Thumbnails

[magisterludi]

Congratulations on a superb piece of software, the only one that I have found which allows me to tether my Nikon cameras to a Vista64 computer, and which provides full color management capability, both for image input and monitor output. Excellent!

The only significant improvement I can suggest is a viewing panel for thumbnails - also color-managed and variable in size - very important for shooting in the field with a client looking on. Any plans for such a thing?

[Axel]

Glad to know that FPV Pro works fine on your x64 system!

There is no plan to add a thumbnail viewer at the moment, they tend to make things slower and Vista Explorer does a pretty good job as displaying variable-size thumbnails already, it's color-managed and supports RAW files, search, print...

[UB2009]

I read it on the FAQ and I see it also here: the policy of FPV is to avoid implementing thumbnails. However, I think that you should keep in mind that:

1. Users (especially professionals) like to use a single program for all their file viewing needs. In e.g. Irfanview, it only takes one keypress (T) to display instant thumbnails. Leaving FPV just to see my thumbnails costs time, mouse clicks, keypresses and Alt-tabs.

2. You make the assumption that users first navigate to their image folders via the Explorer and then use FPV. My guess is that intermediate/advanced users use more advanced file managers like e.g. Total Commander and may have abandoned Explorer totally (I did, more than 10 years ago). I predict that you will not be able to force such users to revert to Explorer just to see their thumbnails. I would suggest that for such issues a poll is in order.

A workaround would be to have some configurable shortcuts like "open containing folder in Explorer + thumbnail view" or "open the image in external editor/viewer in thumbnail mode".

[Axel]

I see your points. Of course there is no such thing as an "instant thumbnail view", thumbnails are typically created and cached in some database, then retrieved when needed. Thumbnail databases needs maintenance functions, such as re-creation or re-indexing, packing etc and all this is clearly out of scope for FastPictureViewer. Programs not caching thumbnails are slow by necessity as opening and downscaling pictures everytime can certainly not be quick (one cannot rely on the presence of a suitable embedded thumbnail in all files).

FPV is used in scenarios involving browsing deep folder hierarchies containing hundreds of thousands of images (try it!). Most other programs would take a week just to create the thumbs while FPV grabs the files at about 1000 per second.

Windows already offers powerful search functions, including search on metadata, for example you can search for all images taken at f/5.6, or at 300mm etc, it would not make sense to duplicate all this functionality, also knowing that Windows 7 will probably expand even further on that.

Perhaps there is a way to configure alternative file managers to open FPV on files or folders?

Besides that a program launcher is currently in development and should appear soon. What is not clear yet is on what program edition it will appear.

Hitting Ctrl+E opens an Explorer window with the current image selected. If you set the Explorer window in thumbnail view it will open in this mode the next time around as it remembers per-folder settings, at least this is how it work on Vista. This gets you as close as possible to an instant thumbnail view.

[UB2009]

Thank you for your fast reply.

Ctrl+E is interesting... When in the future "open the image with configurable editing program" gets implemented, we will certainly have more options.

[AlphaOmega]

if i may, i want to add a few suggestions to the subject:

1. it'll be good if you'll make CTRL+E hotkey customizable

2. what if you'll add a thumbnail panel. for example: user hits a hotkey and a panel of other 10 images (5 prev and 5 next, for example) pops up somewhere..

3. you have a scroll between images inside one folder, but i don't get how exactly it works. it changes pictures, but in an unknown way (i hit bottom of that scroll and still got + 100/200 or smth pictures, but not the "last" files in folder).. so - maybe you'll add a few very small thumbs there? or sume ruller? of course, with posibility to disable this option in preferences....

[AlphaOmega]

additional:

4. option to quit program after opening in explorer (via ctrl+e)

[Axel]

but not the "last" files in folder

Try the Down arrow key, or Alt+PgDn. Most keyboard shorcuts are documented in the quick help.

[AlphaOmega]

no, my point is:
i would like if scroll has ruller (sectors) on it and the click will correspond to a regular scroll: i click at the middle and you program jumps to the middle of the files list in that folder; i click near the end - i get near_the_end file, i click at the bottom - i get the last file.
hotkeys let me jump through some file or to the beginning or the end, but i want to jump through the files as i described below.

[Axel]

The scrollbars and trackbars don't behave in this way on the Windows operating system. If you want to jump directly to a location the proper gesture is to drag the slider (or elevator, in the case you are interacting with a scrollbar) to the location where you want to jump and release the mouse button. You can see this is every app from Notepad to IE to Word. FastPictureViewer behaves exactly in this standard way.

Clicking above or below the slider (or elevator) always move up or down by a certain amount called a "page". In FPV's case a page is 1/10 of the number of images or 100, whichever is less.