John Walkosak
02-19-2003, 07:00 PM
Okay how often has this happened to you? You pull out your Pocket PC to show off some digital pictures to your friends and colleagues only to be rewarded with that stupid, annoying, "please wait" icon spinning like a moron in the middle of your screen. Why? Because your mega pixel digital images are so, well, mega. Read on to see how Palbum Picture Optimizer by SPB software house can help you to avoid this embarrassing heartbreak... <br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-000.jpg" /> <br /><br /><!><br /><i>There is nothing worse than trying to be all hip and cool and show off your great digital photographs and images on your flashy Pocket PC, only to be rewarded with a long wait period, with friends jeering "Why not just use real photos?"</i><br /><br /><span><b>Tame your Digital Images </b></span><br />I like the digital lifestyle and take a lot of digital photographs. Since it's difficult to to carry around my 19 inch CRT to show these pictures to friends and family, I like to use my Pocket PC as a photo album. This is nothing unusual, but one of the problems is the size of digital photos. Most cameras these days are 2.2 megapixels or higher, resulting in per-image file sizes of over 500K. Just a few of these can choke your iPAQ pretty quickly, and make these images load slowly. These images aren't made with a Pocket PC screen in mind.<br /><br />That's where SPB Software House's Palbum Picture optimizer can make life easier. Simply put, it is a great software package which allows you to customize your images for display on your Pocket PC. This software does three things: <br /><br /><li>The software optimizes the digital images specifically for display on the Pocket PC screen, and consequently the file size of the image is reduced.<br /><li>The software performs some basic image editing (image brightness, etc).<br /><li>The software can display the images, and present a slideshow of the images.While it's true that you could optimize your digital images for your Pocket PC in PhotoShop or even with some of the Windows XP power toys, it's much more efficient to be able to do it directly on your Pocket PC . <br /><br /><span><b>It's a Viewer -- No, it's an Editor </b></span><br />Not to put too fine a point on it, this software configures your digital images specifically for display on your Pocket PC. The benefit of this is that you can take your CF card out of your camera, pop it into your Pocket PC, optimize your images and have rapid access to your pictures. Best of all the software gives you an option to copy instead of overwrite your original images. That way, you can build albums on your Pocket PC and still have your digital images to archive on your main PC. I am finding this useful in that it's easier and faster to show these optimized images on my Pocket PC. <br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-003.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 1: Determining which Images to Optimize </i><br /><br />The software allows you to pick a directory of images and then select one or multiple thumbnails that you want to optimize. You're presented with a few options regarding rotation of an image's JPEG quality and predefined image size. It is here that you can choose whether or not to overwrite the original files. This process is easy and straightforward.<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-004.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 2: Options for optimizing your image </i><br /><br />Because the images are now made with the Pocket PC in mind, they look great.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-006.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 3a: Before: the original image is 225K.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-007.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 3b: After: The optimized image is a 65K with no discernible difference on my iPAQ</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-optSCAN0003.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 4: Here's a dramatic change - The original of this image was 2.59 meg optimized to 51.4k!</i><br /><br />But it's not just an optimizer, it's also quite a competent viewer. Don't get me wrong , it's no "Picture Perfect" but as far as keeping everything in one application it does quite well, giving you the ability to scroll through full screen images, and even present automatic slide shows. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-001.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 5a: Thumbnails of my images</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-010.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 5b: It makes a decent viewer</i><br /><br /><span><b>Bare Bones Editing </b></span><br />One feature that I hope the developer will develop is easing the use of the plug-in feature. The software ships with two plug-ins: Blur and Brighten. These operate pretty much as you would expect from the names: one blurs images and one can brighten them. I have found the latter to be useful in the field when I need to fix bad shots on the fly. However, the plug-in features are not the most intuitive to use - you must first set the brightness to increase and then select the photo, instead of selecting the photo and choosing to apply the plug in to it. This is a minor point but one that bothered me. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-008.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 6a: Selecting a plug-in</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/walkosak-feb02-pictop-009.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 6b: Brightness Filter controls.</i><br /><br /><b><span>Gotchas</span></b><br />While the software is easy to use and powerful, there are two minor areas which bothered me:<li>As mentioned above, the interface for the plug-ins seems slightly backwards. I would like to be able to tap and hold and have an option to apply the plug-in directly to the image on the screen. <br /><br /><li>Also the icons at the bottom of the screen seemed to confuse me (OK , maybe I shouldn't hold that against the software , maybe I'm just old). This is probably just a criticism of graphics and not really usability, and probably just personal <span><b>Where To Buy</b></span><br />The software can be <a href="http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=2760&associateid=204">downloaded from PocketGear</a> or purchased for $14.95, (affiliate link). In my opinion a great deal . <br /><br /><b><span>Conclusions</span></b><br />This software has allowed me to stand proud and show off my really geeky digital photos without the fear of making my audience wait and lose interest. The software is a good Swiss army knife for digital images!