PhotoReviewer User Manual
Contents
1. PhotoReviewer User Manual Last modified December 28 2004 By Ben Haller Copyright 2004 Stick Software This manual is only available in English at present PhotoReviewer is a photo management application for Mac OS X This manual assumes that you have already downloaded a copy of PhotoReviewer if not visit PhotoReviewer s main page at http www sticksoftware com software PhotoReviewer html It also assumes that you know all the basics of using the Macintosh in Mac OS X including using the mouse menus and windows and opening and saving files Right now this manual is really an FAQ frequently asked questions list because PhotoReviewer is a simple enough app that it doesn t seem to merit a full manual that would just be a lot of work and would probably be less effective at answering actual user questions Let us know if you disagree however if a full manual is needed for PhotoReviewer it can be made Please send comments on this manual to us at support sticksoftware com Thanks Questions What is PhotoReviewer What does it do How and where do I install PhotoReviewer What is a typical workflow using PhotoReviewer Can I review images that I have imported into iPhoto What is the Setup panel I see at launch Now that my review is set up what do I do I don t like toolbars is there a context menu Why don t my images stay rotated Why can t I crop my images What is this about duplicates and2. you can just hit the Start button once you ve set it up the first time In the top part of the Setup panel you configure where PhotoReviewer will look for new photographs to review Photo Review Setup 2 Please configure the details of this review process below Use the delta buttons to browse for the folders you want Review Folder Pictures KA Scan subfolders of the review folder for images m Subfolder images get sorted in with others J Subfolder images go at the end of the review The textfield shows the path of the Review Folder you will use for your review As with all such path textfields in PhotoReviewer you can change it in a variety of ways select and type a new path drag a folder in from the Finder or click the delta button to the right of the textfield to get a file browser where you can choose the folder you want Additionally you can drag a folder to PhotoReviewer s icon in the Finder or the Dock whether PhotoReviewer is currently running or not and the folder you have dragged in will automatically be chosen here as your Review Folder The controls immediately below the Review Folder textfield control how the Review Folder is scanned for photographs to review You can choose whether PhotoReviewer will scan subfolders of the Review Folder for photos or will only find photos at the top level Additionally if you choose to scan subfolders for photos you can choose how images found in subfolders will be positioned i
3. which can be loosely translated as guessing to reconstruct the red green and blue values that did not get measured by looking at measured values from adjacent pixels So if you consider a true pixel to be a pixel with legitimate non interpolated red green and blue values then your camera has 1 3 or 1 4 depending on exactly what you mean as many pixels as the marketing bites claim it does Using 2x reduction effectively uses this true resolution and skips the interpolation step that is normally performed to reconstruct the double size image that camera manufacturers have led people to expect Those interpolated enlarged images are usually blurry and full of interpolation artifacts anyway so you don t lose much by choosing not to generate them You can choose to reduce the image size early which is how you get the biggest speed benefit from it or late which will still give some speed benefit and will result in higher quality images particularly with Sigma and Fuji cameras Reduce the size early unless you notice quality problems in the images you re seeing and they appear to be resolved when you change to late reduction The next control governs the image interpolation quality Image interpolation Use fast bilinear interpolation _ Use slow high quality VNC interpolation This setting is used in most cases only if size reduction is turned off or late reduction has been chosen Choosing VNG interpolation will perform an
4. Keys Default Paths Finally you may want to reset PhotoReviewer to its default keys or folder names That s what the buttons below the Preference panel s folder configuration area are for Be careful though resetting the keys or folder names is not undoable The option to rename files that are moved into user defined folders is covered in a later topic since we should talk about the handling of subfolders first How exactly are subfolders handled PhotoReviewer allows you to scan all of the subfolders inside your Review folder for images to review That s a very useful thing but it may not be immediately obvious how the subfolders are handled as images are moved around due to being approved and vetoed Happily this behavior can be configured It is governed by the three checkboxes in the upper left of the Behavior tab of the Preferences panel wv Preserve folders for approved images v Preserve folders for vetoed images Preserve folders for user defined folders These checkboxes are essentially parallel they all control whether the subfolder path that an image was found at is preserved when the image is moved to a new destination or whether the image is just moved to the top level of the destination One checkbox controls this for approved images one controls this for vetoed images and one controls this for images moved to your user defined sorting folders For example suppose your Review folder is Desktop Review and suppose an
5. The next time you run PhotoReviewer you review that photo and decide to approve it it really is a splendid barbecue photo PhotoReviewer now needs to move it to the approved directory but the older file named barbecue jpg is already there Well PhotoReviewer is all about speed it doesn t want to bother you with pesky details like this So rather than forcing you to choose a new name to resolve the conflict PhotoReviewer will generate a unique name by itself without saying a word to you You will discover it later if you even care when you look in your approved folder Typically the unique name might look something like barbecue_73925 jpg PhotoReviewer will preserve the original filename and add a random number to the end of it When possible it will keep using the same random number over and over so if you had approved photos named My barbecue jpg Jim s barbecue jpg and Molly s barbecue jpg and then approved another three photos with the same names you might end up with My barbecue_22534 jpg Jim s barbecue_22534 jpg and Molly s barbecue_22534 jpg The hope is that this would help you keep related photos together if they end in the same random number they were probably processed by PhotoReviewer during the same session What is shareware How do I pay As aclosing note we d like to remind our readers that PhotoReviewer is a shareware product Shareware is a method of distribution for software that lets you try the softw
6. a non image file that snuck in accidentally for example you have to hunt through all the empty folders one by one Instead you can check a checkbox on the Behavior tab of the Preferences panel vw Delete review folders that become empty When this option is enabled folders that become empty as a result of the review process will be deleted for you automatically When you finish your review your Review folder should be completely empty If a subfolder is still hanging around that means that there is a non image file somewhere inside it which prevented PhotoReviewer from deleting the folder for you Unfortunately we have to do a bit of explanation regarding what exactly an empty folder is The problem is that the Finder and various other applications may create bookkeeping files inside your folders those files are normally invisible but if you are a power user you are probably aware of them They go by names like DS_Store and FBCIndex and they typically contain an index or other such information related to the contents of the directory These files should not prevent a folder from being considered empty since they are not really data bearing files in their own right they merely contain data that wishes to remain attached to that folder For this reason PhotoReviewer will ignore all such dot files when determining whether a folder is empty or not For the typical user this is the correct behavior in all cases Power users ma
7. after it finishes preloading all of the review images Particularly when working with files that are very slow to load such as raw image files from digital cameras this can make life much more pleasant But PhotoReviewer s preloading algorithm is fairly smart so even if you limit it to keeping five images in memory at a time you may find that it usually has the image you want to view next already in memory and ready to display Don t assume you need to preload everything to get a fast review What are all these preferences Sorting tab The preferences on the Sorting tab of the Preferences panel were discussed in the sections on using user defined sorting folders above What are all these preferences Raw Images tab This section describes the preferences on the Raw Images tab of the Preferences panel These govern the processing of raw format images from digital cameras Only some digital cameras support saving images in a raw format and there are many drawbacks to doing so from larger image size to a need for more complex processing once the image is downloaded from the camera to the computer It is recommended that only those very comfortable with both digital cameras and digital image editing attempt to use raw format images and the rest of this section will assume such a level of expertise PhotoReviewer supports most of the raw formats out there at the present time almost 100 different cameras at last count The easiest way to t
8. allows you to move vetoed files to a veto directory rather than simply deleting them There is an obvious advantage to this you can recover images that you vetoed accidentally But there is a less obvious advantage too PhotoReviewer eliminates duplicates not only among the files in your review directory but also with reference to your approved and vetoed directories Suppose you veto a given image and then suppose for whatever reason that same image ends up in your review folder again later Maybe you download it from your camera a second time by mistake maybe you re importing photos from a source that contains duplicates whatever it happens and quite often in some situations If you deleted the image when you vetoed it PhotoReviewer would have no way of remembering it and you would have to look at the duplicate and veto that too But if you had PhotoReviewer move it to a veto directory PhotoReviewer will notice if a duplicate shows up in your review directory and will delete the duplicate for you all this assuming you use the delete duplicates feature at all The same thing applies to your approved directory so you might want to leave approved images there rather than moving them to some other folder because as long as they are there PhotoReviewer will eliminate any duplicates of them that may crop up What known bugs and issues affect PhotoReviewer The only known issue affecting PhotoReviewer at this time is the possibilit
9. currently displayed image displayed in the lower left of the Review window The overlay can be turned on and off with the first checkbox the remaining checkboxes turn on and off the display of specific pieces of information In no particular order the checkboxes control display of the index of the current image in an Image x of y form similar to that always shown in the review window title bar the filename of the current image its full path in the filesystem its size on disk in bytes and either K or MB depending on how big it is its file type as determined by both its HFS type a file system attribute and its extension the end of its filename like the jpg in foo jpg the size of the image in pixels and the creation date of the image s file which may be different from the date the image was actually downloaded scanned taken of course The point size of the type used to display the overlay information can be changed with the pop up at the bottom Finally there are the controls for Thumbnail appearance Thumbnail Appearance Thumbnail size EA Matte thumbnails with a border 5 Pixels wide _ m _ of white af 64 96 128 192 256 384 of black f of color oe Non square images produce non square thumbnails q Non square images get matted out to be square v Frame thumbnails with black The settings of these controls govern the appearance of the thumbnail generated by the Copy Thumbnail menu item in the Edit
10. extremely high quality and extremely slow interpolation to generate the full resolution image Don t be surprised if it takes a minute or more to complete Choosing bilinear interpolation performs a much faster interpolation that will have more artifacts and problems than the VNG interpolation but did we mention how much faster it is The last set of controls govern camera specific preferences Camera specific Four color RGB am creen door processing WM Rotate Fuji images to appear normal vw Use R sensor on Fi f mages when appropriate Display raw data as grayscale document mode gt Use fast interpolati f Sigma Foveon J Use slow high quality Foveon interpolation Some cameras may depending upon the lenses and filters used the shooting conditions etc produce raw images that have what you might call a screen door pattern in areas with a strong green component such as blue sky You ll know it when you see it You can eliminate this pattern by checking the Four color RGB checkbox Don t turn it on unless you need to as it will make the processing of your raw images somewhat slower Fuji CCDs have the peculiar feature that every second row is staggered by a half pixel width In order to properly process these images PhotoReviewer performs a trick interpreting the CCD as being rotated by 45 degrees which places all of the pixels in the right locations You can view the images rotated if you wish that will be faster but y
11. image is located inside your review folder at Desktop Review Latest example gif That image will be a part of your review if and only if you checked the Scan subfolders of the review folder for images checkbox in the setup panel when you began your review Assuming you did what happens to this image when you approve it veto it or move it to a sorting folder The answer depends upon the settings of the aforementioned checkboxes For example suppose your Approved folder is Desktop Approved and Preserve folders for approved images is checked When this image is approved it will be moved to Desktop Approved Latest example gif its subpath Latest is preserved If Preserve folders for approved images is not checked its subpath will be discarded when it is approved the example image will be moved to Desktop Approved example gif If folders are preserved for moves to user defined sorting folders the folders go under the sorting folder s path For example take the same file at Desktop Review Latest example gif and suppose a sorting folder is set up with a name of Travel That sorting folder is relative to the Approved folder Desktop Approved so it is located at Desktop Approved Travel If Preserve folders for user defined folders is checked and the example image is moved to this sorting folder it will end up at Desktop Approved Travel Latest example gif If Preserve folders for user defined folders is not checked
12. menu as well as of the thumbnail dragged out of the Review window if you are configured to drag out a thumbnail and not a full size image see the Behavior tab preferences for more on this You can set the size matting and framing of your thumbnails These controls should be fairly self explanatory so we won t go into them in detail here Experiment until you get an appearance you like What are all these preferences Behavior tab This section describes the preferences on the Behavior tab of the Preferences panel A few were already discussed in the sections on subfolder handling and empty folder removal so let s start off with the two checkboxes in the top section that have not already been discussed v Wrap around at the end of a review vw Find images in bundles such as app and rtfd The first checkbox Wrap around controls what happens when you try to move past the end or the beginning of your set of review images using the Previous or Next toolbar buttons or the equivalent menu or keyboard commands If you are set to wrap around you will move from the last image to the first and from the first to the last If you are not set to wrap around you will get a beep Which you should choose is purely a matter of work style and personal preference The second checkbox Find images controls how PhotoReviewer treats special folders called bundles Bundles appear in the Finder as single files but they are actually folders a
13. next You could also work with your photos in any other photo cataloging application you choose or simply keep them in folder and use the Finder to handle them when needed What you do with your photos after you finish reviewing them is completely up to you PhotoReviewer makes no assumptions about that Can I review images that I have imported into iPhoto When images are imported into iPhoto iPhoto makes a copy of them inside the iPhoto Library Users sometimes want to run PhotoReviewer on their iPhoto Library or on a subfolder within it This is generally not recommended The iPhoto Library is a private data store that belongs to the iPhoto application if images in the library are moved renamed or deleted iPhoto may get confused and be unable to display its entire library This is due to the way iPhoto is designed and is not in any way PhotoReviewer s fault modifying the iPhoto library in any way other than using the iPhoto application is simply not supported and is a very bad idea Deleting things out of your iPhoto library using the Finder would yield equally bad results For this reason it is reasonable to treat iPhoto s library as a black box which photos go into but do not come out of except in the ways that the iPhoto application supports For this reason some users keep a copy of their original photographs archived separately from their iPhoto library and we would recommend this as a precautionary measure If you have such a s
14. sometimes it is not The other solution would be to approve and veto all of the images in your Review Folder and then as a post pass do a second review of your Approved Folder s contents renaming the images at that point This would give you names for your approved images without numbering gaps For ease of explanation this problem was presented in terms of the contents of your Review Folder actually though only files that are still present in the current review session are checked against for naming conflicts So even if your approve action is leave in place not move to Approved Folder doing rename approve rename will give you Beach 1 and Beach 1 because the first Beach 1 will after being approved no longer be part of the current review and will thus not affect the filename chosen The basic rule of thumb is if you want two different images to be renamed in a sequential manner you must rename both of those images as part of a single review before approving or vetoing either of them If this seems complicated and strange you may wish to look again at the auto renaming feature that you can enable when using user defined sorting folders It is quite powerful and simple and will allow you to avoid these sorts of technical issues in most cases However if you can heed the caveat described above PhotoReviewer s renaming feature should serve you well How do I use user defined sorting folders PhotoReviewer s sorting of im
15. which if checked will cause the enlargement to be at most double the original so as to prevent excessive blockiness The next checkbox High quality controls the quality at which scaled images are produced Higher quality scaling with the checkbox checked in other words will produce a better looking picture but it may make PhotoReviewer a bit more slow In almost all cases you will want this checkbox to be checked since image preloading means that even if the scaling is slow you will usually not actually have to wait for it Last come the controls for the window background color You can use the color well to choose the background color for the Review window Some images however such as PDF files may be transparent in some areas In such cases one typically wants the image to be displayed against a white background a checkbox is therefore provided for that purpose so that even with a non white background color chosen white is used when necessary with transparent images If you really want to see transparent images against a non white background just uncheck this option Next we have the controls that govern the Information Overlay Information Overlay Appearance Mi Overlay image information i Review position Cimage x of y F File name F File size K or MB _ File path v image size pixels vw Creation date v File type amp extension Use 11 H point type These control an overlay of information about the
16. a very deliberate design decision made for a good reason explained below As a result of this decision rotation of images doesn t stick If you rotate an image in PhotoReviewer it will be unrotated again the next time you review it or whenever you view that image in some other application The only purpose of allowing rotation in PhotoReviewer at all is to allow you to see your images better in order to better decide what action to perform on them The reason PhotoReviewer doesn t modify image data is that it gets very messy and there are many hidden gotchas involved For example suppose PhotoReviewer is able to read and display an image but there is some extra information such as the EXIF tags that digital cameras generate that PhotoReviewer doesn t understand Ensuring that no information is lost or corrupted when many image file formats are exceedingly complex and can contain all sorts of auxiliary data besides the actual image itself is a very tricky thing to do Another gotcha is lossy compression JPEG files for example degrade in quality each time they are resaved because the JPEG format does not preserve the exact image but instead a lossy approximation of it If PhotoReviewer regenerated new JPEG data after a rotation operation the quality of your JPEG images would inevitably be degraded possibly quite noticeably The only way out of this problem would be to save the rotated image in a non lossy format like TIFF instead of
17. ages into approved and vetoed is simple and clear cut but some tasks are more complex For them PhotoReviewer supports the configuration of up to ten user defined sorting folders Reviewed photos can be moved directly to any of these ten folders with a single user configurable keypress or a toolbar button The user defined folders and the keys that trigger them are configured in the Sorting tab of the Preferences panel Key Folder Path Key Folder Path l i tempPhotos b 6 Pictures testPhotos tempPhotos 7 7 foobie 4 4 Pictures 9 9 9 The buttons here labelled 0 through 9 are for changing the key associated with a given folder To change the key for a particular folder just click on its key button The key button will remain highlighted indicating that it is waiting for you to press a key on your keyboard Do so and the key button will change to display the key you have just pressed If it doesn t you probably pressed one of the reserved keys space return tab backspace or escape Those keys may not be used for custom folders If you set up two different folders to use the same key their key buttons will be highlighted with red to indicate the conflict You can resolve the conflict by simply changing one of the conflicting keys to some other key The textfields are for setting the folders themselves As with other folder textfields in PhotoReviewer you may type in the textfield drag a folder in from the Finder or click t
18. are before you pay for it shareware is not free in other words only free to try It is required that you pay the shareware fee if you use PhotoReviewer beyond a trial usage PhotoReviewer costs 10 Please be worthy of our trust and pay for the software you use Information on how to pay and other registration details can be found at http www sticksoftware com software html Comments on PhotoReviewer suggestions for future products and other feedback are welcomed at support sticksoftware com Thanks for your support
19. de the Review folder and it is to be moved to a user defined subfolder called Igneous Rocks It would then receive a name of Igneous Rocks 1 gif If Igneous Rocks 1 jpg already existed it would be called Igneous Rocks 2 gif instead The part where this gets tricky is if subpaths are preserved when moving files to user defined folders Suppose our example image is now inside a folder called downloaded which is itself inside our Review folder If subpaths are preserved when it is moved to our Igneous Rocks user defined folder it ends up at a path relative to the sorting folder of Igneous Rocks downloaded The folder it is being placed in is named downloaded so it will be renamed downloaded 1 gif or whatever number is available So the name given is always the name of the parent folder the image ends up inside not the user defined folder that it was explicitly moved to This prevents you from ending up with different images named Igneous Rocks 1 inside different subfolders of your Igneous Rocks sorting folder How exactly does removal of empty folders work Suppose you have a Review folder that contains a bunch of images in various subfolders You go through the whole review process vetoing and approving and sorting and you move all of your images out of your Review folder What are you left with Well it s hard to tell Probably a bunch of empty folders but if you want to make sure there s nothing important in there
20. ell if your camera is supported is to try reviewing some raw images from it If your camera is not supported in the version you have first check that a newer version of PhotoReviewer has not already been released with support for your camera and then email us to let us know A key thing to keep in mind with PhotoReviewer s treatment of raw images is that the priority here is speed PhotoReviewer does not claim to be able to make final quality images based upon your raw files indeed there isn t even any easy way to save the image that PhotoReviewer has generated since PhotoReviewer never modifies your image files The goal rather is to get the fastest display possible PhotoReviewer s raw image engine has been hand optimized to take full advantage of the speed of your computer including AltiVec optimizations for the G4 and G5 chips and it is very fast compared to typical raw image display in other apps The hope is that you will be able to see which images have potential sort them accordingly and then perform a slow painstaking high quality conversion of the keepers later The first control we ll talk about is the white balance radio control White balance Do not perform white balancing O Auto white balance Camera balance fallback of none J Camera balance fallback of auto You can choose not to perform any white balancing the raw samples are simply taken as given auto white balancing an automated attempt to find a white point
21. eparate archive you can use PhotoReviewer on that archive or on a copy of it and then re import the reviewed archive into iPhoto If you do not have such an archive then you can use only the iPhoto application to review your photographs running PhotoReviewer on your iPhoto library risks data corruption and loss for the reasons explained here In fact it is safe to run PhotoReviewer on your iPhoto library provided that you do not modify the library in any way You can do a review in which approved images are copied and vetoed images are left in place or a review in slideshow mode that does not allow you to approve or veto images and such a review will be safe Be extremely careful that you set up your review correctly however as an incorrect setting may lead to corruption of your iPhoto library Also be aware that the format and setup of the iPhoto library is private and may change from one version of iPhoto to the next and that the library may contain multiple copies of your images at different resolutions with and without changes you have made in iPhoto etc Tread carefully and keep backups What is the Setup panel I see at launch The Setup panel configures what PhotoReviewer will do in the reviewing session you have begun You set where PhotoReviewer looks for new photographs and what it should do with photos you approve and veto PhotoReviewer will remember your settings so if you typically want to do the same sort of review every time
22. erated by digital cameras Most cameras are supported new ones are added all the time so the best way to tell if yours is supported is to try And best of all PhotoReviewer s policy of blinding speed applies here too raw photos which take more than a minute to display in some other applications display in a few seconds in PhotoReviewer It s so fast that you can truly review your raw images on the fly as if they were JPEGs a luxury not found in other photo management applications And by the way if you re looking for a low rent slideshow application PhotoReviewer can fill those shoes too How and where do I install PhotoReviewer PhotoReviewer is a breeze to install Simply copy the PhotoReviewer application into one of the standard OS X locations for applications such as Applications or Applications where is short for the location of your home directory No further setup is required Once you ve got PhotoReviewer copied to a standard location just double click it in the Finder to launch it or drag it to your Dock for easy one click access Which folder should you use Applications is the typical location used if you do not have Administrator privileges on your OS X machine or wish PhotoReviewer to be available only to you not to other users of the machine Applications will make PhotoReviewer available to all users of the machine but typically requires Administrator privileges for you to copy things into it For more informatio
23. es just that The sensor values are simply taken as given without attaching colors to them without interpolation without anything This produces a grayscale image that can be useful in some circumstances Finally cameras made by Sigma are unique for reasons that Sigma owners know and that we need not go into here and PhotoReviewer has specialized interpolation code to work with them There is a fast and a slow version comparable to the bilinear versus VNG interpolation tradeoff for other cameras We recommend using the fast interpolation unless you notice artifacts with it that go away using the slower interpolation method How can I best use PhotoReviewer There are several tricks that will help you use PhotoReviewer to best effect keyboard shortcuts the Rescan Review Directory command and proper use of the vetoed and approved directories Keyboard shortcuts exist for the most commonly used features of PhotoReviewer approving a photo vetoing a photo and moving to different photos within your review directory A keyboard shortcut reminder panel can be displayed using the Show Key Controls command under the Window menu the panel is small and floats so you can keep it open until you get used to the controls To approve the currently displayed photo just press the space bar To veto the current photo press backspace perhaps labeled as delete on your keyboard To move forward to the next photo without either approving or vetoing the c
24. ew Folder will be displayed Now that my review is set up what do I do Once you ve set up your review and you have the review window displaying your first photo you may wonder what next The basic idea of PhotoReviewer is make a decision on the currently displayed image tell PhotoReviewer your decision repeat oP Approve So if you like the image you see you can approve it by pressing the space bar or the return key which are bound to the approve action or by selecting the Approve Photo menu item or by clicking the Approve toolbar button all of these do exactly the same thing The approved image is moved or copied to your Approved folder or perhaps left where it is on disk depending upon what you chose in the Setup panel It is removed from your list of images to review and the next image is displayed Suppose you don t like the next image as much You can veto it by pressing the backspace key which may be labeled delete on some keyboards or by selecting the Veto Photo menu item or by clicking the Veto toolbar button again these all do exactly the same thing The vetoed image is deleted immediately moved to the Trash moved to your Vetoed folder or perhaps left where it is on disk depending upon what you chose in the Setup panel It is removed from your list of images to review and the next image is displayed So as you go along approving and vetoing the list of images left to review gets shorter and shorte
25. for the photo and balance using that sometimes successful often not or white balancing using a white point supplied by the camera if available if not the fallback chosen is used Trial and error will probably lead you to your preferred setting here and it may depend on the subject of the photos you re reviewing The next controls govern size reduction a key feature Size reduction greatly speeds up display Factor r none 2x 4x ax Reduce size early for maximum speed _ Reduce size late for maximum quality Size reduction allows PhotoReviewer to process your raw images much faster than it otherwise could All of the pixel processing need only be done on one quarter as many pixels if you are using 2x reduction With 4x reduction there is one sixteenth as much work to do You will not see a full 4x 16x or 64x speed increase however because the initial load of the raw file into memory always takes the same amount of time with size reduction turned on the load time is typically the majority of the total processing time for the image At least 2x reduction is strongly recommended and in fact a case can be made for that being the true size of the raw image in the first place Camera manufacturers like to claim as high a number of megapixels for their cameras as they can but most cameras actually measure only red green or blue light not all three at any given pixel location and then they perform an operation called interpolation
26. ge in your chosen external editor viewer app governed by the preference just described above The next preference governs what you get if you click and drag from inside the Review window to outside Dragging the review image drags out a thumbnail Dragging the review image drags out the full image J 3 g You have two choices a thumbnail generated using your Thumbnail Appearance prefs on the Appearance tab or a full size image You can drag the thumbnail or image to any application that receives dragged images drop it into a Mail app compose window for example or a TextEdit document Note that the item dragged is not a file however applications which only accept dragged images that are files such as browsers Preview app and image editing applications will not accept the drag To open reviewed images in applications of that sort use the Open Photo in menu item in the Edit menu after setting your preferred application with the external editor viewer preference described above Finally at the bottom of the Behavior tab are controls allowing you to set PhotoReviewer s memory usage policy z f Keep previously viewed images in memory up to a limit of 5 images Keep all previously viewed images in memory PhotoReviewer can keep images in memory in order to display them more quickly when you come to them in your review These controls let you set it to keep a fixed number of images from 5 to 100 or all previous
27. he delta button to get a browser where you can choose the folder you want However there is one caveat partial versus absolute paths An absolute path is a folder path that represents a specific folder on your disk Applications or Pictures Sorting folders with absolute paths will as you would expect sort images to that specific folder and you will always get an absolute path if you drag a folder in or choose one with the browser A partial path on the other hand is a path which because it does not start with or does not specify one specific folder but rather any number of different folders depending upon what it is relative to For example a path of landscapes is partial because if it is taken as relative to your home directory it represents landscapes but if taken as relative to your Pictures directory it represents Pictures landscapes it could mean either one In PhotoReviewer partial paths are legal for sorting folders and they will always be taken as relative to the Approved Folder chosen for a given review So if you choose Pictures Approved 2004 as your Approved Folder then a sorting folder of landscapes will move photos into a folder at Pictures Approved 2004 landscapes If this discussion made your eyes glaze over you can simply always use absolute paths for your sorting folders by dragging them in from the Finder or choosing them in the file browser with the delta buttons Default
28. ifferent OS X releases at Apple s whim but a bit of searching should turn it up If you want to use Image Capture to download your photos you can choose it in that pop up menu if you want to use the Finder to do it you can just choose No application We plan to add the capability to download photos from cameras and card readers to PhotoReviewer in the future which should make this step much less complicated you would then be able to simply have PhotoReviewer launch when a camera or card reader was connected and review your photos directly However this feature has not yet been implemented The second step is to review that folder in PhotoReviewer To initiate the review you can drag the folder to PhotoReviewer or choose the folder in PhotoReviewer s setup panel Later sections of this manual will describe the remainder of the review process for now suffice to say that at the end of your review you will typically have a folder with your approved photos possibly other folders with sorted photos that you directed to those folders and possibly a folder of vetoed photos unless you chose to delete them immediately or place them in the Trash The third step is to do whatever you want with the results of your review If you ultimately want to use iPhoto to store your approved images you can now drag your approved folder to iPhoto and make an album there and you might want to read the next section about iPhoto s library and PhotoReviewer
29. ing especially if you re trying to handle several thousand images at once PhotoReviewer automates this process for you Just select the appropriate menu item and PhotoReviewer will scan through your files and fix things up Duplicates are eliminated by deleting all but one copy An image is considered a duplicate of another if the two are exactly the same size in bytes on your disk and if the two have exactly the same binary contents Note that two images can look exactly the same to the eye but be different sizes on disk and have very different binary representations One might be stored as a TIFF file one as a very high quality JPEG for example while they might look identical they are really quite different from the computer s point of view Undisplayable files are eliminated by vetoing them which may mean deleting them moving them to the Trash moving them to the Vetoed Folder or simply removing them from the list of images left to review depending on what you choose in the Setup panel What is and is not displayable is judged by what Apple s image handling code thinks of them PhotoReviewer uses code written by Apple to display images for it as do most Cocoa applications Apple s code like all code has idiosyncrasies There will be images that PhotoReviewer considers undisplayable that display just fine in say GraphicConverter There will probably be images PhotoReviewer can display that do not display properly in GraphicConverter to
30. it will end up at Desktop Approved Travel example gif This extends to folder paths with multiple components in the natural way So an image at Desktop Approved Latest Downloads example gif would be sorted into a sorting folder of Travel Korea by being placed into either Desktop Approved Travel Korea Latest Downloads example gif or Desktop Approved Travel Korea example gif depending upon the Preserve folders for user defined folders setting Obviously typical usage will be simpler than this sort of case it is explained here for those power users who actually find this useful and important How does renaming of images work for user defined folders The previous section explained the subtleties of how subpaths are handled if you are not clear on that you should read that section first Those rules are used to generate the full path that an image will be moved to when it is moved to a user defined sorting folder Images moved to user defined sorting folders may also be renamed using a checkbox on the Sorting tab of the Preferences panel wv Rename moved images using sorting folder name The rule is actually quite simple The new name for the image is the name of the folder it is going to be placed in plus a space plus a pound sign plus a number plus the proper extension The number used is the first number not already used for a file in that folder For example suppose a file called example gif is located directly insi
31. ly viewed images This should be changed with extreme caution if you do not know how to use Apple s utilities or Terminal app to determine how much memory an application is using or if you do not know how to force quit an application then you should not change this preference except perhaps to lower it from its default value of 10 down to the minimum of 5 The reason is that at this time PhotoReviewer exercises no caution about how much memory it uses It will just blindly follow the preference you have set until it uses up all of the memory your machine has After that point your machine s performance will rapidly degrade with constant disk access and molasses slow user interface updates things may get so slow that you find it difficult to quit PhotoReviewer thus the need to know how to force quit an app So you must be very careful about how you set this preference For example if you have TIFF files that are 20 30 MB which are not uncommon for high end digital photographers and such folk keeping even 10 such files in memory may use upwards of 300MB of memory It adds up fast The keep all setting is particularly dangerous as you may forget you set it open a review with 10 000 images in it and then wonder why your machine is no longer working Don t say we didn t warn you The virtue of course is that by keeping images in memory PhotoReviewer will be able to do a lightning fast review for you without even touching the disk
32. mong the images in your review list freely You can also jump to an image based on its filename its index or even randomly if you want to start at a random position in your review list there are menu items and toolbar buttons for all of these actions I don t like toolbars is there a context menu There is indeed a context menu First of all you can of course turn off the toolbar in the Review window by clicking the white lozenge shaped button at the right side of the window title bar Now that that s gone you can access most of the common review commands by bringing up the context menu in the review window To do this hold down the control key and click on the photo in the review window those with two button mice may also use their right mouse button of course A menu will appear with a variety of choices including all of the most common review actions Why don t my images stay rotated Why can t I crop my images pis Rotate Rotate As you re browsing among your images you may encounter some images that need to be rotated PhotoReviewer provides menu items and toolbar buttons that allow you to rotate your images clockwise or counterclockwise so you can do that easily But there is an issue involved that needs to be discussed PhotoReviewer never modifies your images in any way It moves them from folder to folder renames them and even deletes them but the image data contained inside the file is never modified in any way This is
33. n on this see Apple s documentation on using OS X Applications is the safer choice however if you are not sure Drag PhotoReviewer from the disk image it is distributed on into the folder where you wish to install it After it has been copied you may eject and throw away the distribution disk image If you are unfamiliar with the use of disk images dmg files you can read more about disk images on Stick Software s web site at http www sticksoftware com register diskimages html To uninstall PhotoReviewer simply drag PhotoReviewer from your hard drive to the trash You will need to quit PhotoReviewer before you will be able to empty your trash What is a typical workflow using PhotoReviewer The first step in using PhotoReviewer is to get a folder of images and movies and sounds if you like that you want to review In many cases you will already have such a folder ready to go but if you re using a digital camera you will need to copy your photos from your camera s storage typically a CF card memory stick or some such to your computer There are a few ways to handle this situation Some cameras or card readers will when connected to your Mac appear in the Finder as a removable disk in such cases you may review the contents of that disk directly When doing so PhotoReviewer will warn you that that is not recommended this is because reviewing your original copy of your photos risks losing data if you veto an image you don
34. n the order of your review The next part of the Setup panel controls what happens to the images you approve and veto during the course of the review 3 Don t allow changes slideshow mode Allow changes review mode s Leave approved images in place w Copy approved images to the Approved Folder s Move approved images to the Approved Folder Approved Pictures Approved A J Leave vetoed images in place J Delete vetoed images immediately J Move vetoed images to the Trash Move vetoed images to the Vetoed Folder Vetoed Pictures A First you choose whether your review will entail making changes at all moving images to different folders deleting or copying them or whether PhotoReviewer will run in slideshow mode In slideshow mode all approval and vetoing is disabled nothing you can do will modify your images in any way so it is a safe mode for simply viewing photos On the other hand if you choose to allow changes you then select the actions that are performed when you approve and veto images If a designated Approved Folder or Vetoed Folder will be used in your review you select it in the appropriate textfield again by typing a path dragging in a folder from the Finder or clicking the delta button to bring up a file browser Finally having made these choices you click the Start button at the bottom 4 The Setup panel will disappear the review window will open and the first photo in your chosen Revi
35. nd may have images inside them that you wish to review Examples of bundles include applications that have a app file extension and rtfd rich text files such as those saved by TextEdit If you re not sure what all this means leave it unchecked but if you understand what bundles are and want to review images inside them you can turn this option on The next behavior preference is for an external viewer editor for PhotoReviewer Open images when requested in this application Preview app Choose You can choose an application from a file browser by clicking the Choose button or type the name of the application you want exactly into the textfield The chosen application will then be used by PhotoReviewer whenever it wants to open an image in a secondary app Examples of when this might happen include when you select the Open Photo in menu item in the Edit menu or when you click the image in the review window depending upon the next preference which we re about to describe The next control lets you choose what happens when you click on the image in PhotoReviewer s Review window Clicking the review image moves to the next image Clicking the review image runs the context menu Clicking the review image opens it in the app chosen above You can move to the next image equivalent to clicking the Next toolbar button run PhotoReviewer s context menu you can read more on this in the section on the context menu or open the ima
36. ng sequence number to force your sequential numbering to start at a value high enough to avoid conflicts with previously named images The other is to either rename all of the images in a review before approving or vetoing any of them or rename all of the images in your Approved Folder as a separate post pass after you re done approving and vetoing An example of how this issue can bite you may be in order Suppose you re reviewing a bunch of beach photos and you set up your rename panel with a base name of Beach and sequential numbering starting at 1 You look at the first image like it rename it giving you Beach 1 and approve it moving it to your Approved Folder Now you look at the second image like it and do a Repeat Last Rename You will get Beach 1 again because the first image named Beach 1 is no longer in your Review Folder and only files in your Review Folder are seen for the purposes of finding naming conflicts To continue the example this could be resolved in two different ways One would be to rename both of the images and any other beach images in the Review Folder before approving or vetoing any of them If you did this and then approved some and vetoed some this might leave you with approved filenames like Beach 1 Beach 3 and Beach 7 with gaps where the vetoed images had been Sometimes this is desirable if you want the numbers to reflect the index of the negative on a roll of film for example
37. o This is the reality of life in a world without standards that are strictly adhered to exactly what is and is not allowed in a given file format is unfortunately a bit fuzzy and nobody quite agrees on all the details PhotoReviewer takes a position shared by most other Cocoa applications so it should agree with Preview TextEdit and Mail That s about the best one can hope for If you find PhotoReviewer s determinations about what is and is not displayable to be unacceptable then we suggest that you not use the feature gt How do Rename Photo and Repeat Last Rename work One thing users commonly want to do with a set of photos is rename them in a more rational manner than the auto generated names they often have Sometimes the new names depend upon what category the photo falls into for example you might want to end up with Beach 1 Beach 2 Party 1 Party 2 and Party 3 For this type of situation sorting into user defined sorting folders with the Rename images moved to user defined folders feature turned on is often the right solution How this works is described in detail in the next several sections Sometimes though the names you want are less predictable Janie at the beach David and the beach Frisbee on the beach or sometimes you may wish to rename your images without using custom sorting folders For these sorts of situations PhotoReviewer has a simple but powerful renaming facility To rename a phot
38. o just select the Rename Photo menu item from the Edit menu or press Command R A panel will appear giving you some choices about the rename operation Rename Photo Jf Please enter 2 new filename for the current photo below or choose a previously entered name Ss wv Add a sequential number to filename Starting at and counting up Pa with zer t j digits Cancel O Enter the base name you want to use for the photo in the field at the top If you want a unique sequential number to be added to the base name so you get Beach 1 and Beach 2 for two successive photos choose a base name like Beach and then check the sequential number checkbox below You can choose a starting number for the sequence if for example you already have Beach 1 through Beach 714 stored away elsewhere and you want to start at 715 Finally choose how you want the extension of the filename to be treated if you are not sure the second choice Standardize to tif jpg etc should be fine for most purposes As you are making these changes you can observe the final filename that will be used for the rename operation displayed in the textfield at the bottom of the panel When you press OK that is exactly the filename that will be used for the renamed photo so look at that field to make sure you re set up the way you want to be If you re using the sequential numbering feature you may wish to rename multiple image
39. ou may get a sore neck Or you can rotate them back at the end of processing to get a normal looking image paying a speed penalty in return The Rotate Fuji images checkbox governs this choice The Fuji F700 is unique at the time of this writing in having two separate sensors at each pixel location the S and the R sensors They have different sensitivities and the theory is that when the main sensor the S sensor gets overexposed the R sensor which is less sensitive will have a properly exposed pixel value By combining the values from the two sensors in an intelligent way the theory goes you get a broader exposure latitude than you would otherwise get It is essentially the same as bracketing your exposures high and low and combining them in PhotoShop PhotoReviewer does not attempt to combine the S and R data to make one perfect image it always shows you either the S or R sensor data by itself If Use R sensor is unchecked it will always show you the main S sensor If Use R sensor is checked it will try to determine whether the S sensor was overexposed and if it was it will show you the R sensor instead so you can determine whether it captured data that will allow you to compensate for the overexposure in later processing This feature is in its early stages we d love to hear from an F700 user who understands the relevant issues and has ideas that would make our treatment here better Display raw data as grayscale do
40. r You can see where you are at any time by looking at the title bar of the window 000 bryce 1012 tif 1 of 61 It will say something like x of y which tells you the index of the current image being displayed x and the total number of images left to review y At some point you will run out of photos to review and your review will end although if more images have arrived in your Review folder in the meantime you may wish to rescan to find the new images and continue your review process By the way the little fuzzy spinny thing on the right side of the title bar shown in the snapshot to the right as well as in the title bar snap above it may not be visible in your review window indicates that PhotoReviewer is preloading images for you PhotoReviewer does that as a sort of side project to allow it to more quickly display those images for you later Its loading will not interfere with your use of the application and you don t have to wait for it to finish Under almost all circumstances you should not care whether PhotoReviewer is loading or not the indicator is there so you understand why your machine may be acting busy and using its disk even though you re not doing anything You don t necessarily have to make a decision on the current image PhotoReviewer does not force you to work in a linear fashion You can use the arrow keys or the Move to Next and Move to Previous menu items or the corresponding toolbar buttons to move a
41. s in your Review Folder using exactly the same settings To allow this to be done as rapidly as possible PhotoReviewer has a Repeat Last Rename menu item This does exactly the same thing as opening the Rename Photo panel and immediately hitting the OK button If sequential numbering is not in use you will probably get an error panel since reusing the previous rename s settings will probably result in a naming conflict A little clarification of how the sequential numbering scheme works may be helpful The number chosen is the first number that is not already taken by an image in your Review Folder starting at the minimum number given For example if you start a review and you already have an image named Beach7 a sequential numbering of other images in the review with a base name of Beach and a starting count of 5 will give you Beach5 Beach6 and then Beach8 On the other hand the names of images in your Approved Folder and Vetoed Folder are not consulted when determining the sequence number because those folders might contain tens of thousands of images in arbitrary subfolders which could take a long time for PhotoReviewer to scan through So you might rename an image in your review and then when you approve or veto it it might end up having to be renamed again to prevent a name conflict with another image already in the destination folder To avoid this being a problem there are two things you ought to do One is to use a starti
42. sometimes the Finder just chooses not to show you a preview for its own secret reasons So this is the gap PhotoReviewer fills PhotoReviewer works very quickly Getting going on a collection of tens of thousands of photographs has a start up time of less than a second try doing that in iPhoto Moving from one photo to another is almost instantaneous you can hold down a key and flip through your photos like riffling through the pages of a book Designating a photo as a keeper or a reject is a matter of a single keypress and you can configure up to 10 additional folders that are also available with a single key PhotoReviewer will even find duplicate photographs for those cases when you downloaded the images off your camera twice by accident and will weed out corrupted image files that are not displayable Once you ve pared down your collection to the photos you actually want to keep you can then import them into iPhoto or whatever much more painlessly This may sound like a very simple thing and indeed PhotoReviewer is a very simple application But once you ve struggled to wade through a few hundred photos in some other application and then experienced the ease with which PhotoReviewer lets you zip through them we think you ll learn to appreciate its simplicity Also worth mentioning is the fact that PhotoReviewer supports file formats that iPhoto Preview and most other applications don t support in particular the raw file formats gen
43. t want to veto for example and because some cameras and card readers have driver issues that will make the review process work less well than it does for a folder on a local disk we have heard of the creation dates seen by PhotoReviewer on a CF card being incorrect for example With these caveats in mind however many users choose to review their photos directly in camera or in card like this We would recommend that you try it first with some test photos that you don t mind losing to make sure you understand all of the issues for your particular setup The more standard and supported way to review images from a digital camera or card reader is to copy them to a local drive first If your camera or card reader appears in the Finder as a removable disk you can use the Finder to copy the images to a folder on your local hard drive Alternatively you can use the Image Capture application provided by Apple as part of OS X at Applications Image Capture to download your photos Many users have their computer set up to launch iPhoto and begin an iPhoto import when they connect their camera or card reader When you use PhotoReviewer this is typically no longer desirable You can change this behavior inside the Image Capture application select Preferences from its menu select the Camera tab in the Preferences panel and make a new choice in the pop up menu for When a camera is connected open the exact location of this preference may change in d
44. undisplayable images How do Rename Photo and Repeat Last Rename work How do I use user defined sorting folders How exactly are subfolders handled How does renaming of images work for user defined folders How exactly does removal of empty folders work What are all these preferences Appearance tab What are all these preferences Behavior tab What are all these preferences Sorting tab What are all these preferences Raw Images tab How can I best use PhotoReviewer What known bugs and issues affect PhotoReviewer What is shareware How do I pay What is PhotoReviewer What does it do PhotoReviewer is an application for managing large numbers of incoming photographs For example you might have a digital camera and take pictures by the dozen or the hundreds most of which you ultimately don t keep Most methods of weeding a large photo collection down to the keepers don t work very well Viewing the photos in Preview for example is slow and it s difficult to sort the photos into keepers and rejects you have to keep switching to the Finder Importing the photos into iPhoto isn t much better it s very slow takes up a huge amount of memory and doesn t allow for a very rapid review process partly because you keep having to wait for iPhoto to refine its display Trying to review the photos directly in the Finder doesn t work either the Finder s preview is too small to allow you to compare photos well and
45. urrent photo press the right arrow key The left arrow key similarly moves you to the previous photo You can hold down modifier keys when you press the arrow keys shift will make you move by 10 at a time alternate perhaps labeled as option will move you 100 at a time and shift and alternate together will move you by 1000 at a time should you ever have that many images Finally you can move to a random image in your review directory by pressing the tab key if you want to commence your reviewing process at a random point rather than at the alphabetical beginning of the file list The Rescan Review Directory command can be very helpful if you have a large number of images in your review directory You will find that once you have a few thousand images eliminating duplicates and undisplayable images takes a fairly long time and if you use those options you have to sit through that process every time you start a new review process But there s really no reason to analyze the same images again and again you really want to check only those images that have been added to your review directory since you last scanned through them This is what the Rescan command is for When you have added new images to your review directory just Rescan and any duplicates or undisplayable images among the new additions will be handled without looking again at the files previously there This ties into the purpose of the vetoed and approved directories PhotoReviewer
46. using the original format but then PhotoReviewer has just made your files balloon in size perhaps to hundreds of times their original bulk These issues are very complex to handle well iPhoto for example creates whole directories containing copies of your original images your modified images thumbnails of your images etc in an effort to both allow modification of images and to preserve the quality of the original That level of complexity is something PhotoReviewer wants to avoid it s part of the reason why iPhoto is so slow although admittedly powerful and PhotoReviewer is so fast and it comes with a lot of other baggage too And it s comforting to be guaranteed that your images are not being corrupted or degraded in any way when handled by PhotoReviewer that s a guarantee that no application that actually modifies your images can make This concern is also the reason why PhotoReviewer does not and never will support cropping of photos red eye removal or any of the other modifications people like to make to their photos That is not what PhotoReviewer is for and by choosing to embrace that limiting decision PhotoReviewer becomes a leaner faster safer application for the job it is intended to perform What is this about duplicates and undisplayable images In some situations you may get a lot of duplicate images or a lot of corrupted files that cannot be properly displayed Eliminating these can be quite annoying and time consum
47. y find cases where this is problematic however in which case this option should be turned off What are all these preferences Appearance tab This section describes the preferences on the Appearance tab of the Preferences panel There are three sections to this tab to control the appearance of the Review window the Information Overlay and Thumbnails The Review window appearance controls at the upper left of the Appearance tab look like this Review Window Appearance F Shrink large images to fit window Enlarge small images to fit window F High quality image interpolation slower Window background color wv Use white for images with transparency The first controls are checkboxes that govern the scaling of images displayed The first checkbox Shrink large images if checked will cause images that are larger than the review window s area to be shrunk until they fit exactly into the review window When it is not checked the central portion of the image that fits into the review window will be displayed and the remainder will not be visible The second checkbox Enlarge small images if checked will cause images that are smaller than the review window s area to be enlarged until they fit exactly into the review window If the image is very small it may become blocky and pixellated as a result since of course bitmap images have a limited resolution for this reason a third checkbox Maximum enlargement is provided
48. y of bugs in Apple s image display code PhotoReviewer uses code written by Apple to read in and display images PhotoReviewer has no control over the behavior of that code and no way to fix bugs that may exist in it Because of such bugs particular images may fail to display even though other applications can display them just fine Those other applications are not using the same Apple code to display images so they aren t bitten by the same bugs Some images may even make PhotoReviewer crash due to bugs in Apple s image handling code that is quite rare but not unheard of particularly in certain releases of OS X Again PhotoReviewer has no control over this there is nothing PhotoReviewer can do to keep Apple s code from crashing If you encounter a problematic image we suggest that you complain to Apple through whatever channels may be available to you You can confirm that it is Apple s bug by trying to add the image to a document in TextEdit it should fail to display or even crash in TextEdit in the same way it does in PhotoReviewer One behavior of PhotoReviewer s is intentional but may be surprising so we ll mention it here Suppose you are set up to move approved images to their own directory and suppose you approve an image whose filename is say barbecue jpg Then suppose you go to a friend s place the next day there s a barbecue there you take a photo the photo gets named barbecue jpg and it ends up in your review directory
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