Jpeg Viewer Help Contents
SBJV Jpeg Viewer Help Contents

Jpeg Viewer main window commands:

File

New Jpeg Viewer

New Index Window

Generate Catalogs

Next Image

Previous Image

Encrypt File

Decrypt File

Open

Delete

Save as BMP

Set WallPaper

Print

Edit

Mark All

Mark None

Invert Marks

Mark Current File

UnMark Current File

Mark Wildcard

UnMark Wildcard

SlideShow

Start/Stop

Set Interval

Normal/WallPaper

Forward/Reverse/Random

Only include marked items

Image Properties

Auto-Color/Grayscale

Auto-ColorDepth/8-bit

Shrink/Fullsize/Stretch/Zoom

Center in Window

Options

Set decryption key

Display file/directory pane

Display categorization pane

Confirm Delete

Confirm Move

Next Picture Lookahead

Join Directories

Save Defaults

Help

Contents

About


New Jpeg Window
New Jpeg Viewer

Creates another Jpeg viewer window. Useful if youd like to view more than one picture at a time. Both windows are completely independent and may view different directories if desired.


New Index Window

The visual index system is a feature designed to allow you to get a quick overview of the pictures in a particular directory. The visual index window displays a rectangular grid of thumbnail images which are generated automatically on-the-fly. You may scroll this grid up and down to get a view of the entire directory of images.

The visual index window can be opened in two ways: 1) with the New Index Window command on the Jpeg viewer main windows pull-down menu, and 2) with the Index button on the Jpeg viewer main window file/directory pane.

Double clicking on any thumbnail image will cause a full-size Jpeg viewer window to be opened.


Generate Catalogs

What are catalogs?

SBJV includes a catalog image generator. Catalog images are images that contain a collection of thumbnails. They are useful in case you wish to distribute a summary of your collection of images to another user. For example, catalogs are used widely in binary picture newsgroup to give an overview of a selection of pictures before they are uploaded.

How do you generate them?

The option to generate catalogs is located under the File menu in the main window of SBJV. First go into the directory you wish to generate the catalogs from. Then, select Generate Catalogs from the file menu. You will be presented with a rather complex dialog box of options. Most of these are already set to the default values and need not be altered. Click on Ok. Your catalogs will be placed in your SBJV/SBNews directory (unless you have specified otherwise).

What are all those complicated options?

There are several options that control the output of the catalogs. Most are set to defaults and need not be modified. Here is a descriptive listing:

Background Style

Blend Filename

Thumbnail Image Properties

Output File Path

Output File Name

Cat-Number Padding

Initial Cat-Num

Output Image Size

Number of Columns/Rows

Quality

There is also a button called Annotate which will let you configure a header (text across the top of a page) and a footer (text across the bottom of a page) to be added to the catalogs. This is a good place to put a title or copyright information.


Quality

The quality setting effects the jpeg compression of the output catalog files. Setting normal quality yields good compression, but less than optimal image quality. Setting high quality enables very high image quality, but compression suffers and the output files will be larger than normal.


Catalog Generation: Background
Background Style

This controls the background appearance of the catalogs (i.e. the area that is not covered by the thumbnails). Several different styles are available depending on your personal preference.

·	Raised Groupbox / Sunken Groupbox. These simulate a 3-dimensional box around each image. The background color is automatically chosen to be light gray.

·	Flat Gray / Flat Black / Flat White. These are pure colors.

·	Tiled Blend of image. This takes another image (specified in the blend field) and tiles it for use as the background. The effect is similar to how MS-Windows can tile an image for wallpaper on your desktop.

·	Stretched Blend of image. This takes another image (specified in the blend field) and stretches it to fill the background. Aspect ratio is not preserved, so some images may not look right in this perspective.


Catalog Generation: Blend Filename
Blend Filename

This is the name of the file that will be blended into a background if you specified Tiled/Stretched blend as the background style above. Any JPG/GIF/BMP file will work.


Catalog Generation: Thumbnail Image Properties
Thumbnail Image Properties

This is a selection of miscellaneous properties for the thumbnail images.

·	Center image in box. This causes each thumbnail image to be centered within its box rather than aligning it to the upper left corner.

·	Fast integer scaling. Causes images to be scaled to a multiple of ½, ¼, or 1/8. The image will probably not fill the whole box in this case. You probably should NOT check this option unless you have a good reason for doing so.


Catalog Generation: Output file path
Output File Path

This specifies the path to which output files will be written. It defaults to the directory in which SBJV/SBNews was loaded.


Catalog Generation: Output file name
Output File Name

This is the name of each catalog file. Do NOT specify a path or extention for the filename. The extention jpg will automatically be added. Catalog numbers will also be added automatically.


Catalog Generation: Padding
Cat-Number padding

This controls how numbers are represented in the filename. This is best shown by example:

·	No Padding: example cat1.jpg, cat2.jpg, ..., cat99.jpg

·	Pad 2 digits: example cat01.jpg, cat02.jpg, ..., cat99.jpg

·	Pad 3 digits: example cat001.jpg, cat002.jpg, ..., cat099.jpg

·	Pad 4 digits: example cat0001.jpg, cat0002.jpg, ..., cat0099.jpg


Catalog Generation: Initial Catalog Number
Initial Cat-Num

This is the starting number for the catalog filenames. You can start it anywhere youd like, but 1 is usually a good bet.


Catalog Generation: Output Image Size
Output Image Size

This specifies the resolution of the catalog files. You may choose anything you likelarger resolutions offer better quality and/or more images per page, but require a higher resolution display to view them fullsize. 800x600 or 1024x768 is usually a good choice.


Catalog Generation: Number of Rows/Columns
Number of Rows/Columns

·	Number of Columns. The number images across a page from left to right.

·	Number of Rows. The number of images down a page from top to bottom.


Next/Previous Image; Navigating through images
Next/Previous Image

There are several ways to navigate through images in the Jpeg viewer:

·	Use the Next Image or Previous Image command on the File pulldown menu.

·	Scroll the file listbox and double-click on a filename. (assuming file/directory pane is open)

·	Press the << or >> buttons. (assuming file/director pane is open)

·	Press Control-N for next or Control-P for previous


Open File

Executing this command will present you with the Standard Windows File-Open dialog box. This may be useful if you know a specific file that you wish to view and you can find it more quickly this way rather than navigating through the Jpeg viewers file and directory listboxes.

The Open File dialog is a standard Windows common dialog box and should function similarly to the Open File dialogs in other Windows programs that you are used to.

SBJV/Jview supports several different file formats.


Delete File

This command will delete the current image that you are viewing. The file will be deleted from your hard drive and will not be retrievable in the future.

By default, a confirmation dialog will be presented to make sure that you wish to delete the file. You may disable this confirmation dialog by using the Confirm Delete preference on the options menu.


Save as BMP

This will save the current file that you are viewing as a Windows Bitmap (BMP) file. A dialog box will prompt you for the filename you wish to save it as. The BMP format is a useful format to use when communicating with other Windows programs.


File Types

SBJV/Jview supports the following file types:

·	Jpeg (JPG): Jpeg is a lossy compression format. It uses a complex mathematical procedure to remove certain less-important information from the image. Thus, if an image that was originally not in the Jpeg format is converted to Jpeg, some loss of data will occur. However, this loss is calculated to be imperceptible to the human eye. Since Jpeg is a lossy compression algorithm, it is able to achieve high compression ratios (i.e. small files) and is an excellent format for transmission to and from the internet.

·	Windows Bitmap (BMP): The Windows Bitmap format typically does not employ any compression and hence may have a very large file size. The simplicity of the format makes it very easy for programs to use and it is widely supported by Windows programs.

·	Graphics Interchange Format (GIF): The GIF format employs a lossless compression method, so no data is lost in the compression process. It is historically a very popular format, but recently has been losing much of its popularity to Jpeg. GIF is a good format to choose if you want your data compressed, but cannot afford to lose any data.


Set as Wallpaper

Executing this command will instruct Windows to set the current image as wallpaper. Wallpaper is the background of your desktop. SBJV/Jview will first convert the current image to a BMP, then save it in your SBJV/Jview directory as PAPER.BMP, and finally instruct Windows to use PAPER.BMP as wallpaper.

Thus, the file is actually copied and you may delete the original if desired.


Print

This will print the current image on your printer. There are two types of printing that can be performed:

1.	Print at actual size: This will print the image to the printer at screen resolution. The image may be smaller (or larger!) than the paper and thus it might not fill the paper optimally.

2.	Print  scaled to paper: This will scale the image so that one axis of the image will will the entire page. This will use an optimal area of the paper, but it does have the effect of magnifying very small images and they may appear pixelated.


Global Mark Commands
Global Mark Commands: Mark All, Mark None, and Invert Marks

These three commands (Mark All, Mark None, and Invert Marks) all operate on the entire list of files. They do not depend on the current file that is hilighted in the listbox.

·	Mark All: Sets every entry to marked status

·	Mark None: Sets every entry to unmarked status

·	Mark Invert: Anything that is marked will become unmarked, and everything that is unmarked will become marked.

Hint: You can use the Mark All command and the Delete command to delete an entire file directory with just a few keystrokes.


File Mark Commands
File Mark Commands: Mark Current File and Unmark Current File

These commands act on the file that is currently hilighted in the file listbox. They affect the marked status of that file only.


Wildcard Mark Commands
Wildcard Mark Commands: Mark Wildcard and Unmark Wildcard

These commands use a wildcard specification. A wildcard is a text string with the special characters * and ?. The * character will match any string of characters, and the ? character will match any single character.

The Wildcard Mark commands will apply the wildcard string you enter to each filename in the filename list and mark each filename appropriately.

For example, if you used a*.jpg as your wildcard string, all Jpeg files beginning with the letter a would be marked.


Slideshow General Information

The slideshow mode will display the pictures in a directory automatically, with each new picture being displayed at a fixed time interval. There are two ways to initiate a slideshow:

1.	Use the Start/Stop menu item on the Slideshow pulldown menu.

2.	Press the play > button on the file/directory pane.

Once a slideshow has been activated, there are two ways to stop it and return to normal mode:

1.	Use the Start/Stop menu item on the Slideshow pulldown menu.

2.	Press the stop o button on the file/directory pane. (The play button automatically changes to the stop button when the slideshow was started)

There are several different options that may be selected for the slideshow:

·	Interval

·	Normal/Wallpaper

·	Forward/Reverse/Random

·	Only include marked items

Hint: While the slideshow is playing, you may wish to hide the file/directory pane and/or the categorization pane to get a larger viewing field for the pictures. The panes may be hidden by using the Options pulldown menu.


Slideshow Interval

The interval is the amount of time that will elapse before the picture is changed to the new one. Setting a small interval will cause a fast slideshow and setting a large interval will cause a slow slideshow. The interval may be changed before or during the slideshow presentation.


Slideshow Normal vs Wallpaper
Slideshow: Normal vs Wallpaper Mode

The Normal mode will cause the slideshow pictures to be displayed in the Jpeg Viewer window. This is the default behaviour and should be suitable for most modes.

Wallpaper mode will cause your Windows wallpaper to be updated by the slideshow.

Hint: You could use Wallpaper mode, set a large interval, minimize the Jpeg viewer, and then your Windows wallpaper would change automatically while you were working in other applications (kind of a slideshow in the background).


Slideshow Forward, Reverse, or Random
Slideshow: Forward, Reverse, or Random

This sets the order that the pictures will be displayed. Forward will display each picture successively moving down the directory. Reverse will display each picture moving up the directory. Random will choose each image at random (i.e. without any order whatsoever).


Slideshow: Only display marked items

This will limit the slideshow to items that you have marked with the mark commands (located under the edit menu). This may be useful if you would only like to include a subset of the files in the current directory in the slideshow.

Note that if no items are marked, this option will be ignored and all items will be displayed.


Automatic Color / Grayscale

These two options control whether images are displayed in color or grayscale (black and white). If Automatic Color is checked, then images will be displayed in color or grayscale depending on the type of the image. If Grayscale is checked, then the image will always be displayed in grayscale, regardless of the images color content.

Jpeg images can be decoded quicker in grayscale mode, since the color component need not be decompressed. Thus, if you wish to quickly scan a series of images, you may wish to select grayscale decoding.


Automatic Color Depth / Forced 8-bit

Color depth is the amount of color information that is stored for each pixel. There are several different color depths available under the Windows operating system:

·	2-bit (monchrome): Only two colors, black and white.

·	4-bit: Sixteen colors, from an indexed palette

·	8-bit: 256 colors, from an indexed palette

·	16-bit: 65536 (or 32768 in some settings) colors.  True Color.

·	24-bit: 16 million colors. True Color.

Each successive color depth setting requires more memory (for uncompressed data). For example, a 24-bit image requires three times the storage space of an 8-bit image.

Most people run their system in either 8-bit (256-color) or one of the True Color (16-bit, 24-bit) modes. The Jpeg viewer will normally automatically determine what mode youre running in and adjust its output accordingly. This is the Automatic Color Depth setting.

If you are running in one of the True Color modes and youd like the images to be processed in 8-bit mode, you can check the forced 8-bit option.


Shrink / Fullsize / Stretch

The Jpeg viewer supports several different methods of displaying the image on-screen:

·	Shrink by Integer Scaling: This is the fastest method. The Jpeg decompression routines can automatically shrink an image to ½, ¼, or 1/8 scale. Shrunk images can be decompressed faster, so there is a noticeable speed gain. However, since the image is a fixed scale, it will probably not fill up the window, and will probably be smaller than you would like.

·	Display full size: This will display the image at its full size resolution. The image may be larger than the available window space, and scrollbars will be enabled to let you pan or scroll the image around in the window.

·	Stretch to Window: The image will be stretched so that it fills the largest possible area of the window while still preserving aspect ratio. If you have a very small image, then it may be stretched significantly beyond its true size. This method is comparably slower than the others.

·	Stretch to min(Window,Fullsize): Similar to the previous option, but it will not stretch an image beyond its real size. Thus, a very small image will remain very small. This may also be slow.\

·	Zoom In (2:1, 3:1, ...): This will magnify the image as it appears onscreen.


Center in Window

If checked, then the image will be centered in the window. If you dont check it, then the image will be aligned relative to the upper left corner.


Set Decryption Key

The Jpeg viewer may be configured to automatically decrypt files that have been encrypted with the Encrypt.Exe program or directly by SBNews/Newsbot. If an encrypted file is detected, then you will usually be prompted for the key, but you may also enter the key manually by selecting this option.


Display File/Directory Pane

If checked, then the file/directory pane will be displayed along the left side of the window. If unchecked, then it will not.

The file/directory pane contains a series of buttons and listboxes designed to allow you to easily navigate through a directory of images. Normally, you probably want to leave it enabled. However, if you want to maximize window room for the image (such as when running a slideshow), you may wish to disable it.


Display Categoriation Pane
Display Categorization Pane

The categorization pane allows you to easily move files to other directories. It is displayed on the right side of the main window.


Confirm Delete

If checked, then a confirmation dialog will appear whenever you delete a file. This is helpful to keep you from accidentally deleting something you do not want to. However, if youre an expert user then you may wish to disable the confirmations.


Confirm Move

If checked, then a confirmation dialog will appear whenever you move a file using the categorization options. This is helpful to keep you from accidentally moving a file to the wrong directory. However, if youre an expert user then you may wish to disable the confirmations.


Next Picture Lookahead

The next picture lookahead will automatically begin preloading the next image when you start veiwing an image. Thus, if you are viewing images sequentially down a directory, this will speed things up. However, if you are not viewing images in a sequential manner (i.e. youre jumping all over the place for some reason), then this may slow things down.


Save Options
Save Defaults

This will save the options that you have currently selected as defaults which will be used next time you load the program.


Join Directories

This command is best illustrated by example...

I routinely back up my image file collection to CD-R (writable CD-ROM drive) media to save my more precious hard drive space. Thus, the bulk of the files are located on a CD-ROM disc. Now, as I download new images, I categorize them into a directory on my hard drive (after all, I wouldn't want to burn a new CD every time I downloaded a new file). Thus, I have two separate directory structures, one on CD and one on my hard drive.  To browse pictures, I would normally have to switch between these two directories.

The join directories command was designed to deal with situations like this. It will allow you to join (or "merge") one physical directory into another, so you can see the files in more than one directory at a time.

Following my example above,

I place files on my hard drive in a directory called D:\IMAGES. This directory has several subdirectories, such as D:\IMAGES\CARS, D:\IMAGES\PLANETS, etc. The CDR backup has an identical directory structure, on drive H:, H:\IMAGES\CARS, H:\IMAGES\PLANETS, etc.  What I would like to be able to do is to merge these directories.

I set up a join mapping in SBJV by setting source directory to D:\IMAGES\ and join directory to H:\IMAGES\. Now, any time I look at any picture in the D:\IMAGES\CARS\, the files in H:\IMAGES\CARS\ will automatically be added to that directory.

Specifically, this is what the join directories command does: Any time SBJV searches a directory for filenames, it will check to see if that directory matches any join source directories. If a source directory was matched, then the SBJV will also search the directory specified by the join directory.

For example, assume you set the following:

Source Directory = C:\PICTURES\DOGS

Join Directory = C:\PICTURES\COWS

Then, if you loaded up C:\PICTURES\DOGS, you would also see all of the pictures located in C:\PICTURES\COWS. Furthermore, if you loaded up C:\PICTURES\DOGS\POODLES, then you would also get any pictures in C:\PICTURES\COWS\POODLES (unlikely, but possible).

There are several uses for the join directories command:

·	Merging the contents of directory structures located on different hard drives.

·	Join the contents of several small directories into one large one. Good to display a slideshow of ALL the pictures on your hard drive.


Encrypt File

This command will allow you to encrypt a file so that it cannot be viewed without the encryption key. You may encrypt a single file or multiple files if you have some tagged.

The encryption dialog will prompt you for an encryption key. This is the key that will be used to encrypt or "scramble" the image. You must remember this key if you are ever to view or decrypt the image again. A longer key does offer better protection against code breaking.

Once you have entered your key and pressed OK, a window will display the results as each file is encrypted. Once the encryption is complete, the OK button will be enabled and you may press it to dismiss the dialog.

SBJV, SB Image Explorer, and SBNews can all view encrypted files automatically, as long as you specify. Thus, you may encrypt your files for security while still being able to view them easily. You may use the decrypt command at any time to return your files to their original, unencrypted state.


Decrypt File

The decrypt command is used to decrypt or "unscramble" files that were encrypted using the encrypt command or Newsbot's automatic encryption features. Once decrypted, a file may be viewed by any program, with or without the encryption key.

The encryption dialog will prompt you for a key. This should be the same key that you used when you encrypted the file in the first place. You will be prompted to enter it twice, to make sure that you typed it correctly.

Once you have entered your key and pressed OK, a window will display the results as each file is decrypted. Once the decryption is complete, the OK button will be enabled and you may press it to dismiss the dialog.


Temporary Registration Code Expired

Your temporary registration code expired. My official policy (for Online Credit Card Registrations) is as follows:

1) You log on to my web site at http://smbaker.simplenet.com/sbnews/sbnews.html and press the <Register> button.

2) You are then guided through an online credit-card registration process.

3) When the process is completed, you are immediately issued a TEMPORARY registration code. This code is only good for a maximum of 7 days.

4) Usually within 72 hours of registering, you will receive via email a PERMANENT registration code keyed to the email name you supplied. You may then enter this code into SBNews and it will be good forever. You may discard the TEMPORARY code at this point.

If you have not received your PERMANENT registration code within the time period that the TEMPORARY code has expired, then something has gone wrong. The email message may have been lost, or I may have somehow missed processing it. Please send an email immediately to smbaker@primenet.com and I will look into the situation and get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you for your support.