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Quick Start Guide Detailed Setup Thumbnail Properties WebPage Appearance FTP Settings Program Automation E-mail Settings HTTP Settings Misc Options GPS Setup HTML Properties Miscellaneous HTML
EXIF Editor Batch Processing Rotating Images
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 RoboPhoto FAQ
If your question isn't listed, send e-mail to support. Be as specific as possible and if needed, provide the exact steps that support must take to reproduce your problem. This FAQ is a work in progress.
How do I search this FAQ? Select 'Find' from your web browser's pull down menus or press Ctrl-F. Back to the top How do I search the robophoto.com web site? Use the 'Search' button or do it now. Back to the top How do I get help from within the program? Press the F1 key, click the 'Help' buttons, or right click on any of the wizard screens. Context sensitive help is available though out the program. Note: If you get a Windows error message saying there is no program "associated" with HTML files, you'll need to create an association. You want to associate your web browser with HTML files. If you're running Internet Explorer, the path is probably C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe - point to that when Windows prompts you or choose its icon from the list. Back to the top How do I download RoboPhoto? Click here. Back to the top I downloaded the demo and it's on my disk. Now what? Run the setup program (rphoto30.exe or rphoto.exe) and accept all of the defaults. Back to the top I can't find the downloaded demo on my computer. What do I do? Look for it. Click your Windows 'Start' button, followed by 'Find Files or Folders'. Look for rphoto*.*. When found, double click on it. Back to the top When I try to run rphoto30.exe, I get an error saying the file is invalid. Why? It's probably because the download did not complete successfully. Redownload and overwrite the existing copy. Back to the top When installing, I get an error message about CTL3D32.DLL. What do I do? Welcome to the wild and wacky world of Microsoft Windows shared DLLs. Click here for more information. Back to the top When installing, I get an error about a missing DLL. What do I do? Please contact support and tell them the exact error message. Back to the top When installing, I get an error about a DLL being in use. What do I do? Shut down all Windows applications before running the setup program. Back to the top I just installed the demo. Now what? RoboPhoto places an icon on your desktop during installation. It looks like a camera. Click on this Icon to run the program. Back to the top OK, I'm running RoboPhoto for the 1st time. What do I do? Click here for basic step-by-step example or here for a more detailed one. Back to the top I've screwed everything up and want to start over. Do I need to reinstall the program? No. Just select the 'Start Over' option by right clicking on any wizard screen. This deletes all of the configuration files. The next time you run RoboPhoto, everything will be set to the default values. For example, you may want to do this prior to following the instructions in the Quick Start Guide. Back to the top How do I purchase RoboPhoto? Click here. Back to the top Is there a Macintosh version of RoboPhoto? No. RoboPhoto is a Windows application. Click here for the system requirements. Back to the top What is FTP? FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It's a set of rules for transferring files across the internet. FTP software programs have to follow these rules. The result gives a program (RoboPhoto) the ability to transfer files (like HTML files) from one computer (yours) to another (like Tripod) using a common language (FTP) so that other computers (HTTP servers) can make them available to anyone on the web. RoboPhoto is capable of both creating HTML files and uploading them to an FTP server. It's an 'FTP client'. Back to the top Do I have to have access to an FTP server to use RoboPhoto? No. By default, RoboPhoto creates web pages direct on your computer that you can view without having to be connected to the internet. Note that some features, like creating area maps and posting to soap applications, require that the web page exists on a publically accessible web server. When creating a web page, you'll be prompted whether to upload it to an FTP server. Back to the top Where are RoboPhoto web pages saved on my computer? In the \Webpages directory under the main program directory. If you installed the program in the default location, the full path is C:\Program Files\rp30\Webpages\. The disk name matches the web page name. For example, the path to a web page named 'employees' would be C:\Program Files\rp30\Webpages\employees\. Back to the top What is a web hosting provider? Web hosting providers operate computers that are connected to the internet and allow you to store your web pages so that anyone with a web browser can access them. Back to the top How can I get free web hosting? Click here. Back to the top How can Tripod offer web hosting for free? They make money from the banner advertisements that they put on your web pages. It's a good deal for both you and them. Back to the top Do I have to use Tripod with RoboPhoto? No. RoboPhoto will work with any FTP server. Back to the top I already have an account with GeoCities. How can I use them? Like with Tripod (or with any web hosting provider), you need to configure RoboPhoto so that it can communicate with their FTP servers. From the FTP configuration screen use the following values, where 'accountname' is your GeoCities account name: FTP Server Name: ftp.geocities.com Port: 21 Username: accountname Password: (your GeoCities password goes here) Initial Server Directory: (leave it blank) Parent URL: http://www.geocities.com/accountname Back to the top I sell stuff on eBay. How can I use pixiad.com? Note: Pixiad is a low cost image hosting provider for eBay sellers. Most free web hosting providers don't allow commercial use and/or linking to URLs outside of their domain. If you're promoting product for sale on eBay, that's a problem. Pixiad is the answer. Use the following info in the FTP configuration, where 'accountname' is your Pixiad account name: FTP Server Name: pixiad.com Port: 21 Username: accountname Password: (your Pixiad password goes here) Initial Server Directory: web Parent URL: http://www.pixiad.com/~accountname Back to the top How do I get my own internet domain name? Read the bottom part of this page. Back to the top I have my own domain with OLM.NET. What's the FTP info? Note: OLM is a very good, low cost, web hosting provider that will host your domain name. You get more features than you'll ever be able to use. For example, you get 300 megs of disk space for only $18.95 per month. They are also very reliable. Another good choice in the same league as OLM is aplus.net. Use the following info for OLM in the FTP configuration, where 'yourdomain.com' is your domain name. Note that with OLM, your username will be the same as the domain name, less the '.com' part. So, with the domain name yourdomain.com, your user name will be 'yourdomain'. FTP Server Name: yourdomain.com Port: 21 Username: yourdomain Password: (your OLM FTP password goes here) Initial Server Directory: www Parent URL: http://www.yourdomain.com Back to the top My ISP gives me 5 megs of web space. Can I use them? Yes, if they allow standard FTP access. Most do. Note: ISPs, typically, only give you about 5 megs of storage space, so you'll run out of disk space pretty quickly. Using typical JPG sizes (about 100kb each), you'll be able to store about 50 images. A better alternative would be to sign up with any of the free web hosting providers. Back to the top What happens if I try to upload a file that already exists on the FTP server? You will the prompted whether to overwrite it. You can suppress these prompts and force the program to not overwrite existing files by specifying the FtpNoOverWriteHtml thru FtpNoOverWriteBinary Misc Options. Back to the top What's the name of my FTP server? There's no way for us to know that. You need to ask your web hosting provider. Back to the top Does the demo version quit working after 30 days? No. Click here to see the demo limitations. Back to the top How do I put a link to a web page into an e-mail message? Just type it in, including the http:// part. When the recipient's e-mail reader sees the text, it will recognize and treat it as such. The link is not somehow embedded into the message or requires anything special on your part - just type it in. Back to the top Why can't I include spaces in the web page name? The FTP server directory will have the same name as the web page name. Spaces are not allowed in FTP server directory names. Back to the top What image formats can RoboPhoto process when batch processing? JPG, uncompressed TIF, PNG, TGA, BMP and PCX. Back to the top Does RoboPhoto support GIF and compressed TIF formats? No. These formats use LZW compression and the owner of these patents make it prohibitively expensive for software developers to make use of them. Back to the top I'm confused by the JPG quality option. What should I do? Use 95 and forget about it. Back to the top Is there a better alternative to resizing images from the batch processing screen? Yes. Whenever possible, you should size your images direct from the source, i.e. let your digital camera or scanner do the work. Whenever RoboPhoto (or any software) resizes a JPG file, it must save it. Every time you save a JPG file, image quality is loss due to the image compression. The fewer times you save a JPG file, the better. Back to the top How can I make my JPG images smaller? There are 2 ways. One, you can increase the compression by decreasing the JPG quality. Two, you can resize them. Click here for more information. Normally, the images you publish on the web should be 640 x 480 and be about 100kb each. Back to the top Why are the TIF files that my camera creates so big? Unlike a JPG file, non-LZW TIFs are big because they're not compressed. If the file is 1600 x 1200 and 24-bit color, the file size will be 5.76MB each (1600 pixels x 1200 pixels x 24 bits x (8 bits / 1 byte) = 5,760,000 bytes) You should use the batch processor to resize and convert them before creating a web page. Back to the top What is the aspect ratio and should I maintain it when resizing an image? The aspect ratio of an image is the width divided by the height. When resizing, you should always maintain the aspect ratio. If you don't, the image will be distorted in one direction. Imagine a 3 inch square piece of painted rubber. Now imagine what this piece of rubber would look like if your stretched it so that it's 3 inches by 6 inches. The same thing happens to digital images if you don't maintain the aspect ratio. Back to the top Why should I add copyright notices to my images? A copyright notice is your claim of ownership. It should be of the form © <year> <owner's name>. Always use © instead of (c) or 'copyright'. Back to the top What font should I use for copyright notices? Since the copyright notice is compressed when saved with the JPG image, the text's quality will decrease. To minimize the effect, use a simple font like arial. Complicated fonts like times new roman don't render well when compressed and some fonts, like courier, look absolutely horrible when saved with a JPG file. Back to the top I want to add new images to an existing web page. How do I do that? Specify the new images as your image source directory and a web page name that matches the existing one. A detailed example of doing this is here. Back to the top How do I change 'Photo Gallery' to something different? On the HTML customization screen, type what you want to use in the box. You can also change the titles for individual images from the EXIF editor. If you want to get fancy, you can even use an XML file or have the program prompt you each time by specifying the PromptForTitle option. But there's more. You can also change it by specifying the PromptForTitle Misc Option. Back to the top How can I hide the thumbnail border? Specify 0 for the table border width on the HTML customization screen. Back to the top How can I prevent the thumbnails from touching each other? From the HTML customization screen, specify a number (like 10) for both the table cell padding and spacing. You'll probably also want to use 0 for the table border width if you're doing this. Back to the top Can I use my normal FTP program instead of RoboPhoto? Sure. Just upload the files in the \Webpages directory. Note that you can automatically launch an external program when RoboPhoto ends by specifying the RunExeBeforeEnd Misc Option. Back to the top I get a 'Relaying Denied' message when sending e-mail. How do I prevent that? Use your ISP's SMTP server. Mail servers return the 'Relaying Denied' message when they're unable to determine if the person connecting is authorized to send mail through the server. Your ISP, since they were the one who issued you an IP number, can confirm that you're you. Back to the top I get a 'Host Not Found' message when sending e-mail. How do I prevent that? A 'Host Not Found' means exactly that - the server that you specified could not be found. There are 2 common reasons why this would occur. First, the DNS server, whose job is to convert human readable names (like domain.com) to computer readable names (like 123.2.255.1), could not convert the name. The second common reason is the server name is invalid. For example, you may have specified mail.isp.com instead of smtp.isp.com. Back to the top How do I find out the name of my ISP's SMTP server? The easiest way is to ask your ISP. Another way is to just guess at it until you get it right by clicking the 'Test' button on the settings screen. If the domain of your ISP is your-isp.com, make guesses in the following order: your-isp.com, mail.your-isp.com, smtp.your-isp.com, mail1.your-isp.com, and smtp1.your-isp.com. If all of those fail, you should find a web site that allows you to do an "MX Lookup". Back to the top Will the e-mail recipients see their address in the TO field? Yes. RoboPhoto does not send out carbon copies, i.e. each message is sent individually to the (single) intended recipient. Back to the top Will the e-mail recipients see the other people in my e-mail list? No. Again, each message is sent to only to the individual recipient. Back to the top What should I use to create the e-mail and URL lists? NOTEPAD.EXE or any true ASCII editor. Do not use a word processing program (like Word or WordPad). Back to the top I get a '404 Host Not Found' when posting using HTTP. Why? This error means that the file was not found. This could be either because the file isn't there or that it's there but you don't have access to it. You may have to perform a CHMOD on the script - ask your web hosting provider if you're unsure how to do this. Back to the top Posting to a script doesn't work, but RoboPhoto doesn't report an error. Why? There are a few possibilities. One, the script may simply not work. Two, the script may not be returning HTTP errors (instead, it's sending human readable error messages). Three, the script may be redirecting to another URL - HTTP clients cannot automatically redirect a post to a different URL. Back to the top How can I automatically change RoboPhoto's output without manually editing it? The Misc Options allow you to search and replace a specific file or all ASCII files in a directory. See the SearchPath, SearchFor, and ReplaceWith options for more info. Back to the top What happens when I double click on a text box? It depends on what's in the text box. If it's an ASCII file, it'll be loaded into the program currently associated with TXT files. If it's a local directory, it'll be loaded into Windows Explorer. If it's a URL, it'll be retrieved and loaded into your web browser. If it's empty, nothing will happen. Back to the top Where is RoboPhoto v1.0? RoboPhoto v1.0 was released in 1999 and was only given away to family and friends. After much positive feedback, it was decided to release it as a commercial application. So here you go. Back to the top Will there be future versions of RoboPhoto? Yes. If you have suggestions for new features or improvements, please speak up. With the Misc Options, it's practical to implement customer-specific features without stepping on the rest of the program. Back to the top What's the upgrade policy? Registered users receive FREE lifetime upgrades. This even applies to major upgrades when there's an increase in price. Back to the top What is EXIF? EXIF stands for "Exchangeable Image File Format". This file format allows for the storage of non-image data (such as the shutter speed when the picture was taken, an image description or GPS coordinates) within the actual image file. Virtually all modern digital cameras store images as EXIF files in the JPG format. Back to the top Why do the GPS coordinates differ from what I originally entered? The EXIF specification only allows saving GPS coordinates to 2 decimal places on the minutes. When RoboPhoto loads an image on the EXIF editor screen, it reads the coordinates direct from the EXIF headers. So, if you manually enter GPS coordinates to 5 decimal places on the degrees (which is more precise than EXIF allows), the values need to be rounded in order to adhere to the EXIF spec. The difference that you see is the result of these rounding errors. Back to the top Is one latitude/longitude format better than the other? With respect to saving the info to the EXIF file, the answer is no. Choose the format that is most convenient for you. Back to the top What's the difference between local time and UTC time? UTC is the time in Greenwich England at a given local time. For example, during daylight savings time (summer) on the east coast of the USA, if the local time is 1:00pm, the UTC time is 5:00pm. If during the winter, the UTC time would be 6:00pm. When west of Greenwich England, the local time is behind the UTC time. When east (like in Russia), the local time is ahead of UTC time. More info is here. Back to the top Is the USA's longitude east or west of Greenwich England? It's west. Back to the top Is the USA's latitude north or south of the equator? It's north. Back to the top What's a major consideration when editing EXIF information? If you edit any of the EXIF fields on the EXIF editor screen, the file has to be re-saved in order to save the new EXIF information. This occurs (without prompting) when you load a different image by clicking either the 'Back' or 'Next' buttons. If you don't edit the EXIF information, there's no need to re-save the files so this is not a consideration. To preserve the JPG image quality, you want to minimize the number of times the file is saved so, when editing an image's EXIF information, edit all fields before proceeding to the next image. You can specify a different JPG quality value to use when saving EXIF files (instead of that in the main program settings) by specifying the GpsWriteToExifJpgQuality Misc Option. Back to the top What is SOAP? Soap stands for "Simple Object Access Protocol". It's a XML based language that computers on the internet can use to exchange information. The benefit of using Soap instead of a proprietary method is that it's a standard, i.e. any computer, regardless of the operating system, can communicate with any other computer as long as Soap is spoken. Soap packets are transported using HTTP, just like when you click a 'Submit' button on a normal web page. Back to the top Why is SOAP important? Today, there's no standard language that computers on the internet can use to share information. Soap attempts to change that. Microsoft's latest operating system (XP and beyond) will incorporate Soap capabilities. Time will tell. Back to the top Why must webpages with an area map be uploaded to a server? Area maps are loaded directly from the Census Bureau's mapping server. In order to do that, the mapping server must download the information that it needs to create the map from a publically accessible web server. RoboPhoto creates this information and uploads it along with the other files. Once there, it can be downloaded by the mapping server so that it can generate the map. If the mapping server can't retrieve this information, it can't make the map. Make sure the 'Parent URL...' value specified in the settings is correct. Back to the top Why won't the area map work with my free web hosting provider? Some free web hosting providers do not allow linking to sites outside of their own. If that's the case with your hosting provider and if you want to use area maps, you'll need to host your web sites with someone else. Back to the top Why is there no area map on my webpage? There could be several reasons including:
Why is my area map centered over the Sahara Desert? The center of the area map is the average latitude/longitude of the GPS coordinates in the tracklog or, if you have the AreaMapExtentsPerPictures Misc Option selected, it's the average location of the pictures. A common cause is that you entered an (E)ast longitude on the EXIF editor screen for a point within the USA. Points within the USA should have a (W)est longitude and a (N)orth latitude. Back to the top Why won't the area map or speed legend icons display? It's probably because the Census Bureau's mapping engine is experiencing technical difficulties. Don't be surprised if this happens. It could also be because their server is unable to access your server because the parent URL isn't accessible. Back to the top The area map's high speed is incorrect. How do I correct it? Despite the GPS's best efforts, bogus tracklog points are sometimes recorded. These trackpoint locations, because they're so far from the surrounding ones, causes the velocity calculations to be grossly innacurate. It may indicate that you attained a top speed of 123 mph while you were hiking up the mountain, for example. RoboPhoto will automatically detect and remove these bogus tracklog points if you specify both the TrackPointErrorDeviations and TrackPointErrorPeriods Misc Options. If you're unsure of what values to use, specify 2 and 20 respectively. If that doesn't remedy the problem, repeat the process specifying a lower value (like 1.5) for TrackPointErrorDeviations and/or a higher value for TrackPointErrorPeriods (like 40). Back to the top Why are some of my pictures not georeferenced? It's probably because the picture was taken outside of the timeframe when the GPS unit was recoding a tracklog. Or, if you're reading the GPS info from the EXIF headers, it could be because no valid latitude/longitude values exist. Back to the top Why do some of my pictures link to multimap.com? If the location of an image falls outside of the USA, a single map link is created that points to multimap.com. If this happens for a picture that was taken within the USA, it's probably because you entered something other than (W)est or (N)orth on the EXIF editor screen. You may also have the ForceMultiMap Misc Option set. Back to the top Why doesn't my track exactly follow the street? Because the maps are inaccurate. Most of the streets in the Census Bureau's mapping engine were entered before the advent of GPS, i.e. whoever entered the streets was either guessing at the location or was trying to match a paper map. You'll find that major roads and smaller roads in large cities are pretty accurate. It's a roll of the dice when it comes to small roads in rural areas. Back to the top How accurate are the GPS positions and the speeds? That depends on the GPS unit and whether or not it supports WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System). There are other factors as well including whether SA (Selective Availability) is activated and how clear the GPS signal is (trees, clouds or the roof of your car). With a decent view of the sky, no WAAS capability with SA turned off, you should be accurate to about 20 feet. With WAAS, the error will drop to about 10 feet or less. Back to the top Why do my trackpoints overlap and how can I prevent it? The program automatically ensures that consecutive trackpoints never overlap. However, if you're backtracking over a previously traveled path, the trackpoints will probably overlap. You can prevent this by turning the tracklog recording off before this condition can occur. Note: if it's important to distinguish between overlapping trackpoints, you may want to color them based on the direction of travel instead of the speed. Back to the top How can I prevent the tracklog from displaying on the area map? Select 'No Track Points' on the GPS configuration screen. Back to the top How can I prevent the display of the speed legend? Specify the AreaMapNoSpeedLegend Misc Option or a constant color for the trackpoints. Back to the top What's a map datum and does it matter which one I use? If the earth was a perfect sphere, there would be no need for map datums. Unfortunately, that's not the case - the earth is irregular and tends to bulge out at the equator. For example, the earth is about 40km wider at the equator than it is at the poles. Map datums attempt to describe the shape of the earth as an ellipsoid at a specific location. Latitude and longitude values will differ based on the map datum that was used to record the coordinates. Some of the differences are relatively small, like the difference between WGS84 and NAD27. Some can be huge, like the difference between WGS84 and TOKYO. The default datum that's used for GPSs in the USA is WGS84. However, maps created by the USA government are usually based on NAD27. The difference between these 2 datums, for RoboPhoto's purposes, is insignificant. If this minor difference bothers you, change your GPS's datum to NAD27. Note: RoboPhoto always writes the EXIF datum as WGS84. You can change this to something different by specifying the GpsMapDatum Misc Option. What you enter there should match the settings of your GPS. Back to the top Does it matter if the camera time differs from the GPS time? Maybe. The time difference should be less than the amount of time you're stationary when each picture is taken, i.e. if there's a 60 second difference, it won't matter as long as you're stationary for at least a minute before and after a picture is taken. See the GPS settings for more info. Back to the top Why can't RoboPhoto communicate with my Garmin Etrex unit? A common problem with the Etrex is the cable connection at the unit. It must be firmly in place - sometimes you have to push really hard. Jiggling it doesn't hurt either. Also make sure the contacts are clean and free of debris. A complete checklist for diagnosing common communication problems is here. Back to the top |