Pictures FX 1.0 Help

This is a view of the pictures in your galleries. Currently ‘All Images’ from all your galleries are shown.

The thumbnail with the orange border is the currently highlighted image.

You can select or deselect one image by long-pressing on an image and choose Select or Deselect from the pop-up menu:

The thumbnails with the green edges are the selected images. If there are multiple images selected and there is an image whose thumbnail has an orange border, that image is currently highlighted. Usually, the highlighted image is the image you touched most recently.

If the thumbnail has an orange asterisk, the image has been modified. Thumbnails always show a part of the original image and don’t include the effects of the modifications.

If you want to see the images of only one particular gallery, click the galleries-list button and you’ll see a list of all the galleries on your phone:

Select a gallery from this list and you’ll go back to the previous screen now showing only the pictures from the selected gallery. You can cancel the selection of a gallery by pushing the back-key on your phone or by clicking the gallery-button.

Controls on the control-bar:

· The galleries-list button allows you to select a specific gallery.

· The gallery-button will bring you back to the list of image thumbnails.

· The settings-button allows you to specify the gallery settings.

· The camera-button allows you to open the Camera FX application.

There are additional actions you can do for one image or for multiple images at the same time. You can do this by doing a long-press on one of the thumbnails. You will see a pop-up menu:

The pop-up menu is divided into 3 sections. One section deals with actions that can only be done for a single image. The other sections deals with actions that can be done for one or multiple images at the same time and the third section contains actions that act on the list itself.

Actions for one highlighted image only:

· View/Edit
Brings you to a screen that allows you to edit the highlighted image or go to the Image Viewer. You can go to the Image Viewer by just clicking the thumbnail as well.

· Select or Deselect
Selects or deselects the highlighted image. A selected image will show a green border around its thumbnail.

· Details
Shows you a pop-up with detailed information about the highlighted image.

· Share
Allows you to share the highlighted image with other people using applications that are installed on your phone (e.g. mail, twitter, facebook, etc).

· Set As
Allows you to use the highlighted image in other applications on your phone (e.g. use it as wallpaper or as a contact-icon).

Actions for one or more images:

· Rotate
Allows you to rotate your selected images 90 degrees, clockwise (CW) or counter clockwise (CCW), 180 degrees or to remove any existing rotation.

· Delete
Deletes your highlighted image or your selected images from the phone. Be careful!

· Refresh Thumbnails
The thumbnails shown in the list are cached for quick retrieval. Sometimes the images on the thumbnails may not match the actual images. You can refresh the selected thumbnails by choosing the ‘Refresh Thumbnails’ option, which will regenerate the selected thumbnails from the original images. Note that this action can take some time and cause browsing the list of images to slow down temporarily.

Actions for the list of images:

· Select All
Select all images currently shown in the list.

· Select None
Deselect all images.

The Image Viewer

When you selected ‘View/Edit’ for an image, the Image Viewer will be shown.

It shows you the full image and a row of buttons on the bottom.

The buttons, from left to right, will execute the actions Share, Set As and Details. The orange asterisk indicates that this image has been edited. Clicking the Delete button on the right will delete this image.

When you swipe your fingers over the image horizontally, you will move to the next or previous image in the gallery. You’ll see 2 blue horizontal arrows appear briefly:

If you touch the screen for a longer period of time (long-press), then a zoom-in indicator will appear. Hold down your finger and move your finger to extend the rectangular area:

Release your finger and the image will gradually zoom in, only showing you the area of the selected rectangle:

You can move the image around by touching and then moving your finger over the screen. 4 green arrow appear indicating that you can move the image around:

You can press and hold your finger down on the zoom-out button on the bottom of the screen to zoom back out.

If you touch the screen for a longer period of time (long-press), then the zoom-in indicator will appear again allowing you to zoom-in even further up to 200%.

Additional actions:

When you press your phone’s menu-key, a menu will be shown with additional actions:

· Effects (Off)
Brings you into the Image Editor (Effects) or brings you back to the Image Viewer (Effects Off).

· Zoom
Scales the original image using the selected zoom-percentage.

· Rotate
Rotates the image.

· Crop
Executes the phone’s cropping action.

· Resize
Reduces the width and height of the image to the selected percentage.

· Save
This action applies the modifications/color-effects to the image and saves the result in a brand new copy of the image. Depending on the amount of memory available, saving the image may take a while. Larger images may need a slower process to apply and save color-effects. Saving smaller images can be considerably faster. See the Save Images section below for more information.

Both the Effects and Zoom attempt to use the full-sized image. However, when memory is limited and the image is very large a smaller sized image will be used instead for the Image Editor or the zooming. Note that this will not affect the quality of the image when it is saved (see Save Images).

The Image Editor

When you select the Effects menu item will let you edit the picture and assign a number of color-effects to it.

You click the add-effect button on the bottom to add a new color-effect to the picture.

In this example we add a Colorization effect to the picture’s color-effects list.

On the left size, you see the color-effects list. It has the add-effect button on top and a scrollable list of active color-effects below it.

Click on the add-effect button to add new color-effects to the bottom of the list.

Click on a color-effect in the list to hide or show its color-effect panel.

Long-press on a color-effect to insert a new color effect above it, to move the color-effect one step down or up or to delete the color-effect.

On the right side, you see the currently selected color-effect’s color-effect panel.

In this example, you see the Colorization’s panel. You select the colorization’s color by pressing - and moving - your finger over circle of gradients of color. You select the amount of colorization by pressing and holding the ball in the center of the circle and the dragging your finger to the left or to the right.

When you add color-effects to the list, each effect will be applied to the picture from top to bottom. You’ll notice that the order in which the color-effects are applied to the picture is important.

Below is a list of the currently available color-effects. More effects will be added in future versions of Pictures FX.

· Negative
This effect has no color-effect panel. It just creates a negative of the picture.

· B/W Mixer
Creates a black and white version of the picture.

· Brightness
Increases or decreases the brightness of the picture.

· Colorization
Overlays a color-filter over the picture.

· Color Shift
Add or removes an amount of red, blue and/or green to each color in the picture.

· Contrast
Increases or decreases the contrast of the picture.

· Contrast per Color
Increase the contrast of each individual RGB color-channel. You can add/decrease/reverse color in the shadows and decrease/add/reverse them in the highlights. Can be used to make pseudo cross-process, velvia, provia or lomo like color-effects.

· RGB Mixer
Increases or decreases (scales) the amount of red, blue and green components of each color in the picture.

· Saturation
Increases or decreases the saturation of the picture.

· Threshold
Transforms the picture into a pure black and white picture without any gray colors.

Instead of describing each color-effect in detail, just play with it to learn the effects they have on your pictures.

Gallery settings:

· Gallery Animation
When checked, the list’s thumbnails will slide into the gallery. Uncheck this option if you don’t want to see this slide-animation.

· Save Quality
Determines the quality with which your edited images will be saved. You should choose a lower quality setting only to limit the images’ file-size.

· Clear Cache
When clicked, the cache of thumbnails on your SD-card is deleted and will be re-generated when necessary. Use this option only if some thumbnails in the gallery look wrong or corrupted.

Saving Images

When you selected the Effects menu item of an image with color-effects, you will save the image with the highest resolution and color-quality as possible given the phone’s memory constraints.

Normally, this would mean 5MPixel images for first generation phones and 9MPixel images for second generation phones (16 bit color).

To use as much memory as possible, saving images is done in the background:

You’ll see the message above that the images will be saved as soon as possible.

When you leave the Image Editor, you can open the phone’s Status Bar and this is what you may see:

A notification is shown that tells you that an image is in the process of being saved.

If you select the notification, a dialog pops up that allows you to select one of three actions:

Select Nothing to just dismiss the dialog, select View Image to open the Image Editor with this image or select Cancel Save to abort saving the image (note that saving an image cannot always be aborted but images that are waiting to be saved can always be aborted).

When an images has been saved successfully, you’ll see the thumbnail of the modified and saved image:

If you select the notification, you’ll directly go to the Image Editor showing you the modified and saved image.

You can Save more than one image at a time. If one image is in the process of being saved, other images wait in line to be saved:

FAQ

· Why only 9 color-effects?
More will be added in future versions.

· Will sharpening, color correction and such effects be supported?
Currently only so-called linear color transformations are supported, where every pixel’s color is transformed in the same way as every other pixel’s color in the image. Support for non-linear color transformations (white-balance, curves) will be considered for future version as well as other effects such as sharpening and blurring of images.

· Why is saving large modified images so slow?
Large images cannot be saved in one shot due to the phone’s limited memory. They have to be chopped up into small parts, each part handled separately and then re-assembled and saved as a whole image again. This takes time.

· If the thumbnails in the Pictures FX gallery are corrupted, don’t show up, what can I do?
These are things you can do:
1 Go to the settings and select Clear Cache.
2 Select all thumbnails, press the menu-key and select Refresh Thumbnails.
3 Reboot your phone or remove and re-insert your SD-card.

· Problems, suggestions or compliments?
Please send me an e-mail if you encounter problems, when you have suggestions for enhancements or just to tell me you like my application ;-).

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