(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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