Index

Index:

Intro	Introduction to Album

Display	The Album display and buttonbar

Using	Using Album

External Files	External Files

Printing	Printing

Configuring	Configure


Introduction

Album is a utility to view and print graphic images. Its features include:

* read BMP, PCX version 5, GIF single image and WMF metafiles

* view graphical thumbnails for quick retrieval

* print proof sheets of the thumbnails or graphics from a disk file

* copy and paste images to and from the clipboard

* embed bitmaps in clipboard metafiles for use in other applications

Prerequisites

Album requires Windows 3.1.

Constraints

Album stores its images in memory - you'll need sufficient memory to support whatever you wish to access. Large color bitmaps can consume several megabytes, so beware.  Printing requires a print driver that supports StretchDIBits.

Copyright

Album is a copyrighted work by Doug Overmyer, 1993.

Distribution Terms

Album may be freely used in any non-commercial setting . It may not be distributed in conjunction with any commercial or for-fee product unless prior approval is obtained from the author. Use in a commercial setting must also be arranged with the author.

Disclaimer

You use Album entirely at your own risk. Only you can determine its suitability for your configuration and needs. No other warranties are offered or implied.

Notices:

Arts & Letters® is a registered trademark of Computer Support Corporation. CorelDRAW® is a

registered trademark of Corel Systems Corporation. Micrografx is a registered trademark of Micrografx,

Inc. GIF is a a registered trademark of CompuServe Inc.


Display
The Album Display

Otto's Album is a MDI application with a button bar along the top of the window area , separate child windows for each thumbnail, and a status bar along the bottom.

From left to right the button icons represent:

Open a disk file

*

Copy to Clipboard

Paste from Clipboard

Delete Clipboard contents

*

Tile windows

Print images

About Otto's Album

These buttons duplicate options on the Album menus.

On the bottom is a status bar that offers prompts explaining the various menu options and buttons. While reading graphic files, the first pane becomes a progress meter letting you know how things are proceeding.

In the open area are windows which display thumbnails of the graphics currently stored in Album. You can drag these windows around in the display area, iconize them, tile them or use the other options on the Window menu. If you zoom one of the graphics, the graphic  is displayed full size.in a scrollable window.


Using UltraClip
Using Album

You can load images for viewing by choosing File/Open and selecting files from the dialog box. The images are then loaded into separate windows that display thumbnails of the graphics. To see an image full size, zoom the thumbnail by clicking the maximize button or double clicking the title bar. You can scroll the zoomed image if it is too large to fit on the screen.

You can tile the open windows by choosing the Window/Tile option or clicking on the 'Tile' button on the button bar. Close All on the same menu closes all open windows.

Choose File/Print to print an album page of the currently open graphics. Your images will be printed in a grid based on the options in the configuration dialog.

You can copy any image window to the clipboard by choosing Edit/Copy or clicking the copy button. Album puts two formats of the graphic on the clipboard: both a DIB and an PICTURE formats are created.


External Files

.BMP, .PCX, and .GIF Files

Album can read Win 3.x style bitmap files, .PCX version 5 files, GIF single image as well as Aldus-style metafiles (the kind produced by Corel, Arts & Letters, and other draw programs). Choose File/Open select the file type you are interested in, and highlight the filenames you wish to load.

.WMF Files

 For metafiles, UC creates a  DIB image from the vector format. Only Aldus style placeable metafiles are supported.


Printing

Printing Proof Sheets

Album includes a print option that lets you print 'proof sheets' of the current windows. In the File/Configure dialog you can specify the grid used to position the printed thumbnails:

m Across by

n Down with

 x Inches of margin.

During printing, new thumbnails are created to optimally fill the available space with a caption built from the filename or module name. Be patient when starting a print - creating a page with 24 or 30 thumbnails is quite system intensive considering the scaling and (in most cases) color conversions. Don't try a print without sufficient resources - the print manager can consume considerable disk and memory resources. The quality of the output depends somewhat on the printer driver, as does the speed of the operation.

Printing Graphics Directly from Disk

Album will also directly print thumbnail sheets of graphics files residing on disk without loading

them simultaneously into memory. This feature allows you to print automatically  thumbnails for a very

large number of graphics images - such as might reside on a CDROM.

First, close all open windows. You must do this, as only then will the proper menu option appear! Then choose File/Print List  to select the files you wish to print. You can select any

bitmap or metafile that Album can read.

In addition to the file name, Album titles each page with the drive/subdirectory where the images were found and a sequential page number.

While much less memory intensive than printing the images from memory, you must still ensure that the

system has sufficient resources.


Album Configuration
Configuring Album

Choose File/Configure to start the configuration dialog:

You will be able to set the Printing Grid and Print Margins by filling in the edit boxes. Margins are specified, I'm afraid, in inches or tenths of an inch.

The Printing Grid determines how many graphics are printed per page. A grid of 1 by 1 prints one per page, while 5 by 6 puts 30 on a sheet.

Thumbnail Size lets you specify the nominal size of the displayed thumbnail images (actually, the graphics are scaled to fit within a square defined by this parameter).

Remember, if you try to print 30 images on a page, that's a lot of bits to push around, regardless of the size of the output.