User Guide changes for v.10.7

(1)
HDF topic was rewritten due to functional changes.

Make HDF Image (high depth of field)

HDF combines (overlays) multiple photos of the same subject with different 
focus settings from near to far. Different parts of the subject are in 
sharp focus in each image. The idea is to combine the images so that all 
parts of the subject are sharp. This technique is most useful for extreme 
close-ups.

Making the photos: choose a point for the center of the image. Aim the 
camera at a near object and depress the shutter button 1/2 way, to set the 
focus on this object. Hold the button at the 1/2 position, aim the camera 
at the chosen center, and snap the photo. Now choose a farther object and 
do the same. Repeat with increasing focus distance until the entire subject 
is sharp in at least one photo. The camera position should be very nearly 
the same for all photos, which can be a challenge when the subject is very 
close. Camera movement can cause scaling and parallax problems (nearer 
objects shifted against farther objects). Such problems can be fixed later 
in Fotoxx, but this may require considerable time. It is better to avoid 
the problem.

Processing the photos: in Fotoxx, choose the HDF menu function and select 
up to 9 images. The images will now be aligned as well as possible. This 
may take a minute or more per image, depending on image size and CPU speed. 
The output image is an even mix of the aligned input images. A small amount 
of camera movement between the photos is compensated, but this is limited, 
and parallax shifts are not compensated at all. When the alignment is 
complete, a dialog opens. You can select any input image and "paint" with 
the mouse on any area of the output image. This converts the original mix 
to the selected image for the area being painted. The radius of the 
paintbrush can set larger or smaller, so you can paint large areas quickly 
and control fine detail when needed. If you have overlapping near and far 
objects, time and patience will be needed to make all of them sharp. The 
examples in the fotoxx gallery took about 5-10 minutes each, but the object 
overlaps were also minor. Misalignments can be corrected by selecting the 
"warp" option in the dialog. The selected image can then be dragged and 
warped with the mouse. The warp is limited to the area around the mouse. 
If a painted area is dragged, the corresponding image is automatically 
selected and dragged, while areas painted with other images remain fixed. 
Move around to different areas and make incremental drags until all areas 
are aligned.

Suggested workflow:

  * Using paint mode, choose each image in sequence and paint all areas 
    that look sharp with that image. Any boundaries that are not 
    well-aligned will show up clearly as shifts in the edges of objects. 
    Some of these can be made unimportant by changing the image used for 
    painting (if more than one image is sharp enough). Use [suspend] to 
    free the mouse to zoom and pan to other areas. The button is changed 
    to [resume], and will re-activate the painting mode. 

  * Using warp mode, make fine adjustments as needed to eliminate visible 
    shifts. Use [suspend] and [resume] as needed to zoom and pan to other 
    areas.


(2)
Panorama topic was rewritten due to functional changes.

Make a Panorama Image

This function stitches 2-4 images together to make a wide image or 
panorama. The images must overlap by 10% or more, so that the program can 
find where they coincide and put them together.

Using the panorama menu function, select 2-4 image files. The images are 
initially joined and shown with a small transparent overlap. A dialog pops 
up asking you to drag the images into rough alignment. Drag the images with 
the mouse to align them to each-other. It works best to proceed from right 
to left. Change the order by dragging an image until it trades places with 
a neighbor image. Rotate an image by dragging the BOTTOM edge. Use the 
[resize] button to get a bigger image after moving them closer together.

The images should be correctly curved and fit together well. If they do 
not fit, you need to set the lens parameters as described under "Lens 
Parameters". You can adjust these parameters within the dialog until the 
images fit reasonably well, and this may be good enough for most panorama 
jobs. The lens mm parameter (focal length) is obtained from the EXIF data 
if available. The lens bow parameter (curve distortion) must be adjusted 
manually, but this is often insignificant and can be left at zero.

Press [proceed] when rough alignment is finished, and the program will do 
fine alignment and join the images. Internally, the images are shifted and 
rotated and the degree of match is evaluated. This is done with increasing 
image sizes until the best match is found within a fraction of a pixel. 
This may take a minute or more per image, depending on CPU speed and image 
size.

When fine alignment is complete, the combined image is displayed. A dialog 
pops up for fine adjustment of brightness and color match. You may see a 
sharp border because the images do not have the same brightness and color 
balance. The [auto color] button can be used to perform an automatic color 
match, which is usually the best starting point. The other controls allow 
you to make additional changes to better match the images. Change the 
values for brightness and color and press the [apply] button to see the 
results. Use [auto color] to match the other images to the one changed. 
Use [file color] to restore the original values from the input files. The 
"blend width" input governs how the images are blended together: the color 
balance is gradually shifted over this many pixels, to mask imbalances 
that cannot be fully corrected. The default is 1 pixel, which makes any 
brightness or color differences look obvious. When done, you can use 
unbend, image warp, rotate, trim, and other functions for final 
adjustments.

Vertical Panoramas
Rotate the images 90° to make them match as a left-right pair. After doing 
the panorama, rotate them back.

Panorama Limitations
Panoramas including nearby objects can be tricky: when the photos are 
made, be careful to turn the camera on a vertical axis through the lens, 
with minimum lateral movement, otherwise the images may align poorly due 
to shifting foreground objects (parallax). This is not an issue when the 
subject is 50+ meters away, since a small lateral movement has little 
impact on the image.


(3)
In the topic Technical Notes, the status bar information was reduced:

Status Bar Information
   navigation:      1234x987x24 0.45MB 56%  edits: 3
Explanations:
   1234x987x24    image width x height x depth (bits per pixel)
   0.45MB         image file size (updated when a modified image is saved)
   56%            zoom status, image % size
   edits: 3       3 prior versions are saved in the undo stack


(4)
All instances of "fotoxx" were changed to "Fotoxx" except for command lines
and HTTP links.

===========================================================================

User Guide changes for v.10.6

(1)
The following sentence was added to the topic "Save Image File":

If "make new version" is checked, then the file name will have a version 
number appended, either -02 if the file has no version number, or the 
next version number. This makes it easy to save a modified file without 
losing the original, or retain a series of changes.

(2)
The first part of the HDR topic was changed as follows:

Select the HDR menu function. A file open dialog is started to select up 
to 10 image files, which must all have the same pixel dimensions. 

===========================================================================

User Guide changes for v.10.5

(1)
The following item in "Essential Information" was removed:
   Menu: Tags > Index: generate thumbnails for fast image gallery.

(2)
Two items were moved from the Tags menu to the Tools menu. "Index Tags" 
was split into "Rebuild Thumbnails" and "Rebuild Tags Index".

Tools menu additions:
  Rebuild Thumbnails  Rebuild thumbnail files for fast browsing
  Rebuild Tags Index  Rebuild tags index for searching tags
  Convert Tags        Convert tags to new standard for fotoxx v.10.0

Tags menu deletions:
  Index Tags     Rebuild tags index file.
  Convert Tags   Convert tags to new standard for fotoxx v.10.0

(3)
The topic "Index Tags" was rewritten to reflect the split into two
functions. This topic and the "Convert Tags" topic were moved from
Tags topics to Tools topics. Topic "Index Tags" no longer exists and 
the two derived topics are (4) and (5) following.

(4)
Topic: Tools > Rebuild Thumbnails

You need to do this after first installing fotoxx, if you add new image 
files to your collection, or if you move or rename image files or their 
directories. Nothing is lost when image files are moved, but the image 
gallery (thumbnail) windows will be slow. This is a self-healing problem 
in that a second visit to the same files will be much faster. This 
function regenerates all thumbnail images to make all gallery windows 
fast. A dialog will ask for the topmost directory of your image files. 
That directory and any subdirectories having images will be processed. 
If you have multiple image directories not within the same hierarchy, 
make one directory with links to all the others. Time required depends 
on computer speed and average image size. My 2.66 GHz development 
computer does about 1600 images / minute.

(5)
Topic: Tools > Rebuild Tags Index

You need to do this if you are using the fotoxx tag functions and you 
move or rename image files or their directories. Nothing is lost when 
image files are moved around, but tag searching will fail to find the 
moved images. This function regenerates the tags index file from the 
tags stored in the images. A dialog will ask for the topmost directory 
of your image files. That directory and any subdirectories containing 
images will be processed. If you have multiple image directories not 
within the same hierarchy, make one directory with links to all the 
others. The time required depends on computer speed and average image 
size. My 2.66 MHz development computer does about 700 images / minute. 
Once the images have been indexed, searching them using tags is almost 
instantaneous. This function also works incrementally: if only a few 
images have been moved (unknown to fotoxx), then only these images are 
processed. The indexing should complete in seconds instead of minutes. 
The index is built in memory and then written to disk. There is a limit 
of 100K images. The index file is at /home/<user>/.fotoxx/tags_index.

(6)
Several references to "Index Tags" and "Convert Tags" were changed to 
"Tools > Rebuild Tags Index" and "Tools > Convert Tags".

(7)
Changes for topic: Tags > General Principles

Limitations and Practical Tips

The following are the default limits for tags. These are compile time 
constants which can be easily increased if needed, although I believe 
they are large enough to exceed practical limits:

    o   max. tag length: 50 characters per tag
    o   max. tags for one image file: 1000 characters
    o   max. tags in a category: 10000 characters
    o   max. tags overall: 50000 characters
    o   max. tags in a search: 200 characters
    o   max. tags for Mass Add Tags: 200 characters

The practical limit for the overall number of tags is in the range 
200-500. Exceeding this range is possible but will lead to some practical 
problems: The window showing available tags will be large and tags will 
become hard to find (although sorted by category and within category), 
and the point and click method of adding tags will become more cumbersome. 
If tags are broadly defined and fewer in number, the search results will 
be larger, but using the search results (image gallery window) to find a 
smaller set of images is also quite fast. Physical file organization is 
also preserved in the gallery window (files located together in their 
directories will also appear together in the gallery window). All in all, 
my recommendation for the casual photographer is to use fewer and broader 
tag categories.

(8)
The topic Tags > Edit Tags was rewritten to reflect the new categories
feature.

Open an image file and then select the edit tags menu. Existing tags are 
shown in "current tags". Available tags are shown in the "defined tags" 
window below. One of these tags can be added to the image by pointing and 
clicking with the mouse. A tag can be deleted by pointing and clicking 
within "current tags". Tags recently added are shown in "recently added". 
This is a convenience to make adding tags to a new batch of images easier, 
assuming that many of the same tags will be used repeatedly. Point and 
click the same way. New tags that have never been used before (and do not 
appear in the list) can be added by typing them in and pressing [create]. 
The date of the image, if available, is shown as "image date". This may 
be entered if missing, or changed. You can enter a full date in the format 
yyyymmdd or a shorter format yyyy or yyyymm. A missing month or day is 
logically equivalent to "01" for search purposes. The [use last] button 
fills-in the date from the last date entered or shown. This is to allow 
easy dating of a series of images. You may enter an optional "stars" 
rating for the image. The dialog remains open if you navigate to a new 
image, and the current tags are filled-in from that image. The [Next] 
button does the same, and advances to the next image in the current 
directory or the current set of images from the Search Tags function.


Tag Categories
You can assign categories to tags to help organize them and locate them 
more quickly when adding tags to images. They are optional and they play 
no role in tag assignment or searching: only the tag is stored in an 
image, not its category. Typical categories are people, places, things, 
events, landscapes, buildings, etc. When creating categories and tags, 
check "manage tags" to prevent clicked tags from being added to the 
image (if done accidentally, just click in "current tags" to remove). 
To add a new tag with a new category, enter the caterory and tag and 
click [create]. The category can be left blank and the tag will be 
assigned to "nocatg". To assign a tag to a different category, click a 
category (bold text) or enter a new one, click the tag, and press 
[create]. The tag will move from the old to the new category. To delete 
a tag, click the tag and press [delete]. The window of defined tags is 
updated to reflect changes. If you have a large number of tags and 
categories, expand the window to show more of them or use the scroll bar. 
Tags used in images but not assigned to a category will appear under 
"nocatg". 

===========================================================================

User Guide changes for v.10.4

(1)
The following section was added at the beginning:

Fotoxx Survival Guide
Essential information for those who hate big user manuals:
 o  Most menu functions have live help activated by F1.
 o  Mouse left click: zoom image bigger, centered at mouse position.
 o  Mouse right click: restore image to fit in window.
 o  Mouse drag across image: works like scroll bars.
 o  Gallery button: thumbnail browser: view all images in current directory.
 o  Click image in thumbnail browser: show in fotoxx main window.
 o  Menu: Tools > Change Language: switch between English and your language.
 o  Menu: Tags > Index: generate thumbnails for fast image gallery.

(2)
One sentence in the section Navigation was changed:

Pressing the [gallery] button in the fotoxx main window will bring the 
gallery window forward with the current file thumbnail in the top row.

(3)
The following was added to the 3rd paragraph in the section Panorama:

The lens mm parameter (focal length) is obtained from the EXIF data if 
available. The lens bow parameter (curve distortion) must be adjusted 
manually, but this is often insignificant and can be left at zero.

===========================================================================

User Guide changes for v.10.3.1

(1)
The paragraph on Grid Lines was rewritten as follows:

This function adds or removes horizontal and verticle lines across the 
image. The lines are useful when an image must be rotated for horizon 
alignment, or when an image is unbent or warped to straighten walls or 
other objects in the image. During a trim (crop) function, the line 
spacing changes to keep the lines equally spaced. Using two horizontal 
and vertical lines (3x3 tiles) is useful for trimming an image following 
the Rule of Thirds (Wikipedia).

(2)
The following was added at the end of the Trim Image paragraph:

The button [invert] exchanges the width/height ratio (2:1 becomes 1:2 etc).

(3)
The Keyboard Shortcuts table has two new entries:

T key    shortcut for menu Transform > Trim
B key    shortcut for menu Retouch > Brightness/Color

===========================================================================

User Guide changes for v.10.3

(1)
EXIF and tag functions are in separate top-level menus. The 
corresponding text paragraphs were rearranged to match, and the 
following addition was made for the View EXIF functions:

Basic EXIF Data
All EXIF Data
...
There are two menus for viewing EXIF data, Basic EXIF data and All EXIF 
data. Basic EXIF Data is a short report of the most commonly needed data, 
including the photo date and time, exposure data, focal length (real and 
35mm equivalent), user-assigned tags and star rating, and a history of 
Fotoxx edit functions that have been applied to the image. All EXIF Data 
reports all available data, including IPTC and other categories 
supported by the program exiftool.
...


(2)
The following paragraph was added to General Editing Procedure

Suggested Workflow: 
Convert RAW files to TIFF with 16 bits/color. The high color depth 
reduces the risk of visible "banding" from functions that can radically 
shift the brightness distribution (especially Flatten and Tone Mapping). 
When finished, convert the final TIFF to JPEG (quality level 70-90) to 
reduce the file size (from typically 50 MB to 2 MB). You will not be 
able to see a difference between the final TIFF and JPEG images. To 
preserve the possibility of re-editing the image later, keep the RAW 
file, which is much smaller than the TIFF file. Most of the time you 
can just edit the JPEG that comes out of the camera. Use this more 
time-consuming procedure only if you see banding.

===========================================================================

User Guide changes for v.10.2

(1)
General Editing Procedure (revised function of undo/redo buttons)

The image in the main window can be operated on with the edit menu 
functions. You can use these functions in any order, and the changes 
are accumulated for the current image and shown in the main window. 
The Toolbar [undo] and [redo] buttons can be used to review the 
before/after results for the last 99 edits of the current image. 
These buttons also work during an image edit to review the before/after 
results of the current edit function. When finished with an image, use 
[save] or [save-as] to replace the original file or save to a new file.


(2)
Tone Mapping (rewritten to be less technical)

Tone mapping increases the apparent brightness range of an image by 
increasing local contrast. It is especially useful to improve HDR images, 
but can also be applied to any image. HDR images often seem "flat" 
because the contrast between nearby pixels has been reduced to make the 
overall contrast fit within the available range (normally 8 bits per 
color). Tone Mapping increases the contrast between nearby pixels 
without increasing the overall contrast. It relies on the nature of 
human vision: contrast within a small angle is perceived more strongly 
than contrast over a large angle. Tone mapping also brings out subtle 
details (low contrast) that would otherwise be hard to notice.

Other methods can also be used: adjusting the brightness curve can 
increase contrast for a selected brightness range (possibly at the 
expense of others). Flattening the brightness distribution can spread 
the available contrast more evenly. Increasing color intensity and 
saturation can also bring out more detail. These methods operate 
globally: all pixels of a given color and brightness are processed 
the same. Tone mapping processes pixels differently depending on the 
brightness of surrounding pixels and is more effective at enhancing 
detail.

In the dialog, the graphic curve determines how much local contrast 
is increased depending on local contrast. The left end of the x-axis 
corresponds to low-contrast pixels and the right end high-contrast 
pixels. Normally the left side of the curve would be raised to increase 
the contrast of low-contrast pixels. The Constrain slider below the 
curve regulates the internal algorithmic calculation, from no 
constraint on the left to full constraint on the right. If moved too 
far to the left, the image will show artifacts (bright or dark "rays"), 
so push it right until these disappear.

The curve can be dragged with the mouse and its effect on the image 
will show up in a few seconds (depending on image or area size and CPU 
speed). The constraint slider also needs a few seconds to show up in 
the image. If more contrast is wanted, raise the curve. If uniform 
areas (e.g. sky) become mottled, pull the left end of the curve down 
to reduce amplification for low-contrast pixels. In some cases it 
will be best to select different areas of the image and process them 
separately, e.g. more conservative for sky, more aggressive for 
textured surfaces like stone walls.


(3)
View EXIF Data (table added)

Fotoxx uses the following EXIF keys:
  Date/Time Original   Edit Tags function - image date
  Keywords             Edit Tags function - image tags
  Rating               Edit Tags function - image stars
  Edit Status          history of fotoxx edits applied to the image


(4)
Edit EXIF data (new section)

A specific EXIF key can be added or revised. Enter the key name and 
press [fetch] to retrieve existing data, if any. Enter the new data 
and press [save] to save the new or revised data. Input the key name 
in lower case and without blanks, e.g. the key "User Comment" in 
View EXIF Data would be entered as "usercomment".


(5)
Delete EXIF data (new section)

This function allows deletion of a specified EXIF key, or all EXIF 
data at once. Input a key name in lower case and without blanks, e.g. 
the key "User Comment" in the View EXIF report would be entered as 
"usercomment".


