FAQ for Mapivi (last update: 24.09.2006) 1. What should I do, if a dialog pops up saying: "Error in mapivi" "image "imageXX" doesn't exist at ..."? Press OK, and update the thumbnails by pressing . If there are still problems, restart Mapivi with the menu File->Restart. This problem may occur, when you are working with Mapivi while it's still busy e.g. loading the thumbnails. 2. What's about the memory consumption, when adding comments and IPTC information to pictures? It's like you would expect it: about one byte per char. Example: adding a comment of 30 chars to a 1MB picture will increase the file size about 0.03%. 3. How many comments are allowed in a JPEG picture? From the wrjpgcom man page: The JPEG standard allows "comment" (COM) blocks to occur within a JPEG file. Although the standard doesn't actually define what COM blocks are for, they are widely used to hold user-supplied text strings. This lets you add annotations, titles, index terms, etc to your JPEG files, and later retrieve them as text. COM blocks do not interfere with the image stored in the JPEG file. The maximum size of a COM block is 64K, but you can have as many of them as you like in one JPEG file. However I recommend using IPTC instead of JPEG comments, see question 25. 4. How do I work with comments? Simply select a picture to comment and press , enter the comment and press Ctrl-x to close the dialog. Example: you have three pictures to comment, one with Tom and Tim, one with Tom and Peter and one with Tom and Linda. They were taken at Lucy's party. Here is what I would do: select all three pictures, press , enter "Lucy's Party Tom", press Ctrl-x. Now all pictures have the comment "Lucy's Party Tom", now select the first one and add "Tim", the second and add "Peter", and so on ... However I recommend using IPTC instead of JPEG comments, see question 25. 5. I've added several comments to my picture; I can see them with Mapivi, but not with my other tool. Why? Some viewer tools only support the first comment of a JPEG picture. You can use the join comments function of Mapivi to join all comments to one. 6. I can manipulate pictures with Mapivi, but why is there no "Save" or "Save as"? When manipulating pictures, Mapivi serves as a frontend to the ImageMagick tools. The manipulation is done directly on the file, so there is no need to save. But there is also no undo, so better keep the option "Create backup" enabled. You can also force a backup with the menu File->Make backup. If there is already a backup, Mapivi will ask you to overwrite it. The backup of file.jpg will always be named: file-bak.jpg. If you delete file.jpg and there is a backup named file-bak.jpg, Mapivi will ask to rename the backup file to the old file name. This is also done when renaming the original file. If a file has a backup file the string "[bak]" is shown in the size column of the thumbnail table. 7. What's the IPTC urgency tag for? The urgency is an IPTC field to specify the importance of a picture. The urgency may be used as a search or sort criteria. I use it to separate the really good and important pictures from the rest. That's my reflection: My grandma has about 5 photo albums of her whole life, that number of pictures can be viewed in some hours. Since I own a digital camera the number of photos I take is exploding (even if I really try hard to sort out about 50%). So when I keep on taking so much photos I never will have the time to look at them, when I am older. That's where the urgency tag comes into play, I simply mark the best or most important pictures with a high priority. Later I can choose a view to see only the best pictures of e.g. my children. This can be done in the search dialog by selecting the proper urgency and e.g. the Name of the person to search for in the pattern field. 8. How can I get the Mapivi Icon under MS Windows? Use the MapiviIcon32.ico (this is located in the directory pictures of your Mapivi packet) in the properties dialog of the windows explorer. 9. How do I open a directory not accessible with the directory tree on the left? (This may happen when running Mapivi under MS Windows) Press , or use the menu File->open directory. Or left click on the label, where the actual directory is displayed (above the thumbnail list). A dialog will pop up, where you can enter the directory name to open. 10. Is it recommended to do image manipulation with pictures in JPEG format? Usually image manipulations should be done with an image manipulation program, like The GIMP or Photoshop. They support lossless image formats, like XCF or PNG. The disadvantage of JPEG is the fact, that every time you change and save a JPEG picture it has to be compressed again. This compression is NOT lossless, so with every step your picture quality gets worse and worse. However there are some lossless JPEG operations, which don't affect the quality of the picture. It may be appropriate to use JPEG for some image manipulation (like the functions provided by Mapivi) if the source and target format should be JPEG anyway. Mapivi tries to support the manipulation of JPEG files as much as possible by lossless operations (rotation, cropping, adding of comments and IPTC information) and lossy one-step-manipulations. It's e.g. possible to apply several filters and color adjustments to a picture while adding a border. So there is just one recompression to the picture. This should produce the same results like manipulating the picture with the GIMP and then saving it as a JPEG file. To get the maximum possible quality, I recommend setting the quality to 95%. A higher value just increases the file size, not the quality! This setting is also recommended, if it's necessary to do a manipulation including several steps. Note: Adding, editing or removing JPEG meta information, like IPTC, EXIF or comments is lossless with Mapivi! 11. How to compare details on two pictures? Switch the autozoom option of (menu: Options->Window->auto zoom) or open the pictures and press to zoom to 100% for each. Click on the thumbnail of the first and then on the thumbnail of the second picture. Now you are able to move the picture in the canvas, when you switch back to the other picture you will see the same part (e.g. the lower right corner) of this picture. Another possibility is to build a difference picture of two pictures. This can be done using the menu "Extra->build difference picture". 12. What the meaning of all the special info in the thumbnail table? Let's start with the EXIF column: [s] the EXIF info has been saved to an extra file use the menu to restore it back [t] there is an EXIF thumbnail embedded in the picture this is optional (press key to view the thumbnail) date the date and time the picture was taken 18mm the focal length of the lens (27mm) the focal length of the lens in 35mm film equivalent F2.8 the aperture 1/60s the exposure time +0.3 the exposure bias value ISO100 the ISO speed rating the size column: [bak] the file has a backup (e.g. file-bak.jpg) 1143kB the file size in kB (1kB = 1KiB = 1024 Byte) 2048x1536 the picture size in pixels 3.15MP the amount of pixels in mega pixels (1MP = 1000000 pixel) 2.69 b/p the bits per pixel value (kind of quality value) [3:4] the aspect ratio date the file manipulation date Viewed x times how often the picture has been displayed in Mapivi the rest should be obvious, I hope. 13. Panic! Where is my backup file? A backup file (named e.g. pic-bak.jpg) is only created, when the "Create backup" button was selected. If the backup is not shown directly after a conversation, please press to update the thumbnail table. Hint: If a picture has a backup this string: [bak] is shown in the size column. 14. I've rotated my pictures manually, but the rotate flag is wrong now. What should I do? Clear the rotate flag (see menu Edit->Rotate->Clear rotate flag). 15. I've rotated my pictures, but the EXIF thumbnail is still in the old wrong position. What should I do? There are two possibilities: a) lossless (rotate thumbnail) Press to open the options dialog, go to the Thumbnails pad and deselect "Rotate EXIF thumbnail when rotating picture". Now rotate the picture to match the EXIF thumbnail (press to see the EXIF thumbnail). Now select "Rotate EXIF thumbnail when rotating picture" in the dialog noted above and rotate the picture again. b) fast (create new thumbnail) Just build a new EXIF thumbnail (see menu Edit->EXIF info->(re)build thumbnail). Both possibilities are lossless for the picture. 16. I want to save a copy of a picture in the same directory, with a different name (Save As ...). How to do this with Mapivi? Select the picture (e.g. pic1.jpg), use the menu: File->make backup. A new file named pic1-bak.jpg will be created, select this picture and press (or use the menu: File->rename) and rename the picture to the new name. 17. If I resize the Mapivi window the pictures do not resize. What's wrong? Nothing is wrong, zooming is slow, and so Mapivi just rezooms on user request. Press key (Shift-u) above the picture and it will be reloaded and zoomed to the new canvas size. You may also try (fit picture in canvas) or (display in original/100% size). 18. Mapivi is great! Why is it free? Because I like and use a lot of free open source software myself and Mapivi is my contribution back to the community. But anyway, you are free to make a donation, see http://herrmanns-stern.de/software/donations.shtml Your donation of any amount will encourage me to continue the development. 19. How can I reuse the saved EXIF information or IPTC templates from the pre-0.7.0 Mapivi versions? The only way is to use an old Mapivi version, restore the EXIF information to the pictures and apply the IPTC templates to certain pictures: Quit the old Mapivi version. Then start the new Mapivi version (>= 0.7.0) and save the EXIF information (if needed) and the IPTC templates again. Before using an old Mapivi version I recommend to make a backup of the Mapivi configuration file: (for UNIX: ~/.maprogs/mapivi/mapivirc) and restore it before switching back to the actual Mapivi version. 20. How to use hierarchical keywords and categories? If there is no tree visible in the "edit keywords" or "edit categories" dialog press the right mouse button and add some items. A double click on a keyword will insert it in the IPTC segment of all selected pictures. I recommend using the join mode. In this mode Mapivi will store your keyword hierarchie in the pictures. You can retrieve the hierarchie anytime later by simply browsing your pictures. Hint: According to the IPTC standard, supplemental categories are depricated. Based on that I recommend using only IPTC keywords. 21. Is it possible to search for pictures stored on an external media (e.g. CD, DVD, USB-Stick, external HD)? Yes, of course, if Mapivi knows about them. Follow this procedure: 1. Insert the media 2. Press F7 in main window (directory tree will show up) 3. Select media root folder (e.g. /media/dvd for UNIX or D:\ for Windows) in Mapivi directory tree 4. Select Mapivi menu: Search->build database ... to add the pictures stored on the external media to the Mapivi search database Hints: - As Mapivi will just show the path to the picture (e.g. /media/dvd/pic1.jpg or D:\pic1.jpg) it is recommended to use a CD/DVD folder structure with unambiguous naming e.g. dates like 20051026_Party/ this will help you to find the right CD/DVD - If you didn't use Mapivi for deleting the pictures you should select Mapivi menu: Search->clean database ... to update the Mapivi search database - For thumbnails see next question 22. When I find pictures stored on external media (e.g. CD, DVD, USB-Stick, external hard disk no thumbnails are shown. Can this be changed? Or: Is it possible to show the thumbnails of pictures stored on an external media in the search dialog? Yes, it is possible. Follow these steps: 1. Insert the media 2. Press F7 in main window (directory tree will show up) 3. Select media root folder (e.g. /media/dvd for UNIX or D:\ for Windows) in Mapivi directory tree 4. Select Mapivi menu: Extra->build thumbs in all sub directories ... Mapivi will store these thumbnails automatically in a central folder if the media is not writable. 23. Does Mapivi store the thumbnails? Where are they stored? Yes, Mapivi tries to store all produced thumbnails. They are stored depending on the configuration in a) a sub folder of the current folder named .thumbs or b) in a central folder (for UNIX: ~/.maprogs/mapivi/thumbDB/) 24. What is the dotted line in the menu for? When you select the dotted line you will get a so called tear-of menu. The menu will become a new window and you may place it anywhere on your desktop. This is very handy if you need some functions several times. 25. Should I store my picture comments in the IPTC or the JPEG comments? Use the IPTC information. The IPTC information is much more structured than the JPEG comments. A JPEG comment is just one long text string. So when your picture collection keeps growing, searching pictures will become more difficult. The problem is not finding pictures with a certain comment, but that the search results are simply to numerous. Example: You have a picture of the car from your best friend Tom. When using JPEG comments you would write something like "Tom's car" into the comment. When you later search for pictures of Tom, you will find this picture, even while Tom himself is not on the picture, just his car. Using IPTC information, the description would be the same "Tom's car", but you would not search the IPTC description field for "Tom", but the IPTC keywords (where you store the names of the persons shown on the picture). So this picture will not show up in the search results, just the pictures which really depict Tom. 26. I there a support for other encodings, character sets, German umlaute, accents etc. in IPTC meta information? No, currently there is no support for this in Mapivi. Anyhow, it is possible to add and see them in the IPTC dialog, but they are not correctly displayed in the thumbnail list and it is not possible to search for words with umlauts, accents etc. I still haven't figured out how to handle this properly in Mapivi any hints are welcome. Meanwhile I recommend to use translations like these for the German umlauts: ü (u with two dots above) -> ue, ä -> ae etc. 27. When I start other gnome/GTK applications, Mapivi is killed with a segmentation fault. Is there a fix? Yes, there is one, see: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=130912&highlight=mapivi You just have to apply a 3 line patch to one of the PerlTk files, rebuild and install PerlTk. It's not a Mapivi, but a PerlTk bug, thus all PerlTk applications stop with a segmentation fault, when a gnome application is started. 28. Will image quality decrease when adding or editing meta data? Is there a recompression of my picture when I add or change IPTC information? No, a JPEG picture has several segments, when you add, change or remove meta information (IPTC, EXIF, comments) the segment containing the image data is not changed. You will see no quality decrease when commenting your pictures with Mapivi, even when you change e.g. the IPTC keywords a hundred times.