Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I left the following message on the Yahoo group but this is probably a better forum to air my plight...

When I am Cropping in the Full Page Editor I have the option to move to the
next/previous photo thereby processing all the photos in the queue. What I was
wondering is how I can change the Portrait/Landscape document orientation without going
to the Size/Loc page and use the drop down list to change it? Is there a
shortcut that I can use?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

If there is no way to do this then please consider this a feature request. I would think that it would be very easy to impliment.

Regards,

Jim McMann
San Jose, CA.

Jim,
I think I understand what you are doing but a bit more detail of your whole job would be helpful as there may already be an existing feature in Qimage that can be used.
Eg. are you doing one image per page & filling it or multiples per page?
But an answer to your direct question is:
One way to make this easier and quicker is to go through the queue in the FPE and deal with the
images that are the right way up. Then change the page orientation & go through again to do the rest.

Terry.

I have been taking a lot of bird pix for many years and usually come home with 100 shots in 45 minutes.
Some of the "keepers" are Vertically oriented, and some Horizontally.
I put all the verticals together that I want to keep and print, and SAVE JOB.
Then I do the same with the Landscape shots that I want to keep; SAVE JOB.
Then when printing, (I want my name and the filename in the lower left corner), It is easily set.

Finish the set of prints, and load the other JOB, reset the floating text to match orientation, and print.

Maybe that idea will help?
Fred

The other little "trick" to help with Fred's neck-ache cure  ;) is to pre-sort the images by orientation from the View menu (not in the menu cheater list unfortunately).
Terry.

I assume Terry means from the main screen.
Good idea.
You can put all your images in the queue, and use the keyboard arrow keys to sort them into groups of Verts or Horiz and work on them that way.
Fred

Excellent response and I appreciate it. Thanks for the work-a-rounds but I still wish I could just have a button to push and let the software do it.

The way this happened is that I selected 58 photographs (My wifes last trip) and dumped them into the queue without thought of orientation. Since the image frame is not the same as a 4 x 6 I had to crop them all a little and I wanted to choose the crop not just accept the center sectione. So of course it seemed like every other photo was a different document orientation. I had to switch between the cropping page and the Size/Loc page to change orientation and that was a big time waster. I would still like to be able to change the document orientation from the crop screen.

Now, I will try to remember that I can sort the list of files by orientation before adding them to the queue, but that presents another problem. What if I have two or more pictures of the same subject some horizontal some vertical. My wife may not do that, but I do all the time. If I sorted them by orientation, it would make comparing and selecting one out of potentially several, more difficult.  I also like printing trip photos in the order there were taken. It just makes the memories and the story telling of the vacation easier.

Please add this feature. I can't believe that I am the first to ask for this!

Best wishes,

Jim McMann
San Jose, CA

Jim,
Glad to help. The suggestions are not so much work-a-rounds but ways to use Qimage. That's not to say I don't agree with your request  :)

Here is how I sorted out 20 images from a batch of a 100+ I took on Tuesday.
I went through the images and rated them using the Qimage facility, 5 for the best, 4 for quite good and 3 for maybe. I then pre-sorted by rating (View menu again). The 5's were then at the top of the thumb list, 4's & 3's below etc. Some shots were vertical and when I also sorted by orientation, shots of the same rating were together with the vertical ones first, followed the horizontal ones.
That technique should work for you too. Don't forget that you can use the P+ button for previewing, rating and adding to the queue. All the features are there to assist you in sorting out a batch of images.
Terry.

Hi
I think this is one for Mike - perhaps he could add it to the right-click menu, or to the Menu Cheater

Brian

The right click menu in the FPE seems to be the best option.
Terry.

Hello and thanks again...

So does Mike monitor these forums or is there a special place to make a feature request? I looked around but couldn't find anything special.

There seems to be plenty of room to add a drop down list or a toggle button (2 states portrait & Landscape) radio buttons or whatever. If it would be placed in the right-click menu then I would hope Mike could assign a ctrl/alt key combination to make it faster then right clicking all the time. It would be nice if the command key stroke could be standardized but I don't know if command key standardization is a goal in Qimage.

That said, I do want to say how really great Qimage is. The more I use it the more I am coming to rely on it. If I ever have a problem printing I just turn to Qimage and the problem goes away.

Praise from an old programmer is good praise indeed.

Jim McMann
San Jose, CA.

Do I monitor?  Surely you jest!   ;D  That's an easy suggestion and I already added it to the list.

Mike

Hello Mike;

Funny, just mention a guys name and out he pops.

Thanks for adding it to the list and I look forward to seeing it in the software.

Jim McMann
San Jose, CA.

CTRL-O is now in the right click menu to change page orientation.

Just wanted to say thanks. Don't know when you actually put it in but whatever the time is was really fast! The fastest time I have ever seen someone add a feature and release it. If it was Microsoft, it would have been, what, two years? Works great too.

 ;D very happy!

Thanks,

Jim McMann
San Jose, CA

Jim,
Mike is fast in his responses so I suggest you set up such that you get e-mails on topics that you are involved with, so you don't miss them  ;)
Terry