning, then a default sort of "Filename Ascending" will be used instead.



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Tip # 47
(Options) PROGRAM OPTIONS (SLIDE SHOW & OTHERS)

Click here to show the options screen.

Most of the cool slide show effects are done with the Program Options window. In order to get it up, you can bring up the TOOLS Menu and then click "Program Options (Slide Show & Others)". Once you have opened the "Program Options" window, you can change many options.

Below is a list of some of the cool things you can do from there:

Slide Show Options:

Continuous Looping: Check this to control if you want the slide show to start over again after it's shown you all of the photos.

Time Delay Between Photos: Use this to control the amount of time (in seconds) the photos are shown before the next photo is loaded, while playing the slide show.

Transition Effects:

One Selected Transition Effect: You can select a single transition effect so that every image that gets displayed will use this single transition to show the image.

Sequential Effects: As the images are loaded and displayed the next transition in the list is used to show the image. After the last transition is used, it starts back at the first transition.

Random Transition Effects: Select this if you want each photo to use a random transition effect.
Transition Effect List:
This is a pulldown list of all the available transition effects.

Play Music During Slide Show (SlideShow(1-9).Wav): Check this if you want to play music while the photos are being displayed in slide show mode. When the slide show is paused, the music stops as well. The sound file used to play the music should be named "SlideShow1.WAV" and MAKE SURE it's in the SAME folder as the images.
NOTE: If you would like many sound files to be played one after the other, then name them sequentially. For example: SlideShow1.Wav, SlideShow2.Wav, SlideShow3.Wav. If you had these 3 files, then each one would be played in sequence. Once all the wave files are played, then it starts back over again with the first one.
HINT: ONLY 1-9 is valid, so SlideShow10.Wav would be ignored.

Voice Clips Must Play: Check this option, if you want your voice clips to be played while the music is put on hold. After the voice clip plays, the music is continued. If this option is not checked, and the play music option is checked, then only the music files found in the folder are played. Even if some of your images have voice clips, they will be silent. Only the music plays.
NOTE: You need to have the "Play Voice Clip Comments" option checked as well.

Image Display Options:

File Sort Order: This controls the order in which the files appears in the files list. You can sort using any of the following methods:

Random File Order
Checkmarked Files To Front
Checkmarked Files To End
Filename Ascending
Filename Descending
File Extension Ascending
File Extension Descending
PARTial Filename Ascending
PARTial Filename Descending
File Date Ascending
File Date Descending
File Size Ascending
File Size Descending.
Image Dimensions Ascending
Image Dimensions Descending
Camera EXIF Date Ascending
Camera EXIF Date Descending
Camera EXIF Make/Model Ascending
Camera EXIF Make/Model Descending

NOTE: For a detailed description of all sorting options click here.

Rotation Memory: Check this if you want the program to remember which photos that you have rotated. Then when you go back to view them after viewing other images, they will STILL appear rotated :) This memory is lost when you close the program.

Zoom Mode: Check this if you want to see each photo in it's actual size (100% zoom). So, large images would need to be scrolled around in order to view the whole image. There is a zoom slider in this mode so you can view from 12% to 1200% of the actual image size.

Enlarge Photo To Fit Screen: Check this if you want small photos to be enlarged to fit the screen.

Smoothing when sizing to fit screen: Check this if you want the highest quality sizing. So, if an image needed to be shrunk or enlarged to fit the screen, this option will do it in a manner that produces non-jagged images. Very smooth and nice. If you have a slow computer (less than 400MHZ) you may want to turn this option off, because it can slow you down a bit.
NOTE: You can also DOUBLE-CLICK the image to switch from "Zoom Mode" to "Enlarge Photo To Fit Screen Mode".

Cool Stuff Options:

Play cool program sounds: Check this option if you like the cool swishing and camera shutter sounds.

Auto Thumbnail Sliding: Check this if you like the sliding of the thumbnails. When you click an image on the thumbnail list at the top of the program window, it will "slide" into the middle of the screen if it can. That way you can see some images before and after the one you just clicked on.

Background For The Images: Select if you want a charcoal dark matting for each image displayed. You can also select a colored matte background as well, in which the color is auto-chosen based on the colors in the image. You can of course just select black background as well.

Thumbnail Checkboxes: This changes the appearance of the thumbnails that are shown at the top of the main window. Checkboxes will appear so that you can checkmark selected files. Once you have the files checked, then you can perform various operations on them. For example: Delete, Copy, Rename, Move and BATCH operations as well.
NOTE: You can ALSO use the checkboxes that appear in the files list on the right side of the screen.

Show Novice Pop-Up Hints: This allows you to enabled or disable the pop-up tool hint boxes that appear in the program. For more information about pop-up hints, click here.

Comments Options:

Auto Size/Show Comment Window: Check this option if you want the comment window panel to be auto-sized. This means that if NO text comment was found for a photo, the comment panel at the bottom of the screen will NOT be shown. IF, however, there was a text comment file found, then the comment panel will be sized large enough to fit the text comment inside of it.

Show Comment At Bottom: Check this if you want the comments to be shown at the bottom of your screen EVEN if there is no text comment for a photo. This is useful, if you want to ADD text comments for photos. This way, if a photo had no text comment for it, you will still see an empty comment panel that you can enter text into. These text comment files are named "photoname.ext.TXT".

Font Selection: Click this button if you want to use a font of your choice for displaying the text comments.
NOTE: Click here to see how to Add Text Comments to your photos

Play Voice Clip Comments: Check this if you want to play the voice comment file that is associated with the photo, when you view the photo. These files are named "photoname.ext.WAV". You can create these with this program or you can create them with your own sound recording program.
HINT: If you have the "Play Music" option checked, you will need to also check the "Play Voice Clips" option as well to hear the voice clips play during a slide show.
NOTE: Click here to see how to Add Voice Comments to your photos

Show Photo Until Voice Clip Complete: Check this if you want to make sure that the next photo in the slide show is NOT displayed until the voice clip is done. So, if you had a slide show delay time of 3 seconds, BUT a photo had a voice clip of 5 seconds, then if this option is checked then the photo will stay on the screen for 5 seconds to give it time to complete the voice clip.

Saving & Closing Buttons:
You have the standard Apply, Cancel, Close and Default buttons, but there are a couple of unique ones called REVERT and UNDO. This allows you to change all the settings to reflect what the current Photo Jockey settings are. It's useful when you start making a bunch of changes and then decide you messed up and you don't want to close the window and then re-enter the window. Just click the REVERT.

APPLY: This applies any changes to the options that you have made. You will be able to see or hear the affects of the changes by using the main Photo Jockey window WHILE this window is still open.
CANCEL: This closes the options screen without giving you a chance to apply any unsaved changes
CLOSE: This closes the options screen and gives you the opportunity to apply any changes you may not have saved
REVERT: This changes the settings back to the way they were when you first loaded the Program Options screen.
UNDO: This will UNDO the last "APPLY" that you did. If you have done a lot of applies, then you can do a bunch of UNDOs.
DEFAULTS: This sets all the options to default values.






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Tip # 82
(Printing) PRINT PHOTO FULL PAGE

Click here to show the Print Custom Layout Screen.

Let's say the photo you are viewing is a nice one and you want to print it full page. You can print on any size paper. You could print 8x10 or you could print a 4x6. Once you have a photo you want to print showing on the screen, just use the "Tools Menu" and select "Print Full Page or Custom Layout".

At this point you can click the printer setup button to set your paper size and then you can click the print button to print the photo.

For a complete description of the printing features, click here.

NOTE: Some photos will not fit perfectly on the page because you may have a photo whose shape doesn't quite match the shape of the paper size you selected. In this case you can CROP the photo in the Custom Layout screen and then click the print button.




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Tip # 83
(Printing) PRINT MANY PHOTOS ON A PAGE

Click here to show the Print Custom Layout Screen.

There are several reasons why you would want to print many photos on ONE page.

You are interested in saving money

You want to print an ODD size, like 2x3 in.

You want many wallet sized photos all on a single sheet

You can save money because it's typically cheaper to print 4 photos of 3.5x5 on a regular sheet than it is to buy 4 sheets of 3.5x5 paper. Of course you will have to cut them out afterwards.

You can also select a "Photo Size" of "Custom Size" to indicate what size photos you want. So, you could tell it 5x9 and then poof when you print, it prints out a 5x9 print on a regular sheet of paper. You need to make sure that the paper you are printing on is AT LEAST as large as the custom print size you are wanting to print.

You can also have many wallet-sized photos all on one sheet of paper. It's a lot more convenient to print wallet size photos this way.

Just use the "Tools Menu" and select "Print Full Page or Custom Layout".

Once the Print Custom Layout screen is displayed, there are several options and checkboxes etc. that are available for your use.

Hint: The simplest way to use the Custom Layout Screen is to follow these 5 steps:

1. Select Photo Size

2. Drag a Photo From Thumbnails List

3. Drop Photo onto the paper Template preview area

4. Click Printer Setup from the Printer Functions and choose the correct printer and select the correct print quality etc.

5. Click Print from the Printer Functions

Select Photo Size:

Pull Down List: You can select Full Sheet which means that the largest possible photo will be printed onto your paper that you select with the "Printer Setup" button. There are other choices too: 5x7, 4x6, Wallet size, Fit-2-Perfectly, Fit-4-Perfectly and many other sizes too.

There are two SPECIAL options at the bottom of the list:
1. Custom Size
2. Replicate
Custom Size: This allows you to enter a WIDTH and HEIGHT manually and then click "Accept". This is used when the available photo sizes do NOT match anything that you want to use. So, you basically make up your photo size.
Replicate: This allows you to take a single photo and place as many as possible onto the selected paper. It asks you for the photo's smallest dimension side and it auto-calculates the photo's other dimension side based on the photo and then replicates as many as it can fit.

Drop Photos Onto Paper:

Auto Spacing Between Images: This will place the photos onto the paper in an EVEN fashion so that any margin space will be equally divided so that the resulting photos have an even white border around them. If you UN-check it, then all the photos will be smashed against each other. This is useful if you don't want white margins and you want as few paper cuts as possible to get your photos out.

Use Same Adjustments For Duplicate Photos: There are many adjustments that can be made to a photo. For example: Cropped area, Rotation, Color Adjustments, Mirroring etc. This is handy so that if you are printing several of the SAME photo on a page, then as you modify ONE slot on the page, all the other slots of the same photo will be adjusted as well. Big time saver. Of course if you want individual adjustments, then UN-check it.

Allow Dropped Photos To Fill Empty Slots: If you have a template that shows spots (slots) for 4 photos and you only have ONE photo loaded, then the other 3 slots will appear BLUE. If you were to drag a photo onto one of these empty slots, then that photo will fill up ALL of the empty slots. If you don't want this action, then UN-check it.
NOTE: You can empty out a slot by RIGHT-CLICKing on a slot and then choose "Remove the photo from this slot in template"..

Green Border: A green border around a photo indicates that the photo will fit perfectly on the page with no additional cropping.

Red Border: A red border around a photo indicates that the photo will NOT fit perfectly on the page and needs some cropping to fit perfectly.

TIP: You can drag photos from the thumbnail list onto any slot on the template preview area. You can also drag from your desktop or Windows file explorer too. You can also drag from one slot to another slot.

TIP: If your template shows more than one photo on the selected paper size, then you can also drag from one photo slot onto another photo slot.

TIP: In order to perform adjustments like cropping, just click on the slot that contains the photo you are interested in adjusting. Then that photo will appear in the big cropping window. At this point you can move the cropping handles or play with the various image adjustment buttons for Color, Rotation, Sharpness, Smoothness, Text Boxes and Logo/Image Insertion. When you click on another photo, the adjustments you just made are remembered.

Printer Functions:

Printer Setup: This section allows you to do "Printer Setup", to select your paper size and quality. Or you can switch between several printers too.

Print: Finally, you can click the "Print" button to actually print the photo.

CANCEL: After you click "Print", you can cancel the printing process if it's taking too long for you by clicking the "Cancel" button. The same button is used to Print and Cancel.

Enlargement Method: There are several methods available. The "REED" method is the best for enlarging by a large amount and you want the best smoothing and sharpness for photos. Use "GENERIC" if you want the FASTEST printing, but can never be the best quality. For more information about all the various resizing options, click here.

Cropping Area:

Save Button: If you wanted to save your CROPPED area of the adjusted photo for some reason, you can do so by clicking this button.

UnLock Button: Allows you to move the cropping handles freely instead of being locked to the shape of the printed photo.

Lock Button: Allows you to move the cropping handles in a locked fashion so that the resulting printed photo will always fit perfectly on the printed page.

Color Adjust Button: Allows you to do Color Adjustments to the photo,

Rotation Adjust Button: Allows you to rotate the image to any angle.

Sharpness / Smoothing Adjust Button: Allows you to sharpen the image.

Text Boxes, and Image Overlays: Allows you to add text boxes to the image. And allows you to add company logo image overlays to the image.

Flip Aspect Checkbox: Allows you to rotate the cropping rectangle sideways.

Mirror Photo Checkbox: Flips the image from left to right.

Flip Photo Checkbox: Flips the image from top to bottom

Thumbnails Area:

Portrait Thumbnails: This allows your thumbnails to be taller than they are wide. Depending on your folder of photos, this may or may not be what you want.

Auto Rotate: This is useful if you want the largest looking thumbnail. If you are trying to display a tall photo into a wide thumbnail, the image will have a lot of margin space on the left and right sides. But by AUTO-ROTATING the image, it will be larger and less margin space. It just looks better. Of course the auto-rotated images will appear lying on their sides.

Folder Options: On the right side of the thumbnails are the folder options. This is useful if you want to select a different folder for photos. You can also create new folders and delete folders as well. For a complete description of the folder options, click here.

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Tip #
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) FOLDER PREVIEW POP-UP

When you move the mouse over a folder name in the Folder Tree, then you will see a Folder Preview Pop-Up window. This window shows how many images and movies that are in the folder. It also shows how much disk space is used by the folder. In addition, it shows some thumbnails of the images in the folder.

HINT: You can CLICK on one of the thumbnails in the preview and it will show a larger thumbnail to view. Once you are viewing the larger thumbnail, you can then click on the "Full Image Preview" button.

NOTE: The Folder Preview pop-up window remains showing as long as your mouse is moving over the various folder names in the folder tree view or inside the Folder Preview area.

TIP: Click the following link to re-activate the Folder Preview Pop-Up window now.

The Folder Preview can be configured in two ways.

You can use the VIEW main menu, then select "Configure Pop-Ups like (Tool-Tips, Novice Hints, File Properties & VCR Buttons)" function. You can controls if the folder preview pop-up is active or if it's turned off. You can also control if it shows 4 small thumbnails or just 1 large thumbnail.

The second way to configure the preview pop-up is to click on the "Folder Preview Settings" button in the preview window itself.

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Tip # 32
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) FOLDER PANEL OPTIONS

The folder panel is located in a few places:

The top side of the files list on the main program window

The right side of the Custom Print Layout

The right side of the Photo Quilting Window

If you were interested in the Files List Panel, then click here.

This panel contains many features to manipulate your folders.

BROWSE Button:
This allows you to browse to a specific folder to load up the photos. You can either specify the folder, or you can select from a list of most recently used folders.

NEW Button:
Click this to create a new folder in the list of folders that you see in the Folders List. These folders are sub-folders of the currently displayed folder of photos.

DELETE Button:
Click this to delete the currently displayed folder of photos.

RENAME Button:
Click this to rename the currently displayed folder.

REFRESH Button:
Click this to RELOAD all the photos from the current folder. This is useful, if you have renamed some files and want the files list sorted again. Or if you have copied or moved some new files into the current folder by SOME OTHER program and you now want to see the new files.

NOTE: You can also select to clear the thumbnail cache for the current folder. Typically you would answer NO. It's only useful if you find that the thumbnails appear wrong. This could be because of bad memory/disk when the thumbs were created. Also viruses could corrupt the thumbnail cache. So in this case you would clear the thumbnail cache to force the thumbnails to be rebuilt. For more information about thumbnail caching, click here.

OPEN CURRENT FOLDER:
This button looks like a computer icon. Click this button if you want to open Windows Explorer file manager with the current folder. Click here to learn more.

SORT FOLDER:
Click this green pyramid to change the sort order of the list of folders being shown (by date or by name).

PARENT:
Click this button to load the images from the parent folder of the current folder. For example: If your current folder is "C:\MyPhotos\Trips\Paris\2003" and then you click the Parent Folder, then the folder "C:\MyPhotos\Trips\Paris" will load and become your current folder.

BACKWARD / FORWARD:
These buttons work like your web browser buttons work. They go backwards and forwards through the most recently viewed folders. This is very handy, especially if you are bouncing around between folders and want to do it quickly.

HOME FOLDER:
This button looks like a home icon. Click this button if you want to LOAD the Home Folder into Photo Jockey. This is a quick way to get back to viewing the home folder. You can also SET the Home Folder as well.

FOLDERS TREE VIEW

In addition to the buttons that you can click on, there is a LIST OF FOLDERS that you can click on. Once clicked, that folder will be loaded into Photo Jockey. And that folder will become the current folder.

The Folders Tree has a built in folder management system. You can DRAG/DROP folders to and from this tree window. If you DRAG/DROP a folder within the tree window, you can MOVE/COPY folders without the need for a separate Windows Explorer File Manager window.

NOTE: If you drag from the Folder Tree and then drop onto the Folder Tree, then Photo Jockey knows the source and destination folder names. It will then update all the database entries and favorites list, and thumbnail cache to reflect that certain images are now in the new destination folder. That way thumbnailing the destination folder will be FAST and your database entries for the source folder won't be orphaned.
HINT: As you are dragging folders around, if you HOVER OVER A FOLDER's plus/minus icon, then that folder will expand or collapse so you can control what folders you see AS you are dragging around. ALSO, if you drag near the edge of the Tree View window, the entire window will scroll up/down or left/right depending on where your mouse is. That way you don't need to use the scroll bars to view a different section of the Tree View window.

TIP: As you drag, you can use the SHIFT or CTRL keys like you normally would do, for standard Windows programs, to control if you want to MOVE or COPY the selected folder.


FOLDER PREVIEW POP-UP

HINT: As you move the mouse over each folder in the folder tree, you will see a Folder Preview Pop-Up. This allows you to see how many images and movies are in the folder and total spaced used etc.. It also shows you thumbnails of some of the images in that particular folder. This is very handy. To learn more about the Folder Preview Pop-Up window, click here.

TIP: If you have turned off the Folder Preview Pop-Up, and want it back now, you can click here to re-activate the Folder Preview Pop-Up.

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Tip # 25
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) QUICK TOOLS PANEL

Click here to show the Quick Tools Panel.

If you want to do more than simple viewing of images, then you should check the "Quick Tools" checkbox on the files list panel. This brings up a floating window with many of the common functions that you may want to do.


Editing Functions

Save Button:
This allows you to save your current image to your drive.
Click here for more information about saving images.

Edit Button:
This allows you to edit the current image file in your favorite external editor.
Click here for more information about Editing images.

Filter Button:
This allows you to control what file types get loaded into the files list.
Click here for more information about Filtering graphic file types.

Preview Button:
This opens up a Comparison Preview window for the current image.
Click here for more information about Previewing or Comparing images.

Rotate Right Button:
This rotates the current image to the right. If want the image to be saved rotated, you need to save the image.
Click here for more information on Rotating.

Rotate Left Button:
This rotates the current image to the left. If want the image to be saved rotated, you need to save the image.
Click here for more information on Rotating.

Flip Button:
This flips the current image from top to bottom. If want the image to be saved flipped, you need to save the image.
Click here for more information on Rotating.

Mirror Right Button:
This mirrors the current image from left to right. If want the image to be saved mirrored, you need to save the image.
Click here for more information on Rotating.

Rotation Button:
This allows you to rotate the image by any angle.
Click here for more information about Rotating images.

Cropping Button:
This allows you to crop the image so that only the portion of the image that you want remains.
Click here for more information about Cropping images.

Resize Button:
This allows you to resize the image larger or smaller. When enlarging, you have the option for Digital Zoom.
Click here for more information about Resizing images.

Red-Eye Removal Button:
This allows you to remove red-eye or green-eye from photos.
Click here for more information about Red-Eye.

Text and Image Overlays Button:
This allows you to add Text boxes to your image. Great for copyright notices. It also allows you to add image logos to your image. Great for adding company logos or doing double exposure effects.
Click here for more information about Overlays on images.

Color Adjusting Button:
This allows you to adjust the colors, brightness, contrast, hue etc... It also has a copy/paste region feature too.
Click here for more information about Color Adjusting images.

Gray Scale Button:
This allows you to adjust the colors so that the image looks like a Black & White photo.
Click here for more information about Color Adjusting images.

Sepia Tone Button:
This allows you to adjust the colors so that the image looks like an old style photo.
Click here for more information about Color Adjusting images.

Negative Scale Button:
This allows you to adjust the colors so that the image looks like a negative photo.
Click here for more information about Color Adjusting images.

Sharpen/Smooth Button:
This allows you to sharpen the image or smooth the image.
Click here for more information about Sharpening or Smoothing images.

Tag Functions

Check All Files Button:
This checkmarks all the files in the files list.

Flip Checkmarks Button:
This flips all of the checkmarks for the files in the files list.

UnCheck All Files Button:
This unchecks all the files in the files list.

Copy Checked Files Button:
This copies all of the checkmarked files OR just the current file to a selected destination folder.

Move Checked Files Button:
This moves all of the checkmarked files OR just the current file to a selected destination folder.

Delete Checked Files Button:
This deletes all of the checkmarked files OR just the current file.

Rename Checked Files Button:
This renames all of the checkmarked files OR just the current file with the renaming method of your choice.
Click here for more information about Renaming files.

Batch Process Button:
This batch processes all of the checkmarked files and applies the same edits to all of them. You can apply the following edits:

Color Adjusting

Rotating

Resizing

Text/Image Overlays

Sharpen/Smooth

When you start the batch, you are allowed to edit ONE of the checked files with up to 5 different edits. It then applies the SAME edits to the remaining files that are checkmarked.


Gallery Functions

Web Page Button:
Click this button to generate a Web Gallery from your current folder of images. It builds all the needed thumbnails and HTML files.
Click here for more information about Web Page Gallery Creation.

Contact Sheets Button:
This allows you to create a printable Contact Sheet for selected images. You can optionally SAVE the Contact Sheet to your drive instead of printing it.
Click here for more information about Contact Sheets.

Photo Quilting (Mosaics) Button:
This allows you to reproduce an original photo from a series of thumbnails to produce a quilting (mosaic) effect. The final image when viewed closely looks like a bunch of thumbnails in a grid. When viewed from a distance, it looks like the original photo. This is great for printing posters.
Click here for more information about Photo Quilting.

Search For Duplicate Images Button:
This allows you to search your system for duplicate images. These are images/photos that you may have saved in more than one folder. You may have hundreds of duplicates and not know it. This allows you to find them, so that you can delete them, or rename or move them around.
Click here for more information about Searching For Duplicate Images.

Create / Edit Slide Show Play Lists Button:
This button looks like "123". It allows you to create & edit Slide Show Play Lists. These can control the order in which images are displayed in any folder.
Click here for more information about Slide Show Play Lists.



Other Functions

CD Burning Button:
This allows you to burn CDROMs with either:
1. Some folder(s) of images
2. Burn a selected Web Gallery that you created with the "Web Page" button.

Click here for more information about CD burning.

Custom Printing Button:
Click this button to print images using the custom print layout screen. You can do the same thing from the main menu's "Print" item.
Click here for more information about the Print Custom Layout.

Scanner Functions Button:
Click this button to select a scanner to scan in images into your current folder or temp folder.



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Tip # 33
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) SELECTING MULTIPLE FILES FOR DRAG-DROP, COPY, MOVE, DELETE, RENAME, BATCH OPERATIONS OR CONTACT SHEETS

If you want to copy/delete/move/rename files from the current folder, you need to indicate which file(s) are to be operated on. You can do this by checking the checkboxes next to the filename in the files list. Also, if you have the "Thumbnail Checkboxes" option set, you can check those checkboxes as well.

TIP: If you want most of the files in the list checked and you don't want to waste a bunch of time clicking away, you can just check the ones you DON'T want checked. Then click the "Flip All Checkmarks" button. Then what was checked becomes un-checked and what was once un-checked becomes checked. The "Flip All Checkmarks" button looks like a BACKWARD green checkmark. There's also a "Checkmark All" button and a "Un-Check All" button as well to help facilitate checking the files you want. These tagging buttons are located on the Quick Tools panel.


TIP: Sometimes you may want to checkmark a bunch of files all at once. There is an easy way to do this. Just click on the first file in your bunch. Then, WHILE HOLDING DOWN THE SHIFT KEY, click on the last file in your bunch. The shift key tells Photo Jockey that you want to do a whole group at a time. You then get the choice of (checking, un-checking, flip checking) all the files in the group.

Once you have selected your files, you can then do the following with the tagged files:

Drag/Drop images

Copy files

Delete files

Rename files

Move files

BATCH function.

Contact Sheets.

Once you start one of these operations, you are given a choice to either perform the operation on the current file OR on all the tagged files.

HINT: You can also press the "SPACE BAR" to check and un-check files.

HINT: You can press the DELete key and it will act as though you had clicked on the Trash Can button.

HINT: When you do your dragging, you have the option of dragging the current image OR all the tagged files. Also, you can ONLY DRAG FROM THE IMAGE DISPLAY area of the screen.



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Tip # 34
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) RENAMING FILES

The rename button is located on the "Quick Tools" panel. When you click on the Rename button, which has an "RE" on it, and you have tagged multiple files; you are shown many ways to rename the files. The following are the various ways to rename multiple files:

Insert Anywhere In Filename
Just select the position in the filename and the TEXT you want inserted into all the tagged files.

Add To End Of Filename
Just type the text you want to appear at the end of all the filenames.

Replace First Few Characters
Type what you want to become the first part of all the filenames. If you typed Hello, then all the tagged filenames will start with "hello" replacing what USED to be the first 5 characters of each tagged filename. This is because "hello" is 5 characters long.

Delete First Few Characters
Select how many characters you want to remove from the beginning of all the filenames.

Delete Last Few Characters
Select how many characters you want to remove from the end of all the filenames.

Delete Anywhere In Filename
Select the position in the filename and how many characters you want to delete.

Sequential Renaming
This allows you to rename a series of files so that they all have the same base filename with a number appended to it. For example:  Paris_001.jpg, Paris_002.jpg, Paris_003.jpg. The appended number is automatically incremented as it processes all the tagged files. You can also Prefix the number to the FRONT of the filename instead of Appending them.

NOTE: There is powerful "Minimum Digits In Output Sequence#" option. This allows you to force how many digits appear in the filenames. For example: If your output would have been:
IMG_1.jpg
IMG_10.jpg
IMG_11.jpg
IMG_12.jpg
IMG_2.jpg
IMG_3.jpg
IMG_4.jpg
IMG_5.jpg
IMG_6.jpg
IMG_7.jpg
IMG_8.jpg
IMG_9.jpg
Then 10,11,12 would appear out of sequence. If you force 2 minimum digits to fix this, they would look like:
IMG_01.jpg
IMG_02.jpg
IMG_03.jpg
IMG_04.jpg
IMG_05.jpg
IMG_06.jpg
IMG_07.jpg
IMG_08.jpg
IMG_09.jpg
IMG_10.jpg
IMG_11.jpg
IMG_12.jpg
Then all the filenames would appear in the correct sequence. You can force up to 10 digits.

NOTE: There is powerful "Append Original Filename" checkbox. This allows you to append the original filename to the new filename. For example: If you had the following original filenames:
D_IMG_1029.jpg
K_Flower2.gif
And you used a base name of "Vacation_" then the resulting filenames would become:
Vacation_101_D_IMG_1029.jpg
Vacation_102_K_Flower2.gif
At first glance, you may not see the brilliance of it. But let's say you hack off MOST of the end so that you have:
Vacation_101_D.jpg
Vacation_102_K.gif
You now could have a folder of pics all sequentially renamed PLUS you have the added benefit of the additional information at the end. This information could be used for anything, but in order to get your brain juices flowing, let's just say that the _D would indicate photos taken by Dave and the _K would indicate photos taken by Katherine. Otherwise, without the ability to append original filename, you would have a long and tedious chore to manually place the _D and _K at the end of the filenames. In other words, not only do you have a sequence that you want, you can also determine who took which picture. Of course it could be used for other purposes as well.

Swap Left/Right Portions
This allows you to take all of the filenames and cut them in half and then swap the halves. You just select where the CUTTING point is located.

Replace Text
You can replace specified text in filenames while renaming. For example: If you had filenames like these:

FileImg_001.jpg
IMG_002.gif
0001_IMG.bmp

You could replace the "img" with "Image" and the list would end up like this:

FileImage_001.jpg
Image_0002.gif
0001_Image.bmp

There are many uses for this and you can even REMOVE the text by making the "replace with" text blank to produce a list like this:

File_001.jpg
_0002.gif
0001_.bmp

Rename To Camera EXIF Date/Time
You can rename all the filenames based on the date the photo was taken. This will effectively make the sort order of the files based on the date the photos were taken. The resulting list could look like this:

2004_02_13_n001.nef
2004_02_13_n002.nef
2004_02_13_n003.nef
2004_02_13_n004.nef
2004_02_13_n001.crw
2005_08_21_n001.crw
2005_09_30_n001.crw

You can even rename by Date AND Time. This will effectively make the sort order of the files based on the cronological order the
photos were taken. The resulting list could look like this:

2004_02_13-18_26_02_n001.nef
2004_02_13-18_26_15_n001.nef
2004_02_13-18_26_56_n001.nef
2004_02_13-18_26_56_n001.crw
2004_02_13-18_26_56_n002.nef
2005_08_21-04_12_43_n001.crw
2005_09_30-12_32_14_n001.crw

NOTE: If you just have a SINGLE file tagged, OR you selected to perform the operation on the CURRENT file, then you will NOT see the above choices for renaming. You will just be able to rename ONE file, with the option of renaming it to a filename that already exists from a pull-down list.



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Tip # 35
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) COPY FILE(S) FROM PHOTO JOCKEY

If you want to copy files from Photo Jockey to another folder on your system, you can do so by one of two methods.

You can select (checkmark) the files you want to copy, then drag the file(s) from the Photo Jockey main window onto your file manager window. This will COPY the file(s) into the folder you DROPPED onto, in the file manager window.
NOTE: When you DRAG to copy the files, you are asked a couple of questions.

Do you want to resize when dropping

Do you want to copy any associated TEXT/VOICE comments

You can select (checkmark) the files you want to copy and click on the COPY FILES button in the Quick Tools panel. Then select a destination folder. This button is one of many on the Quick Tools Panel.

HINT: When you do your dragging, you can ONLY DRAG FROM THE IMAGE DISPLAY area of the screen.

TIP: See the tip on "Selecting Multiple Files" to see how to do that.



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Tip # 22
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) FILTERING FILE TYPES

Click here to show the Filter Screen.

If you are viewing a folder that has tons of different types of images, and you are only interested in a couple of file types, then this Filter window can help you out.

Just click on the button that looks like a Funnel next to the Editing pencil button on the Quick Tools panel.

By default ALL of the file types are CHECKED in this window, so that as you browse folders, you will see all the image formats that Photo Jockey can display. If you decide that you want a limited set of image formats to display in Photo Jockey's Files List panel, then uncheck all the formats and then check only the formats you are interested in viewing.

NOTE: If you have a bunch of files in your files list that are check marked, then if you choose to hide (by unchecking in this window) a file type that WAS checked, then if you later make them visible (by checking in this window), then you those files will NOT have the checkmarks checked in the files list panel..



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Tip # 57
(Duplicates) SEARCHING FOR DUPLICATE IMAGES

Click here to show the Search For Duplicate Images Screen.

If you have lots of photos and you do lots of editing and moving and copying photos, it's possible that you could end up with a bunch of duplicate images. If you are interested in knowing where all your duplicate images are, then this is the function you need.

From the main menu, you can click on the FILE menu, then click on the "Search For Duplicate Images" menu item. There is also a button on the Quick Tools panel as well for quick access.


General Description

This tool will search any part of your system for duplicate images. There are two types of duplicates that can be found.

Identical: These are images that are physically the same. They are EXACT copies of each other. The file size, date and time will be the same, and the image dimensions will be the same.

Appearance: These duplicates are NOT identical, although they will APPEAR the same. The file size, date and time can be different, and the image dimensions can be different.

Once you have located your duiplicate images, you can then delete the ones you no longer want. You can also rename and move these duplicates.

DUPLICATES THAT ARE NOT DUPLICATES:

HINT: If you have used mounted drives/volumes or assigned network folders to drive letters or used the old obsolete SUBST command to fake a drive letter pointing to a real folder on a real drive, you have the possibility of seeing duplicates that are NOT duplicates.

For example:

Y:  Points to \\computerA\photos\bestpics

Z:  Points to \\computerA\bestpics

If ComputerA has a bunch of shared folders and 2 of the shared folders really point to the same folder, then Y: and Z: are really the same thing.

Also, if you have for example:

R:  Points to C:\MyPhotos\GoodStuff (via the SUBST)

Then R: is really the same thing as the folder C:\MyPhotos\GoodStuff.

In any case, you do NOT want to see duplicates reported that show files in Y: being duplicated on the Z: drive, because if you delete one of the images, it actually deletes 2 of the images. So, even though you THINK you are getting rid of a duplicate, you are in fact deleting a single image that is NOT duplicated. And you will need a backup in order to recover that file.

SOLUTION TO PROBLEM:
So, Photo Jockey implements a technology that allows it to KNOW which of the folders that are being compared are really pointing to the SAME PHYSICAL data. We call these MIRRORED folders. Photo Jockey will eliminate all mirrored folders from the searching process. Thus you will never have the situation above of false reporting. False reporting is where it thinks 2 images are duplicated and that one of them can be safely deleted (when in fact 2 images are pointing to the SAME IMAGE and neither of them can be deleted without deleting the other).

A complete list of the ignored MIRROR FOLDERS (if any) are shown in the search results report list.


SEARCHING OPTIONS

Before you click the "Start Search" button, you can select various options to perform the search in the way you want.

Where To Search:
Where to search: This option allows you to specify WHERE in your system to search for duplicate images. All selections can search sub-folders as well.

Current Folder: uses the folder that the main Photo Jockey screen is displaying.

Current Drive: uses the current drive that the main Photo Jockey screen is displaying.

All Local Drives: uses all drive letters (A-Z) that are physically attached to the system. Network drives are IGNORED.

All Drives(Local/Network): uses all drive letters (A-Z).

Specific Drives: you are able to select WHICH DRIVES TO SEARCH. You are also allowed to select which network folders to search as well, if you want to search certain folders connected via your network.

Specific Folder: you are able to choose which drive/folder to search.

My Documents: The main folder in which it's a good idea to store all of your personal files. Makes it easier for backup purposes and organizational purposes too.

Use Exclusions: will allow you to specify what folders to exclude from any searches. This is useful if you have some folders that contain many duplicates that you don't really care about, OR if you have some folders with LOTS of images that you don't care if they are duplicated elsewhere. By excluding these folders you save time in the search process and reduce the size of the list of duplicates. Click the "Exclusion List" button to edit the list of excluded folders.

Search SubFolders Too: Normally, you would WANT this option checked. This allows the current folder and it's sub-folders to be searched. This "can" produce a larger results list than if you don't check it. Un-checking this option restricts the search to just a SINGLE folder. Typically the only reason you would have this option un-checked is if you are searching by "Image Appearance" and you are only interested in images looking the same in ONE folder. If you are NOT searching by "Image Appearance", it is UNLIKELY that you will find any duplicates.

Compare Tagged: This allows you determine if any of the tagged files are duplicated in any of the areas where you are searching. This is useful if you have a main repository of images and you periodically add images to it. And you don't want to add any duplicate images to it. Also, the searching goes a little faster with this method.

Specific Drives: If you had chosen "Specific Drives" from the top list of choices, then this button option will appear. This allows you to specify which drives and or network folders you would like to search for duplicates. There is a pulldown list next to this button to show you what drives you have selected.

Custom Folder: If you had chosen "Specific Folder" then this option will appear. This allows you to specify what drive/folder you would like to search for duplicates.


How To Search:
How to search: This option allows you to specify how duplicates are found. You can choose from the following methods:

Quick: Duplicate Name/Date/Time/Size

Quick: Duplicate Date/Time/Size

Slow: Duplicate Image Appearance

Slower: Duplicate EXACT copies of each other (Dup Finder)

Name/Date/Time/Size Duplicates: Finds all images that match on name, date, time & size. Typically these matching images will be IDENTICAL images.
Date/Time/Size Duplicates: This method will more than likely be IDENTICAL images and will find duplicates on your system even if they were renamed because they will match of Date, Time & Size.
Images Appearing Duplicate: Searches based on how the image appears. So, if you had a low quality JPG image of small dimension and a high quality BMP image of large dimension (of the same scene), this method will show the 2 images as duplicates. Brightness and rotation can be different and they will STILL be shown as duplicates!
EXACT Copies of each other (Dup Finder): This is great for finding all duplicates that REALLY ARE EXACT COPIES of each other. The files are the same size and contain the same data. A typical use for this is to find all the duplicated downloaded images from your camera. Most people re-download their images by mistake and thus have lots of dups on their hard drive that are in fact the same files. Learn more about Exact Copies Search


Image Appearance:
How Close To Match: This option is used to determine how close 2 images should appear before being considered duplicates of each other. Exact Match will only show dups that are nearly the same. Close Match will find images that even have slight differences. Such as one image may have no copyright notice on it and another may have a copyright notice on it and they will still be considered duplicates. Loose Match will match against more images because the strictness is reduced.

Allow Brightness Differences: Let's say you have some images that are duplicates, but they have different brightnesses. Normally these duplicates images would not be found. This is because the images are too different to be considered a match. If you use this option, then images of different brightnesses but same basic appearance will now be reported as duplicates. By default this is checked.

Allow Wrong Coloring: Let's say you have some images that are duplicates, but are NOT the same coloring. IE: One is black & white and the other is in color and a third is in color but tinted differently. This is the option you want checked to be able to find those types of duplicates. Basically when the image comparison is being done, the color portion of the image is not compared. If you are searching thousands of images, this option can cause quite a few false dups. These are reported duplicates that don't even look similar.

Close Dimensions: This limits the duplicates found. In order to be considered duplicates, 2 images' dimensions must be within 20% of each other. For example: If you had 3 images that looked the same and were 640x480 and 700x520 and 320x240, then only the 640x480 and 700x520 would be found as dups. This is because the 320x240 was too different in image dimension. This can be a useful option.

Only Rotated Matches: Let's say that you have a bunch of images that you rotated or flipped or mirrored. And you want to be able to find these duplicates as well. If you were to do a search that also searched if rotated, mirrored, flipped, then the search would take at least 8 times as long. Since this is not desirable, we've provided a simpler and faster method. By finding duplicates ONLY if they were rotated or mirrored or flipped, the search time is dramatically reduced. And the found duplicates list is much smaller. You can then delete the images you no longer want and then re-do the search WITHOUT this option checked to find all the rest of the normal duplicates.

Clear All Fingerprints: This removes all fingerprints from the database. Of course, the next time you click "Search", it will have to take the time to rebuild the fingerprints. Again, once rebuilt, any further searching will go much faster.


Exact Duplicates (Dup Finder):
Searching for Exact Duplicates is useful for many things. A good example is for people that copy images from their camera memory card and then forget to erase the memory card. Then take a bunch more photos and then download those new photos PLUS THE OLD PHOTOS onto their system. They now have duplicate images that are exact copies of each other (the old photos are on their system twice). Some downloading software that is smart will rename the downloaded files so that the ones that are duplcaites have different names than the ones already on their system. For example:  IMG_0920.JPG and IMG_0920B.JPG might possibly be the result of such a scenerio. So, looking for identical names isn't going to find every duplicate. Also, it's possible that as these images are downloaded to your system that the date/time stamp is made the current date/time. That means that IMG_0920.JPG might have a date of 07/04/2007 and the IMG_0920B.JPG might have a date of 07/28/2007. This means you can't just look for files that have the same date/time stamp.

Filenames can be different: This is useful in detecting duplicate files even though their filenames may be different. See the example given above about digital camera owners.

Time stamps can be different: This is useful in detecting duplicate files even though their file date & time stamps may be different. See the example given above about digital camera owners.

Search movies as well: This is useful if you want to find duplicate movies too, instead of just duplicate images.

Only search images larger than 640x480: If your search results is finding tons of duplicates and you want to narrow the duplicates down to images that take up the most space, you can limit the search to just larger images instead of any sized image.

JPG Images containing EXIF Information: This is useful in detecting duplicate files ONLY IF they contain EXIF Information. This is great if your results are showing you tons of duplicate sets of images of photos you didn't even take. You should then checkmark this option and re-run the search. Then only images containing Exif information will be shown. See, practically all digital camera's images have Exif information stored in them. So, by checking this option, you should only see duplicate images created by digital cameras. Although, it's possible these images were NOT taken by your camera.

Clear All Fingerprints: This removes all fingerprints from the database. Of course, the next time you click "Start Search", it will have to take the time to rebuild the fingerprints. Again, once rebuilt, any further searching will go much faster.



START SEARCH BUTTON:
This button searches for duplicates based on the various options you have set. During the search process, images are fingerprinted. The fingerprinting takes time, once images are fingerprinted, then the next time you do a search, they will NOT need to be fingerprinted again. So, the first search will be slower than subsequent searches. After the searching is done, a list of any found duplicates will be displayed on the right side of the window in the Search Results panel.

SEARCH RESULTS PANEL

This panel shows a list of all found duplicates. The duplicates are shown in groups. As you click on a filename, the image is shown in a preview window. In the preview window, you can DELETE or MOVE or RENAME the file. If you DBL-CLICK the file, you can bring up a Preview Window of the image.

You can also easily use the thumbnail list that appears at the bottom to view the images that are considered duplicates.

SAVE LIST
This allows you to save your results list if you don't want to review all the duplicates right away. Once you save the results, you can later load the results and continue with your review of duplicates.

LOAD LIST
If you had saved your results, you can later load your results to continue to review all of your duplicates.

FIND
If the results list is large and difficult to find a particular filename, then you can use the FIND option to locate a filename.

CUT LINES
If your results list is large, then as you review your list, it would be nice to remove lines from the list that you no longer care to look at. As you review your duplicates and delete the ones you no longer need and rename and move the files you need to rename and move, then you can remove those lines from the results list so that your list can become smaller and easier to manage.

IDENTICAL
This checks to see if 2 selected files are IDENTICAL. You can highlight 2 images using the CTRL keys. In order to be identical, they can't just look the same, they have to be the same byte for byte. It would have to be as though you had copied the file.

SIDE-BY-SIDE
This opens up 2 preview windows side-by-side for 2 selected files. You can highlight 2 images using the CTRL keys. There is a 3rd window that shows up on the bottom. It shows you the differences between the 2 images. The is very handy in determining which of 2 files is of better quality so you know the one to delete. Typically you would delete the one of least quality.

TIPS

How to speed up search:

Pre-Build Database: If you are searching by image appearance, it would be a good idea to do a complete search the first time. ie: Search by all local drives. This will take the LONGEST time to complete (maybe several hours if you have lots of images). But all your subsequent searches will then go much faster.

Exclude Folders From Search: Also, you can EXCLUDE more folders from the search, that are of no interest to you, by using the Exclusion list. In the "Where To Search" panel, you NEED to check the "Use Exclusions" checkbox. Then you NEED to click on the "Exclusion List" button and add all the folders to the list that you DO NOT WANT to have searched. Then click the search button and the search will go faster.

CONSIDERATIONS

Files Not Searched:
In order to produce a results list that is not filled with a bunch of duplicates that you don't care about, there are certain file types that are NOT searched. These are *.ICO, *.EMF, *.WMF..This is because these file types are not used for photos. They are mostly very small ICONS and clipart. Also, if you are searching by "Image Appearance", then images with dimensions less than 64x64 will be ignored. This is because typically photos are much larger.

Files Not Really Duplicates:
Because of the method used to determine if files are duplicates, it's possible that you will get some duplicates reported that in fact don't even look similar. When searchnig by "Image Appearance" this happens because the logic is based on speed and in order to process so fast, you can end up with a few that shouldn't have matched (false positives). The percentage of this happening is very low, so if you see it happen, don't worry. Basically, the method of checking works best on photos. It doesn't work as great on images of lots of solid colors such as line art. If you have a bunch of line art or non-photos, these can show up as false dups. If you use the "Allow Wrong Coloring" option, this can increase false dups too. It's just a side-effect of being able to find more true duplicates. If you are searching by "Date, Time & Size", it's possible to get false dups when working with groups of images whos dates & times are the SAME. Some companies set all of the files in a package to have the same date & time for all the files. This increases the likelyhood of false dups.

Files Not Really Different Files:
If you are on a network or have a redundant folder that is being searched, it is possible that the results list would show 2 images as being duplicates, when in fact the 2 different images shown are actually pointing to the VERY SAME FILE. To be clearer, let's say you have drive X: mapped to C:\MyPhotos\Paris and you do your search. The results list could show 2 files being duplicates:

C:\MyPhotos\Paris\IMG001.jpg
X:\IMG001.jpg

You may think at first glance that these are 2 different files that appear to be duplicates of each other. And you may decide to delete one of them. Since they both point to the same file on your drive, if you delete one of them, then they will both be gone. If you notice this, use your RECYCLE BIN to recover the mistakenly deleted file.

Searching By Appearance Is Slow:
This will happen the first time you do a search. This is because all the files being searched have to be fingerprinted. Once fingerprinted, the search will go much faster. This is because the fingerprints are saved into a database for later retrieval.

Duplicates NOT Found:
If you know that certain files should appear in the results list and they do not, then some of your options may not be set properly. For example: Searching the wrong areas (Where To Search). Also, if you have "Compare Tagged" checked, then it limits the results to any duplicates found that happen to match any of your tagged files. Also, if you have "Exclusions" checked, then maybe your exclusion list contains the folders that have the duplicates you want to find. Also, if you are searching by "Image Appearance", then if you have "Close Dimensions" or "Only Rotated Matches" checked, then you results list will be filtered to be smaller than what it would have been otherwise.



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Tip #
(Duplicates) DUPLICATE SETS THAT EXACT MATCH (DUP-FINDER)

Searching for duplicate images on your system is valuable when organizing your photos. At best, duplicates WASTE disk space, at worst, they can confuse you as to which image to use for a particular task.

This window is displayed when you search for EXACT duplicates. These are files that not only look the same, but in reality ARE the same. These files can be the result of:

Copying individual files manually or folders without thought

Downloading the same images from a camera multiple times

Copying the same images from digital memory card several times

Copying files because you WANT copies in a special folder like a Best-Of folder

Backing up to another drive (essentially making copies of ALL files)

The LAST TWO scenerios are ones that you DO NOT want to delete files from. For example: If your backup drive is drive Z:\  then you do NOT want to delete stuff from the Z:\ drive because that is your backup stuff that you may need to restore from at a later date when your system blows up. So it is very important that you DO NOT include any backup drives or backup folders in the search for duplicate images. Otherwise these backup areas may show up in some of your duplicate image sets. If they do, you can set these important folders as "PROTECTED".

After the duplicate searching is completed and this window is displayed, there can be many sets of duplicates. Each set of course must contain at least 2 different files. These sets may of course contain more than 2 files, it just depends on how many copies of a particular file you have. Each set shows a list of files in 3 columns

Column 1: Filename

Column 2: T or V or T/V (Indicates if the file has an associated text or voice comment file)

Column 3: Folder for file.

These duplicate sets need to be cleaned up in order to regain the disk space used by them. You will see a set of VCR buttons that you can use to browse through all the duplicate sets. There are two ways of doing the cleaning. Simple and Advanced.


PROTECTED FOLDERS:

When this function first loads, you are able to define which folders are to be consider protected (sacred, locked, important). These folders might be from a backup drive or backup folder. They might also be from a Best-Of folder that contains copies of images that also reside somewhere else. They might also be a test folder, a folder that contains duplicates of images that you are working on for some reason. In all of these cases, you most likely DO NOT want any images removed from these folders. That is why we give you the opportunity to specify which folders are to be protected from file removal during the clean-up process. To help speed up the process, there are 2 levels of protection.

Single Folder: This protects the checked folder

Sub-Folders: This protects the checked folder and ANY subfolders that it may contain

When you are checkmarking the folders, the GRAY CHECKMARK indicates to protect the selected folder. A NORMAL CHECKMARK indicates to protect the selected folder AND all of its subfolders too.

CONTINUE: Click this to return to the duplicate Sets Clean-Up screen.

SIMPLE USERS:

The easiest way for novices to do a quick cleanup of duplicate images is to click the "Auto CleanUp All Sets" button. This goes through all of the duplicate sets and picks one file out of the set and KEEPS it intact, and then replaces the others in the set with a ShortCut to the one remaining file in the set. When done processing all sets, you are shown how many sets didn't get cleaned. It's possible that some sets can't be cleaned because maybe all of the folders in a set are protected folders. This would mean that NO files would be removed in the cleaning process. Nothing is actually cleaned up until you click the "Apply" button. You can of course move sets from the To-Be-Cleaned sets back to the Un-Cleaned sets by clicking the revert button in the To-Be-Cleaned sets section.

ADVANCED USERS:

When you see a set that you would like to cleanup, then click the "Cleanup Set #xxx" button. This cleans up the currently displayed set. This keeps the HIGHLIGHTED file and replaces all the other files with ShortCuts pointing to the remaining highlighted file. After you cleanup a duplicate set, this set is moved to the To-Be-Cleaned sets. Nothing is actually cleaned up until you click the "Apply" button. You can of course move sets from the To-Be-Cleaned sets back to the Un-Cleaned sets by clicking the revert button in the To-Be-Cleaned sets section.

PREVIEW AREA:

This area shows you a preview of the image you are dealing with in the duplicates set. It tells you the file's date & time & size. If the selected file is a ShortCut (because it was cleaned by you), then the file date, time and size are those of the ShortCut file that replaced the original file..

Text Comments: This memo area shows any text comments that may be attached to the image file. If it's blank, then there are no text comments available for the file.

Voice Comments: If there are any voice comments for the file in preview, then the voice comment will play.

MAKE SHORTCUTS:

This option is on by default. When files are deleted, they are replaced with a ShortCut file so that you can save space and still have access to the file in the same folder as the deleted file. If you don't want the deleted files replaced with Short Cuts then, UN-check this option.

APPLY:

When you are ready to process all of the To-Be-Cleaned sets, click the "Apply" button. This takes all of the To-Be-Cleaned sets and removes all of the files that have a strike-through font. These are the ones that are deleted and replaced with Short Cuts pointing to the remaining file in the set..

After the last set is cleaned, then this window will close and you are done. If you decide that you deleted some files you didn't want to, then you can try to look for them in your Recycle Bin. See note below in the General Notes section about the Recycle Bin.

GENERAL NOTES:
If you think you may have accidentally deleted some files you didn't want to, then try to recover them from your Recycle Bin. Some drives will not delete files to your Recycle Bin either because it's not a local drive (floppies, network drives, CD-ROMs etc...) or because there is not enough space in the Recycle Bin to accomodate the deleted files.

Since the cleaned (removed) files are replaced with Short Cuts that point to the remaing file in the duplicate set, you can still double-click the shortcut file, while exploring your system, to load the image. It also means that you will still have files in folders that you may want to delete. This is because some people may not like a bunch of shortcut files hanging around.



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Tip # 58
(Duplicates) DUPLICATE IMAGES WIZARD

Searching for duplicate images on your system is valuable when organizing your photos. At best, duplicates WASTE disk space, at worst, they can confuse you as to which image to use for a particular task.

The "Search For Duplcate Images" screen has plenty of options. In order to make the option selection easier, a WIZARD is provided. This wizard steps you though the various options and explains each option in plain terms. Once you have completed the wizard, you are then taken to the "Search For Duplicate Images" screen. At this point all options you chose are now selected on the screen.

Once you have used the wizard a few times and understand what the various options do, then you will probably want to skip the wizard to save you time.

Click here for complete descriptions of searching options.



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Tip # 59
(Duplicates) EXCLUDING FOLDERS DURING SEARCH

This window is available to set excluded folders during Searching for duplicate images.

EXCLUDE FOR SEARCHING FOR DUPLICATES

When searching for duplicate images in your system, you may find that certain folders produce a lot of duplicates that you are not interested in. For example: Let's say you have a folder of photos that contains all your best photos and another folder that contains all your funniest images. Well, if you DO NOT exclude these folders, then it's possible that when you search for duplicates, you will end up with a bunch from these folders. This is because these images are copies of the originals.

Also, let's say you have a folder of several thousand images that come with some software package and you don't care about duplicates in that package, but because there are so many images, it increases the search time.

In both of the above scenarios, you may want to exclude those folders in question.

TIP:
Once you select a folder to be excluded, you may also want to checkmark it so that all of it's sub-folders are excluded as well.

HINT:
Let's say you have selected to exclude G:\MyPhotos\Vacation\BestPics   AND you have checkmarked it so that all of it's sub-folders would be excluded as well. AND let's say that you WANT to have G:\MyPhotos\Vacation\BestPics\Edited\MyCollection to be included in the search. In this scenario, you can included that folder using the bottom half that controls what folders are FORCED to be included, even though it's parent folder was excluded in the top half.

NOTE: Forcing inclusion in the bottom half will NOT force the folder to be searched. Let's say you search drive "D:"., if the included folder is not part of the search area, it is NOT forced to be included. It's only included if it's part of the searched area.

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Tip # 49
(Options) CACHING OPTIONS

Click here to show the Cache Options Screen.

If you want to change the default caching system settings then use the main menu and select the "Options" menu. Then pick the "Caching Options" menu item.

Typically if you are loading and viewing small images, then they load very fast. However, if you are loading LARGE images or image types that are slow in loading, then they will load slowly. If you are bouncing around between a few images to compare them, then the slowness can be annoying. This is why Photo Jockey has a caching system built in. This cache allows the images to be placed into a faster loading format in your temp folder. This way when you bounce back to one of the slow loading images, it will load REAL FAST.

Of course the cache temp folder consumes a large amount of disk space. The more files you cache the more temp disk space is used. This is why you have the ability to control the caching system settings.

NOTE: There is also a thumbnail caching system built in too. This thumbnail cache survives the closing of Photo Jockey. This means that when you load Photo Jockey the next time, the thumbnails that appear at the top will be built very fast instead of taking the time to load the image and shrink it into a thumbnail.

CACHING SYSTEM SETTINGS:


THUMBNAIL CACHING OPTIONS:
Thumbnail caching greatly speeds up the time it takes to display your thumbnails. There are no configuration settings, because it's all automatic. However there are 2 options you can use to control the size of the thumbnail cache.
NOTE: The thumbnail cache files are KEPT in the  
"\Program Files\Common Files\Smatters\ThumbnailCacheV1" folder on your system drive.. Windows VISTA users will use the
%ALLUSERSPROFILE\Smatters\ThumbnailCacheV1  folder.

COMPACT CACHE:
This allows you to decrease the size of the thumbnail cache by removing unwanted entries from it. These entries are thumbnails that are hanging around with no purpose. For example: Let's say you browse to a folder with 100 photos. Now these 100 thumbnails are in the cache. Now let's say you burn the photos to a CD-ROM and then delete the files from your system. Well, now you have 100 thumbnails in your cache that are of no value. This is because they refer to files that no longer exist. It's best to remove them from your cache. Also, let's say you are connected to a network and view lots of files from the network drive. And then later, you remove the network computer so that you can't access those photos anymore. Again, you have a bunch of thumbnails in the cache that are just wasting space. So, compacting the thumbnails cache is a good thing to do once in awhile.

DELETE CACHE:
This reduces the size of the thumbnail cache to zero. However, all thumbnailing will be slower until you have built up the cache size again. Every time you visit a folder and the thumbnails are built and displayed, they go into the cache so the next time you load Photo Jockey, the thumbnails are displayed very fast.

IMAGE CACHING OPTIONS:
Image caching greatly speeds up the time it takes to display your images. There are several configuration settings described below. Generally you would always want the cache turned on, unless you have very little disk space left, or your hard drive is very slow.

IMAGE CACHING SYSTEM TURNED ON:
This indicates if you want to allow files to be cached. If you choose yes, then files will be cached as they are loaded. This generally speeds things up. If you un-check this option, then no images are cached and thus you will see no speed improvement when you load images that were previously loaded/viewed.

CLEAR IMAGE CACHE
Remove all files from the image caching temp folder. This frees up some disk space.

ADVANCED CACHE OPTIONS:
Automatically determine best drive: This automatically selects the Windows operating system's temp folder where most applications store their temp stuff. You can of course select a different drive if you need a drive with MORE free space. Another reason to switch to a different drive would be that a different drive may be a FASTER drive. In fact, you can click on the "Test Best Drive" button to determine which drive is the fastest drive.

CURRENT CACHE USAGE:
Cache Drive Free Space: This shows how much disk space is available on the drive that contains the image cache.
Cache Space Used: This shows how much disk space in MegaBytes is currently being used by the caching temp folder.
Cached Images: This shows how many images are currently in the caching temp folder.

CURRENT CACHE SETTINGS:
Maximum Images To Cache: This limits how many files can be used by the caching system. Generally, you will want at least 20 or 30 so that as you bounce around to various images, they will start to load faster. If you don't care about using a lot of temp disk space, then crank this number way up.
Minimum Free Disk Space: This determines at what point the caching system becomes disabled. If there is NOT enough free disk space, then the caching system is disabled in order to preserve disk space. Generally, reserving at least 150MB is fine.
Minimum Mega Pixels: This determines what sized images are cached. For example: It would be wasteful to cache small files, because they load fast anyway. So, this allows you to control the minimum megapixel size of an image in order for it to get cached.

APPLY
Accept the changes to the caching system.

DEFAULTS
This changes the settings to default values that are good to use for most people.

HELP
This brings up this help topic.


NOTES: When you exit Photo Jockey, then the caching temp folder is cleared out automatically so that you can regain the disk space that was used by the caching system.



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Tip # 48
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) SETTING FILE TYPE ASSOCIATIONS

If you are wanting Photo Jockey to load up a photo when you dbl-click on it in the file manager window, then this is the feature you need to use. Just use the main menu and select the "Options" menu. Then pick the "Setup File Type Associations" menu item.

There are many different file types that are images. The most common are *.gif, *.bmp, *.jpg. You can tell Photo Jockey to associate itself with these file types and others as well. That way when you dbl-click on these file types in your file browser, then Photo Jockey will load and display the file you dbl-clicked on.

HINT: This is far easier than loading Photo Jockey and then clicking on buttons to browse for the image you are interested in. So, basically, the associations are a time saver. Nothing more, nothing less.

This feature has 3 modes of operation:

Quick Association for (*.bmp, *.gif, *.jpg): Setup the association for the 3 most common image formats in one step.

Quick Restore Association for (*.bmp, *.gif, *.jpg): Restore the associations for the 3 most common image formats. Use if you decide you don't want Photo Jockey to be the viewer for those file types any longer.

Custom Setup: You can pick & choose which file types for which Photo Jockey will be the default viewer.

NOTE: If you are running XP, 2003 and above, you may need to ask your system administrator to give you administrator privileges so that you can set your associations. You can't properly set them if you don't have administrator rights. Windows 95/98 do not have this problem.

WARNING: If you un-install Photo Jockey, WHILE Photo Jockey is associated with some file types, then when you dbl-click on those file types Windows may give you an error or not load any viewer at all for those file types. You will need to re-install Photo Jockey and then un-check ALL file types in the "Custom Setup". Then you can uninstall Photo Jockey again.



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Tip # 24
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) SAVING IMAGES

Click here to show the Save Screen.

If you have made some adjustments to a photo and you want to save it, then you can click on the button that looks like a Floppy Disk on the Quick Tools panel. When you click the SAVE button, the SAVE WINDOW is displayed.

This is NOT your typical type-a-name, select-a-format, click-enter-done type of saving screen. There is so much more useful functionality on this window to make your life easier.

First of all, there are 2 things that always irritate when using the typical saving routine. And of course this saving routine solves BOTH problems.

You can't see the file size UNTIL after you save the file

You can't see the quality UNTIL after you save the file

1. SELECT A FILE FORMAT:

BMP: This file format keeps all the quality (loss-less) and the file sizes can be huge. This saves using 24-bit format.

JPG: This file format keeps a specified amount of quality (lossy) and the saved file sizes are MUCH smaller. At 97% quality, you should not be able to see a difference in quality from BMP, which is perfect quality. This saves using 24-bit format. See JPG Quality tips.

GIF: This file format loses some quality (lossy), but saves images as 256 color files. For LINE-ART or ILLUSTRATIONS, GIF is the best format. For photos, it's useful only if you NEED GIF format. This saves using 8-bit format.
NOTE: There is a GIF Dither Mode that allows you to pick either "Dither" or "No Dither". If it's line-art or illustrations with lots of solid color, then pick "No Dither" for a cleaner looking image. Dither basically sprinkles colors on the image from a bucket of only 256 colors. And by sprinkling properly, you can make a photo appear very good.

PNG: This file format keeps all the quality (loss-less) and the file sizes are much smaller than BMP (less than half the size), but still larger than JPG typically. Click here for details on PNG format.
NOTE: For LINE-ART or ILLUSTRATIONS the file sizes can be very very small and perfect quality. Much better choice than GIF format. For photos, no loss in quality but still much larger than JPG. This saves using 24-bit format.

2. SELECT KEEP CAMERA INFORMATION:
Check this checkbox if you want to keep any camera related information like shutter speed, ISO or flash settings etc. This information is called EXIF Camera information. Typically, you will want to keep this information so that later on you can tell what camera settings were used to take the photo. If you want a super small file size and don't care about the info, then UN-Check the checkbox. Keeping the information increases the file size by a few KB. Only JPG and PNG keep the EXIF Camera Information. So, if you save as BMP or GIF, you WILL lose this information. Don't worry too much about this because Photo Jockey has the ability to Restore EXIF Camera Information. It takes EXIF Camera Info from a photo and then pastes that EXIF Camera Info into a photo that had lost its info. Of course it's best to restore the EXIF Info from the original photo so that the EXIF Camera Info won't be lying about your camera settings:)

3. SELECT KEEP ORIGINAL FILE DATE:
Check this checkbox if you want the original file's modified date to be used.

4. SELECT KEEP ORIGINAL FILENAME:
Check this checkbox if you want the original filename to be used.

5. CLICK SAVE (Overwrite):
Click this button to quickly save and overwrite the current image. This is a quick way to update your edits to a file.

6. CLICK SAVE FILE AS...:
If you don't want to use the same filename, then use this saving option. Once you have selected all the options you want, then click "Save File As". Then pick a filename and click save.

7. DEFAULT SETTINGS:
Since the save feature remembers the settings from the last save operation, you can restore the settings to default values by clicking this button.

TIP: For your convenience, the settings you use to save the file are REMEMBERED so that the next time you go to save an image, it uses the same settings. You can of course restore default settings if you wish.

HELPFUL HINTS:

Estimating File Size:
You can bounce around selecting different file formats and you will see the "Estimated Size:" change to reflect what the file size WOULD be if saved as the selected file format.

Viewing Quality Changes:
If you are interested in seeing what the quality looks like for a particular format, just look at the bottom portion of the saving window where there is a preview. MAKE SURE the zoom level is set to at least 400%. Then click on BMP file type and then click the file type you are interested in using. You should be able to see subtle changes in the preview indicating the amount of quality that you would lose. This is because BMP does not lose quality. To get the hang of this, select JPG quality of 40% and watch the preview and then click on the BMP format. You will see a pretty dramatic change in quality.

Estimating JPG Quality %:
For JPG format, try using the 97% quality FIRST, and then click 92, then 74, then 60, then 40. And when you detect too much loss in quality, then stop lowering the quality. Basically, go as low as YOU think is acceptable. It's not always a good idea to use 97%. 97% uses more disk space while not always giving you more apparent quality. You may frown, but consider this. Let's say you start with a POOR image. Then you want to save it, well (now you smile) you may only need a quality of 75% to match the quality of the poor image :)

As you lower the quality you should see the image becoming worse (more blocky), especially on high quality images. If your source image is pretty low quality to start with, then you may need to lower the quality setting a bunch before you notice the quality of the image going away.

HINT: You should be looking at an area in which there is high contrast, like along the edge of something in the photo, like a face or arm etc.

EXIF Camera Information:
Click here to learn about EXIF Camera Information.

JPG QUALITY NOTE:
When you save in the JPG format and use a quality of at least 80%, then adjoining pixels are NOT blended. This makes it GREAT for photos, and pretty good even for line art and bar charts (images with lots of solid colored areas). Now, if you go below 80% quality, then adjoining pixels ARE blended. For photos, you won't notice this too much, but for line and bar charts you WILL see the blended edges and thus the quality is reduced. This is not really a bad thing because if you pick a quality of less than 80% then you are not interested in the highest quality image either. If you save with a quality of 97%, you can re-edit/save the image at least 20 times before you notice ANY deterioration of the image quality! Of course if you use 92%, you WILL notice after about 3 edits (if you look REAL close). Once you get into the 80's quality, it's not a good idea to re-edit/save the images with that low of a quality.

TECHNICAL MYTHS:
It's no secret that the BMP format produces the largest files and doesn't lose any quality. It's also no secret that JPG typically loses a little quality and saves a ton of disk space. What IS A SECRET is that BMP is not always the best format to use if you plan the re-edit the image a few times. As a matter of fact, if you save with JPG with 97% quality you can re-edit the image at least 20 times before you notice ANY deterioration of the image!!! The myth is that you should always use BMP if you plan on re-editing the image. The actual truth is this... Use PNG or BMP if you are working with line-art or illustrations that you plan on re-editing many times. If you are working with photos, use JPG with a quality of 97%. The exception to the rule is this...If you plan on editing with OTHER photo editing software, then go ahead and use BMP, because some of these other softwares don't have the ability to set 97% quality. But if you plan on doing all your changes in Photo Jockey, then use JPG. Photo Jockey has plenty of photo editing built in. Color balancing, Rotation adjustments, Sharpening, Smoothing, Text Box additions, Company Logo insertion, and Resizing etc. See Photo Jockey Editing features.




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Tip # 40
(Tips) PREVIEW COMPARISON WINDOWS

Click here to show the Preview Window.

In order to bring up a preview comparison window, click on the "Previews" main menu option. Then click on the "Open Preview Comparison Window". Or you can click on the open preview button in the Quick Tools panel. It's the same button icon as the "Open Preview Comparison Window" menu item icon.

You can have many preview windows open all at the same time. Each preview window has a toolbar at the top that allows you to perform many common operations like, resizing, cropping, printing, etc...

HINT: When you close the preview window, it remembers it's window size for the next time you load a preview window. This is a handy feature so you won't have to keep manually resizing the window larger/smaller for your liking.

TIP: You can DRAG & DROP from the preview windows for added functionality.

Why would I want to open Preview Window?

Holding area to do something with it later on.
If you have several images or MOVIES sprinkled into various folders that you want to print or copy or delete etc, you could open up a preview window for each one. And then BEFORE doing your final action on them, you could review them to be sure. And then do your operation. A more efficient way to do this sort of thing is to use the ON-HOLD window.

Compare a bunch of images all at once
If you have several images that you want to see all next to each other, then you can TILE them all on the screen at once in a checkerboard pattern.

Compare two images side by side showing differences
If you have two images and don't know which one is better, you can do a side-by-side comparison and zoom in and see which has better detail. Optionally, you can look at the differences window to see what's been "added" or "subtracted" from the main (left) image to result in the second (right) window's image. Great for seeing watermarks too :)
NOTE: You can of course save disk space by deleting the images of lesser quality.

Find Dead, Hot, Stuck or Weak Pixels from digital cameras
If you have a digital camera and want to see if your camera's sensor is defective, you can use this feature to find the bad spots in your sensor.

Comparing Two Images Side-By-Side

The main purpose of the preview is to compare two images so you can decide which one to delete. This way you can get rid of your duplicates and keep the ones of higher quality. The easiest way to do this is to view them side by side. So just follow these simple steps:

Click on an image on the main Photo Jockey window

Open a preview window for it

Click on another image on the main Photo Jockey window

Open a preview window for it

In the preview window, right click and select Side-By-Side Comparison with another preview window.

DBL-Click in each preview window for Zoom mode

Zoom in and look around each image

Decide which is the better of the two images

Click the delete button in the preview window whose image you want to delete

At the bottom you will see the "Image Comparison Window". This is the window that shows you what's been added or subtracted from the main (left) image to produce the comparing (right) image. Even if the differences are small, you can MAGNIFY the differences by using the red slider to the right. There are 3 buttons:
A: This shows all differences between the 2 images
+: This shows what's been added to the left image to produce the right image
-: This shows what's been subtracted from the left image to produce the right image

HINT: If you DBL-CLICK in the Image Comparison Window and zoom in and scroll around, then the main (left) image is also scrolled to the same position in the image so that you can compare faster and easier.

Find Dead Pixels (Digital Camera Image)

This allows you to find bad pixels in the sensor of your camera.

First, take a photo that is supposed to be black. Maybe go into a room with no lights on to make it dark. Then put your lens cap on the lens or put a black sheet of paper as close to the lens as you can without touching it. Then take the longest exposure you can. Most high-end cameras will let you go 30 seconds, and set your ISO to 100. On low-end cameras, set your ISO to it's best setting (lowest) and turn your flash off. Then take a picture. It should be black. On your high-end camera, move your exposure from 30 seconds to 10 seconds, then 1 second, then 1/60 second. So, high-end cameras will have 4 black photos and low-end cameras will have 1.

Now move on to the white photo sequence. Find a bright light in your room and take a 30 second exposure from about 2 inches from the light, then take a 10 second exposure. For low-end cameras, just put a bright white FLAT sheet of paper on a table and have the camera about 5 inches away and put the flash ON. Then take the photo.

Now that you have your black and white photos, download them to your computer where you can find them. Locate them with Photo Jockey and load the folder into Photo Jockey. Then do the following process for each of the black photos.

Click on the photo to view it

Click on the main menu's PREVIEWS menu item

Click on the Find Dead Pixels (Digital Camera Image) menu item

This brings up a side-by-side comparison window, your original will be on the left

Slide the sensitivity slider all the way to the right

DBL-Click on the right side image and zoom in and scroll around looking for areas that are NOT black. The left side original image will by in sync as you scroll around.

Make notes as to where in the image the bad spots are

Finding Hot, Stuck, Dead, Weak pixels:
Load the other black photos and do the same process, you should find the same bad areas but maybe not quite as noticable. For high-end cameras, if you look at the 30, 10, 1, 1/60 second exposure images and the bad spots seem to fade away as you go to the faster shutter speed, then those pixels are called "hot" pixels. You should NOT see any "hot" spots at 1 and 1/60 second exposure. If some of your spots do NOT fade from 30 to 10 seconds, then those spots are called "stuck" pixels. Stuck pixels are bad because they will appear in all your photos. Hot pixels ususally blend into your normal photos so you don't notice them as much.

If the bad spots are faint when the slider is all the way to the left, then your camera is in pretty good shape, if they are still bright, then you may want to exchange your camera or have it fixed, because those spots will show up in your photos.

You can do the same thing with your white photos. The right side will show "weak" pixels in your camera, again if they are faint, then don't worry. If they stick out like a sore thumb, then you have "dead" pixels, and you should get the camera fixed, because those spots will show up in all your photos as a dark or black dot.

NOTE: Always use the left image which is your original image for determining if the bad spot is strong or faint. The right side image is used to LOCATE the bad spots easier. So when the slider is all the way to the right, even the faintest bad spot will stick out like a sore thumb.


Preview Window Options:
There are many buttons in the preview window that allow you to:

Get help

Get Image properties

Save image

Delete image

Print image

Rotate image

3D Perspective/Shear/Special Effects

Resize image

Sharpen/Smooth image

Add Text/Image Overlays

Color adjust image

Red-Eye Removal

Crop image

Popup Menu Options:

When you RIGHT-CLICK the mouse, you will get a pop-up menu that allows you to control the preview windows.

Find Dead Pixels (Digital Camera Images): This allows you to compare your black photo that you took with your camera and compare it against a TRUE black image and shows you any spots that are not true black in your image (bad pixels). In addition, you can compare a white photo that you took with your camera and compare against TRUE white to see if there are any weak pixels.

Tile All Preview Windows: This TILES all the preview windows to fit on the screen in a nice checkerboard fashion so you can see all the previews at once.

Show All Preivew Windows: This shows all the previews again in case you had minimized some of them.

Hide All Preview Windows: This minimizes all the previews so that you can get them out of your way for the time being.

Close All Preview Windows: This closes out all the preview windows when you are done with them.

Show Side-By-Side Comparison With...: This allows you to do a side-by-side comparison of two images. You are allowed to select another preview window to compare the current preview window against. They are tiled on your screen.

View #########: There can be any number of these at the bottom of the pop-up menu. There is one for each preview window you have open. Just click on the one with the filename you are interested in showing. The ######## is where the filename is placed in the menu caption.

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Tip # 45
(Tips) SPEEDING UP PHOTO JOCKEY

There are various ways to speed up Photo Jockey. The main way to speed up operations is to utilize the caching mechanisms in Photo Jockey. They are turned on by default. Other ways to speed up Photo Jockey are to change certain settings in Photo Jockey.

USE CACHE SYSTEM:

By default the Image Caching system is enabled. This can greatly speed up the loading of images that you have recently viewed. So, if you are comparing a few images and bouncing back & forth between them, they will be shown much faster after the initial load. This IMAGE CACHE is emptied when you close Photo Jockey to give you back disk space.

Also, as you view THUMBNAILED images, they are stored into another cache that is NOT emptied when Photo Jockey closes. This allows Photo Jockey to display the thumbnails of folders MUCH faster the next time you view the same folder at a later date. Also, the thumbnail cache is used when viewing preview windows in the "Contact Sheets" and "Search For Duplicates" windows. There are a few other places where the thumbnail cache comes in handy as well.

NOTE: Click here to learn about your "Cache Settings".

NO SMOOTHING:

If you want to speed up the program operation, you can go into the "Program Options" window. Then look for the "Smoothing when sizing to fit screen" and then UN-check it.

The quality of the final image on the screen may NOT look as good, but it will operate faster.

NOTE: Click here to learn about your "Program Options".

NO TRANSITIONS:

You can also turn off the slide show transitions. Just go into the "Program Options" window. Then click "One Selected Transition Effect". Then click the pull down that is below that option and choose "GENERIC". That way NO transitions will be performed for each image that you view. It won't look as cool, but it will go faster.

NOTE: Click here to learn about your "Program Options".

NO AUTO PREVIEW IN CONTACT SHEETS:

You can also UN-check the "Auto Preview" checkbox in the "Contact Sheets" window. If you are not displaying the "Contact Sheets" window, then there is no need to un-check this checkbox.

NOTE: Click here to learn about your "Contact Sheets" window.

USE SMALL IMAGES FOR RAW OR PCD IMAGES:

If the CURRENT image you are looking at is either RAW images from a digital camera, or PCD images, you can speed up the time it takes to load these images. From the tools menu you will see:

RAW Images Loading Quality

PCD Images Loading Quality

Then pick the smallest size for image loading. This can make a speed difference of about 2 to 3 times faster for the RAW or PCD images.

NOTE: Click here to learn about your "RAW Images" window.
NOTE: Click here to learn about your "PCD Images" window.

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Tip # 46
(Tips) TURN OFF SOUNDS

There are two types of sounds that the program produces. It produces COOL sounds like swishing and camera shutter clicking etc. It also plays any voice (*.wav) file that may be associated with the photo that is displayed.

Go into the Program Options window and then UN-check the "Play cool program sounds" or UN-Check where it says "Play Voice Clip Comments".

NOTE: See how to add Voice Comments to your images.



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Tip # 51
(Options) VIEWING MODES (MOVABLE OR FULL SCREEN)

By default the program window is FULL SCREEN when run from a CD. If you want to change it so that it's a standard MOVABLE window like most programs, you can do it easily in one of two ways:

Just bring up the tools menu and select "Program Window Size" and then pick either "Sizable And Movable" or "FULL Screen Size"

Choose "VIEW" from the main menu. Then select "Program Window Size" and then pick one of the two choices.

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Tip # 53
(Options) THUMBNAIL OPTIONS

By default the thumbnails that appear at the top of the program are set to a size that is convenient for most purposes. If you decide you want BIGGER or SMALLER thumbnails, you can do so by going to the tools menu and picking "Thumbnail Size & Shape". You can also go to the "View" option from the Main Menu.

NOTE: You can also change the SHAPE of the thumbnails too. Let's say that most of your photos are TALLER than they are wide. You could change the shape to PORTRAIT. If most of your photos are WIDER than they are tall, then use LANDSCAPE. If your photos have a pretty even mix of tall and wide, then pick SQUARE.

TIP: You can also toggle between having ONE ROW of thumbnails and MANY ROWS of thumbnails quickly by pressing CTRL-R. The number of ROWS that get displayed depends on the current HEIGHT of the Photo Jockey window.

HINT: You can also go into the "Program Options" screen and check the "Thumbnail Checkboxes" option. This shows checkboxes along with each thumbnail. This makes it easy to check the photos you want for later Copying, Moving, Renaming, Deleting or BATCH operations. You can, of course, still use the checkboxes that are next to each filename, but sometimes it's easier to pick when you know what the image looks like instead of knowing just the filename.



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Tip # 54
(Options) THUMBNAILING MOVIES

By default the thumbnails for MOVIE files appear as a picture of a movie projector. When you go to a folder that has some movie files, you will be prompted to thumbnail the movies. This makes for a nicer user experience because you will quickly be able to know which movie thumbnail clip to click on so that you may view the movie. Otherwise, if you don't thumbnail the movies, then all movie clips will have the same projector icon and you will be left guessing which one to click on to view.

Once you click the option to make the thumbnails for the movie, you are presented with a window that shows the list of movie files that need thumbnailing. You can check or un-check any of these movie files before clicking the start button.

START:
This starts the thumbnailing process. Each movie clip usually takes a couple of seconds. BUT some movies can take up to 20 seconds to thumbnail. Of course there will be some movies that can't be thumbnailed and others that may lock-up the program. Only corrupted movie files will lock-up the program. Once the thumbnails are completed, the Photo Jockey thumbnail cache is updated so that the next time you view the movies in the same folder, you will see the thumbnails in the thumbnail list at the top.

CANCEL:
This allows you to stop the thumbnailing process so that you can go on doing other things, you can thumbnail the remaining movies at a later time.

EXIT:
This closes the thumbnailing window.

HELP:
This loads up this help tip.

GENERAL TIPS:

LOCK-UPS:
If you have a movie clip that locks up the program, the name of the movie is stored in a file called "MOVIESBAD.TXT" in the Photo Jockey folder. That way the next time the thumbnailing window is displayed, any bad/corrupted files that causes lock-ups will NOT be checked. That way future lock-ups are prevented.

THUMBNAIL PROBLEMS:
If you encounter some movie clips that can't be thumbnailed, then the default icon of a slide projector will be used as the thumbnail. If you obtain newer Windows Media Player software or corrected movie clips and believe that you may be able to get a thumbnail from the problem movie, you can click on the REFRESH button. Then choose to clear the thumbnail cache for the folder. You will then be asked to thumbnail the movies again.

NOTE: It is possible that some MOV (QuickTime) movies will not be able to be thumbnailed because of the way they handle Overlayed video.

HINTS:
If you click on a movie clip filename, the cooresponding thumbnail in the thumbnail window becomes highlighted. Also, if you click on a thumbnail in the thumbnail window, the filename in the list of movie clips becomes highlighted.



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Tip # 36
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) DRAG FILES/FOLDER INTO PHOTO JOCKEY

Photo Jockey supports drag & drop from Windows Explorer file manager. You can also drag/drop from your desktop screen too. Once you complete the drop in Photo Jockey, then it will load and display the images from that dropped folder.

Simply DRAG the folder you want to view right into the Photo Jockey program window. At this point you will have all the image files loaded into this program and the FIRST file in the list will be showing.

HINT: If you drag a FILE instead of a FOLDER into Photo Jockey, the images in that folder will be loaded into the program. AND more importantly, the image file you DROPPED will be the one showing :)

NOTE: Of course you need to be able to see both Photo Jockey and the file manager at the same time. If Photo Jockey is currently in FULL SCREEN mode, you can re-size the program window size from the tools menu. Then you can move the Photo Jockey window around on your screen so that you can see both your file manager and the Photo Jockey program window.



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Tip # 37
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) DRAG FILES FROM PHOTO JOCKEY

Photo Jockey supports drag & drop to Windows Explorer file manager. You can also drag/drop to your desktop screen too. You can even drop onto other applications like Paint programs, ICQ instant messenger program, OutLook email program and many more. Of course the recipient needs to support drag/drop in order for them to accept dropped files.

HINT: You can easily drag files from the main image display area into the Folder Tree View so you can effectively copy or move a single file or multiple tagged files into some other folder.

Simply DRAG from Photo Jockey Image Display area and DROP where you want to. You are given the options to drop the file as normal or to drop ShortCuts to the file or to JPGConvert

WARNING: If you are dropping some files that have a Photo Jockey database entry for them, then you need to realize that if you drop onto Windows Explorer/Desktop THEN Photo Jockey WILL NOT KNOW the destination folder. Thus, these files that are being copied into some "unknown" folder WILL NOT have their database entry copied for them. Of course your originals will still keep their database entry, but the newly created copy will NOT. This is not a bug or a bad thing, it's just something to consider. For example: If you drag and drop to copy 10 files into a new folder, THEN you DELETE those 10 original files. Then since your 10 new files won't have any database entries for them, then when you do a database search for information what WAS stored for the old files, the database search function won't find any matching records. So, it's a good idea to copy the database records as you copy files. A simple way to do this is to use the COPY function in Photo Jockey, OR the simplest way is to drag and drop onto the Folder Tree View window. Since Photo Jockey controls this window, it will know how to copy the database entries. SPECIAL NOTE: If you drag/drop onto an application like Paint, or Outlook or Excel or pretty much anything that is not a file manager, then you don't have to worry about the above comments on database entries.

TIP: If you are in ZOOM viewing mode and you are looking at a large image, then if you drag the image, it will just scroll around the window :) In order to tell Photo Jockey to DRAG/DROP, you need to hold down on the shift key while dragging.

HINT: When you do the DROP, you are asked if you want to drop the currently displayed image, OR ALL tagged (Selected) files. Click here to learn how to select multiple files.

NOTE: Of course you need to be able to see both Photo Jockey and the destination location at the same time. If Photo Jockey is currently in FULL SCREEN mode, you can re-size the program window size from the tools menu. Then you can move the Photo Jockey window around on your screen so that you can see both your file manager and the Photo Jockey program window.



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Tip # 38
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) IMAGE REDUCTION FOR DRAG/DROP

JPGConvert

This feature is also known as the JPGConvert feature.

There are several reasons why you may want to use this feature.

Need to email smaller sized versions of large photos

Need to email lower quality versions of photos

Need to convert photos of various formats to JPG format..

In order to bring up this feature you need to drag/drop from Photo Jockey to some destination folder or email attachment area. After you do the DROP, you are asked if you want to JPGConvert, select yes. Then a window with reduction options appears.

Select Smaller Image Dimensions:
This option allows you to pick various sizes from 1024x768 down to 320x200. In fact, you can enter a CUSTOM SIZE if you wish. You can also select DON'T LIMIT, if you are not interested in changing the dimensions of the images. (Maybe you only want to change the quality).

Enter Custom Dimension Maximums:
If you had selected "CUSTOM SIZE", then you can pick your own dimensions for the resulting images.

Select Smaller Image Quality:
You can pick from 4 different JPG quality settings, or you can enter a custom quality factor. Keep in mind that the higher the quality, the more disk space or email space is required.

Maximum Quality:
The Quality for PCD, JPG, and RAW images are improved a little when this option is checked.

TIP: This option is only visibly useful for images that are line art patterns. Such as grid lines and moire patterns. Normal photos will NOT experience a visible improvement.
NOTE: This option dramatically increases the time it takes to convert the above graphic types. The time increase can be up to 300% on very large images. Small original photos do not show much of a performance hit.
CONCLUSION: Check it ONLY if you have LARGE JPG files that are line art test patterns AND you want the maximum quality resized image.

Keep Camera Information:
If your images were taken from a digital camera and have Extra Camera Information in them that you want to keep, then check this checkbox.

Show Total Drop Size:
Click this button if you want to know the TOTAL size of the drop. This is most handy for email dropping. That way, you know the size of the email that you are sending. If your buddy can only get 5MB at a time and your drop total is 8MB, then you know you need to reduce the image dimensions more or reduce the quality more, or just send less images :)

Complete Drop:
This completes the DROP and all images will now be in the JPG image format, which everyone can view.

Various Tips & Notes

NOTE: In order to DROP smaller copies of the images, these copies are saved in your TEMP folder until you exit Photo Jockey. At that point they will be deleted. This is because, if you DROPPED some photos into your email program, the email program needs to know where the files are located and they NEED TO EXIST. So, they stay in your TEMP folder until you exit Photo Jockey.

NOTE: If you don't want the Camera Information (shutter speed etc.) saved in the JPG files, then UN-CHECK the check box for that option. This can help reduce the file size by about 1K - 5K on cheap digital camera photos, and sometimes up to 30K on higher-end models.

TIP: Keep in mind that if an image is ALREADY small enough, then it won't be made any smaller.

TIP: ALL IMAGES are converted to JPG. This can be very useful, especially if you drop TIFF files and you would rather have a JPG dropped etc.

TIP: If you are dropping lots of files, please keep in mind that it could take between 1 and 2 seconds per image to convert into the smaller images that will be used for the DROP. So please be patient!!!

TIP: If you only wanted to convert the dropped files to JPG and don't want the image dimensions changed, then click the "DON'T LIMIT" option. Then there won't be any dimension limit set for your dropped images.



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Tip # 20
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) HOW CAN I LOAD A FOLDER THAT I WENT TO RECENTLY

In the TOOLS menu, you can click on "Browse For Photo Folder", or you can click on the "Browse" button on the Files List Panel. This is the panel on the right side of the Photo Jockey window. Then you can select one of two menu choices.

You can pick "Recently "Browse For Folder" selections". Then select the folder that you are interested in. This brings up a standard Windows open dialog box from which you can choose an image and then click OPEN, or you can continue to browse for what you want.
NOTE: The list displayed shows the most recently selected folders using the "Browse For Folder" method.

You can click on the "Recently Viewed Folders". Then select the folder you are interested in. Then that folder is immediately loaded into Photo Jockey.
NOTE: The list displayed shows the most recently loaded (viewed) folders that have images in them.

HINT: You will notice that there are a limited number of "recent" slots. As you visit folders, the MOST RECENT folder is placed at the top and the folder at the bottom of the list is dropped off. For convenience, when you re-visit a folder, it's placed back at the top of the list again so that the more popular folders never get bumped off the bottom.

TIP: If you have some folders that you want QUICK access to, then use the "Favorites" menu. This works are you would expect by being able to keep a list of folders that you want to go to quickly. You can control the order in which they appear, and you can give your folders a nickname. For example: You may have a folder named "New Folder 2". But in the favorites list, it could be named "My Best Photos". You can also set a home folder or start-up folder. This is the folder that gets loaded by default when Photo Jockey loads. This is also located in the "Favorites" menu.



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Tip # 31
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) SENDTO AND HOW TO USE IT

Most users won't know what "SEND TO" means. But it's a very handy functionality of Windows. You can control WHAT PROGRAM is used to load a particular file. So, if MS-PAINT or Adobe PhotoShop is the default loader for JPG files, you can force Windows to load the JPG files with ANOTHER program of your choice.

When you are in the Explorer file manager of Windows, you get to see a tree view of your folders, and lists of your files in a particular folder. Typically when you are viewing the files, you can either view them in detail mode where you see the filename and filesize and modified date etc..., OR you can view them in ICON mode where you see ICONS that represent each file you are looking at.

Just RIGHT-CLICK on a file, and then you will see a POP-UP menu. In this menu, you will see the "SEND TO" menu item. Just click on that and you will see a list of programs that you can use to load the file you are located on. You will see Photo Jockey in that list. So, if the file you are RIGHT-CLICKING on is called IMG0096.JPG, and you pick Photo Jockey from the SEND TO list, then Photo Jockey will load up and display the IMG0096.JPG file.



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Tip # 55
(Options) HOW CAN I ROTATE PHOTOS ON THE SCREEN

Sometimes you view images that are NOT rotated properly. Then you have to tilt your head in order to view them properly. This can cause strain on your neck and make other people looking at you laugh.

To avoid these problems, bring up the TOOLS menu, then click on "Rotate / Flip / Mirror Image". From here you can click on rotate left or rotate right depending on your needs.

HINT: Until you close Photo Jockey, any photos that you rotated will remain rotated for viewing purposes. This is for convenience so if you are going back & forth between a couple of un-rotated photos, you won't have to keep rotating them :) We call this rotation memory. It DOES NOT modify your actual photo file!

NOTE: If you don't want the rotation memory in effect and love to tilt your head, you can turn this feature off by using the TOOLS menu and clicking on "Program Options (Slide Show & Others)". Then look for "Rotation Memory" and UN-check it.



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Tip # 56
(Options) HOW TO QUICKLY SWITCH VIEWING MODE FROM "FIT-TO-SCREEN" TO "ZOOM MODE"

The default viewing mode is to shrink the photo to fit the screen. So, if you had a large photo (a photo larger than your screen), you would see the complete photo in reduced size. If your photo was very tiny, then it would appear tiny in the viewing window.

If you want to switch in-to and out-of Zoom mode, so that you can scroll around your large image, you can do it in two different ways.

You can click on "Program Options (Slide-Show & Others)" from the Tools Menu. Then you can check or un-check the "Zoom Mode" checkbox.

An EASIER way is to DOUBLE-CLICK on the photo. This alternates between seeing the image sized to fit the screen and Zoom Mode.

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Tip # 21
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) PROPERTIES OF AN IMAGE

Click here to show the Properties Screen.

If you want to know properties about an image, just click on the FILE menu from the main menu. Then pick "Properties". You can also bring up the Tools Menu and select "Properties".

It shows you:

Filename

File Folder

Image Width

Image Height

File Size

File Date

Attributes: For example (Archived, Read-Only, Hidden)

EXIF Camera Information: This shows EXIF information like shutter speed etc.

NOTE: Only images from a digital camera can have Exif information. If you don't see any Exif information when you EXPECT to see them, then it's a good bet that some other software used to edit the image REMOVED the Exif information. You can recover lost Exif information using Photo Jockey.



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Tip # 27
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) PASTING IMAGE FROM CLIPBOARD

If you want to PASTE an image from the ClipBoard, you can do that with Photo Jockey. Just go to the Main Menu and click "Edit" and then select the "PASTE Image From ClipBoard" menu item.

Of course you need to COPY something onto the Clipboard before you can do the PASTE operation. Typically, you would do the COPY or CUT to Clipboard function in a DIFFERENT image editor. Then you could paste that image section into Photo Jockey.

When you PASTE, you can specify that you want the PASTED IMAGE to be saved in your CURRENT Folder, or your TEMP folder. You can also specify the graphic file type and the JPG Quality.

TIP: When you press the "Prt Scr" or "Print Screen" key, the whole screen that you see on your monitor is put onto the Clipboard for pasting purposes. See the Paste Screen (Screen SnapShot) feature.

HINT: Cool usage: Once the PASTE is done, you can DRAG the image to any folder, OR you can drag it to your email attachment area. Then you can email your tech buddy your screen shot so that he can help you out on your computer problem. When doing Screen Shots, use the GIF format when saving. This is because usually they end up taking less disk space while still holding good enough quality.



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Tip # 28
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) PASTE SCREEN (SCREEN SNAPSHOT)

This function is just like the Paste Image From Clipboard function.

The difference is that it's a QUICK way to capture a screen shot. So,  it's a nice one click way of getting your screen saved as an image.

HINT: Cool usage: Once the PASTE is done, you can DRAG the image to any folder, OR you can drag it to your email attachment area. Then you can email your tech buddy your screen shot so that he can help you out on your computer problem.

NOTE: Since you are placed into the Windows temp folder after the Screen Snap Shot, you may want to click on the "Browse" button and then select the second item from the top in your "Recently Viewed Folders", to go back to the last folder you were viewing before you did the Screen Snap Shot.



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Tip # 39
(Loading & Saving, Drag & Drop) EXPLORE CURRENT FOLDER

Sometimes it's nice to be able to bring up the Windows Explorer file manager to browse around. There's a button next to the "Parent" button on the Folders List Panel that opens the Explorer Window panel. There is also a Main Menu item you can use. Click on the FILE menu, then choose "Explore Current Folder In Tree Mode".

This opens the Windows Explorer file manager with the current folder. The file explorer will be in tree outline mode (split panel mode). The current folder will be hilighted in the tree for easy browsing. You can then quickly drag a folder from the Explorer Window back into Photo Jockey. Click here to learn about Drag/Drop.



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Tip # 62
(Editing) COLOR ADJUSTING

Click here to show the Color Adjusting screen.

Let's say you want to take a photo and make it brighter or add some contrast etc. This is where you would do such operations. You can also color balance (remove yellowish tint from indoor photos taken without flash). In addition, you can brighten selected regions of the image. And as an added bonus, you can COPY and PASTE portions of images onto the same image or a different image. You can also sharpen or smooth portions of an image  to create a 3-D appearance as well. You can also use it to create a double-exposure photo.You can also use the gamma to fix under-exposed or over-exposed images.

Just click on the SUN button on the Quick Tools panel, then you will see the Color Adjusting Screen.

If you want to Color Adjust a bunch of photos all at once, you can do so with the Batch Feature.

From the Color Adjusting window you have many sliders:

Contrast

Brightness

Gamma

Shadows/Highlights

Saturation

Hue

Color Balance

Color Range (Unique Feature)

Less / More Coloration

Green/Yellow default indicators buttons:
These are round buttons that appear to the left of the sliders. When green, they indicate that the sliders are in the default position (no image adjustments). As you move the sliders, the indicators will turn yellow. This means you have requested some image adjustement for that slider.
HINT: You can click on the yellow indicator button to return the sliders back to the default position. The button will turn green again as well. If you click the button again, the button will turn yellow again, and the settings will go BACK to the adjustment setting you had set before clicking it the first time. Basically it's a toggle button..

How do I control the Order In Which the Adjustments are made?
There are many adjustments you can do to an image. In fact, there are 12 different types of adjustments. The order in which each adjustment occurs is controlled by the "Order Of Processing" window. And you can see the order, by their numbering on the Ordering Panel.

NOTE: You may THINK that you can control the order in which the various adjustements are made by simply doing ONE adjustment and then clicking APPLY. And then doing the next adjustment and then clicking APPLY and so on. And you would be correct..... sort of. Sure the order would be the order you wanted, BUT the QUALITY in the burned out areas or dark/black areas could be diminished. A simple example would be to take a sky photo and crank on the contrast so that most of the clouds become burned out (solid white). Then apply., Then reduce the brightness so as to bring back the detail of the clouds. Well, that won't work, because you will have solid white areas that are now darker. You won't see the detail come back in. For details on multiple adjustments, click here.

These sliders allow you to control the amount of adjustment.
The following adjustment features are listed in the order in which they get processed by default. You can of course change the order in which they are processed. Since the Color Range feature doesn't alter the image in any particular way, it is shown as the first feature. All the rest of the features DO alter the appearance of the image and so they each have a number next to them indicating the order in when they get processed. The Color Range feature does NOT alter the image in a particular way. It just acts like a FILTER. It controls what parts of the image DO get altered by the OTHER sliders.

COLOR RANGE OPTIONS:

Let's say that you want to make a red sweater look like a blue sweater. You could spend hours and hours hand editing your image, OR you could use this option.

Basically, you select a color that you want to change/alter/adjust. We call this color the Color Range. Then you play with the sliders for adjustements like brightness, saturation, hue, etc... You will notice that ONLY COLORS IN THE IMAGE THAT MATCH YOUR COLOR RANGE WILL BE AFFECTED. So, if you added brightness, you would see the red becoming brighter. If you played with the hue, you would see the red sweater become another color (like blue or green or whatever). The reason this feature is so powerful is because a red sweater is actually made up of a LOT OF DIFFERENT COLORS and yet the whole sweater becomes a different color WITHOUT affecting the rest of the image. There are lots of varying tints involved and varying shades of the same color involved. There are 2 sliders that control the sensitivity of determining what colors should be considered a match. As you slide the "Color" slider to the left, then the colors being transformed are more limited because they have to be closer to the "Color Range" you selected. As you slide the "Shade" slider to the left, then the shades that get transformed are more limited because they have to be closer in brightness to the "Color Range" you selected.

3 EASY STEPS:

Select "Color Range" option:  Checkmark the "Color Range" checkbox.

Select "Color Range" color:  You can click on the colored square next to the "Color Range" option. You will see an Eye-Dropper icon for your mouse. Click on the red in your sweater, then when finished selecting the color, click on the "Stop Selecting Color" button. You also have the choice to pick a color from a color wheel. Typically for photos, pick a color from the image. Try to pick a color that is an average of the brightest red and darkest red of the sweater you are trying to change. Otherwise, if you picked the brightest red, then only the bright red to medium red areas will get adjusted.

Color Sensitivity: Adjust to right for more color range tolerance(more colors close to the selected color are affected), or to the left for less tolerance.

Shade Sensitivity: Adjust to right for more shade tolerance(more shades of the selected color are affected) and to the left for less tolerance.

TIP: The default settings of the sliders are good for photos because you need some relaxation on the color matching. Otherwise maybe only a few dots on the image would get transformed instead of the whole sweater. Likewise, if you are working on a cartoon, line-art, graph or some image with lots of solid colored areas, then you may want to slide the sliders all the way to the LEFT. That way, only the specific color you select will get transformed.

HINT: You may have a photo with someone with a red sweater and a red hat. If you only want to change the color of the HAT, then you may think....hmmmm....(If I change the hat, then the sweater gets changed). You can get around this by going into the Region Drawing mode. This allows you to draw a region around the hat. Then only that portion of the image gets adjusted. You don't even have to be very good about drawing the region around the hat. Just draw a circle around it and since the Color Range searches out a specific range of colors to adjust, you will see that only the hat gets adjusted. Pretty slick.

MORE POWER:
You can use this feature to make blue skies bluer, and red sunsets reder and green trees greener too. Just select your Color Range from a dot in your sky. Then use the hue slider to make minor changes to the tint. Then you can use the Less/More sliders to increase the particular colors of interest.

Hue Slider:
This slider allows you to control the hue. So, basically you can rotate the colors. Red becomes green and green becomes blue and blue becomes red. You can produce some very interesting effects this way.

COLOR BALANCE:
If you want to take a photo that has certain tint and remove the tint, then use the Color Balance button next to the Color Balance slider. When you click on it, you get 3 different methods of removing the tint.

Auto Select - This allows you to automatically detect the tint color and remove it. Works great about 90% of the time.

Select White Point On Image - This allows you to click on a part of the image that you believe is supposed to be white in real life. Once you click it, the program automatically knows what the tint color is and removes it. After you are done selecting the white point, click the "Stop Selecting White Point" button.

Select Color From Color Wheel - If there are no areas that you believe to be white in the photo (like a piece of paper), then the last ditch effort would be to manually pick a color. You can change the color quickly in real time by dragging a color marker around a colorerd wheel.

NOTE: After you have selected a color, you should use the "Color Balance Slider" to control the amount of tint removal from the entire image or from the selected region.

Saturation Slider:
This slider allows you to control the amount of saturation in an image. It works better than other applications, because when you reduce the saturation down to zero, the other applications do NOT work properly. Photo Jockey on the other hand DOES. The resulting image looks just like the Gray Scale version. And it SHOULD. Other programs do not produce a final image that is just like the gray scale version.

Gamma Slider: (Fixing UnderExposed / OverExposed images)  (All channels or specific color)
This slider allows you to control the amount of GAMMA. The more gamma, the darker the image becomes. BUT UNLIKE the brightness slider, the gamma slider will make bright areas much darker and dark areas a little darker. That way you don't wind up with an under exposed image.  As you use less gamma, real dark areas become much brighter and bright areas become a little bright. That way you don't wind up with an over exposed image. This makes the histogram squeeze to the left or right. NOTE: Once you go past 3 notches to the left or right of the default position, your image will become more grainy. Play with it to get the desired results.
TIP: Typically, you would select "Gamma ALL". This takes all 3 color channels (Red, Green, Blue) and applies gamma to them. If you want to do specialized gamma, then you could select which color channels get applied.

Contrast Slider:  (All channels or specific color)
This slider allows you to control the amount of contrast in the image. The MORE contrast, the dark areas become darker and the bright areas become more bright. This makes the histogram squeeze or stretch.
TIP: Typically, you would select "Contrast ALL". This takes all 3 color channels (Red, Green, Blue) and applies contrast to them. If you want to do specialized contrasting, then you could select which color channels get applied.

Brightness Slider:  (All channels or specific color)
This slider allows you to control the amount of brightness in the image. The MORE brightness, then all areas of the image become brighter. This makes the histogram crawl to the right or left. The default is to use all channels so that the image becomes brighter. You can select ALL, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan. If you select Yellow, then only the yellow is added to the image.
TIP: If you are doing color separation then you could select the Yellow channel and slide the slider all the way to the left so that what remains is only the BLUE part of the image. If you select Magenta and do the same thing you would be left with the GREEN part of the image and if you use the CYAN channel, you would be left with the RED part of the image.

Shadows / Highlights:
If you have an image that needs selective brightness, then you should NOT use the brightness slider. The brightness slider adds brightness to the ENTIRE IMAGE. The HIGHLIGHTS slider adds brightness to bright areas of the image. The SHADOWS slider adds darkness to dark areas of the image. This is also better than the contrast slider, because adding contrast not only makes bright areas brighter, but it ALSO makes dark areas darker. So, if you just want to add highlights or just want to add shadows, this is the slider for you. You can even customize the range of brightness that is considered shadows or highlights. See more information on the Shadows / Highlights Customization Screen.

RGB (BY STRENGTH):
The RGB sliders allow you to increase or decrease the amount of either the RED, GREEN or BLUE color channel of the image. The difference between this option being checked or unchecked is the way in which the color is added or subtracted.

UNCHECKED: These sliders allow you to increase or decrease the amount of either the RED, GREEN or BLUE channels of the image. The difference between this and the "Brightness Slider" is that the brightness slider adds to the brightness of the image. This may not be desired. You may want to maintain the overal brightness while adding more Red, Green or Blue to your image. That's where these controls come in handy. For example: When you add more green, it will ALSO take out some red and blue (so as to keep the general brightness). Of course in extreme slider settings this can't be maintained, because your eyes are more sensitive to Green than it is to red and blue. But for minor changes in coloration, it works great.

CHECKED: This option, (By Strength), adds or subtracts a specific color based on the STRENGTH of that color in the image. This option allows you to use the sliders to NOT just add a color to the entire image, but INSTEAD it adds a specific color to areas of the image that already contain the specific color. Areas that do NOT contain much RED will NOT have much RED added. Areas that have a lot of RED will have more RED added. This is very useful for color correcting RAW Images from digital cameras. If you are color correcting RAW images, it's best to try RGB slider values that DO NOT GO NEGATIVE. Keep them at ZERO and above. Otherwise your highlights (burn-out areas) may change from white to some color like purple or green etc....

COLOR SHUFFLE pulldown list:
This pulldown list contains a list of color translations that you may want to do. For example: Let's say that you want all GREEN to be RED and all BLUE to be GREEN and all RED to be BLUE. Then you would select the RGB=BRG item from the list. The default value is RGB=RGB, which says that RED is red and GREEN is green and BLUE is blue. So basically NO color translation is done.

NEGATIVE IMAGE checkbox:
Check the NEGATIVE IMAGE checkbox if you want to turn your photo into a negative.

GRAY SCALE IMAGE checkbox:
Check the GRAY SCALE IMAGE checkbox if you want to turn your photo into a black & white photo.

SEPIA EFFECT checkbox:
Check the SEPIA EFFECT checkbox if you want to turn your photo into an old style photo.


TIP: Auto Adjust Contrast/Brightness button allows you to automatically adjust a photo for you. It works very well on about 90% of all photos.

TIP: Auto Adjust Color Balance button allows you to automatically color balance a photo for you. It works very well on about 90% of all photos. This removes the yellowish tint from indoor photos. It can also remove ANY tint that you select using the "Color Balance" button next to the Color Balance slider.




FULL SIZED PREVIEW (checkbox)
It's preferred that you adjust all your photos while in the small preview mode. This makes all the adjustments faster. In fact you can slide the sliders and the preview image is updated in real-time. If you MUST see the image in real size while you are moving the sliders, you can check the "Full Sized Preview (Slower)" checkbox. This of course is slower but you can see more detail in the image.

SHOW STARTING IMAGE (checkbox)
As you adjust your sliders and settings, you are always shown the image with the settings applied in your preview area. BUT let's say you wanted to COMPARE the applied image with the image BEFORE the settings are applied. This way you can see JUST HOW MUCH CHANGE you've made to the image. Just check the checkbox and you will see the image as it was BEFORE your changes. At this point you can scroll around but nothing else. Then UNCHECK it and you are back to normal again.


HINT: While you are adjusting the sliders, certain areas of the photo may become OVER EXPOSED (white). These areas are shown in the "Deterioration Color". The default is RED. You can of course change it to any color you wish. The nice thing is that you can see in real-time if you are making the photo too bright etc. In fact, you can select from 3 choices to show areas of deterioration.

NONE - No deterioration is shown in red: This makes it so that you don't see any RED (deteriorated) areas in the preview image.

Near Over Exposure: This makes it so that areas that are near over exposure or areas that are over exposed are shown in RED in the preview image. These are areas that are beyond white and below black.

Near Over Exposure & Deterioration: This shows the over exposure areas PLUS any areas that are deemed to be areas of degrading quality. For example: Let's say you have a blue flower and you increase the contrast to where some of the blue has become blue-green. Well, this is NOT over exposure, BUT it is degraded quality. Also, flesh colors can become REDISH when you apply high contrast. So this is a nice feature to be able to see.

Histogram & Gamma Curve

The histogram shown is a standard chart. It shows how much of the image is bright and how much is dark etc. The Gamma setting is also shown on the histogram graph as a Green line/curve.

Main Buttons:

ACCEPT:
This takes the current adjustments and then applies them to the photo and sends you back to the main Photo Jockey window WITHOUT SAVING the image. You MUST save the image back to disk, from the main Photo Jockey window,  if you want to keep it for future use..

CANCEL:
This quits the Color Adjustments Screen and sends you back to the main Photo Jockey window.

APPLY:
This applies the current adjustments to the image. So when the region is adjusted the way you want it, then click the Apply button.

NOTE: Please note that you can click "Apply" as many times as you need while making your adjustments. BUT you should NOT click "Apply" if you are on your LAST adjustment. In other words, DO NOT CLICK APPLY, if you are done with all of your adjustments. If you are done, you should click the "Accept" button. The reason is because when you click "Accept", it internally does the "Apply". You may say "So, what?". Well, let's say that you have a circle to make an area brighter and you click "Apply". Now that area is brighter. And you STILL have your region (circle) on the image in the upper left corner. Now you click "Accept". Since the "Accept" will do the "Apply" behind the scenes, your image will have 2 (TWO) regions that are brighter.

TIP: In order to make sure you don't have the above problem, you can do the following.... While you are in the Region Drawing mode, and you are finished, you should get rid of the region that is remaining on the image. Just click the "Draw Region" button and then click once on the image. That will remove the region.

UNDO:
This will undo the last APPLY you did. There are 100 levels of undo available (limited by free disk space). So, as you are making adjustments and you realize that you need to undo some changes you had made, just click this button.

REDO:
This will undo the last undo, so if you are undoing a bunch and then realize you went too far, you can click REDO to get back where you want to be.

REVERT:
If you decide that you have goofed up your image and want to start fresh again, click the "Revert" button. This reloads the image and you can start adjusting again.

PREVIOUS SETTINGS:
This is handy, if you had previously adjusted an image and forgot the settings you had just used. Just click this button and it automatically sets all the sliders for you to the SAME positions that they were in the last time you had clicked the ACCEPT button.

DEFAULT SETTINGS:
This button is a good starting point. It sets all the sliders to a position that is considered ORIGINAL settings. That means that NO adjustments are made to the image. Brightness is at original, Contrast is at original etc.
NOTE: If this button is yellow, then some slider adjustements have been made. If it's green, then all sliders are currently at default values.

REGION DRAWING:

Up to now, all the image adjustments have been performed on the entire image. This section describes how to perform image adjustments on just a selected portion of the image. Basically, you draw a region. It could be a square, triangle, circle or some irregular shape. Once you are done drawing the shape, then all of the image adjustments are done on just the region you had drawn.

In order to get into the region drawing mode, you need to select it from the pull down list that has these options:

Full Image Adjusting

Draw Region For Adjusting

Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting

How To Draw A Region

Start by selecting the "Draw Region For Adjusting" option. You are then put into a mode that allows you to draw any shape. The simplest way to draw is to click on the image in the image drawing window. Hold down on the mouse and move it around and you will see what you are drawing. When you let up on the mouse, your region is done drawing. If you want to draw ANOTHER region, just click on the "Draw Region" button from the Drawing Settings window. If you decide you do NOT want to draw a region, just click the "Drawing" button. Basically it's a toggle button it switches from "Draw Region" to "Drawing". If you see "Draw Region", then you are in scroll & drag mode. As you drag the mouse over the image, you will be scrolling the image. If you drag the mouse over the current region you will be dragging the region around. If you see "Drawing", then all you can do is to drag the mouse to draw a new region.

HINT: If your hands are shaky or not steady, your final region may NOT be exactly the shape you wanted. If order to modify the region's shape, you can change the "Select Drawing Mode" option to "Add To Current Region" from the Drawing Settings window. You can also select "Subtract From Current Region". After you have selected one of these two options, you can now draw more areas on the image. And depending on the Drawing Mode, you can make the region larger or smaller. Keep adjusting the region until you are happy with the region area.

NOTE: As you are drawing, you can switch from normal drawing into Line drawing by pressing ALT-V or ALT-S. ALT-V allows vertical or horizontal line drawing and ALT-S allows straight line drawing. ALT-C allows Circle drawing. ALT-F finishes the special drawing mode and switches back to normal drawing mode.

TIP: ALT-A selects ALL. This means the whole image is selected. There are 2 methods of selecting the entire image.

Select entire image (no border)

Select entire image (with border)

When using "no border", this is useful if you plan on using the CUT/PASTE features. If you use the "with border" option, it's useful if you plan on using the "Subtract From Current Region" option. Maybe to cut a hole out of the middle of the image and then apply the color changes to the outer part of the image. Then when using the "Edge Blending" slider, the edges of the image won't be affected. If you don't plan on using the "Subtract From Current Region" to cut a hole out, then method 2 is basically worthless, because it would be faster to just use the "Full Image Adjusting" mode.

Region Drawing Settings Window

Select Drawing Mode:
This controls how your region drawing works.

Draw New Region - Default: In this mode, when you are done drawing a region, you now have a new complete region.
Add To Current Region: In this mode the region you draw is ADDED to the current region that is already showing.
Subtract From Current Region: In this mode the region you draw is REMOVED from the current region already showing. This is useful to refine some edges or to create some holes in the current region.

Draw Region/Drawing:
This is a toggle that switches from DRAW REGION mode to DRAWING mode. While it says "Drawing" you can draw regions in the image. While it says "Draw Region", you can only drag the image or drag the drawn region around. If your mouse is over a region when you drag then the image won't scroll around, BUT the region WILL.

Up/Down/Left/Right/UpperLeft buttons:
These are fine tuning controls that allow you to move the current region up / down / left / right one unit, or to position it in the upper left corner of your main image.

Edge Blending Direction:
This controls the direction of the blending. The blending allows the region to soften the edges so that you don't see a visible harsh sharp edge. You can either blend in all directions (default), or you can Blend From Top, Blend From Right, Blend From Left, Blend From Bottom. A good reason to use one of the special blend directions might be if you have a photo that is taken with a flash, but the flash didn't cover enough of the subject and that the image is bright on the right side and dark on the left. You could draw a region around the subject and then select to brighten the region and select a blending of "Blend From Right". Then adjust the "Edge Blending Amount" a bunch and you will see that the subject is brightened MORE on the left than it is on the right.

Edge Blending Amount:
This controls how soft you want the edges of the region to appear to help hide the fact that you have doctored the image.

Flood Fill Region:
This allows you to fill in the region with a specified solid color. You can still use the "Edge Blending" slider to control how the edges of the region are blended with the fill color.

NOTE: If you are in Copy/Paste Drawing mode, then the flood fill color is used as the background image. So, as you increase the "Overlay Strength" sliders, you will see the flood fill color appear stronger. And again, you can use the "Edge Blending" slider as well.

Reverse Region:
This allows you to invert the region. Let's say you had drawn a little square in the middle of your image. If you select to "Reverse Region", then the region BECOMES the WHOLE image MINUS the little square in the middle. So the whole image, except the middle square gets the color adjustments performed on it.

NOTE: This option is NOT available if you are in "Draw Region For Copying, Pasting" mode.

FLASH Region Outline:
For a visual helping hand, you can have the drawn region flash so that you can locate it easy on a large photo. There may be times that you don't want to see it flash. UN-Check this option, if you don't want the region to flash.

COPY / PASTE / CLONE DRAWING:

In order to get into the cloning region drawing mode, you need to select it from the pull down list that has these options:

Full Image Adjusting

Draw Region For Adjusting

Draw Region For Copying/Pasting

Select "Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting". At this point you need to draw a region as described earlier in the section for Region Drawing. Once you have drawn your region, you can perform neat copy/paste/clone functions.

After you have drawn your region, you can DRAG the region to another spot on the photo and then click the Apply button in the main Color Adjustments window. You can then drag it some more and then click Apply again. This way you can quickly create multiple copies of something in the photo. Of course you will want to use the Edge Blending Amount slider to soften(feather) the edges around the region so that it doesn't look like a poor job.

Transparency:
These controls allow you to customize how your region is rendered. If you want part of the region to be SEE-THROUGH (transparent), then use these controls. You can check the Transparency checkbox, then select a Transparent color by clicking on the colored square next to it. What ever color you select will then become see-through (in the region) as the image is rendered on the screen.

NOTE: The two Tolerance sliders are similar to the "Color Range" sliders. If there are colors that are CLOSE to the transparent color, they will be considered transparent as well. You can control the color tolerance by using the top slider. If you want to control varying shades (brightnesses) of the selected background color to be consider transparent, then use the bottom of these 2 sliders.
TIP: You can checkmark the FADE OUT option to make it so that colors close to the transparent color will not be totally see-through, but instead partially see-through. The closer the colors are to the transparent color the more see-through the image becomes.

Overlay Strengths %:
These sliders control the visibility of the Main Image and the Overlay region. Each image (Main, Overlay) can have it's own visibility strength froim 0 to 100%. If you set both to 50% then you will see both images equally at 1/2 brightness. If you set both to 100%, then you have effectively made a DOUBLE-EXPOSURE. If you set both to 0% then you are not thinking properly, although IF USING A TRANSPARENT IMAGE, can produce a very neat black CUT-OUT type of effect.

NOTE: If you want the sliders to be LINKED so that as you move one, the other moves, you can click on the LINK BUTTON to the left of these sliders. It makes it EASY to FADE IN/OUT the overlay image. Try it, you will like it.

Resize Method PullDown:
If the percentage of enlargement is larger than 100%, the method you select here will be used to do the enlargement. The "Generic" method is that fastest and the "Reed" method is the best (typically for photos). Click here for more information about all the resize methods.

Region Copy Size %:
You can actually control the SIZE of the copied area easily. You can go from 25% up to 400%. If you want a percent larger than 100%, you can control what method is used to enlarge the image by using the "Resize Method Pulldown" option.

Refresh - ReCapture Button:
If you decide that you don't like what's in the copied region, you can move (drag) the copied region to another part of the photo, and then click the ReCapture button and the copied area will PICK-UP the new portion of the photo as the new copied area.

Copy Button:
If you are interested in copying a portion of an image into another image, then you can draw your copied region area. Then click the COPY button. This copies the region onto the clipboard that you can later paste from.

Paste Button:
After you have clicked the COPY button on a DRAWN region from one photo, you can load another photo, then click the PASTE button. Then poof, then old copied region is pasted into the new image. You also have the choice to paste in a Standard way. This pastes whatever is on the clipboard. You can copy images to the clipboard from many paint programs. You can also do it from your keyboard with the PrintScreen key or ALT-PrintScreen. You can also do it from Photo Jockey as well.

NOTE: After you paste, you can still use the other controls to control the SIZE of the region and mirror flip options too. Very handy!!!

Load Image Overlay Button:
This allows you to select an image to use as your overlay that you can drag around the screen. This is great for loading an image on top of another to produce a DOUBLE-EXPOSURE effect. The image that you load will have a rectangular region that CAN NOT BE ALTERED. IE: You can not add or subtract from the region. You can however draw a NEW region, which will of course discard the loaded image overlay.

Sharpen / Smooth Button:
After you have drawn your region area, just click on the "Sharpen / Smooth" button located after the COPY and PASTE buttons. This button takes you to the "Sharpening / Smoothing Effects" window. You can then apply the level of sharpness or smoothness that you wish. Then click the ACCEPT button in the "Sharpening / Smoothing Effects" window.

NOTE: ONLY THE REGION AREA that you had drawn will be sharpened or smoothed. It's probably a good idea to use the "Edge Blending Amount" slider so that region's edge won't be as noticable.

Mirror Button:
You can mirror the copied area in case you are cloning a head and the head is facing the wrong way :)

Flip Button:
Just like you can mirror the copied area, you can also FLIP the copied area from top to bottom.

TROUBLE SHOOTING:

Problem: When I draw a region, it looks real jagged, like it was drawn in low resolution.
Solution: When you draw your regions in a zoom mode of less than 100%, then the region WILL become more and more jagged in appearance as you lower the zoom slider. It's best to use 100% or higher, when drawing the region.
Exception: You will not have this problem if you use the CIRCLE mode or the STRAIGHT line drawing modes (ALT-C, ALT-S, ALT-V), even in low zoom modes.

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Tip # 64
(Editing) COLOR SWAP (Swaps one color for another color)

Click here to show the Color Adjusting screen.

COLOR SWAP is a term used to indicate that you are replacing ONE color for ANOTHER color in a photo. So, you could make a blue car look red instead. You could also turn a purple sweater into a tan sweater. The possiblities are endless. Let's discuss what is needed to achieve this great feat.

HOW OTHERS DO COLOR SWAPPING

First of all, the Color Swap feature can be found in some cameras. Canon for example, has a color swap feature that works "decent" for colored objects that don't vary much in it's color or the shade of the color you are wanting to replace. Once you get into objects that have bright sides and dark sides then the Color Swap feature built into the camera starts to degrade fast and then the results are mediocre to poor. In order to produce great results in varying colors AND shades, you need more sophisticated software such as Photo Jockey.


HOW PHOTO JOCKEY DOES COLOR SWAPPING

Photo Jockey performs the Color Swapping feature by using the COLOR RANGE feature in the Color Adjusting screen. The color range feature allows you to pick a color with an Eye Dropper. This color is called the color range color. For example: If you clicked on the red car, then you would see that red is the selected color range.

After you select the color range color, make sure that you chose a color that is appropriate for your desires. For example: If you clicked on the red portion of a red car that was in a dark shadow, then DON'T expect the rest of the car in the sunlight to be SWAPPED with great accuracy. Likewise don't pick the brightest red, because then the shadowy areas won't be swapped very good either. So, pick a medium shade of red. Then both the brighter areas and darker areas will be swapped very nicely.

In order to determine that you have picked an appropriate shade of red, just select with the eye-dropper the RED color you would like to use. THEN take the brightness slider and slide it ALL THE WAY TO THE LEFT. This will take the brightness of the color range color down to total black. So, if you see most or all of the car turning black, then you know you selected a good shade of red. If only a small portion of the car turns black, then you should probably re-select the color range color.

Once you have chosen a good color range color, you can then use ANY COLOR ADJUSTER SLIDER. So, with that in mind, you could use the HUE slider. This changes the color from RED to whatever color you desire.

At this point you are done doing the color swap.

NOTES:
Follow these steps to get the best Color Swapping quality:

Load your photo

Enter the Color Adjusting screen

Checkmark the "Color Range" checkbox.

Pick the Color Range color: Click on the colored square next to the color range checkbox. Then pick "Select Color On Image". Use the Eye-Dropper to select the color. You can use the scroll bars to scroll around the image if it's a large image. Click the "Stop Selecting Color" button when done.

Verify it's a proper color: Slide the BRIGHTNESS slider all the way to the left. Your selected color should go to black throughout your photo. If not enough of your chosen color goes to black, go back and pick a different shade of the color. Pick a color that transforms most/all of your selected color to black. If troubles, adjust the tolerance sliders.

Adjust tolerance sliders: If you can't seem to get most of your color range color to go to black, you may play with the "Color Sensitivity" and "Shade Sensitivity" sliders. The color tolerance slider allows more/less colors to be considered for adjustments. The shade sensitivity allows more/less shades to be considered for adjustments.

Put the BRIGHTNESS slider back to its default position, once you have a decent Color Range Color selected.

Adjust HUE slider to get the desired color swap effect.

You are done

TROUBLE-SHOOTING: It's possible that you may want to change a red car to a blue car, so you select the color red. But if there is a red stop sign in the photo, that sign will ALSO get changed to blue. THIS IS UNDESIRABLE. In order to avoid this, you can use the "Draw Region For Adjusting" mode instead of the "Full Image Adjusting" mode. Then draw around the car (making sure you do NOT include the stop sign).  The shape you draw does NOT need to be perfect, just make sure it does NOT include objects that may be affected by the color swap.



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Tip #
(Editing) MULTIPLE COLOR ADJUSTMENTS WINDOW

This window comes up when you click on the panel that shows the order in which the various adjustments get processed. This is a dark gray panel just to the left of the sliders. For more information about why you would want to change the order of processing, then click here.

This window allows you to control the order in which the various color adjustments get performed. Just drag the various adjustments around until you have the order that you want.

As you change the order around, you will see the main color adjustments window readjust the image. Depending on what order you set, you may or may not see a change or a big change. It also depends on the extremity of the sliders too.

If you decide you reordered incorrectly, you can click on the "Defaults" button.




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Tip # 63
(Editing) MULTIPLE COLOR ADJUSTMENTS

Some images may need some color adjusting of some sort. Maybe contrast or brightness, or hue or gamma, etc... If you go and make some adjustments and then attempt to make even more adjustments by re-entering the Color Adjusting window OR clicking the APPLY button in the Color Adjusting window more than once, then you have the potential for losing image quality.

The section describes how to get maximum detail and quality from your Color Adjustments. For Example: If you...

CLOUD PROBLEM EXAMPLE:

Step #1: Adjust image brighter

Step #2: Apply changes

Step #3: Adjust image darker

You will notice that any highlights (clouds are a good example) that got burned out (solid white) DO NOT COME BACK when you make the image darker in step #3. This is because at the moment in time you are darkening the image, the highlight areas are SOLID WHITE. So, if you make solid white darker, you will end up with some shade of gray. Any details that WERE in those highlight areas before step #1 obviously can NOT be gotten back.

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?
Each pixel in an image can only have a brightness value ranging from 0 to 255. 0 is black and 255 is white. If you have a bunch of CLOUDS in your pic and you add a bunch of brightness or contrast to the image, most likely the clouds will turn solid white. That means every pixel for the clouds will have a value of 255. The TRUE calculations for the clouds produce could produce values like 280, 285, 290, 270, 260, 300. So the differences in brightness between different parts of the clouds are retained during the calculations. BUT ONCE the adjustment is APPLIED, all the values over 255 are CLIPPED. So you wind up with 255, 255, 255, 255, 255, 255. Thus you see solid white for the clouds. Then when you go back and try to reduce the brightness of the pic, the cloud area values of 255, 255, 255, 255, 255, 255 could get reduced to 220,220,220,220,220,220. As you can see, all the areas of the cloud ARE darker, but you don't see any brightness difference between the various areas of the cloud. Theoretically, if the CALCULATED values from step #1 were somehow retained somewhere (280, 285, 290, 270, 260, 300), then the darkening function could have produced a darker image of (230,2235,240,220,210,250). This WOULD HAVE brought back the detail in the clouds. So, the real problem is not in how brightness or darkness or any adjustment is made, the problem is that images can only keep a value between 0 and 255 for each pixel's brightness. So, with a certain amount of trickery and lots of spare ram and extra processing time, there could be a way to get around this problem. You will find that most if not all image editors do not take the time or the memory to get around this inherent problem. In fact, I know of no editor that allows for this.

HOW TO APPLY SMARTLY:
Okay, so now you know that since an image gets clipped at the 255 top end and clipped at the 0 bottom end, each time you APPLY, you need to "think" about how you want to adjust your images to get the best quality and detail in the final adjusted image. Here are some things to consider.

Apply a particular type of adjustment only ONCE.

If you are adjusting contrast, gamma, brightness, then make sure you do them all in one adjustment. Don't spread them out over several adjustments. Otherwise, you could end up with the problem discussed above with the clouds.

Give some thought as to the ORDER in which you apply changes. For example: If you want to apply some contrast and some gamma. You MAY want the gamma to be performed BEFORE the contrast is performed. Or you may want it the other way around. Typically, you would want to keep the default order. Another example of order priority is this. Let's say you have a Yellow flower and you want to apply a lot of contrast and also do a HUE change. Well, if you do the contrast first, it will brighten the yellow flower. Then if you do the HUE, then it will change from a bright yellow flower to a bright blue flower. BUT, if you do the HUE first, then the flower turns blue. And as we all know, blue has a lower intensity to the eye. And as such, when you do the contrast to the blue flower, it's brightness is then LOWERED. See, contrast brightens the bright areas and darkens the dark areas. So, in the end, the flower would NOT look the same using the two different orders of priority. There are numerous other combinations that warrant thought as well. You can play with the "Order Of Processing" and see which way you like the best.

ORDER OF PROCESSING:
This section describes how you can change the order in which the various image adjustments take place. For example: If you think about it, if you are adding a lot of Brightness and checked the Negative Image, you can see that depending on which function is performed first, the resulting image can be very dark or very bright. See, if you add the brightness first, then the resulting image will be very DARK. Think about it.  Now that you know order can be important, you have the ability to CHANGE the order. Just click on the "Order Of Processing" panel. This panel contains all the numbers from 1 through 12 indicating what adjustment is done in what order. Once you get into the "Order Of Adjustments Processing"  window, you can make the adjustments get executed in any order.

NOTE: If you are making "minor" changes, or just small changes to brightness & contrast, then you don't need to mess with the order of processing.

HINT: There may be situations where you may not see much if any difference between various orderings you may choose. An EASY way to know which operation should be done before another is to take your two or more adjustments and more the sliders to a more EXTREME position. Some position that is not close to the default position. Then any variations in the resulting images can now be easily spotted. You will/should then know which order you like best.

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Tip # 72
(Editing) CREATING A DOUBLE EXPOSURE PHOTO

Creating Double Exposure Photos

In the past with real film cameras you could create a double exposure photo by taking one photo, and then NOT advancing the film and then take another exposure. Then the final picture would look like 2 photos overlaid on top of each other. And depending on your techniques, you could get some pretty cool effects. The simple form of this might be to take a photo of someone looking down towards a black book. Then take another shot of someone looking up with a dark background. A true double-exposure would have the final image looking like a face lookup up from a book to the main subject person.

With the age of digital cameras, you can do double exposures with more control and better results. The following describes the basic steps required to create a double exposure photo.

Here's the basic concepts of what you would do:

Select a photo

Draw around the portion of the image you want to overlay on top of another image

Copy that portion to the clipboard

Load the second photo

Paste from the clipboard, the region you had copied

Position the region exactly where you want it

Adjust the overlay strength from 0% to 100%. 50% would give equal balance between pasted region and the underlying photo

Use the edge blending slider to control how sharp the edge of the pasted region should appear

You are done and now you can save your double exposure photo.

You can do the double-exposure effect in two different functions in Photo Jockey. You can do it from the Color Adjusting window. OR you can do it from the Text Box / Image Overlay window.

Here's how you achieve the above concepts with non rectangular shapes using Photo Jockey:

Load photo: From the main Photo Jockey window, click on an image to load and view it.

Click on the SUN button: This is located on the "Quick Tools" panel. This is for color adjusting.

Select the "Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting": There is a pulldown list located to the left of the "Full Sized Preview" checkbox.

Draw around the portion of the image you want to use in the double exposure: Draw an area with the mouse. Or you can press ALT-A to select the entire region when the Color Adjusting window is active.

Copy region to clipboard: Click the scissors button on the Copy / Paste Region Settings panel.

Exit the color adjusting window: Discard/Ignore any changes to the image

Load another photo:

Click on the SUN button: This is located on the "Quick Tools" panel. This is for color adjusting.

Select the "Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting": There is a pulldown list located to the left of the "Full Sized Preview" checkbox.

Draw a tiny spot where you want to paste the first image:

Paste region from clipboard: Click the paste from clipboard button on the Copy / Paste Region Settings panel.

Drag the region around: Drag pasted image around until it's exactly where you want it.

Adjust the "Region Copy Size" slider: Adjust until the pasted region is the correct size

Adjust the "Overlay Strength" sliders: Adjust main slider to 100% and then adjust overlay slider to 100% as well.

Adjust the "Edge Blending Amount" slider: Adjust until the edges of the pasted region are smoothed to your satisfaction

Click the "Accept" button: Then choose "Apply Region To Image"

Now Save your double exposure image: Click the "File" main menu. Then choose "Save File As..."

If you want further help on Color Adjusting, click here.

Here's how you achieve the above concepts with rectangular shapes using Photo Jockey: WITH OVERLAY color adjustments:

Load photo:

Click on the SUN button: This is located on the "Quick Tools" panel. This is for color adjusting.

Select the "Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting": There is a pulldown list located to the left of the "Full Sized Preview" checkbox.

Draw a tiny spot where you want to paste the double exposure image:

Click Load Image Overlay button: Click the load button and choose an image to use as the overlaid double exposure image.

Drag the region around: Drag pasted image around until it's exactly where you want it.

Adjust the "Region Copy Size" slider: Adjust until the pasted region is the correct size

Adjust the "Overlay Strength" sliders: Adjust main slider to 100% and then adjust overlay slider to 100% as well.

Adjust the "Edge Blending Amount" slider: Adjust until the edges of the pasted region are smoothed to your satisfaction

Adjust some sliders for brightness or contrast ect... If you need, you can adjust the overlay to your satisfaction

Click the "Accept" button: Then choose "Apply Region To Image"

Now Save your double exposure image: Click the "File" main menu. Then choose "Save File As..."

If you want further help on Color Adjusting, click here.

Here's how you achieve the above concepts with rectangular shapes using Photo Jockey with NO OVERLAY color adjustments:

Load photo: From the main Photo Jockey window, click on an image to load and view it.

Click on the T/I Button: This is located on the "Quick Tools" panel. This is for text or image overlays. You can also choose "Image Overlays" from the "Edit" main menu.

Click "Image Overlay & Double Exposure": This allows you to overlay images instead of text boxes.

Click "Browse Image Overlay": This allows you to choose a photo to overlay onto the current photo.

Drag Resizing Handles: The image overlay is shown with cropping handles. Just drag them around to get the image overlay to have the appropriate size and position.

Adjust the "Strength" sliders: Adjust main slider to 100% and then adjust overlay slider to 100% as well.

Use Feathering Options: This allows you to feather the edges if you need it. Typically you would NOT feather the edges for true double-exposures.

Click "Accept" button: This exits the Overlay screen.

Now Save your double exposure image: Click the "File" main menu. Then choose "Save File As..."

If you want further help on Image Overlays, click here.



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Tip # 71
(Editing) CREATING A 3-D APPEARANCE FOR PHOTOS

Smoothing Portions Of An Image

In photos there is what's called "Depth Of Field". This sounds complicated, but basically it just describes how much of the photo is in focus. If most of it is in focus, then it has a LARGE depth of field. If only a small part is in focus, then it has a SMALL depth of field.

If you take a photo of a flower on the ground and have a large depth of field then all the grass below the flower will also be in focus. This can detract from the flower itself. In order to produce a more 3-D appearance, you can manually create a SMALLER depth of field. You can do this by blurring everything but the flower. This makes it appear that the only thing in focus was the flower and produces a much more pleasing appearance.

HOW TO CREATE SMALLER DEPTH OF FIELD:
Now that you understand depth of field and how it can affect focus and 3-D appearance, we will show you how to make the depth of field smaller with Photo Jockey. We will give you step by step processes to achieve the desired results.

Load photo: From the main Photo Jockey window, click on an image to load and view it.

Click on the SUN button: This is located on the "Quick Tools" panel. This is for color adjusting.

Select the "Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting": There is a pulldown list located to the left of the "Full Sized Preview" checkbox.

Select the entire photo as your region: You can press ALT-A to select the entire region when the Color Adjusting window is active.

Select the "Subtract From Current Region" method: Select the Drawing Mode from the Drawing Settings window.

Draw around what you want to remain in focus: This drawn region will be Subtracted from the complete region. That way if you had drawn around a flower, then the flower is essentially REMOVED from the active region.

Select the "Add To Current Region" method: Select the Drawing Mode from the Drawing Settings window.

Draw around what you want to be OUT of focus: This drawn region will be added to the current region. That way if you had drawn around a bug, then the bug is essentially ADDED to the active region.

Repeat above 2 steps: Keep repeating the above steps to subtract/add all objects you want to remain focused or be out of focus.

Click on the Sharpen / Smooth button: There is a Sharpen/Smooth button located on the "Copy / Paste Region Settings" window. This takes you to the sharpen/smoothing effects window. Keep in mind that even though you may see the entire image in the sharpening / smoothing window, only the active region will be sharpened / smoothed.

Check the "Smoothing" checkbox: This is located at the TOP of the "Sharpening / Smoothing Effects" window.

Check the "Equal Smoothing" checkbox: This is located next to the "Smoothing" checkbox.

Slide both sliders all the way to the right. This provides maximum smoothing effect.

Click Accept: This accepts your settings and returns to the Color Adjusting window.

Slide "Edge Blending Amount" slider a little to the right a few notches to produce a natural appearance. This way, you won't see a harsh edge in the photo where the smoothed objects are next to the non-smoothed objects.

Click Apply: This is located on the "Region Drawing Settings" window. This applies your changes to the image. And allows you to continue to make additional changes.

Click Accept: This is locacted on the main Color Adjusting window next to the HELP and CANCEL buttons. This takes the current state of the image in the Color Adjusting window and returns that image back to the main Photo Jockey window.

Save your adjusted photo: Click on the FLOPPY disk button to save your new photo.

NOTE: When you draw around the object you want to remain sharp, you shouldn't draw perfectly on the edge of the object, you should draw a little bit on the INSIDE of the object. That way when you do the edge blending the non-sharp area next the the sharp object won't appear sharp. Play and you will see.

TIP: When you press ALT-A to select the entire image, it will ask if you want a border. Choose the border method.

If you want further help on Sharpening / Smoothing, click here.
If you want further help on Color Adjusting, click here.



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Tip # 76
(Editing) COPY / PASTE FROM ONE IMAGE TO ANOTHER

The section describes how to take a portion from one photo and to PASTE it into another photo. You can either paste a region of an image, OR you can paste an ENTIRE imge. Below is a step by step process that shows you how to do this:

COPYING ENTIRE IMAGE:

Load photo: From the main Photo Jockey window, click on an image to load and view it. This is the image you want to COPY from.

Click on the EDIT menu from the main menu, and then choose "Copy Image To Clipboard".

COPYING A REGION OF AN IMAGE:

Load photo: From the main Photo Jockey window, click on an image to load and view it. This is the image you want to COPY from.

Click on the SUN button: Just click on the EDIT menu from the main menu, and then pick "Adjust Colors". Or you can  click on Sun button on the "Quick Tools" panel.

Select the "Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting": There is a pulldown list located to the left of the "Full Sized Preview" checkbox.

Draw the selected portion to COPY: You can draw around the area (region) of the photo that you want to paste into another photo.

Click on the "Copy" button: This button is located on the "Copy / Paste Region Settings" window. It looks like scissors. This copies the region onto the clipboard so that you can later paste it from the clipboard.

Click Cancel: The is located on the main Color Adjusting window next to the HELP and ACCEPT buttons. This brings you back to the main Photo Jockey window

PASTING WHAT YOU COPIED:
.

Load Another Photo: Load the photo you want to PASTE into.

Click on the SUN button:

Select the "Draw Region For Cloning, Pasting":

Draw a tiny circle where you want to PASTE: Draw a small circle where you want to paste the copied portion of the first photo.

Click on the "Paste" button: This button is located on the "Copy / Paste Region Settings" window. It looks like a clipboard and is located next to the scissors button. This allows you to either paste a region you had previously copied (non-standard), or to paste an entire image from the clipboard (Standard). This pasted image goes into your working image into the spot you had drawn in the previous step.

OPTIONS AFTER PASTING:
After you have pasted into your second photo, you can perform many functions to get your desired results.

You can Mirror or Flip the pasted area to get the proper alignment.

You can also use the "Overlay Strength" sliders to control how strong(visible) the pasted region should become.

You can also use the "Region Copy Size" slider to control how large the pasted area should be. So, if your pasted head was too small, just change it's size. You can go from 25% to 400% of the original pasted size.

You can also use the "Edge Blending Amount" slider to smooth the pasted region's edges into the main image.

If you want further help on Color Adjusting, click here.
If you want further help on Copy / Paste, click here.



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Tip # 67
(Editing) ROTATE / FLIP / MIRROR

It's not uncommon to want to rotate your images to the right or left etc. Sometimes you may want to FLIP the image from top to bottom. And also you may want to MIRROR the image from left to right.

These are simple rotation examples. In fact you can do these using the tools menu and then selecting the "Rotate / Flip / Mirror Image" menu option. This allows you to do these simple operations. You can also bring up the "Quick Tools" panel and click on the rotation buttons there too.

HINT: If you have the "Rotation Memory" checkbox checked in the "Program Options" window, then the Rotate Left and Rotate Right operations are remembered as long as you are in the program. If you select to Rotate LEFT or Rotate RIGHT, then you do NOT need to save the image. Photo Jockey keeps a memory of the fact that you rotated the image. So as you bounce around looking at different images, when you go back to an image that you had rotated, it will STILL appear rotated. This memory is kept UNTIL you exit Photo Jockey. When you re-load Photo Jockey, it will NOT show the images as rotated.

TIP: You may want to SAVE your changes. If you do, then open the "Quick Tools" panel and click on the Save (floppy disk) button so that when you load the image at a later date, it will look the way you want it.

NOTE: If you need to do more complex rotations to rotate to a particular angle, click here.



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Tip # 68
(Editing) ROTATION ADJUSTING

Click here to show the Rotation Angle Screen.

It's not uncommon to want to rotate your images to the right or left etc. These are simple rotation examples. In fact you can do these using the "Quick Tools" panel then clicking the appropriate rotate/flip/mirror button. This allows you to do the simple rotations quickly or to FLIP or MIRROR the current image.

BUT, if you need to do more complex rotations you can click on the rotation button on the "Quick Tools" panel. The button looks like a spiral green arrow. This brings up the general-purpose rotation screen. From here you can either DRAG the image to rotate it, OR you can slide the slider to a particular angle of rotation.

If you want to Rotate a bunch of photos all at once, you can do so with the Batch Feature.

HINT: If you are trying to line up a horizon or building, there is a special checkbox called "Show Grid". This puts up a grid on the screen so that you can make sure that the image is rotated to the exact angle that you need.

TIP: If you want a different background color other than black, then click the "Background Color" colored panel. This allows you to choose any color as the background color.

If you have a series of images that need the same angle, you can click the "Previous Settings" button to set the slider to the SAME position as it was set to on the last rotation that you did.

When you are done, click ACCEPT and then save the image by clicking on the save button in the "Quick Tools" panel.



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Tip # 108
(fun stufff) WALLPAPER CREATION

Click here to show the WallPaper Creation Screen.

It's not uncommon to want a photo that you are looking at to be your background WallPaper image. Sure, you can save the photo in the proper graphic format and then move it to the proper Windows' folder and then go into your video properties and then set some settings. BUT it's so much easier doing it in Photo Jockey.

Just bring up the tools menu or the File menu from the main menu and then select the "Use Current Photo As Windows WallPaper" menu item.

You will see a screen with the following options:

WALL PAPER STYLE:
This control allows you to select how you want the photo to appear on your screen. You will see in the preview just how it would look if you were to click the OK button.

RESIZE TO FIT:
This will take real large photos and SHRINK to fit the screen size, OR it will take real small photos and ENLARGE to fit the screen size.

KEEP ASPECT:
As you resize the photo to fit the screen, you can keep the aspect ratio which will keep the photo looking normal. If you DON'T keep aspect ratio, then you run the risk of the photo ending up looking too FAT or too THIN.

DIGITAL ZOOM:
If you have a real tiny photo, then digital zoom will enlarge it with smoothing so that it still looks pretty good instead of real blocky and jagged.

256 COLOR (OLDER SYSTEMS):
If you have your video system set to 256 colors, then you will probably WANT the photo converted to 256 colors. Then the photo will look great on your screen. Otherwise it will look ugly, like a paint-by-number painting.

HELP:
This brings up this help topic.

OK:
This will apply your changes to the operating system and your desktop screen will show the new settings.

CANCEL:
This will cancel out and make NO changes to your screen.





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Tip # 69
(Editing) SHARPENING / SMOOTHING ADJUSTING

Click here to show the Sharpening / Smoothing Effects Screen.

If you want to take an image and enhance it's sharpness or to smooth out grainyness, you can do so by clicking on the button that looks like 2 horizontal lines (one being more sharp than the other). This button is located on the "Quick Tools" panel.

If you want to Sharpen or Smooth a bunch of photos all at once, you can do so with the Batch Feature.

Once you are in the Sharpening / Smoothing Effects screen, there are many controls you can use to sharpen or smooth the image. Before we discuss these controls, you need to understand how sharpening works.

WHAT IS SHARPENING:
Sharpening is the process of taking contrasting parts of the image and making them MORE contrasting. So for example: Let's say you had a light gray pole next to a pretty dark background. Then as you increase the sharpening you will notice that the edge where the gray meets the dark background becomes more contrasted. The gray becomes whiter and the dark background becomes blacker. So basically it accentuates the edges and thus it appears more crisp and sharp. Same thing with freckles etc.

HOW TO SHARPEN:
There are 3 sliders to control the sharpening:

The 1st slider indicates how much sharpening to apply. As you slide more to the right the more noticable the image becomes sharpened. Typically the 3rd notch from the left is the best setting (not too sharp, not too blurry).

The 2nd slider controls the amount of CONTRAST that you will see along the edges.

The 3rd slider is a little more interesting. This controls WHAT AREAS are considered for sharpening. As you slide the slider to the right, more and more of the image is sharpened. As you slide it to the left, less and less is considered for sharpening. In order to determine the area for sharpening, the image is searched for areas that have sharp changes in color. So, if you move the slider all the way to the left, then only the areas with dramatic color changes will become sharpened. For example: If your image was a face on a green background, then only the EDGE around the face would be sharpened, because the inside area of the face doesn't have any dramatic color changes. Everything is pretty much the same flesh tone color.

WHAT IS SMOOTHING:
Smoothing is the process of taking an image and blurring it so that it looks out of focus. It's the opposite of sharpening. Photo Jockey has SMART smoothing. This means that pixels in an image that are near the same color as the pixels NEXT to it are SMOOTHED with those adjactent pixels. IE: Someones skin will become more blended and smoother looking. Also, pixels that are much different in color than the pixels next to it are NOT SMOOTHED at all. This means that the edges of freckles are not blurred. So the resulting image is a face looking more smooth, yet detail still kept sharp. Of course there is a checkbox to not use the SMART method.

HOW TO SMOOTH:
There are 3 sliders to control the smoothing:

The 1st slider indicates how much smoothing to apply. As you slide more to the right the more noticable the image becomes smoothed. Typically most of the way to the right is the best setting.

The 2nd slider controls the amount of SMOOTHING that you will see.

The 3rd slider is a little more interesting. This controls WHAT AREAS are considered for smoothing. This is called SMART smoothing. As you slide the slider to the right, more and more of the image is smoothed. As you slide it to the left, less and less is considered for smoothing. In order to determine the area for smoothing, the image is searched for areas that have sharp changes in color. So, if you move the slider all the way to the left, then only the areas with little color changes will become smoothed. For example: If your image was a face with freckles, then only the normal skin would be smoothed (freckles remain sharp). If you slide all the way to the right, then practically everything is smoothed and not much SMART action taken. In fact it would be similar to checking the "Equal Smoothing" option.

Equal Smoothing. This checkbox allows you to bypass the SMART smoothing logic and to just do smoothing equally across the entire image.

WHAT IS THE PREVIEW WINDOW FOR:
As you sharpen or smooth the image, you can move the crop window around the image. The crop window is located inside the image on the right side of the window. As you MOVE the crop window, it shows that section of the image in the smaller Preview Area beneath the sliders. While your mouse is DOWN on the crop window, the Preview window will NOT show any sharpening. When you lift UP on the mouse, then you see the sharpening occur. This is handy to see just how much sharpening or smoothing is going on. You may need to slide the ZOOM control to 200% or MORE to see the effects of the sharpening.

TROUBLE SHOOTING:
The most common problem is that you move the top 2 sliders to the right and you see NO SHARPENING or SMOOTHING in your image. Having the 3rd slider NOT all the way to the right can cause this. This causes less area to become sharpened.

ONCE YOU ARE DONE:
If you have a series of images that need the same sharpening, you can click the "Previous Settings" button to set the sliders to the SAME positions as they were set to on the last sharpening/smoothing that you did.

When you are done, click ACCEPT and then save the image by clicking on the floppy disk button. Otherwise, click the CANCEL button to NOT make any sharpening changes.


TIP:
You can check and uncheck the "Turn Adjustments Off" option so that you can qucikly see how your sliders are affecting the image.

HINT:
You can create a 3-D appearance in your photos with the smoothing. Imagine a flower with a grassy background where everything is sharp. You can give a more 3-D appearance by drawing a region around everything but the flower, THEN blur the region using Equal Smoothing. This produces a very nice 3-D effect. For more details about 3-D effect, click here.



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Tip # 73
(Editing) RESIZING ADJUSTING (Enlarging/Shrinking)

Click here to show the Resizing Screen.

If you want to resize an image, you can do so by clicking on the button that looks like a magnifying glass on the "Quick Tools" panel.

Let's say you want to make an image smaller or larger, then this is the function you need. There are many features such as Digital Zoom and smoothing when shrinking.

If you want to Resize a bunch of photos all at once, you can do so with the Batch Feature.

RESIZING / ZOOMING OPTIONS:

GENERAL:
New Width: This is the new width of the image in pixels.
New Height: This is the new height of the image in pixels.
Zoom Factor %: This allows easier resizing if you know what percentage size bigger or smaller you want. 100% is actual size (no change). And 200% is twice as big. And 50% is half width and half height.

SHRINKING OPTIONS:
Smoothing Options:

No Smoothing: Creates a jagged appearance on shrunken photos. Typically this is not a good choice except for bar charts.
Mild Smoothing: Creates a smoother appearance on shrunken photos. Typically this is a good choice for line-art and bar charts. This is NOT so good for photos.
Full Smoothing:: Creates a smoothed appearance for shrunken photos. Typically this is great for photos and line-art etc. Full smoothing takes a little longer to process.

ENLARGING OPTIONS:

Method: There are several methods available. The "REED" method is the best for enlarging by a large amount and you want the best smoothing and sharpness for photos. Use "GENERIC" if you want the typical blocky mode of enlarging. For more information about all the various resizing options, click here.

KEEP ASPECT RATIO:  This ensures that as you change the Width then the Height is auto adjusted to keep the image the same shape. Also, as you change the Height, the Width is auto adjusted.

USE SCREEN SIZE: This automatically makes the image fit as large as possible based on your current screen size.

ONLY ADJUST DIMENSIONS: This allows the image to change it's dimensions, BUT the original image is not RESIZED TO FIT the new dimensions. So, if you were enlarging the image you would see a white border where it was enlarged. And if you were shrinking the image, you would see that the image is being cropped to fit the new smaller dimensions.

BATCH MODE:
If you are in batch mode, then the following additional options are available:

ADJUSTMENT TO USE:
Use Dimensions: This allows you to resize a series of images based on a hard coded size (number of pixels). This way all your photos can be resized to become the same size based on the DIMENSION value.
Use Zoom Factor: This allows you to resize a series of images based on a PERCENTAGE of the original size. This way you can make all your batch photos twice as large, or quarter sized etc.

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Tip # 70
(Editing) 3D Perspective / Shear / Fish-Eye / Special Effects Transformations

Click here to show the 3D Perspective / Shear / Fish-Eye / Special Effects Transformations Screen.

If you want to give the appearance that you are looking at the image rotated in 3D space, you can do so by clicking on the "3D" menu item that is found in the "EDIT" menu. This function also allows you to SHEAR/TILT an image to the left/right. Also, let's say you have taken a photo of a building and when you look at the photo you've taken, you notice that the top of the building is much smaller than the base of the building. This gives the appearance that you were close to the building when you took it. This tool allows you to CORRENT PERSPECTIVE problems. You can also add/correct fish-eye effects. There's also a bunch of cool special effects too like twist and emboss.

If you want to adjust the perspective/shear to a bunch of photos all at once, you can do so with the Batch Feature.

You can take any image and make it shrink as you pan to the right/left/up/down to give it a 3D perspective look. Once you have given a perspective amount, you can slide the smaller side to adjust the angle of view. You can also use the other slider to adjust the amount of image compression/expansion.

3D PERSPECTIVE

You can use the perspective function to add perspective to existing images, OR you can use it to CORRECT perspective problems in existing images. For example: If you have a photo in which the top of the building is very small compared to the bottom of the building, you could fix it by using the Up/Down perspective slider to make the top part of the image LARGER than the bottom part. If you slide it to the right spot, you will notice that your image now has a building that looks the same width from top to bottom. There is a grid you can use to make sure you line things up properly too.

Perspective Direction:
Up/Down
This allows you to control the vertical perspective amounts.

Left/Right
This allows you to control the horizontal perspective amounts.


Perspective Adjustments
Horizontal Slide
This allows you to control the angle of view. Play with it, it's pretty neat.

Vertical Squeeze
This allows you to control the amount of SQUEEZE or EXPANSION in the image.

Reset To Center
This allows you to reset the bottom 2 sliders to the center position. This is the default position.


SHEAR

This allows you to shear an image. It's sort of like tilting or scewing.

Shear Amount Horizontal
This shears in a horizontal direction

Shear Amount Vertical
This shears in a vertical direction

Smooth Diagonals
If you are shearnig photos, then you will want to smooth diagonals (stair-steps). If you have line-art or bar charts, you many want to UN-check this option.


FISH-EYE / PIN-CUSHION

This allows you add Fish-Eye effect or to remove Fish-Eye effect in photos. Fish-Eye effect is where the closer you get to the center the larger objects appear in the photo. Now you no longer need expensive lenses to produce this effect.

Remove Fish-Eye (Pin-Cushion)
This allows you to control if you are ADDING or REMOVING Fish-Eye from the photo. Pin cushion is a popular term used by photographers to indicate an effect that is the opposite of fish-eye.

Auto-Crop
This attempts to produce a final image that has the least amount of wasted space.

Amount Of Fish-Eye or Pin Cushion
Just slide the slider to the right if you want very little effect added to the image. Slide more to the left to add a lot of effect. You can use the slider handles to fine tune and adjust in smaller increments.

Zoom Control
Normally as you adjust the other sliders, the zoom amount is automatically calculated. If you want a different zoom amount, just manually slide this slider.

Vertical Slide
You can roll the image up/down through the center of the fish-eye. It's pretty cool, if you don't want the fish-eye to come from the CENTER of the image.

Horizontal Slide
You can roll the image left/right through the center of the fish-eye. It's pretty cool, if you don't want the fish-eye to come from the CENTER of the image.

Reset To Center
This allows you to reset the right 2 sliders to the center position. This is the default position.



SPECIAL EFFECTS

This allows you create many special effects with your images. Below is a list of all the special effects that you can use.

Twist

Ripple Random

Ripple Tooth

Ripple Triangle

Emboss

Shadow Down Left

Shadow Down Right

Shadow Up Left

Shadow Up Right

Each of the special effects is pretty simple and intuitive to use.

Amount Of Special Effect To Use:
This allows you to control the amount of effect that you are adding to the image.

TWIST OPTIONS:
Twist Left/Right Adjust
This allows you to position the image so the center of the twirl is where you want it.

Twist Up/Down Adjust
This allows you to position the image so the center of the twirl is where you want it.



EMBOSS OPTIONS:
Emboss in Gray Scale:
This allows you to control if the embossed image is pure gray scale or has some color in it.

Emboss Left/Right Adjust
This allows you to control where the light source appears to be coming from for the shadow effect.

Emboss Up/Down Adjust
This allows you to control where the light source appears to be coming from for the shadow effect.



OPTIONS AT BOTTOM:

Show Grid
This allows you to overlay a grid so that you can better align how far to shear or perspective adjust. So, if you wanted to make sure a tree was vertical, then as you play with the sliders, you can see just how vertical the tree is by using the grid. When you have selected the SHOW GRID option, you will see 4 additional buttons that allow you to control the placement of the grid for better alignment.

Allow Enlarging
When you apply the 3D or SHEAR or FISH-EYE adjustments to an image, the image is allowed to grow in size (dimension/resolution) to accomodate the settings. If you want to FORCE the adjusted image to not enlarge at all, then UN-check this checkbox.

Background Color
This allows you to select a color other than BLACK for the background color. This background color is useful when you use Perspective or Shear options which may change the image from a standard rectangular image to an image more like a polygon.

Help
This displays the help you are currently reading.

Apply
This applies the settings to your image and exits.

Cancel
This allows you to exit without making changes to your image.

Previous Settings
If you want to perform the SAME settings that you had last used, you can click this button and it will reset the sliders to that LAST accepted settings.



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Tip # 74
(Editing) TEXT BOX & IMAGE OVERLAYING

Click here to show the Text & Image Overlays Screen.

If you want to add text overlays or image overlays to an image, you can do so by clicking on the button that looks like a "T/I" on the "Quick Tools" panel. This function also makes it very EASY to create and edit business cards..

Let's say you want to add a bunch of text to a photo along with your company logo. Let's say you want to take two photos and do the old fashioned DOUBLE-EXPOSURE effect. This is where you can do that sort of thing. The Text Boxes function has many features to create cool effects, such as Shadowing, Outlining and creating vertical text as well. You can also select an image that is your company logo and place it onto your photo.

If you want to add a bunch of Text overlays and Image overlays to a bunch of photos all at once, you can do so with the Batch Feature.

HINT: You can take the text/image overlays that you add to photo #1 and then go into photo #2 and recall the same overlays. This allows for QUICK addition of the SAME TEXT and SAME LOGOS/IMAGES to multiple images. When photo #2 is loaded, just click on the "Previous Settings" button.

HINT: Also, any text comments or Database fields that you may have for your images can be integrated into the Text Boxes Overlays too. Basically the integrated text can be placed onto your image just like any other text you would type. When used in BATCH mode, you can essentially put individualized captions on lots of images in ONE operation.

General information:
This feature allows you to add as many text boxes and image overlays as you want to any image. You can control the number of overlays by using the "Add Overlay" and "Delete Overlay" buttons. Each Overlay Tab has certain properties that determine how the text will appear. If you change your mind, you can "Cancel".

This window is divided into 3 main areas.

Small Preview: This has the same functionality as the Actual Size preview

Actual Size Preview: This has the same functionality as the Small preview

Overlay Tabs: This is where you set the text box settings.

Selecting, Positioning And Resizing The Overlay Boxes

The preview areas are used to Position the overlay boxes and to resize the overlay boxes. Just click on the text you want to edit in the preview and the appropriate tab will be selected. You can then DRAG the selected box around on the image. You can also stretch and shrink the box by dragging the EDGES of the selected box.
HINT: There is a "Cropping Aspect Ratio" checkbox that allows you to KEEP the aspect ratio of the original photo's aspect. That makes resizing the image easier.

NOTE: If you have several text boxes and some are covering up the text box you want to select, you can select it by clicking on the TABS at the top of the window showing all the text boxes tabs.

The Overlay Tabs are used to set all the options for the text box or image overlay. You can control 3-D shadowing, and outlining and the direction of the text etc.

STYLES: To see how to use saved styles to your advantage, click here.

OVERLAY TAB:
The overlay tab starts off with ONE tab. You can add many tabs by clicking on the "Add Overlay" button. This takes the current text settings (or  image settings) and creates a NEW overlay tab based on it. If you want to get rid of an overlay tab, just click on the "Delete Overlay". If you have MANY OVERLAY Tabs and you want to see exactly how all the text additions and logo images will appear, click on the "Re-Build All Overlays" button. This is especially useful if you have a lot of overlapping text boxes and image overlays want to see which ones appear on top of each other.

Overlay Settings:

Image Overlay / Double-Exposure:
Each overlay tab has the option of being a TEXT overlay or an Image overlay. If you want a LOGO image overlay, then check the "Image Overlay / Double-Exposure" checkbox. This allows you to select from many IMAGE option settings. If you do NOT check the "Image Overlay / Double-Exposure" checkbox, then the options shown on the tab are for TEXT box overlaying.

TEXT OVERLAYING SETTINGS

Text Memo Area: This is a text box that allows you to type as much text as you like. This is a multi-line text area that can contain line-breaks (carriage returns) for blank lines in the output.
NOTE: As you type text into the text overlay box, there is about a 1 second delay before you will see the result in the preview windows.

NOTE: You can integrate any text comments or database fields you have so that they appear in the text memo area. Simply use the following codes in your text:

This inserts the text that was assigned as a "Text Comment".

This inserts the text that was assigned to the database "CATEGORY" field using the "Database Editor".

This inserts the text that was assigned to the database "KEYWORDS" field using the "Database Editor".

This inserts the text that was assigned to the database "NOTES" field using the "Database Editor".

EXAMPLE: If you typed the following into the memo area...

This picture is of type

It's possible that the actual text added to the image could be...

This picture is An example Moon photo of type Astronomy

Font Selection: This is the "F" button. It's a standard font selection window that allows you to pick any font and font color and size etc.

Foreground Color: This allows you to change the font's foreground color.

Background Color: This allows you to change the font's background color.

Smoothing: This allows most fonts larger than 12 points to be smoothed in appearance so that it looks better.

Outline Text: This allows you to outline the text with a different color for a cool looking effect.

Outline Color: This allows you to pick the outline color.

Transparent Background: This allows you to make the background transparent so that all you see is the text overlaid on top of the image.

Strength Sliders: These sliders control the visibility of the Main Image and the Overlay region. The Main Slider IS LOCKED to the Overlay slider. This means if you move the Main slider to the left, then the main image underneath the overlay will show at 0% strength and the Overlay will show at 100% strength. And if you move the main slider to the right, then the main image will show at 100% strength and the overlay at 0% strength.
NOTE: If you want the sliders to be UNLOCKED, so that as you move one slider, the other doesn't move, you can click on the LINK BUTTON to the left of these sliders. It makes it EASY to do the double exposure effect which is both sliders set to 100%..

Feathering Mode: This allows you to select if you what type of feathering you may want. Feathering blends the image with the original underlying image.

Feathering Amount: This allows you to control how much feathering will take place. The more you move the slider to the right, the more feathering will occur.

Quick Alignment: This allows you to quickly align a text box on any of the 4 sides of an image. (Left, Top, Right, Bottom). It not only positions the text box, but also SIZES the text box so that it's a fixed text height that fits about a 36pt size just snug.
NOTE: When alignment other than "No Special Alignment" is selected, you can NOT MOVE the overlay around.

Justification: This allows you to do the standard text justification (Left, Center, Right). The text is justified inside the text box.

Text Direction: This allows you to have horizontal text or vertical text (Up, Down) For vertical text, you need to have the text box TALLER than it is wide.

Left Margin: This determines how much of a left margin you want for the text.

Right Margin: This determines how much of a right margin you want for the text.

3-D Shadow Effects: This controls if you have shadowing effects turned on or off.

Depth: This controls how deep the shadow appears.

Shadow Color: This specifies the shadow's color.

Shadow Direction: This specifies the shadow's direction.

Text Box Overflow: Sometimes it's nice to know, if the text you are placing inside a text box, fits completely. The most useful situations are when you have many lines of text and you are sizing the box and you THINK you have enough height to contain all the lines but instead you are too short and miss the last few lines and don't even realize it. By having a visual indicator, you can know immediately that your height is too short. Also, let's say you are in batch mode and you have various photos of various sizes and it turns out that although some of the output images contain the text boxes perfectly, but that some of them may have text boxes that show incomplete text because the text box was not large enough. This visual indicator will let you know that not all of the text was put into the text box. There are 3 options:

Ignore text overflow:  Don't check for text boxes overflowing

Check that text fits inisde box: Make sure that the complete text fits entirely inside the text box

Check that text fits inside box (ignoring descenders): Same as above, except that any lower case descenders are not checked to see if they fit. That way if you know everything is in uppercase, you can have a text box that is SLIGHTLY shorter than if you had picked the option above.
NOTE: The visual indicator is a RED BAR shown on the edge of the box that ended up clipping off part of the text.

IMAGE OVERLAYING SETTINGS

Browse Image Overlay: This allows you to select the image you want to overlay onto your main image. Typically this will be some sort of company logo that you mght want to place in a corner of a photo. After you select an image the filename of your image will appear under this button.

Set Image Crop Box 100%: After you select an image, you can resize it and move it around the photo just like you would with a text box overlay. If you've resized it and want it back to it's original size, then click this button. You will see the overlay box snap back to the original image size.
NOTE: IF the image is so LARGE that it won't fit onto the main image, then the image can NOT be resized to 100%, but it will be resized as large as possible.
HINT: As you drag and resize the image overlay you will see the percentage width and percentage height appear below this button. This is so that you can tell if you've resized the image to be twice as big (200%) etc...

Enable Transparency Features: If UN-checked, the image that you loaded will be exactly what appears overlaid onto the main image. If checked, then you can do the following:

Change the background color

Make the background color transparent

If CHECKED, then you are indicating that the image was designed with transparency in mind. A transparent image is one that has some design on it and then a background of a SOLID color. This solid background color is called the BACKGROUND COLOR. In order for Photo Jockey to know WHICH color is the background color, Photo Jockey AUTOMATICALLY selects the color in the LOWER-LEFT corner of the image. Whatever color happens to be there is automatically the background color.

New Background Color: If you want to select a different background color you can click on this colored button. Then when the image is overlaid onto the main image, the background color from the source image is converted to this new background color that you selected. That way, if your image had a BLUE background and you don't like blue and don't want to edit the image, then just click this button and you can change the BLUE to some other color of your choice WITHOUT having to edit the image.

Tolerance: Let's say you took a photo of someone standing in front of a GREEN wall. And let's say that you wanted the green wall to become transparent. Well, the grreen in the image most likely will NOT be a solid even color. So, there is NO single color to represent your background color. With the TOLERANCE slider, you can slide it more to the right and it will accept more variations of the green in the wall to be considered as the background color. Then when you use the "Transparent Background" option, the ENTIRE WALL could become see-through.

Transparent Background: This allows you to make the background transparent so that all you see is the image overlay and the background transparency color becomes clear so that you see the underlying main image instead of some solid color.

Strength Sliders: These sliders control the visibility of the Main Image and the Overlay region. Each image (Main, Overlay) can have it's own visibility strength froim 0 to 100%. If you set both to 50% then you will see both images equally at 1/2 brightness. If you set both to 100%, then you have effectively made a DOUBLE-EXPOSURE. If you set both to 0% then you are not thinking properly.
NOTE: If you want the sliders to be LINKED so that as you move one, the other moves, you can click on the LINK BUTTON to the left of these sliders. It makes it EASY to FADE IN/OUT the overlay image. Try it, you will like it.

Feathering Mode: This allows you to select if you what type of feathering you may want. Feathering blends the image with the original underlying image.

Feathering Amount: This allows you to control how much feathering will take place. The more you move the slider to the right, the more feathering will occur.

Batch Mode Auto Sizing: This checkbox only appears if you are processing a BATCH of images. This should be checked if you are in batch mode AND WANT relative positioning and sizing. So, if your batch includes many images of varying dimensions, you might want this checked so that the resulting text looks proportional. So, if you have text with a size of 32 on a LARGE image, then if the batch has a SMALL image, then the text size will auto adjust down to let's say 16. This way when you look at both the large and small images the text look to be the same size in relation to the size of the image. Play with it and see how it effects the results of a batch of varying sized images.
NOTE: If you have some Image overlays instead of Text, these too will be proportionally sized and positioned.

WHEN DONE:
After you are done adding your overlays, you have a few choices to choose from.

ACCEPT: This takes the current overlay and applies them to the main image and exits to the main window. If you are in batch mode, then this sets the overlays to add to all the images in the batch.

CANCEL: This allows you to abort and cancel out of any overlay changes/additions. If you are adding overlays from the Custom Print Layout window, then this will NOT remove the overlays from the photo. You will of course need to use the "Delete Overlay" button.

PREVIOUS SETTINGS: This allows you to use the SAME overlays as you did the last time you used this Overlay function.

NO TEXT/IMAGE OVERLAY BOXES: If you are adding/changing Text or Image overlay boxes from the Custom Print Layout window, then check this box to remove all overlays from the photo at once. This is the only way to remove all of the overlays while in the custom print layout screen. Of course in the normal mode of operation, if you click CANCEL, then no overlays would be added to the image.

Pull Down List To Load Existing Settings Style: If you are wanting to re-load a previously saved settings style, choose the style name from the pull down list. You will have the opportunity to clear you current settings before loading the new settings. This will remove any existing overlays to start fresh and then it will add all the overlays that were saved with the settings style. Or you can elect to KEEP your current settings and ADD the saved style settings to your current settings.

Save Settings: If you want to save all your text/image overlays for later use after you've exited Photo Jockey, then click this button and save your settings with a style name of your choice.

Remove Settings: If you no longer want a style setting in the pull down list, then click this button. This will remove it from the list of available style settings.



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Tip # 80
(Editing) CREATING/EDITING BUSINESS CARDS

Let's say you want to make some business cards. Photo Jockey has the ability to create them easily. The easiest way to make them is to follow these steps:

Load Photo Jockey

Click on the BusinessCards folder on the main window

Select a card template of the color you want to use

Go into the Text/Image Overlay function

Select "Business Card" from the pulldown list of available Styles

Select the text your want to edit, then edit the text to your liking

Click "Save Settings" and give it a unique name that you can remember later

Click "Accept" button

From main Photo Jockey window, save the resulting image to disk

Print the image you created onto business card paper.

At a later date, if you decide you want to change your business card layout, you can pick the colored image you want to use, then go into the Text/Image Overlay function. THEN select from the pulldown list the unique name you had used when you SAVED your settings.

TIP: Although we have provided several different colored business card backgrounds, you can make your own as well. Just take an existing one and edit it with PAINT or some image editing tool. Then fill in the entire image with a single color. Then save it out under a different name so that you don't overwrite the existing file.



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Tip # 61
(Editing) BATCH OPERATIONS

Click here to show the Batch Adjustments Screen.

Let's say you want to take a bunch of photos and rotate them all 22 degrees to the right. This could take some time if you do it manually. Also, let's say that you want to auto fix the brightness and contrast of a bunch of images, again this could take some time manually. And more over, if you wanted to do BOTH adjustments to a series of photos, this would take even longer :(

SOLUTION - USE BATCH OPERATIONS:
Photo Jockey has the ability to take all checkmarked files and to perform up to 6 operations on them automatically.

Color Adjustments

Rotation Adjustments

Sharpness / Smoothness Adjustments

Resizing Adjustments

Text Box & Image Overlaying

3D Perspective / Shear / Fish-Eye / Special Effect Transformations

On the Quick Tools panel you will find lots of buttons. In fact there are 5 buttons next to each other that do the Color, Rotation, Sharpness, Smoothness, Resizing and Overlaying adjustments manually for one photo. Then there is a button that has an icon that looks like (a green rotate, yellow sun, a sharpness line, a magnifying glass) squeezed onto a single button. This is the BATCH button.


OTHER BATCH OPERATIONS:

NOTE: You can also do BATCH Web Page Galleries as well. But not from this function, you have to do it from the Web Page Gallery function.

NOTE: You can also do BATCH DataBase Updates as well. But not from this function, you have to do it from the Batch Updates To Database Function.