	Retriever 2.1 Image Viewer, Thumbnailer & Database


DESCRIPTION:

Retriever is a quick and handy image viewer for Windows95/98/NT4.0,
with an industry standard no fuss user interface. But you can do much more 
with Retriever:

-	create thumbnails fast & easily

-	create impressive contact sheets from thumbnails

- 	save contact sheets as index images, or print them to get an image catalog

-	create a website with thumbnails automatically

-	"Dupe Detective" finds dupes and similar images

-	view your pictures as a slide show

-	manage your images in a unique database 

-	basic, yet powerful image processing, like
	*	realtime color correction
	*	high quality filtered resample
	*	superior color quantization
	*	one click image enhancement
	*	automatic cropping

-	create photo mosaics (large images made from small images)

-	Retriever has a fully operative full screen mode, drag & drop support and 
	shell integration.

The Retriever database and thumbnail functions support any kind of file, 
not only image files.

Retriever has online help and context sensitive help.


AVAILABILITY:

Retriever 2.1 is available as fully functional, uncrippled shareware. 

It is free for an evaluation period of up to 30 days after installation.
The program will continue to work after the trial period.
Continued use after the trial period is illegal without registration.

Registration costs $15. See license.txt or online help.

It is distributed over the internet as a self-extracting installation, eg. at 
http://www1.stuttgart.netsurf.de/~dirk/retriever.html
http://retriever.home.ml.org

REQUIREMENTS:

	Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0+
	HiColor or TrueColor graphics recommended.

INSTALLATION:
	
	Run rtrvr21.exe
	It will extract the setup files to a temporary directory and start the setup.
	
	Retriever 2.1 incl. online help will use 1192k on your harddisk.
	
	Retriever consists of a single exe "Retriever.exe"
	It doesn't require additional DLLs and will not write things to your System 
	directory.

	When you run Retriever for the first time, it will register itself as the 
	"default viewer" for all images that it can display, so you can open and print 
	images from Explorer. Retriever remembers your old "default viewer", and you 
	can switch back whenever you want to.

	If you ever uninstall Retriever and you have used the default database, 
	Retriever's directory will not be removed, so you can save retriever.db if you 
	want. Apart from this Retriever should uninstall tracelessly.

	If you already use an older version of Retriever, you can simply install over it,
	to the same directory.


VERSION HISTORY:

V2.1, released 09/07/1998

	* A slide show view lets you conveniently browse the pictures in a contact sheet. 
	  Manually or controlled by a timer.
	
	* You can create photo mosaics, ie. large images that are composed of small images.

	+ some glitches have been fixed, the database is slightly faster, the "Enhance"
	  feature is slightly less conservative, and the rest I have forgotton.


V2.01, released 07/26/1998
	
	Two bugs have been reported in 2.0; both will only affect some machines and some 
	users, but seen together it's bug enough to make me feel uncomfortable... that's 
	why this new version is released so soon after 2.0
	
	Fixed: - on machines with very large memory resources, if you opened a large 
		 number of files, thumbnails were made too large, causing an error.	
	Fixed: - Dupe Detective would cause an error when he encountered images smaller 
		 than 8x8...
	
	* You can now include files in subdirectories when you open files; this goes for 
	  Dupe Detective, thumbnails etc.
	* If you open "all in directory" you will only get files of the selected type. 
	  Eg. only image files, only jpegs etc.
	

V2.0, released 07/01/1998

	* size of thumbnails can be chosen
	* more/larger thumbnails in one contact sheet
	* open all files in a folder without selecting

	* contact sheets can be split into pages with a selected number of thumbnails per
	  page, for printing, save-as-image and save-as-html pages
	* multiline text in contact sheets supported
	* dynamic fields like "page number" in contact sheet texts  

	* database is shown in it's own pane that can be displayed while you view images
	* drag & drop of database items
	* can use multiple databases, and create your own database files
	* thumbnail and database files can be redistributed
	
	* Dupe Detective can search a directory for dupes, without needing thumbnails first
	* a contact sheet is shown for each group of dupes
	* Dupe Detective has been enhanced (using a whipleash and a hot cooker)

	* crop and cut images
	* cut images that contain multiple pictures, or a picture in a frame, automagically
	
	+ some minor features & enhancements
	+ some cosmetic & exotic bugs have been fixed.


V1.1, released 04/10/1998		

	* adds read & write support for PNG, TIF & WMF files

	* contact sheets can be saved as a website (HTML page + thumbnail images)	

	* Resampling (Resize) has been optimized for speed

	* Thumbnails are now downsampled to get the best out of "line art" images

	* An Utility Bar has been added that has buttons for most menu functions	

	* Windows are more intelligent: can now dock to the sides of the main window, are 
	  opened in unoccupied space and push each other around when you resize them.	

	* file associations ("default viewer") can now be changed to another program at
	  any time. Retriever remembers your previous image program.

	* Some minor improvements were made and "glitches" were fixed. _No_ bugs have 
	  been reported in V1.0 :) although I found one and fixed it ;)) 


V1.0, released 02/01/1998
		

CONTACT:

	WWW: 	http://www1.stuttgart.netsurf.de/~dirk/retriever.html
		http://retriever.home.ml.org
	e-mail: retriever@gmx.net

AUTHOR:

	Dirk Djuga
	Johannesstrasse 9a
	70176 Stuttgart
	Germany
	