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Enhancing your pictures: Image editorDoing and undoingDrawing a new borderRotating and flippingBrightness controlsUsing an external editor |
ViewMinder's Image Editor is where you can draw new borders to your pictures, rotate them or change their light and colour balance. Empty space around the edges can be trimmed. Rotation can be by any number of degrees, to correct their orientation or straighten the horizon. Pictures that are too bright or dark can easily be adjusted. All changes can be reversed if you don't like what you've done or if you change your mind. You can enter the Image editor from Check, Browse or Search mode. First select the picture you wish to edit. It will appear in the Preview window. You can edit only one image at a time, so the image editor is available only when a single pictures is selected. To select pictures one at a time, hold down the Ctrl button when clicking them. If you use the menu or the keyboard shortcut to start the image editor, ViewMinder's internal image editor will open. If you click the toolbar button, you can choose between using ViewMinder's editor or some other picture editing program. (See Using an external editor, below.) If the picture is larger than the window, click the drag
button . If you want to see the full picture on screen, click View on the Image Editor's menu bar and then Fit to Window. |
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Doing and undoingAll of the editing that you do with the Image editor can be undone, by clicking the undo button on the toolbar, or by choosing Edit and then Undo from the menu or by with Ctrl-Z (pressing and holding down the Control key on your keyboard as you type z). Or, if you change your mind about everything, you can simply close the window without saving any changes, and your original picture will be unchanged. If you want to start again from the beginning at any time, select File and then Revert from the menu. A new unchanged copy of the picture will appear in the Image Editor. |
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Saving changesBut when you save your changes, using the save button on the toolbar, or by choosing File and then Save on the menu, the original picture will be permanently altered. Magnifying glassTo see details of the picture, click the magnifying glass button, move the cursor over the part of the picture you want to see and press the mouse button. This does not edit the picture in any way. |
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Drawing a new border
The most common and useful editing task is to crop a picture - that is, to trim it to a new border. Trimming away the edges helps to concentrate attention on the main part of the picture. Of course it will not make the central area any sharper, and everything you trim off will be lost. If you used a scanner to create the digital image, cropping may be essential to remove dark areas along the edges. There are two steps. First you draw a new border. Then you trim the image to this border. After clicking the Border tool, move the cursor over the picture, to the point where you want one of its new corners to be. Drag the mouse (move the mouse while holding down the mouse button) diagonally across the picture to where you want the other corner. This will draw a frame over the picture. |
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Moving the borderIf the frame is not in the right place, you can move it by moving the mouse pointer into the frame and then dragging it (holding the mouse button down as you move the mouse). You can move the sides of the frame, by putting the button pointer over one of the four black handles in the middle of each side and dragging the handle (holding the mouse button down as you move the mouse). You can move two sides at a time, by putting the button pointer over one of the four black handles at each corner and dragging the handle (holding the mouse button down as you move the mouse). |
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Cropping the pictureDrawing this frame does not, by itself, edit the picture. You can remove the frame by clicking a different button on the toolbar, or by clicking once anywhere outside the frame. Once the frame is drawn, the cropping button is activated on the toolbar. By clicking this, you trim the picture to its new border. If you don't like the effect, you can undo it by clicking the undo button on the toolbar, or by choosing Edit and then Undo from the menu or by with Ctrl+Z (pressing and holding down the Control key on your keyboard as you type z). |
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Rotating and flippingTo rotate the picture by 180 degrees (in other words turn it upside down) or by 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise, click one of the toolbar buttons. Rotating the picture is not the same as flipping it. Flipping produces the effect of viewing the picture in a mirror. Flipping is not often needed. Even if you've scanned a film from the wrong side, it would produce a better result to scan it again ! Rotation is more useful. Sometimes the appearance of a picture can be greatly improved by rotating it a few degrees, for example to straighten an almost-horizontal horizon. Click the Free rotate button For more precise control, type in the exact number of degrees. Another quick way is the click the slide bar once and then tap the left or right cursor button on your keyboard once for every degrees of rotation. Cursor right moves clockwise, cursor left anticlockwise. After rotation, the picture will need to be trimmed to make it rectangular again. ViewMinder will do this for you automatically and show you the result if you check the box Trim after rotate. When you are happy with the appearance of the picture, click the OK button. If you change your mind about rotating the picture, click Cancel. Depending on the size of the picture, rotation may take several seconds. |
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Brightness controlsViewMinder offers two ways of improving the appearance of your picture. The first is Balance. This will often create a nice harmony of colours in the picture, without eliminating interesting areas of highlight and shadow. Balancing the colours may not produce good results on poignant or moody pictures. Sunsets, for example, may come out looking like midday. To see the effect, click the Balance button. If you don't like the result, click the Undo button to reverse it. The other method, Brightness, is useful on pictures that look bleached out or gloomy. Click the Brightness button and brightness correction box will open. You adjust brightness with the mouse, to drag the slider bar left or right (by clicking on the bar and keeping the mouse button down as you move the mouse left or right). When you find the level you like, click OK. If you don't like the effect, click Cancel. In either case, the Brightness window will close. Even if you've clicked OK, you can reverse the effect again by clicking the undo button on the toolbar, or by choosing Edit and then Undo from the menu or by with Ctrl-Z (pressing and holding down the Control key on your keyboard as you type z). In technical terms, balance equalizes colour distribution while brightness performs a gamma transformation. |
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When editing is completed...If you close the editor without saving changes, ViewMinder asks you if you mean to do this. If you continue without saving the edits, the image will be the same as before you started Closing the image editor returns you to Check, Browse or Search Mode - wherever you were when you started the image editor. If you have edited the picture, ViewMinder will generate a new thumbnail of it for the Tray. Using an external editorYou may prefer a different program for editing your pictures. If so, when you click the Edit Image button, choose Default Editor or Browse... If you choose Default Editor, ViewMinder will open the program that is associated with the image file type in your Windows Folder options. The default program for image files is often Windows own Internet Explorer. It is not very useful in this case, because Internet Explorer does not edit images. Windows and Internet Explorer are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. You could change the default program for image files but this is not necessary. Instead choose Browse... to search for your favourite image editor. If, for example, you use Photoshop, it will probably be in the Program Files folder of your hard drive, in a subfolder called Adobe. When you find the image editor, click it and then Open. The current image will now open in your favourite image editor. (Adobe and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.) You will not need to Browse to this file again, because its name will be added to the list of choices under the Edit Image button. You can set up several different picture editors as external editors. When you have finished editing the picture in your external editor, save it. You should save it under the same name and format as before, even if your editor offers to let you change the name and format. Certain external editors may tell you that the image cannot be saved because "...the file is already in use". Instead choose "Save as..." from the menu, and save the image with the same name as before. If the editor asks you whether you want to overwrite the existing file, answer "Yes". When you close the external editor, the edited picture will be visible in ViewMinder. If you change your mind about the edits you have made, close the image editor without saving the image. |
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Batch editingViewMinder is not designed for batch editing - that is, editing several images in the same way at the same time. It is rarely useful and can do a lot of harm. For this reason, ViewMinder's built-in image editor will not open when more than one image is selected. However, several images can be placed in an external image editor, by opening them one by one. You can then batch-edit them, if your external image editor has this function. |
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You
can now move the image around the screen by dragging it with the mouse
(i.e. holding the mouse button down as you move the mouse).
and the 
