ctPhotoBook Help File Ver 1.3 (2001/08/11)

1. Getting started

First, it is necessary to create an album which you can work on.
Do this by either clicking [NEW...] on the entry screen, or by choosing the [File->New Album...] menu from the main menu.
You will be prompted to specify a file name. (with a .pbk extension)
ctPhotoBook will then create a directory containing all the necessary files for your new album, including subdirectories for original image archiving.
You are now ready to start importing photos into your album.

2. Importing photos

Either click the [Add Photos...] button or choose the [Layout -> Add Photos...] menu point.
The photobrowser window will open.
Browse through the contents of your hardisk in the explorer style tree view, selecting a folder will display the photos contained in it in thumbnail view.
Click on a thumbnail to select it and view it in the right part of the window.
You can zoom in/out with left/right mous buttons or mousewheel.
Rotate it using the rotation buttons in the [Image] box.
Apply effects using the [Fx...] button, (the one with the eye icon).
Rapidly convert a photo to grayscale by clicking [B/W] button.
Choose [Select] or [Pan] mode with the corresponding buttons.
Select mode will allow you to select a part of the photo by drawing a selection area with the left mouse button down on the photo.
The selected area can be used to apply effects or to cut out the selected part and add it to your album.
Clear the selection with the [CS] button.
The [AR] button is used to allow for preset aspect ratios.
Click it, choose an aspect ratio from the dropdown list and your selection will be fixed to it.
Clicking on the [Add] button will add the photo to the current page of your album. If there is an area selected, only this area will be added to the current page.
The [Fit] button resizes the display of the current photo so that it fits on the current screen.
The [Undo] button reverts any changes you made to the photo.
To just print the current photo, enter its dimension, either Height or Width, select whether you want a hairline black border printed around it, choose a printer and print
Add more photos by repeating the above procedure, when finished, click the [Close] button.

3. Page Layout

Your imported photos are now all located on the current page top left corner.
You can drag them around and resize them at will, using the gray handles on the corners and in the middle.
Resize will always respect the Width/Height ratio of the image.
To modify a photo, or to view it at best detail, doubleclick on it or choose the [Edit photo...] menu.
By clicking on the [Information] button, the window with the photo properties will pop up and allow you to enter precise settings for each photo. You can also send a photo to another page by introducing the page number here and clicking the [Send] button.
Right clicking on a photo will present you with a menu of possible options.
You can insert and delete pages with the [Layout] menu.
To switch between pages, click on [<-] (Arrow left) or [->] (Arrow right) button, or choose a page in the corresponding combobox.
Switching to full screen mode is done through the [View -> Show FullScreen] mode.
Return to normal by hitting the [Esc] key.
To center, align or distribute photos, select some by drawing a selection rectangle around them or by clicking them with the [shift] key hold down. Click the [Align & Distribute] button and experiment.

3.1 HTML Export of pages

Click on [File -> Export Page(s) as HTML...] menu point.
The Export Wizard will display.
First choose an output directory, where you want to put the album files.
Set the width of a page, for first experiments, use the prefilled values.
Every page of the HTML Album will have [Previous] and [Next] links. In the 'Page before page 1' box, please enter the URL of the page where the [Previous] link of the first page points to. In the 'Page after last page' box, enter the URL of the [Next] link of the last album page.
When you check [Include separate pages for each photo], the program generates resampled (to the specified ratio) thumbs of the original photos, which are displayed when you click on a photo on the layouted page, to have a full screen view of an image.
Click on [GO] to start generating HTML. (And be patient, this has not yet been optimized.)
See a demo of a generated album here.

4. What's new

Version 1.3

Web publishing feature has been added.
Full screen display mode added.
Z-Ordering of photos.
Various Progress Bars tell you when images are beeing resampled.

Version 1.2

Pages can have different sizes, orientations and background colors. (Background colors are for onscreen display only)
Wheel Mouse users are able to zoom in and out on the main page.
Undo possibility has been added to the main and to the import form
Options Menu and form added
The Demo has a page limit.
Pages can have names (ie. bookmarks) for quick navigation through huge albums.
A "SnapToObjects" option has been included, which will precisely position objects near each other, for quick and precise layout. In the demo, the objects will be arranged with a fixed gap width, in the full version the gap can be changed.
The behaviour of resizing a photo on a page has changed, the aspect ratio is always kept.
Filenames are displayed in the thumb area.
Aspect ratios for selected regions can be set in the import form.
Duplicate function has been added.

5. About

This software is shareware.
The demo version is limited to 30 days of usage and has some features disabled.
Printout is limited to first page.
Page numbers is limited to 20.
Page size and bookmarks cannot be used.
The Datatable contents cannot be viewed.

The full version is able to use albums created with the demo.
For information how to register, new downloads or anything else go to http://computer.team.lu

I have developed this software because i was not happy with other products i have found on the market.
As a digital camera owner and passionate photographer i needed a way to process large amounts of high resolution photos, organize and layout them quickly and precisely, print out single images and print out pages with the photos layed out, keep them together in an album and long time archive them.
All the existing programs i saw needed huge PC Power, used proprietary file formats (this is very bad for real archiving, think of it) and were slow with importing, displaying and page flipping.
This lead to the following, i think unique, implementation of the ctPhotoBook program.

When you import an image into an album, a copy of the original file is copied to the [Images] subdirectory in the album directory, where photos are again organized in subdirectories containing each at most 100 photos, this for fast disk access. Putting more than 100 photos in one directory would slow down disk access time. Subdirectory creation is automatic, as is the whole archiving process.
Concurrently, and according to the size layouted on the page, an image of the imported photo is rendered in exactly the resolution needed for screen display and stored with an identical mechanism in the [Thumbs] directory.
In highly priced professional environments, this is made on the server side and called OPI, (Open Prepress Interface)
If you flip to the next page, the screen resolution images are loaded and displayed on screen, and not the original, huge, high resolution photos. This keeps memory and cpu usage low, while presenting no inconveniences.
Rerendering of a screen resoultion images is only done after it has been resized and you flip the page or you save the page layout.
If you print a page, the program will use the high resolution photos counterpart to produce the best output.
If you double click a photo to view its detail, again the high resolution part will be used for zooming and editing.
All the layout information is stored in the [Database] subdirectory, within a DBF file, format readable by lots of programms.
If you want to archive an album, simply burn its corresponding directory, (including the .pbk file) on a cdrom, and there you are.

6. More features to come (in no precise order)

Display of the jpeg tags contained in the original file (EXIF), this is very useful as most digicams store extensive exposure information here.
Adding of comments to photos.
Freely distributable album viewer.
Better help file.

8. Bugs and missing features

Despite the fact that we test our software on various PC's, it is more than probable that there are bugs in the programm.
If you encounter such a bug, or if you have a sugestion for improving this software, please mail us at: photobook@team.lu