I'll Show You Mine! Spb Imageer Reviewed [Archive]

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Anthony Caruana

02-09-2004, 06:00 PM

So you've embraced the digital age. The old paper diary has been replaced by a desktop PIM and a Pocket PC. Your old SLR camera is in a cupboard, destined to never again see the light of day. Most of what you do is tied up to some device or other. But, one of the things you find really annoying is that while you're on vacation you take a pile pf photos with that digital camera and you can't clean your images up. And then you get home and you need an easy way to share them with all your friends and family. Well, the team at <a href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com">Spb Software House</a> has an answer to your problems; Spb Imageer 1.0. This app is brilliant as an "on-the-go" image organiser and editor. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-0.jpg" /> <!>Imageer 1.0 is Spb Software House's latest foray into the world of digital imaging on the Pocket PC. If you're looking for Photoshop on the Pocket PC, then Imageer is not for you. Spb has designed Imageer around the premise that users would be focused on specific functions that they would want to perform on the Pocket PC. Imageer's user interface makes performing the most common image manipulations quick and simple. There are some improvements I'd like to see but Imageer gets close to the target in this first release. So, What Does It Do? When you look at what Imageer does, it's hard to believe it achieves so much with a simple set of toolbars and menus. The screen is very uncluttered, making it easy to use. Among the key features are:<li>Picture editing (red-eye, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and more); <li>Read-ahead caching to make image loading faster; <li>Storage card notification with common tasks; <li>Desktop ActiveSync conversion filter; <li>One-click slideshows with smooth transitions; <li>Multiple thumbnail options with multi-threaded thumbnail generation; <li>Batch optimizing of photos; <li>Web publishing to Fotki.com; <li>Album creation and sharing; <li>Rich picture notes (text, drawing, and sound).How Did I Test Imageer? In order to put Imageer through its paces I used Spike, my iPAQ 2210. I installed Imageer to a Sandisk 256 MB SD card and accessed my photos from a Kingston 128 MB CF card (love those dual slots ;-)) One of the neat features of Imageer is that it auto launches when you reinsert a storage card into your device. All the pictures I worked with were shot with my Canon PowerShot A40. None of them had been altered in any way prior to manipulating them with Imageer. The images I worked with were between 700 K and 1 MB in size. They were shot with my two megapixel camera at the highest resolution and image quality settings. Installation Installation is a snap - you'll need to set aside just under 2 MB. Of this, about 1.6 MB goes to the installation location and the rest to the /Windows folder on your device, even if you install it to a storage card. You can reduce the amount of system RAM used up by deleting the sample photos and album that the installer deposits in the /My Documents folder. This gives you back about 200K. The only option you need to consider is whether to include the Activesync filter. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-1.jpg" /> Figure 1: Installing Imageer. On the Pocket PC side of things you'll need to decide whether to use Imageer as your default viewer for most common image types. However, this can be easily changed from within the application options if you change your mind later. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-2.jpg" /> Figures 2: Setting file associations during installation. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-3.jpg" /> Figures 3: Setting file associations through the Options Dialog. <PAGEBREAK> Using Imageer For an application that does so much, Imageer is really easy to use. After starting it up from the icon installed into the Programs folder, I opened my CF card using the folder selector in the top left corner of the screen. This is similar to the File Explorer that ships with Pocket PC. There is no wizard at start up so, after launching, you are straight into the application. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-4.jpg" /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-5.jpg" /> Figures 4 and 5: Accessing photos on my CF Card. There are three views for looking at the image folder; <li>Thumbnails; <li>Thumbnails with details; <li>Details. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-6.jpg" /> Figure 6: The Thumbnails with Details View. In addition to the information in the image views, there are detailed properties pages for the images that show everything from image size to the model of camera used to take the picture and whether the flash was used. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-7.jpg" /> Figure 7: The Properties Page for an image. Once you select an image to view and edit, it appears on the screen. You can choose to either shrink the image to fit on screen or view the image in its full size (you can pan around the image using the stylus). There is a full screen mode that removes the toolbars and menus as well. One of Imageer's strongest features is that while you are viewing an image, it preloads the next image into memory so that it loads quickly. This is a huge plus when dealing with high resolution photos. Performance-wise, Imageer is very strong. The pre-caching of photos means that the wait time for opening the next picture is negligible. As long as I didn't hit the "Next Picture" button too fast, I seldom waited more than a second for a photo to load. The thumbnail views appeared far quicker than the ones generated by Pictures, the image viewing application that ships on Windows Mobile 2003 devices. Working With Images Imageer makes it easy to edit images. I used Imageer to crop a photo so that I only retained the portion of the photo that was of interest to me. While viewing an image, the last button on the toolbar, the palette, activates the various image editing tools. Cropping works simply; just select the Crop tool from the toolbar and use the stylus to select the area of the picture you wish to keep. Then just tap inside the selection to complete the operation. A Save command is available on the toolbar to retain the cropped image. One thing though, once you execute the Save command, the cropped image overwrites the original image. There is a Save As option, but it's in the Edit menu and can be easily missed. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-8.jpg" /> Figure 8: Cropping an image. Removing red-eye from an image is just as easy. Just zoom in on the image so that you can see the red-eye clearly. Select the Anti Red-Eye tool and select the image area you wish to correct. Tap inside the selected area and save. My only gripe about this is that red-eye areas in photos tend to be round and the selection tool only selected straight sided areas. If the Anti Red-Eye tool could accurately select the pupil of an eye it would be better. As it is, it's still pretty good. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-9.jpg" /> Figure 9: Using the Anti Red-Eye Tool. Image brightness and contrast can be adjusted by activating the appropriate tool from the toolbar and using the slider control. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-10.jpg" /> Figure 10: Adjusting brightness and contrast. The Edit menu on the image editing toolbar also allows the user to alter the red, green and blue color balance of the image, sharpen and blur filters, rotate and resize images. There are also undo and redo commands. And, just in case, there is a Return to Saved option in case you make multiple changes and want to return to where you last saved. <PAGEBREAK> Albums and Publishing Like many other image management tools, Imageer lets you create albums of your images and play them as slideshows. There are plenty of slideshow options including using timed slide transitions and different transition types. Although there aren't quite as many transition types as Microsoft PowerPoint, there are plenty to choose from. This feature would have been close to perfect for me if it had VGA card support. That way I could show my photos as a presentation to a monitor or television. Some other Pocket PC graphics applications let you attach a soundtrack to a presentation. Imageer does not support this function. This wasn't a big deal to me but it might be for you. In addition to the slideshow mode, Imageer supports direct publishing to the Fotki.com service. The publishing process is almost identical to album creation. The only difference is the destination of the output. Unfortunately, you can't change the publishing location to your own Web site. Both processes were very simple to effect. There is a well thought out wizard that provides clear instructions and options at each stage. You can select image sizes, contrast and brightness control, image rotation, image renaming with support for automatic name prefixing and .jpeg quality. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-11.jpg" /> Figure 11: Publishing to the Web and creating albums. The Activesync Filter Imageer adds an image filter to Activesync if you select that option at installation (it's on by default). This plug-in supports some image transitions should you use Activesync to transfer files to your Pocket PC. It lets you change image size, .jpeg quality and rotate the image as it's being sent to your Pocket PC. Although it's a nice feature, I personally would not use it often as I tend to use card readers for transferring data to storage cards on my Pocket PC. But it would be handy for small file transfers to my Pocket PC. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/caruana-jan04-imageer-12.jpg" /> Figure 12: The Activesync plug-in. Gotchas Imageer is a very strong version 1 application release. However, there were a few things I found a little annoying. <li>For some image edits I preferred to rotate the image before carrying out the edit. I found that when I activated the editing toolbar the image reverted back to its original orientation. <li>The lack of VGA output was a limitation I'd like to see addressed. After all, the iPAQ Image Viewer that ships with the 2210 includes it. <li>The auto-rotate option was a little annoying as it did not seem to work out the best orientation for many of my pictures. I ended up turning this function off. <li>The Save As command is not easily accessed while editing a picture. <li>You can't alter the location of where photos are published on the Web. Where To Buy The software can be <a href="http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=102019">downloaded from Handango </a> [Affiliate]. A trial version (limited to 15 days) is available. This can be turned into a full version by purchasing a registration key for $14.95 USD. If you're already a registered Palbum owner you can upgrade for just $7.50 USD. Conclusions Imageer sets out to deliver simple image management and editing on the Pocket PC. It achieves this with a very simple user experience and no complexity. If you use a digital camera and a Pocket PC then this application should be a part of your travelling toolkit.

butch

02-09-2004, 06:40 PM

The Save As command is not easily accessed while editing a picture.

In fact, the "Save As" option is not a "Save As", it an export, because when you save as, then close the picture, is ask you if you want to save and if you tap Yes, it will overwrite the original picture! 8O

Jason Dunn

02-09-2004, 06:49 PM

In fact, the "Save As" option is not a "Save As", it an export, because when you save as, then close the picture, is ask you if you want to save and if you tap Yes, it will overwrite the original picture! 8O

Correct - you should not click OK when you're finished, because in the Pocket PC world, OK = save. You should click CANCEL on the editing bar to get out of the editing mode. This is normal Pocket PC behaviour. ;-) I'm open to suggestions as to how we can improve it though!

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

arbitrajeu

02-09-2004, 07:07 PM

Correct... I'm open to suggestions as to how we can improve it though!
Rename the "Save as..." option "Export..." instead, just to be explicit. This would then not set the expectation that the user was then working on the "saved as" version.

I love the product, by the way. :D

Jason Dunn

02-09-2004, 07:15 PM

Rename the "Save as..." option "Export..." instead, just to be explicit. This would then not set the expectation that the user was then working on the "saved as" version.

Ah, ok. So what you're saying is that in desktop photo editing applications, when you use the SAVE AS function on a photo, the photo you're working on becomes the SAVE AS photo, and your original photo is no longer being edited, right? And with Imageer, we keep the original photo open, even after the SAVE AS has been performed. Hmm. Yes, I understand your point better now. I'll see about getting it changed!

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

butch

02-09-2004, 08:59 PM

Ah, ok. So what you're saying is that in desktop photo editing applications, when you use the SAVE AS function on a photo, the photo you're working on becomes the SAVE AS photo, and your original photo is no longer being edited, right? And with Imageer, we keep the original photo open, even after the SAVE AS has been performed. Hmm. Yes, I understand your point better now. I'll see about getting it changed!

Thanks Jason.
I already made the comment to Vassilli will I was beta testing, I don't remember if he gave me a good reason to keep it that way...
You could also just change the popup message to "do you want to save change to "original_file_name"... "
Anyway it's not a big deal once you know hoe the program act. :D

Cypher

02-09-2004, 10:12 PM

Jason Dunn

02-09-2004, 10:14 PM

This is a fantastic program. If there were one thing different, I could use it to replace my photo editing and my slide show software. That one thing is that, although all the features work in VGA mode on my Toshiba e800, the slide show is qVGA. (Pictures display in the top left quarter of the screen). :cry: Maybe in version 1.1??

VGA support is definitely on our radar, but likely not until it's officially supported by Microsoft. Stay tuned, and thanks for the feedback.

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

kzemach

02-10-2004, 12:14 AM

What I'd love to see is some sort of side-by-side comparison of image loading/saving/editing times. For instance, the program we're trying to use now is PAINFULLY slow. Like, 50 seconds to do a downsample and save. The answer I get from the company goes something like this:

"Well, if it's a 1MB JPG file, it's really more like a 12MB file to work with it, thus it's pretty slow."

Still, I can't believe it has to be that slow, thus I'd be curious how this program compares. If it's faster, I'll buy it! Referring here to the effective "native image speed," not this impression of faster loading times due to preloading of the next image as discussed in the article. Would also be curious if it has the following features:

*downsampling; can I reduce the size/resolution/compression?
*annotating: can I draw/put text on to annotate an image?

But, nice review! Maybe I'll buy it anyway just to play with it.

Ken

Jonathon Watkins

02-10-2004, 12:28 AM

Maybe I'll buy it anyway just to play with it.

Nah - try the free 15 day trial first! :wink: That's what I'm doing. :way to go:

Jason Dunn

02-10-2004, 12:35 AM

Still, I can't believe it has to be that slow, thus I'd be curious how this program compares. If it's faster, I'll buy it! Referring here to the effective "native image speed," not this impression of faster loading times due to preloading of the next image as discussed in the article. Would also be curious if it has the following features:
*downsampling; can I reduce the size/resolution/compression?
*annotating: can I draw/put text on to annotate an image?

Yes, you can re-sample an image based on exact pixel size, or % of original size. You can also re-save the image, and in the case of JPEG, pick an exact % of compression you want to have. Check out the virtual tour: http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/imageer/tour4.html - it describes the annotation functions.

In terms of speed in saving a JPEG file, a very important factor is the speed of the memory card - it would be best for you to try Imageer out on your current setup and see if it's better or not. I'm betting it will be. ;-)

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

tregnier

02-10-2004, 01:08 AM

Jason Dunn

02-10-2004, 01:22 AM

Jason wrote...
Some other Pocket PC graphics applications let you attach a soundtrack to a presentation. Imageer does not support this function.

I created a slide show with sound. There is an audio notes option that I used to create a narrative; but I don't think you can append a sound file.

Right, but he's talking about creating a slideshow then putting music to it as a sound track - Imageer doesn't currently support that. What you did was attach a sound file to one image, which is a different type of function. ;-)

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

bmhome1

02-10-2004, 02:28 AM

I was also a beta tester for Imageer. I am a professional photographer and use my iPaq 3955 with dual sleeve to transfer and view digital image files in the field. I might need to find a single 2MB file in a 100 image download. Slow application performance can be painful to endure.

Because of that need, I have tried almost all of the PPC photo viewer applications before choosing the ones I currently own; PocketLoupe (very fast and displays RAW format), Pixfer (transfer files application), PQView for its slide show function, and both Pocket Artist and Photogenics for image manipulation in the field. I even tried a trial version of Pocket Phojo (a $500 specialist application). I'm intimately familiar with speed of image file displays, annoying errors in loading because file sizes too large (2-3MB jpg but over 30MB internal RAM still free) messages, and the limitations of actual use of PPC image manipulation applications.

Now, Imageer has become my current favorite nearly all-in-one replacement for my other loaded PPC image applications, I like it that much. Its very fast and doesn't choke on 2-3MB jpg image files. It zooms to 100% file views nearly as fast as PocketLopue.

What I especially appreciate is the deceptively simple image correction features. Imageer is superior than both Pocket Artist and Photogenics in that function, even though each costs three times as much! The correction tools are also very fast, straight-forward and the results are simply amazing! The manipulated images open on a desktop computer with no suprises: the color corrections, adjustments and even sharpening results look just as good as if done in full Photoshop. And, Imageer doesn't error out or become painfully slow running the filters, unlike the other PPC image manipulation apps I own.

To say I'm pleased is an under-statement. And this is a version 1.0 release. Sure, there are refinements in order (all small), but Imageer's one fine new application for the PPC.

ctmagnus

02-10-2004, 03:15 AM

Spiral

02-10-2004, 05:20 AM

it looks pretty good, but I already got IA Album for free, and it does its job just fine (it can't do red-eye editing though), i can't really justify buying another imaging program.

mmidgley

02-10-2004, 05:49 AM

Having used Palbum Suite for quite some time, I was very impressed with Imageer in regard to loading larger file sizes and always being able to show 100% --where Palbum could not. That is obviously a software design issue, not a hardware issue as the same resources were available either way (iPAQ 5555).

m.

juni

02-10-2004, 08:53 AM

Anthony Caruana

02-10-2004, 09:06 AM

How does the displaying of images compare to Resco Picture Viewer or the built in HP image viewer (which is great)? I found that Resco shows images fuzzier than the HP default image app. I did buy PAlbum Suite and the image quality was better than Resco but worse than the HP Image app.

Also, HP image app is very fast when displaying images, Resco was _extremely_ slow if you have many images in a folder. How fast is this program?

I did a bit of a comparison when reviewing and found that the built-in Pictures app on all PPCs was the slowest. The iPAQ Image viewer and Imageer were almost the same; I couldn't tell the difference and both were too fast for me to time properly with a stop watch.. However, Imageer was faster at opening images due to its read ahead caching.

juni

02-10-2004, 09:26 AM

Cool :). I think Resco is slow because of the thumbnailing...sometimes it could take minutes to get a directory to display.

Barak

02-10-2004, 01:43 PM

I also beta tested this program and it is now the only only imaging program I use. :2gunfire:

During the beta testing, Vassilli was very interested in user feedback and I know he addressed the concerns I had. I wouldn't be surprised to see Imajeer have continuous tweaks made to meet consumer demand.

butch

02-10-2004, 03:03 PM

Hmmm... I'm checking out Palbum Suite and I encountered a jpg that Palbum won't open at 100% zoom, saying that I should use a lower zoom ratio to decrease memory usage. Strange thing is, I'm 97% sure that this image opened in Palbum before, at 100% zoom.

Can I PM anyone with a URL of this image so they can test if it opens in Imageer?

You should reset you PocketPC and retry, the size of the image you can load is relative to the free memory you have left, so colsing all other apps should fix the problem.

Jon Westfall

02-10-2004, 03:41 PM

Another reason I wish I had a better digital camera that stored on SD. Until then, I'll have to wait until the right PDA photo editor comes along to force me to buy one. Looks like a great product though. good work SpB.

Jason Dunn

02-10-2004, 05:31 PM

Hmmm... I'm checking out Palbum Suite and I encountered a jpg that Palbum won't open at 100% zoom, saying that I should use a lower zoom ratio to decrease memory usage. Strange thing is, I'm 97% sure that this image opened in Palbum before, at 100% zoom.

Imageer is 100% different from Palbum - I'm not sure if we even used any code from Palbum. The core engine is 100% new, and the only reason Imageer is being offered as an upgrade to Palbum is as a service to our customers. Imageer is in no way an upgrade to Palbum - it's a totally new product, and is vastly superior to Palbum in every way. Trust me, it will be the best $7.50 that you've ever spent on imaging software. ;-)

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

PS - I'm happy to try and open that image for you if you want. I can't be sure, but if Palbum died at 97%, Imageer can probably do 200%. :wink:

Jason Dunn

02-10-2004, 05:35 PM

Cool :). I think Resco is slow because of the thumbnailing...sometimes it could take minutes to get a directory to display.

That was one of my requirements for Imageer: multi-threaded thumbnail generation. If you put it at four thumbnails in a row, it will generate them almost faster than you can scroll. I had a folder of 200 images and it was fun to watch Imageer chew through them all. :-) Equally as important, the thumbnails don't leave behind marker files - we don't need them, Imageer is fast enough to re-generate them every time without leaving refuse behind on the device. :way to go:

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

ChristopherTD

02-10-2004, 06:12 PM

Jason

I am very impressed with the responsiveness of Imageer, it is very smooth to operate. I upgraded immediately from Picture Album.

I have one wee question...

Is the "storage card notification" supposed to trigger each time you turn the device on?

On my iPaq 5550 with a 512MB SD card, every time I turn the device on it "detects" the SD card and asks me what I want to do! For the moment I have disabled this feature, but I wondered if this was planned behaviour or a quirk of the iPaq.

Regards
Christopher

Jason Dunn

02-10-2004, 06:47 PM

Is the "storage card notification" supposed to trigger each time you turn the device on?

Every time you turn on the Pocket PC, my understanding is that the Pocket PC enumerates the storage card, which is what triggers the notification - because as far as the Pocket PC is concerned, that storage card WAS just inserted. I understand your point, it's a bit irritating, but it's a difficult problem.

I've come up with a potentially interesting solution, so we'll see if it pans out. ;-)

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

butch

02-10-2004, 07:59 PM

That was one of my requirements for Imageer: multi-threaded thumbnail generation. If you put it at four thumbnails in a row, it will generate them almost faster than you can scroll. I had a folder of 200 images and it was fun to watch Imageer chew through them all. :-) Equally as important, the thumbnails don't leave behind marker files - we don't need them, Imageer is fast enough to re-generate them every time without leaving refuse behind on the device. :way to go:

What would be great is to have an option to create embedded thumbnail for images that don't already have one, it would help a lot the next time you browse to that folder :-)

Jason Dunn

02-10-2004, 09:53 PM

What would be great is to have an option to create embedded thumbnail for images that don't already have one, it would help a lot the next time you browse to that folder :-)

Hmm. You mean to actually inject a thumbnail in the metadata of the original JPEG? The negative repercussions of this would be adding to the file size, and the possibility of other applications not being able to cope with the image would be a possibility. Did you really find Imageer slow enough at generating thumbnails to require a feature like this? That's a genuine question, because I honestly feel the thumbnail feature is something that we basically perfected.

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

l0o5er

02-10-2004, 10:13 PM

I was one of the beta testers of Imageer & it didn't take me long to (happily) remove Picture Perfect from my Pocket PC. A fine effort & I look forward to its continuing evolution.

I use Imageer as an image viewer only, transferring files from my PC to my PPC. Whilst the Activesync filter is a big step up from what I am used to it doesn't go far enough in that it doesn't allow image cropping. Up until now I have been using Ulead Smartsaver to crop (& resize to 240x320) my photos & this is a painful process.

I'm interested in what other people using their Image viewers in a similar way to me are doing to make this process as painless as possible. I find that because of the reduced size of the Pocket PC screen real estate I would ideally like to crop nearly 50% of the photos I take on my digicam.

Ideally i would like to see the option to crop photos within Imageer activesync filter. What are you guys doing in the meantime?

butch

02-11-2004, 12:12 AM

Hmm. You mean to actually inject a thumbnail in the metadata of the original JPEG? The negative repercussions of this would be adding to the file size, and the possibility of other applications not being able to cope with the image would be a possibility. Did you really find Imageer slow enough at generating thumbnails to require a feature like this? That's a genuine question, because I honestly feel the thumbnail feature is something that we basically perfected.

Well, every digital camera I've used add an embedded thumbnail, the 300D even have three images for each file. (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=6933659)
And it seem that I always get thumbnails of 6MP pictures almost at the same time I open a folder, but smaller image without emb. thumbnail ex. 1MP always show the thumbnail after... Maybe it just a false impression I have and it the multithread process that make me think that too :)
I don't know how to add a thumbnail to a jpeg file, it could be done only by the "ActiveSync Converter", since if I review pictures I just took with my camera the thumbnail are already there.
It's not a big deal, Imageer is already really fast without that. :-) Vassili is doing an excellent work !!!

Jason Dunn

02-11-2004, 12:27 AM

Well, every digital camera I've used add an embedded thumbnail, the 300D even have three images for each file. (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=6933659)

Wow....I didn't know that! Ok, so at the very least we should be scanning for the thumbnails that are there already... :-)

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

Hugh Nano

02-11-2004, 04:31 AM

Hmmm... I'm checking out Palbum Suite and I encountered a jpg that Palbum won't open at 100% zoom, saying that I should use a lower zoom ratio to decrease memory usage. Strange thing is, I'm 97% sure that this image opened in Palbum before, at 100% zoom.

I'm experiencing similar problems: a 2 mega-pixel image won't display at 100% zoom unless I clear about 10Mb of RAM (hard to do on an old 32Mb iPAQ 3650!), and it won't rotate at all. When I try to rotate, the program shuts down. Similarly, when I try to generate an album, the program starts converting the images OK but spontaneously shuts down after about the third image (actually, one that needs rotating, I think). This is rather disappointing, as image rotation seems to me one of the most basic features needed in a program for editing digital camera images!

Looks like a neat program though--big improvement over Pablum Suite, even if the two aren't really related! I only hope some of these 1.0 bugs get ironed out soon...

davea

02-11-2004, 05:42 AM

For those of us that have previously purchased one of the following
Palbum products:

* Palbum Picture Viewer 3.0
* Palbum Picture Optimizer 3.5
* Palbum Suite 4.0

You may upgrade to Spb Imageer for USD 7.50 using the following link:

http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/imageer/upgrade.html?en

Upgrade process is done in 3 steps.

* Enter serial number of your copy of Palbum product
* Purchase Spb Imageer using the upgrade discount coupon you will get
* Uninstall your Palbum product and install Spb Imageer

If you forgot/mislayed your previous serial number, using the following link will bring an immediate email with your previous serial number to
be used per the above upgreade process:

http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/support/recover.html?en

Everything described above worked flawlessly for me tonight. Hope it
helps you as well.

Jason Dunn

02-11-2004, 06:59 AM

I'm experiencing similar problems: a 2 mega-pixel image won't display at 100% zoom unless I clear about 10Mb of RAM (hard to do on an old 32Mb iPAQ 3650!), and it won't rotate at all.

Thanks for the input - I'll pass along your bug reports. Even if the program doesn't have enough memory to do the requested operation, it should NOT simply shut down. I'll be honest though, doing image editing on a 32 MB device is likely almost impossible...

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

vassiliphilippov

02-11-2004, 07:43 AM

Wow....I didn't know that! Ok, so at the very least we should be scanning for the thumbnails that are there already...

Sure we do!
How else Spb Imageer is so fast with thumbnails ;)

Vassili Philippov
Spb Software House

ChristopherTD

02-11-2004, 10:40 AM

Every time you turn on the Pocket PC, my understanding is that the Pocket PC enumerates the storage card, which is what triggers the notification - because as far as the Pocket PC is concerned, that storage card WAS just inserted. I understand your point, it's a bit irritating, but it's a difficult problem.

I've come up with a potentially interesting solution, so we'll see if it pans out. ;-)

I guessed that it would be difficult to distinguish between both events. It causes problems in other apps as well, MS Reader looks too soon for the SD card, and marks it as unavailable.

If your solution works then it would be a plus - but Imageer without card notification is still great!

MBaas

02-11-2004, 12:54 PM

Wow....I didn't know that! Ok, so at the very least we should be scanning for the thumbnails that are there already...

Sure we do!
How else Spb Imageer is so fast with thumbnails ;)

Oh, wow! So we all witnessed how in Spb development is ahead of marketing - a rare event in the sw-industry and not a bad one :wink: :wink:

Michael

Hugh Nano

02-11-2004, 01:47 PM

[quote=Hugh Nano]I'll be honest though, doing image editing on a 32 MB device is likely almost impossible...

Thanks for your honesty! It would have been nice to know this before I paid $7 for the "upgrade". (Though at least it was an inexpensive mistake!)

I'm curious, though. Why wouldn't 10Mb be enough? Even if the program takes up a couple of Mb, I would think that 6 or 7Mb would be more than enough to rotate a 600Kb image file...

ChristopherTD

02-11-2004, 02:08 PM

I'm curious, though. Why wouldn't 10Mb be enough? Even if the program takes up a couple of Mb, I would think that 6 or 7Mb would be more than enough to rotate a 600Kb image file...

That is the compressed size of the image - it may have to be uncompressed to rotate and could be >6MB in size. Even if the algorithm was clever and didn't keep 2 copies (source/target) in memory while rotating that would still not fit!

vassiliphilippov

02-11-2004, 02:30 PM

I'll be honest though, doing image editing on a 32 MB device is likely almost impossible...

We have tested Spb Imageer on 32 MB devices a lot. There are no problems when you edit 11 mega pixels pictures if you do not rotate it. Spb Imageer can make all editing operations without loading picture in memory (it loads it line by line), except rotating. Rotating requires loading the picture in memory and for example a 4 mega pixels picture requires 12 MB of continues memory to load it.

It would have been nice to know this before I paid $7 for the "upgrade".

Download a trial version and I am sure you will agree with 91% of our beta users who said Spb Imageer will replace all other picture viewers on their Pocket PC.

Vassili Philippov
Spb Software House

Hugh Nano

02-11-2004, 06:11 PM

We have tested Spb Imageer on 32 MB devices a lot. There are no problems when you edit 11 mega pixels pictures if you do not rotate it. Spb Imageer can make all editing operations without loading picture in memory (it loads it line by line), except rotating. Rotating requires loading the picture in memory and for example a 4 mega pixels picture requires 12 MB of continues memory to load it.

It would have been nice to know this before I paid $7 for the "upgrade".

Download a trial version and I am sure you will agree with 91% of our beta users who said Spb Imageer will replace all other picture viewers on their Pocket PC.

Thank you for your kind response, Vassili. My reaction was perhaps a bit too hasty! Sbp Imageer will indeed be replacing all other picture viewers on my Pocket PC, even Palbum Suite!

However, I'm still a little unclear on why I can't rotate a 2 mega-pixel image with 10Mb free. I understand the compression issue (though I didn't realize how dramatic the compression is!), but if you can rotate a 4Mpx image with 12Mb free, why can't I rotate a 2Mpx image with 10Mb free?

In the meantime, I'll see if freeing up any more RAM will do the trick!

Jason Dunn

02-11-2004, 06:20 PM

Thanks for your honesty! It would have been nice to know this before I paid $7 for the "upgrade". (Though at least it was an inexpensive mistake!)

We're looking at changing the software listing to indicate the memory requirement on the software listing. We might say something like "32 MB RAM minimum for photo viewing, 64 MB minimum for photo editing."

Spb will be happy to give you a full refund - if you purchased the upgrade through Handango, I believe you can use their refund service. I don't want you to feel that you wasted $7 if the program doesn't work properly on your Pocket PC. But I would point out that Palbum didn't have the features you're having trouble with, so at the very least you haven't lost anything by going to Imageer. :lol: You may also want to consider a hard reset to clear up some junk if your Pocket PC has been running for a long time - you'd be surprised how much refuse builds up over time.

I'm curious, though. Why wouldn't 10Mb be enough? Even if the program takes up a couple of Mb, I would think that 6 or 7Mb would be more than enough to rotate a 600Kb image file...

It has to do with decompressing the JPEG before it can be worked on, and needing to have two copies in memory, etc. I'm not a developer, so I can't explain the nitty-gritty. Have you considered optimizing your images using the desktop ActiveSync plugin? You can rotate and resize images from there.

Regardless, we want you to be happy with your purchase, so we're happy to offer you a refund if you're not.

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

vassiliphilippov

02-11-2004, 07:07 PM

2 mega pixels picture
6 MB in memory (3 bytes per point)

So 6 MB should be enough (6MB continues memory part). Probably it happens because of memory defragmentation.

Once again ALL other editing operations except rotate can be done with almost 2-4 MB of free memory even with 11 mega pixels picture. It is only rotation that needs much more memory.

Vassili Philippov
Spb Software House

Hugh Nano

02-11-2004, 08:06 PM

We're looking at changing the software listing to indicate the memory requirement on the software listing. We might say something like "32 MB RAM minimum for photo viewing, 64 MB minimum for photo editing."

Probably a good idea! But wouldn't it be better to list the minimum amount of free RAM needed for each?

Spb will be happy to give you a full refund - if you purchased the upgrade through Handango, I believe you can use their refund service. I don't want you to feel that you wasted $7 if the program doesn't work properly on your Pocket PC. But I would point out that Palbum didn't have the features you're having trouble with, so at the very least you haven't lost anything by going to Imageer. :lol: You may also want to consider a hard reset to clear up some junk if your Pocket PC has been running for a long time - you'd be surprised how much refuse builds up over time.

<snip>

Regardless, we want you to be happy with your purchase, so we're happy to offer you a refund if you're not.

No! No! No! You're not getting my Spb Imageer away from me! It's mine, all mine, I tell you! My precious!

Seriously, though, I spoke a little to hastily earlier. I love this program--only wish my Pocket PC could handle the image-rotation feature! The interface is clean and uncluttered, the speed is great, the image-editing features are simple-but-powerful, and the slide-show feature is wonderful! I don't want to go back--I just wish I could go a few steps further forward!

I managed to clear up some more RAM by doing some radical reshuffling of programs and emptying the PIE cache--I now have almost 13Mb free, which defaults to 5.89Mb Storage and 7.04Mb Program RAM. I figured out that one of the problems was that the picture-file properties had been set to "Archive" (I copied them off a CD--common problem), so I changed the properties, then managed to rotate one, but ran into the same "not enough memory" error message when I tried to rotate a second. Closed the program and was able to rotate the second picture, then again ran into the same "out of memory" error when I tried to rotate a third. Couldn't manage to rotate a fourth picture at all.

One other thing I noticed was that the rotated picture-files were significantly larger than the original picture-files: about 1Mb, as opposed to about 630Kb. This seems odd. The larger picture-file sizes might account for why I couldn't rotate back one of the ones I first rotated successfully, but shouldn't have had an impact on the above results, as all the pictures are on my storage card.

Jason Dunn

02-11-2004, 08:16 PM

Probably a good idea! But wouldn't it be better to list the minimum amount of free RAM needed for each?

Perhaps, but that's such a variable - the amount of RAM needed to edit a 1 MB image is different from a 5 MB image...so it would be hard to nail down. Ultimately this is a hard thing to solve because on a computer, you have gigabytes worth of space to use as a swap file, so while it might be slower, it will always work if you have enough hard drive space. We don't have that luxery on a Pocket PC...

One other thing I noticed was that the rotated picture-files were significantly larger than the original picture-files: about 1Mb, as opposed to about 630Kb.

Hmm...it could be that the default JPEG compression level we're using is higher than that of your original image. JPEGs will grow in size if you don't compress them to the same level again. ie: if you take a 500 KB JPEG at 60% compression and re-save it at 80% compression, it will be more than 500 KB in size...

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

ChristopherTD

02-11-2004, 08:20 PM

Jason/Vassili

There are ways of rotating a JPG without altering the image data, i.e. without decompressing/recompressing. A wee utility called PIE does this for me from PicMeta (http://www.picmeta.com).

It may be worth looking at implementing that in Imageer?

Jason Dunn

02-11-2004, 08:24 PM

There are ways of rotating a JPG without altering the image data, i.e. without decompressing/recompressing. A wee utility called PIE does this for me from PicMeta (http://www.picmeta.com). It may be worth looking at implementing that in Imageer?

Yes, it's called lossless rotation, and it's something that we very much want to add to Imageer in the future, but in the constant battle between features and resources, that one lost out. If Imageer had 100% of the features that I wanted it in, it would have taken two years to code. ;-)

Sincerely,

Jason Dunn
VP Marketing
Spb Software House

Hugh Nano

02-12-2004, 12:32 AM

There are ways of rotating a JPG without altering the image data, i.e. without decompressing/recompressing. A wee utility called PIE does this for me from PicMeta (http://www.picmeta.com). It may be worth looking at implementing that in Imageer?

Yes, it's called lossless rotation, and it's something that we very much want to add to Imageer in the future, but in the constant battle between features and resources, that one lost out.

OK. Count one vote for the implementation of lossless rotation in Imageer 1.1!

MBaas

02-12-2004, 10:29 AM

Count one vote for the implementation of lossless rotation in Imageer 1.1!
Oh, so we're discussing 1.1-features already ;)

What I would like to see added is a "Favorites"-feature where you can store favorite folders. Should allow for faster navigation etc...

Cheers

Michael

ferrysj

02-13-2004, 10:19 PM

Anthony Caruana

02-13-2004, 10:32 PM

Which memory option is the best option for installation? If installed on an SD card (Axim), do you lose any efficiencies/speed? As for loading and editing pictures, I could handle slower speeds. I would probably use the slideshow option the most and would like the best performance for that usage. Images would originate from a CF card out of the camera.

Also, does this version perform the same Optimization of photos as the old stand alone Palbum product? As I recall, the standalone was able to provide a sharper (non-fuzzy) image that was better suited for the PPC viewing.

Seve

When I wrote the review I had Imageer installed to an SD card and used the CF slot for my photos. It performed very well for me. Remeber, even though you are launching the app from a memory card, it is in RAM while actually running.

As long as the SD card it's installed on is in the PPC it will work with all functions operational. At least that was my experience.

bmhome1

02-14-2004, 02:44 AM

In my big thumbs-up comments earlier about Imageer, I failed to mention that I am also running it from SD card and viewing images from a CF card.

The great speeds loading 2 - 3.5MB jpg files I experience doesn't seem to matter whether the app is installed in RAM or from card, I tried both ways and didn't see a difference, at least with Lexar media cards.

Jonathon Watkins

02-24-2004, 02:08 AM

OK. Count one vote for the implementation of lossless rotation in Imageer 1.1!

Definitely! That's one thing I would *really* like to see it do. What's the point in re-sampling the jpg, when you can simply redefine what orientation the image is in? Lossless rotating is the way to go. 8)

frbl

02-27-2004, 11:58 PM

...in the next generation Imageer:

1) Conversion of RAW files to TIFF or JPG - a tall order, I know - but it would be great to pull out the CF card from my Canon 10D, processs the pictures via Imageer, put the CF back into the camera and print out to a printer via the camera interface (actually printing via the Pocket PC would be best but the programs aren't yet out there yet for doing that well).

(Obviously, one would want to save the original RAW files somewhere - ahh, I love my dual-slot hp2215(':)')

2) A proportioned cropping tool for sizing the proper frame for 4x6 or 4x5/8x10 output. This would help in the scenario above since the 10D won't print out pictures unless that are properly proportioned and sized.

jbalgley

03-05-2004, 06:40 PM

I'll second the "proportioned cropping" request. Without that, cropping for printing is useless.

hamishmacdonald

03-02-2005, 12:41 PM

Menneisyys

03-02-2005, 01:46 PM

As long as the SD card it's installed on is in the PPC it will work with all functions operational. At least that was my experience.

Yes, all functions of Imageer will work OK off any memory card.

Menneisyys

03-02-2005, 02:16 PM

I really like Imageer, but I ran into something last night that I found very disappointing: I spend a fair amount of time adding comments to my images, thinking that they would be transferred to my Fotki webspace with the images. It wasn't. If the text isn't actually associated with the original photo, and only shows within Imageer, this feature isn't much use to me, and neither is posting a page full of images with no commentary. (Photoblogging is what I want to use this for, essentially).

Would it be possible in a future version of Imageer to have the text comments sent to Fotki?

Imageer stores the image annotations in the JPG files themselves. These annotations can be extracted by using an external program or can be even read by looking into the JPG file itself (it'll be in the EXIF section, after a "ImgComment" tag, in Unicode.) This means it won't be lost and your guests will be able to access them. If you can also upload descriptions in the Fotki webspace later, it's pretty easy to write a client that downloads the images from the webspace (if they aren't available any more locally), reads the descriptions and uploads the latter. If the communication with the server is not overly complicated/secure (but, for example, simple cookie-based), an app like this can be coded in half an hour in a capable language like Java.

Unfortunately, the annotation format is not EXIF-compatible, so no EXIF reader apps will be able to access it - this is a problem with Spb Imageer.

hamishmacdonald

06-21-2005, 02:06 PM

Ah, well, not being a programmer, I don't imagine I'll be writing any procedures for pulling the comments out of my JPEGs. If someone else wanted to do this, I'm sure the community at large would be most grateful.

But I just tried uploading from Imageer to Fotki today (21 June, 2005), and it works again! Hazzah!