Fotoxx User Guide

Fotoxx User Guide v.18.07.1

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Overview

Description
Fotoxx is a free open source Linux application for editing photos and managing a large collection. The goal of Fotoxx is to meet the needs of serious photographers while remaining fast and easy to use. Fotoxx has a rich set of editing, repair, creative and special effects functions. Image modifications are displayed instantly in a full-size image, allowing interactive optimization. Fotoxx can be used to manage a large image collection so that finding desired images is fast and easy. Albums can be created and images arranged with drag and drop. Images can be viewed by clicking location markers on an interactive world map, scalable from street to continent. A detailed list of Fotoxx capabilities is available below.

Hardware Requirements
Fotoxx works best on a strong computer, e.g. a 2+ GHz multi-core CPU with 8+ GB RAM. A weaker computer will generally work, but may be slow for some functions and unable to edit large images. A monitor smaller than HD (1920x1080) will feel too small for some functions using multiple windows. The monitor should have accurate color (most of them do not).

Software Requirements
Most recent releases of popular Linux distributions will work (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Arch ...). This must be 64-bit Linux. Fotoxx Debian packages are built and tested using Ubuntu. A source tarball and make file is provided to build Fotoxx for Linux flavors that use other package formats or have incompatible libraries.

License and Warranty
Fotoxx is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3. Fotoxx source code is free to use, modify, and share with others. Fotoxx is not warranted for any purpose, but if you find a bug, I will try to fix it.

Origin and Contact
Fotoxx originates from the author's web site: kornelix.net.
If you have questions, suggestions, or a bug to report, you may contact me.

Downloads
The latest source code and install packages (debian format) are available at kornelix.net. Fotoxx packages are also available on many other web sites and Linux distributions. Some of these are quite old and should be avoided. It is better to use the above link. If there is a problem, it is easier to fix if you are using the current release.

Updates and Bug Fixes
Fotoxx is updated periodically with new or improved capabilities and bug fixes. Serious bugs are generally corrected with a day or two of being known, if possible, and the web site is updated with a new release. Other web sites and Linux distribution repositories may or may not update for bug fixes.

Optional Package - fotoxx-maps
This is a set of geographic maps covering the world. They show image locations as markers (red dots) that can be clicked to display a corresponding image gallery. Modern cameras with GPS receivers automatically add geotags (earth coordinates) to photos, and these are used by Fotoxx to mark image locations on a map. Geotags can also be added to images individually or with a Fotoxx batch utility. You can add maps of your own at any scale, and your images will populate the new maps automatically. A source tarball and Debian package are available as described above. If you have a good internet connection, you may not need this package, because Fotoxx can also use interactive and scalable maps obtained as needed from an internet map service.

User Guide
Fotoxx is easy to use but unconventional. To avoid getting stuck, please read the introductory sections of this user guide. Help for individual functions can be referenced as needed during use, by using the F1 key.

Translations
Translations of the user interface are available for French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese.
If you can help with translations, review the topic Translations. The user guide is only available in English.

Fotoxx Capabilities

Thumbnail browser/navigator with variable size thumbnails and list view.
Camera RAW file conversion, single or batch, with retention of 16 bits per color.
Internal processing in 24 bits per color (float), file output in 8 or 16 bits.
A comprehensive set of image edit functions are available: brightness, color,
contrast, trim/crop, detail enhancement, resize, sharpen, noise suppression,
rotate, paint, copy, red eyes, text, warp, HDR, panorama, montage ...
A large set of creative special effects and arty transformations is available.
The user has wide control over the characteristics of these effects.
Select image objects or areas and edit them separately from the background.
Copy and paste within and across images, with variable edge blending.
Rapid visual feedback using the full image or a selected zoom-in area.
Most edit functions can be 'painted' locally and gradually using the mouse.
Metadata editing and reporting (tags, dates, captions, geotags ... any metadata).
Edited files are saved with a version number: prior versions are kept by default.
Transparent image areas can be retained. Variable transparency can be added.
Custom edit scripts: record a series of edits on one image, execute on any image.
Batch tools are available for renaming, resizing, converting, processing RAW files,
adding, revising and reporting metadata, and executing custom edit scripts.
Search images using any metadata and directory/file names or partial names
(dates/times, locations, ratings, captions/comments, exposure data ...).
Show a table of image locations and date groups, click for gallery of images.
Show an image calendar, click on year or month for a gallery of images.
Find images by clicking markers on a scalable world map (internet source).
Use locally stored maps (world, continents, nations, cities) and custom maps.
Create albums with selected images. Arrange sequence by drag and drop.
Slide show: use many animated transitions and slow pan/zoom in or out.
Mashup: arrange images and text in an arbitrary layout using the mouse.
Print an image at any scale. A printer color calibration utility is available.
Show video files (first frame) like regular images, optionally play videos.
Comprehensive user guide and context help popups via F1 key.

Table of Contents

Fotoxx Overview	description, prerequisites, license, downloads, capabilities
Fotoxx Usage
Quick Start	1-page overview document
User Guide	comprehensive Fotoxx usage guide (this document)
Installation	Fotoxx software installation, dependencies
Initialization	Fotoxx initialization - locating and indexing image files
Window Views and Menus	top-level windows and associated menus
File View	file view window (view single image file)
Gallery View	gallery view window (view thumbnails)
World Map View	world map view window (local map files)
Net Map View	net map view window (internet world map, scalable)
File Drag and Drop	file drag and drop methods
General Image Edit Procedures	overview - how to edit image files
Edit Workflow	alternative edit methods - simple and complex
Dialog Mouse Ownership	dialog-mouse control and interaction
Dialog Completion Buttons	dialog completion options
Custom Dialog Widgets	how to use custom dialog widgets
Curve Editing	how to manipulate curves used in edit functions
Batch Editing	overview of batch editing functions
Select Images from Galleries	file selection procedure used for many functions
Menu Shortcuts	popup menus, keyboard shortcuts, favorites menu
Managing a Large Collection	collection management and image searching
Right-Click Popup Menus	popup menu functions for file and gallery views
Keyboard Shortcuts	keyboard shortcuts for file/gallery/map views
Mouse Functions	mouse functions for file/gallery/map views
Command Line Parameters	Fotoxx startup options using command line parameters
Top Panel Status Information	details of information in the file view top panel
File View Menus
Favorites Menu	graphic popup menu with user-selected functions, icons, and layout
File Menu
New Session	start new Fotoxx session in a separate window
Sync Gallery	open corresponding gallery view from current file view image
Recent	open gallery view of most recently seen images
Newest	open gallery view of newest images in the collection
Open	find and open an image file for viewing or editing
Cycle 2	cycle through the two most recently seen image files
Cycle 3	cycle through the three most recently seen image files
Raw Therapee	open a RAW file for editing with Raw Therapee
View 360° Pano	view a 360° panorama with a rotating viewpoint and wrap-around
Rename	rename an image file
Blank Image	create a new blank image file with specified size and color
Blank Window	blank or restore (toggle) the current image window
Copy/Move	copy or move an image file to another directory
Copy to Desktop	copy an image file to the desktop
Copy to Clipboard	copy an image file to the clipboard
Copy to Cache	copy an image file to the image cache
Show on Map	show an image file position in Net Map View
Delete/Trash	delete or trash an image files
Print	print an image file
Print Calibrated	print an image file using printer color calibration data
Save	save an image file (replace, new version, new file name)
Prev/Next	show the previous or next image in the current gallery
Metadata Menu
View Meta	list main image metadata
View All Meta	list all image metadata
Tags Overview	image tags (keywords) used for image searching
Geotags Overview	image geotags (location data) used for image searching
Edit Meta	edit commonly used metadata
Manage Tags Dialog	manage user-defined tags
Adding Geotags	add image geotags from user inputs or web service
Edit Any Meta	edit any metadata (add, change)
Delete Meta	delete specified metadata or all metadata
Captions	show file name, captions, comments in image corner
Places/Dates	list image locations and date groups, click for gallery
Timeline	table of image counts by year and month, click for gallery
Search Images	search images using any metadata or file name data
Area Menu
Overview	select area - concepts and usage
Select Area	selecting an image object or area for separate editing
Select Hairy	select a complex area, such as hair or plants
Find Gap	find gap in hand-drawn area outline
Show/Hide	show or hide area outlines
Enable/Disable	enable or disable an area for editing
Invert Area	invert an area (exchange outside/inside areas)
Unselect	remove an area
Copy and Paste	copy an area and insert somewhere else later
Load and Save	load an area from a file or save an area to a file
Undo/Redo Button	undo or redo current edit or any edits to current image
Edit 1 Menu
Trim/Rotate	Trim unwanted margins, rotate or level an image
Resize	Change the image pixel dimensions
Retouch	Edit brightness, contrast, color, saturation
Sharpen	Sharpen a blurred image
Blur	Blur an image or image area (5 methods)
Denoise	Reduce noise (speckles) in low-light images
Red Eyes	Remove red eyes from flash photos
Color Mode	Convert to black & white, color, negative, positive, sepia ...
Color Sat	Increase or reduce color saturation (intensity)
Adjust RGB	Adjust image colors using RGB or CMY adjustments
Adjust HSL	Use HSL to select and change image colors
Add Text	Write text on an image with special effects
Add Lines	Add lines and arrows to an image
Upright	Upright an image rotated 90° or 180°
Mirror	Mirror an image horizontally or vertically
Paint Edits	Paint a retouch function gradually, using the mouse
Lever Edits	Apply a retouch function using brightness or color as a regulator
Edit 2 Menu
Voodoo1	Automatic 1-click enhancement that may work
Voodoo2	Automatic 1-click enhancement that may work
Brightness	Edit brightness distribution, rebalance dark and bright areas
Gradients	Increase local contrast to enhance details
Flatten	Flatten brightness within local zones to enhance details
Global Retinex	Rescale RGB brightness values to remove color cast and fog/haze
Zonal Retinex	Rescale RGB brightness values to remove color cast and fog/haze
Zonal Colors	Fix a false color cast that varies within an image
Match Colors	Match the colors in one image to those in another image
Color Depth	Reduce the number of colors (posterize)
Smart Erase	Remove power lines, trash, other small image spoilers
Brightness Ramp	Add a brightness/color ramp across an image
Paint Image	Mouse-paint with a color, brush size, and opacity
Wacom Tablet	Paint using a Wacom Tablet instead of a mouse
Copy Pixels 1	Mouse-paint area with pixels copied from the same image
Copy Pixels 2	Mouse-paint area with pixels copied from another image
Paint Transparency	Paint increasing transparency using the mouse
Color Fringes	Reduce chromatic aberration causing color fringes
Anti-Alias	Suppress pixelation (jaggies) in low resolution image
Plugins	Use another image edit application as a Fotoxx edit function
Warp Menu
Unbend	Fix images having curved lines that should be straight
Perspective	Straighten an object photographed from below or aside
Warp Area	Warp a selected image area by pulling with the mouse
Unwarp Closeup	Reverse distortions of a close-up face photo (e.g. big nose)
Warp curved	Warp entire image or area using the mouse - curvy warp
Warp linear	Warp image by pulling with the mouse - straight lines preserved
Warp affine	Warp image by pulling with the mouse - parallel lines preserved
Flatten Book	Flatten and straighten a photographed book page
Spherical Proj.	Curve an image into a spheroid shape
Area Rescale	Rescale image down, leaving selected areas unchanged
Make Waves	Warp an image with a wave pattern
Twist	Twist an image around a chosen center point
Effects Menu
Sketch	Convert an image into a simulated sketch
Cartoon	Convert an image to a cartoon-like drawing
Line Drawing	Convert an image to a simulated line drawing
Color Drawing	Convert an image to a simulated color drawing
Emboss	Convert an image to a simulated embossing (3D effect)
Tiles	Convert an image into simulated square tiles
Dots	Convert an image into a Roy Lichtenstein style dot matrix
Painting	Convert an image into a simulated painting
Vignette	Change brightness or color radially around a chosen center
Texture	Add texture to an image or selected area
Pattern	Add a background pattern to an image
Mosaic	Convert an image into a mosaic using tiles from all available images
Shift Colors	Gradually shift RGB colors to GBR or BRG
Alien Colors	add random strange colors to an image
Custom Kernel	Edit and apply a custom convolution kernel to an image
Combine Menu
HDR	Combine images for an extended brightness range
HDF	Combine images for an extended depth of sharp focus
Stack / Paint	Combine images to remove transient cars, tourists, etc
Stack / Noise	Combine images to reduce noise by averaging
Panorama	Stitch together a series of images horizontally
V. Panorama	Stitch together a series of images vertically
PT Panorama	Stitch together a series of images using Panorama Tools
Image Diffs	Show the differences between two images
Mashup	Arrange multiple images and formatted text in a layout
Montage	Join many images into a compact table format
Process Menu
Batch Convert Files	copy, move, resize, rename, convert, add text ...
Batch Upright	scan for rotated images and upright them
Batch Delete/Trash	delete or trash selected images
Batch RAW	convert RAW files to JPEG/PNG/TIFF, 8 or 16 bit color
Burn DVD / Blue Ray	create a DVD or BlueRay disc with selected image files
Export File List	create a list of selected files (e.g. for use in a shell script)
Export Files	export selected files to a directory (e.g. for web upload)
Batch Tags	add or remove tags for selected images
Batch Rename Tags	rename tags for selected or all images
Batch Photo Date	change photo dates or times, or shift time zone
Batch Change Meta	add or revise metadata for selected or all images
Batch Report Meta	report metadata for selected or all images
Batch Geotags	add or revise geotags for selected or all images
Script Files	record a series of edits in a script file, execute on many files
Tools Menu
Index Files	1-time job to find and index all image files
Move Fotoxx Home	move fotoxx home directory to a new location
User Settings	user settings and preferences
KB Shortcuts	show and revise keyboard shortcuts for menu functions
Brightness Graph	show a brightness distribution graph for the current image file
Magnify Image	turn mouse into a magnifying glass over image
Find Duplicates	find duplicate images in a gallery or the entire image collection
Show RGB	show RGB values at mouse position or for selected points
Color Profile	Convert color profile (e.g. sRGB <--> Adobe RGB)
Calibrate Printer	calibrate printer color - compensate for color shifts
Grid Lines	show or remove grid lines, set line count or spacing
Line Color	set color for select area outlines
Dark/Bright Pixels	tool to highlight clipping
Remove Dust	Remove dust spots on images scanned from old photos
Stuck Pixels	Fix bright/dark 'stuck' pixels from camera sensor defects
Monitor Color	tool to adjust monitor brightness and contrast
Monitor Gamma	tool to adjust monitor gamma
Change Language	change the language of the menus and dialogs
Missing Translations	list missing translations for the current language
Uninstall Appimage	remove the appimage package completely
Show Resources	show CPU time and current memory usage
Zappcrash Test	test crash report with source code line numbers
Help Menu	show user guide, recent changes, log file, web site
Gallery View Menu
Favorites Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
Gallery Menu
Sync Gallery	open gallery view from current file view image
All Directories	show all image file directories in a tree structure
Bookmarks	add bookmarks, view list of bookmarks, go to bookmark
Current Album	show current or last used album (gallery)
Manage Albums	create and arrange user-defined image collections
Update Album Files	update albums from updated images
Replace Album File	replace an image file in selected or all albums
Slide Show	create a slide show with animated transitions and zooms
Metadata Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
Gallery View Buttons
Zoom-in / zoom-out	zoom the gallery thumbnails from zero (text only) to huge
Sort Gallery	sort gallery by file name, file date or EXIF photo date
Scroll Gallery	scroll gallery in pages back or forward, jump to start or end
Combine Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
Process Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
Tools Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
Help Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
World Map Menus	maps using local map files
Images by Map Location	click on map marker for gallery of images at location
Choose Map	choose from available maps (USA, France, NYC, etc.)
Custom Map Files	create and install custom map files
Map Markers	show all map markers or only those for current gallery
Help Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
Net Map Menus	maps using an internet map source
Images by Map Location	click on map marker for gallery of images at location
Map Source	set web source for map
Map Locs	define or go to named map location (map position and scale)
Map Markers	show all map markers or only those for current gallery
Help Menu	(same as above, duplicated for convenience)
Other Topics
Video Files	show and play video clips included in image collection
Web Service Photo Upload	how to select and upload a batch of images to Flickr, etc.
Organizing Images for Search	options for image organization and efficient searching
Translations	adding or updating a translation
Recent Changes	list of recent user guide changes
Technical Notes	some technical information about Fotoxx

Fotoxx Usage

Quick Start
This 1-page document is shown when Fotoxx is started the first time.
It is also available via the menu Help > Quick Start.

User Guide (this document)
Fotoxx is easy to use but unconventional. To avoid confusion, please read the first few pages of this guide. The rest can be used for reference as needed. The user guide is available in the menu Help > User Guide. When using Fotoxx, press the F1 key at any time to view information for the current or last used menu function.

Fotoxx uses the term directory, which is the equivalent of folder in Windows land. The terms file and image and image file mean a single file of type JPEG, PNG, TIFF, RAW, etc. containing a single image (photo or other graphic image).

Installation
To install Fotoxx, try the appropriate package first: packages. This may work with one click.
If not, you must install from source code. This is not difficult. Instructions are here: tarballs

Additional programs used by Fotoxx

xdg-utils	required	open text or html files with user's preferred application
exiftool	required	read and write image metadata (tags, comments, etc.)
Raw Therapee	optional	open a RAW file for editing using this specialty editor
growisofs	optional	burn a CD or DVD or BlueRay with selected images
xgamma	optional	used for the adjust monitor gamma function
fotoxx-maps	optional	set of geographic maps to show image locations (gallery by mouse click)
Panorama Tools	optional	PT Panorama function uses Panorama Tools (normally packaged with Hugin)
ffmpeg, totem	optional	programs required for inline viewing of video files

Initialization - Image File Index
Fotoxx needs to know where all your image files are located (directory and file names) and their embedded metadata (dates, tags (keywords), geotags, captions, comments, ratings). This data is indexed for fast searching. Fotoxx also creates thumbnail images so that the gallery windows (thumbnail pages) will work fast. Fotoxx does not modify or copy your image files - it only reads them to make the image file index and thumbnails. The file space required is typically 2% of your total image collection size.

When Fotoxx starts the first time, you must provide information for the initial file indexing process.

top image directories (one or more)

thumbnail directory

extra metadata items to include in the index

Top image Directories
These are the top directories containing your image files, e.g. /home/<user>/Pictures or similar. Subdirectories underneath your top directories are automatically included, to any depth. Use the [select] button to locate and add your top image directories, one or more. Other files may be mixed with your image files.

Thumbnails
This is the directory where thumbnail files will be placed. These are typically 2% as large as your image files (30 KB compared to megabytes). You can use the supplied default or choose another location. Indexing will run faster if this is on a separate physical disk from the image files.

Index Time Required
If you have many thousands of image files, the initial index function may need substantial time. The speed can range from 800 to 6000 files per minute, depending on processor speed, disk speed, and average image file size. The low speed (800/min.) would be expected for large JPEG files (5 MB) on a slow disk (5400 rpm). The high speed (6000/min.) would be expected for a strong computer with 4+ processor cores and a solid state disk (SSD).

When you add new image files to your collection, the next Fotoxx startup will index only the new files. If there are only a few new files, startup will be quite fast. If there are hundreds or thousands of new files, startup will take the time to index them, as described above.

For more details, see Index Files.

Metadata Items
The following metadata is included in the index by default: directory and file names, photo date/time, file creation or modification date/time, rating (1-5 stars), tags (keywords used for searching), caption, comment, geotags (country and city or location names and latitude/longitude). Searching a large image collection for one or more of these items is almost instantaneous.

You can also choose up to 20 other metadata items to include in the image file index. You may not need this. You can skip this initially and add items later if needed. See Index Files for more details.

Note: You can bypass indexing if you hate this idea (probably misguided, but the customer is always right). See the topics Index Files and User Settings. Search and map functions will be disabled if there is no index, and thumbnail galleries will be slow.

Window Views and Menus

Use these buttons (window top left) to switch among the viewing modes:

	File View: the current image file fills the entire window
	Gallery View: thumbnail gallery (directory or other image group)
	World Map View: local maps with clickable markers to display corresponding images
	Net Map View: internet maps with clickable markers to display corresponding images

Each view has a row of menu buttons on the left side. These are top-level menus. When clicked, available menu functions are shown in a popup list. Hover the mouse over a menu to see a popup description of the menu content.

File View
• Zoom the current image in/out with the left/right mouse buttons or mouse wheel.
• Pan and scroll a zoomed image using mouse left-drag.
• Use the menus (left side buttons) to edit the image and perform utility functions.
• The window title bar shows the current image file and directory path.
• The top panel above the image shows image and edit status information.
• Right-click anywhere on image for a popup menu of commonly used functions.

Gallery View
• Use the menus to navigate within the gallery, change the thumbnail size, etc.
• Thumbnail size is variable from tiny to huge, or a list view with key metadata.
• Click on a directory button at the top to go up to a parent directory.
• Child directories appear as folder thumbnails in the gallery. Click to go there.
• The [TOP] button shows a drop-down list of all top directories. Click any to go there.
      (also included: /, user home, Desktop, Fotoxx home, recent images, newest images)
• [TOP] > ALL shows a full directory hierarchy, allowing direct access to any directory.
• Click a gallery thumbnail: show the clicked image at full window size (File View).
• Right-click a thumbnail for a popup menu of commonly used functions.

World Map View
• Available only if the optional fotoxx-maps package is installed.
• The initial map is a very large world map (136 megapixels).
• Click anywhere to enlarge that map area to full size.
• Left-drag to pan and scroll the enlarged map.
• Right-click to collapse the map to fit in the window.
• If your image files contain geotags, the map will show corresponding markers.
• Click on a marker to get a gallery view of the corresponding images.
• You can select from many supplied maps, and add your own maps.

Net Map View
• A world map from the internet can show any place on earth at any scale.
• Markers are present for images with geotags.
• Click on a marker to get a gallery view of the corresponding images.
• No extra packages or setups are required - works out of the box.
• Needs a fast and reliable internet connection for good response time.

The paragraphs below provide more detail about each of the viewing modes.

File View
The current image file is shown, filling the entire window. The current image file is a key concept in Fotoxx. This is the file that most of the menu functions will operate on. The menu buttons in this view (below) show popup menus which are used to modify the image or perform utility functions. Use the left-right arrow button to move to the previous or next image in the current gallery. The keyboard arrow keys may also be used for this.

	current view = image file view
	change to gallery view
	change to world map view
	change to Net Map view

	favorites - custom graphic popup menu with your favorite functions
	open, rename, recent, newest, delete, copy, print, trash ...
	save modified image file, save as new version or new file
	open previous or next image file (left or right mouse click)-
	metadata - edit tags, captions, ratings, geotags ... search images
	select image areas or objects for separate edit, copy, paste, save
	undo or redo previous edit steps (left or right mouse click)
	trim, rotate, resize, brightness, color, contrast, denoise, add text ...
	complex edit functions and image transformation tools
	fix perspective, warp or unwarp image ...
	special effects, arty transforms (filters)
	combine images: HDR, HDF, stack, panorama, montage, mashup
	process - batch move / convert / modify files, search and report functions
	index image files, user settings, KB shortcuts, magnify ...
	help, user guide, change log, translations ...

Zoom Image in and out, pan and scroll a zoomed image
To zoom the image in the main window, left-click a position on the image. The image will grow with each click and the clicked position will move to the center. A right-click will restore the image to fit within the window. To pan or scroll a zoomed image, left-drag the mouse across the image. The image can move with the mouse or in the opposite direction (like scroll bars), depending on a user setting (menu Tools > User Settings). The movement may be 1:1 with the mouse, or may be magnified for faster movement. The mouse wheel may also be used to zoom the image in or out. The middle mouse button (wheel) will make a zoomed image re-center at the mouse position.

Gallery View
All image files in the current directory are shown as thumbnails. You can scroll through the thumbnails and navigate to other directories. The arrow buttons allow scrolling forward or back. You can also scroll with the mouse wheel or scroll bar. Use the zoom buttons to change the thumbnail size. Clicking on a thumbnail will change to file view and display the image full size. This image is now the "current image". Pressing the gallery button in file view will show the gallery view, with the current image scrolled to the top row. The directory path is shown at the top of the gallery window, with one button per directory level. Click one of the buttons to go to that directory. Its subdirectories will be shown as folder thumbnails. Click one of them to go to that directory. Click the [Top] button to choose another top image directory (if more than one), the root directory ( / ) your home directory (/home/<user>), a gallery of the most recently viewed images, or a gallery of the newest images added to your collection. A gallery may also be an album, or the result of an image search or report function.

	change to image file view
	current view = gallery view
	change to world map view
	change to Net Map view

	favorites - custom graphic popup menu with your favorite functions
	sync gallery, albums, slide show
	larger thumbnails
	smaller thumbnails
	sort gallery images by file name, file date, or photo date
	go up to gallery top
	go down to gallery end
	go up one page
	go down one page
	combine images: HDR, HDF, stack, panorama, montage, mashup
	process - batch move / convert / modify files, search and report functions
	index files, user settings, edit KB shortcuts, magnify ...
	help, user guide, change log

There are several types of galleries:
• Directory: all the image files in a single directory (folder)
• Search results: images found by a search function, from various directories
• Images in an Album: an arbitrary collection from various directories
• Recent Files: the most recently viewed or edited image files
• Newest Files: files most recently added or modified in the image collection
• Report: thumbnail images with associated text (metadata)

The gallery window title bar will show the directory name (path), the album name, or Search Results or Recent Files or Newest Files. If the gallery corresponds to a directory, buttons for navigating to parent directories are shown in the top panel. The other gallery types have only the buttons for Album (select an album) and TOP (go to another directory).

If the current gallery is not a directory gallery (e.g. Recent Files), you can navigate to a directory by using the [TOP] button in the navigation bar above the thumbnails.

The [Sort] button is used to sort the thumbnails by file name, file modification date, or photo date (from EXIF data). The displayed date is photo date unless the sort is by file date. Ascending or descending order can be chosen. Directory galleries retain their sort order and scroll position when viewed later (i.e. when other galleries are viewed in-between). The [Sort] button dialog has a button to restore all galleries to their default order: file name ascending. Albums retain the order they were made with. They can be sorted, but the output is a new album named [original name]-sorted.

A gallery thumbnail has a right-click menu with some commonly used functions. One of these is Popup Image, which creates a popup window with a larger image that can be rapidly zoomed to any size with the mouse wheel. Many popup windows can be open at once. This is useful for comparing multiple photos of the same subject or multiple edited versions.

Popup Image Manipulation:
• Click thumbnail with middle mouse button: popup image appears
• Click thumbnail with shift + left mouse button: popup image appears
• Mouse scroll wheel: zoom the image bigger or smaller
• Key F11: make popup image full screen, or return to prior size
• Left mouse button: kill the popup image
• Escape key: kill the popup image

World Map View
Initially a world map is displayed. A left click on any area will expand that area to a much larger size, and a right click will return to the whole map view. The mouse wheel also works. Markers are shown where there are images with a corresponding geotag location. The markers can be clicked to show a gallery view of the corresponding images.

	change to image file view
	change to gallery view
	current view = world map
	change to Net Map view

	choose from available maps (Europe, USA, France ...)
	set map markers, all images or current gallery only

The Choose Map menu offers a selection of large-scale continental and country maps, and you can also install other maps (countries, cities, parks, etc.). These all work the same way. Markers are shown where there are images with a corresponding geotag location. The markers can be clicked to show a gallery view of the corresponding images. The Markers button allows you to restrict the markers to images the current gallery (directory, album, search results, newest, recent).

The initial maps are provided in a separate package: fotoxx-maps. Fotoxx-maps is large - almost 100 MB of maps are provided. You can also add your own maps, explained in the topic Custom Map Files.

Net Map View
This view is similar to the above world map view. The functionality is generally superior, but it depends on having a fast and reliable internet connection. An internet map service is used. Initially a world map is displayed. Use the mouse wheel (or double-click) to zoom-in to any location. Shift the map center using mouse drag. The entire world is represented and can be viewed at any scale down to street-level. You can choose from two map sources, one completely open and one requiring a key (but still free for normal usage volume). If your internet connection is slow or unreliable, it may be best to use the previous World Map method. This is also the only way to make a custom map. The Markers button works as described above.

	change to image file view
	change to gallery view
	change to world map view
	current view = Net Map

	choose internet map source
	set map markers, all images or current gallery only
	select named map view (map location and zoom level)

File Drag and Drop
Fotoxx accepts drag-drop of image files to F-view or G-view mode. In F-view, the file is opened. In G-view, the result depends on the type of gallery. If the gallery is a directory, the file is added to the directory and the gallery will show the new file in its sorted position, by file name. If the gallery is an album, the file is added to the album in the position where it is dropped. This works also if a text string that is a valid file name is dropped.

General Image Edit Procedures
The image in file view mode (the current image) can be modified with the edit functions in the menus Edit, Warp, Effects, Combine. These functions modify the current image in memory and as seen in the window. You can use these functions in any order, and the changes are accumulated. When finished editing, use [Save] to save the modified image back to the same file, save to a new file version (e.g. filename.v01.jpg), or input a new file name and/or directory. Image edit dialogs have sliders, spin buttons, or editable curves that immediately update the image. The reaction time depends on the size of the image, the complexity of the function and the speed of your PC. This is typically less than second for most edit functions on a strong PC.

Undo / Redo button

Click on the left or right side to undo or redo the currently active edit function. After an image has had one or more edits applied, the undo/redo button can be used to go back to prior edit steps or forward to the last edit step. The middle mouse button shows a popup list of all edits done to the current image, and you can select any step to go back to. The image can then be re-edited from this step.

Edit Workflow
You can minimize the time needed to process multiple images if you understand the following:

Choosing a new edit function will automatically complete a prior active edit.
The new edit starts with the end result of the prior edit, and an undo/redo position is created.
Opening a new image file during an edit function will automatically cancel the edit.
The edit function is restarted with the new image.
The [Save] button can be used during an active edit to save the current image status.
The edit function restarts automatically, and an undo/redo position is created.
Some frequently used functions have a [Prev] button which recalls previous settings,
making it easier to process multiple photos needing the same or similar adjustments.

Here is an example workflow for the initial rotate and trim (crop) of a new batch of photos.
You can process one photo every few seconds (+ think time).
   1. Go to the directory with the new photos to process.
   2. Open the first file.
   3. Menu: Edit > Trim/Rotate.
Repeat steps 4-7 for each image. The Trim/Rotate dialog remains open.
   4. Level the image if needed (drag the right edge).
   5. Trim the image by dragging the trim borders to suit.
   6. Press [Save] and choose "new version".
   7. Press [Next] to edit the next file. Press [Next] again to skip over.

Simple Workflow
Most of the time you can just edit the JPEG file that comes out of the camera. Use the following more complex procedure only if you see "color bands" or "posterization" after editing the image, an indication that JPEG 8-bit color is limiting the image quality.

Complex Workflow
To edit with deep color (more than 8 bits), you can start with RAW files from your camera.
There are three options for processing RAW files:

Open a RAW file directly with Fotoxx: use the [Open] button or click the gallery thumbnail. The RAW file may now be edited normally. Fotoxx edit functions work with 24 bits per RGB color, so whatever bit depth the RAW file has will be preserved. Save the edited file as type TIFF or PNG with 8 or 16-bit color, or JPEG with 8-bit color. You cannot save the edited image as a RAW file type. Opening a RAW file may need several seconds, especially on a weak PC. Saving an edited image as TIFF or PNG is slower than JPEG.
Open the RAW file with the File > Open RAW menu, or right-click the gallery thumbnail and use the open RAW popup menu. This opens a specialized RAW editor (currently Raw Therapee). Save the file in the RAW editor as a TIFF-16 file, which will pass back to Fotoxx for further editing if wanted.
Use the Process > Batch RAW menu. You can select many RAW files and convert all of them to type TIFF or PNG with 8- or 16-bit color, or JPEG with 8-bit color. You may then select and edit these files with Fotoxx.

RAW files may have more color depth than 8 bits, especially if the camera is new and very expensive. Conversion into a PNG or TIFF file with 16-bit color will preserve the additional color depth available in the RAW file. The higher color depth reduces the risk of visible color bands if your edits radically shift the brightness distribution. When finished editing, convert the final file to JPEG (quality level 70 or greater) to reduce the final file size to 10% or less. Note that editing in deep color is more important than having deep color in the final image. It is very hard to see any difference between a 16-bit TIFF or PNG file and a high quality JPEG made from that same file. To preserve the possibility of re-editing the image later, keep the RAW file, which is usually much smaller than the TIFF or PNG file.

Edit Dialog - Mouse Ownership
Some edit dialogs use the mouse to reference or alter the image in the main window. There may be more than one such dialog active at the same time. The mouse is also used to zoom and scroll the image, and you may need to do this while using a dialog. Therefore it is important to understand who owns the mouse (which dialog, or main window) and how to change the ownership:

The mouse is owned by the dialog that was last clicked or used. Mouse clicks and drags on the image are inputs to this dialog and DO NOT zoom or scroll the image.
If you hold the CTRL key down while clicking or dragging the mouse, the image will zoom or pan/scroll, and active dialogs are not affected.
The mouse wheel can always be used to zoom-in/out on any part of the image.

Edit Dialog completion buttons mostly work as follows:
    [Reset] - undo changes, return to initial status
    [Apply] - apply settings from dialog to image, leave dialog active.
    [Done] - same as [Apply], but the dialog is closed.
    [Cancel] - discard image changes and close the dialog.
    [Proceed] - proceed with lengthy task based on dialog inputs.

Keyboard Enter Key (aka Return)
Many applications handle the Enter key as 'done', meaning that input is complete and the function can be executed.
Fotoxx does not follow this convention.

The Enter key action depends on which dialog widget or control has the input focus:
• text entry (single line) - input is finished and a function may be called to alter or process the text.
• text entry (multi-line) - a new line is started and additional text may be input on the new line.
• number entry - input is finished and a function may be called to process the entered value.
• check box - toggle status between 'checked' and 'not checked'. A processing function may be called.
• button - the button is pressed, equivalent to a mouse click. A function may be called repeatedly this way.

Custom Dialog Widgets for data input
A few non-standard smaller widgets are used to reduce the size of dialogs (and the amount of area they cover).
They work almost like the standard Gnome widgets for numeric data entry, text data entry, and buttons.

A few standard GTK widgets have also been downsized by reducing unnecessary "padding". This is controlled by the file widgets.css in the Fotoxx home directory (default /home/<user>/.fotoxx). You can modify this file if desired. You can also delete or comment-out the contents, but do not delete the file, since it would be replaced the next time Fotoxx is started.

Curve Editing

Some image edit functions use editable curves. You can manipulate the curves to change some property of the image depending on some other property. The example here shows a brightness curve, whereby you can change brightness depending on brightness (e.g. brighten dark image areas without changing bright areas). Generally, the X-axis of the curve represents the input property (brightness in this example) and the Y-axis the output property (also brightness). The curves can be moved (pulled) with the mouse. "Up" increases the effect and "down" decreases the effect. An anchor point (black dot) is added to the curve wherever it is pulled, and this point remains fixed for subsequent pulls: the curve will continue to go through this point as other parts of the curve are pulled. Anchor points can also be dragged. Delete an anchor point by right-clicking it.

Batch Editing
There are several batch functions in the Process menu to speed some common tasks.
You can select any number of image files (link) and execute the batch function for all of them.

Batch functions can be used for the following tasks:

Rename files, using any combination of old name, new name, sequence number, photo date.
Convert file types (e.g. .png to .jpeg)
Find and upright photos made with the camera turned 90 degrees
Resize files (e.g. reduce for web upload or e-mail)
Copy or move files to another location
Convert RAW files to tiff, png, or jpeg
Add/change/remove tags or geotags
Report or revise metadata items
Set image dates/times or shift times to change the time zone
Delete files or move them to Trash
Script Files: perform multiple edits on one image, save as a script file
which can then be applied to any number of images in batch mode.
Burn selected image files to a DVD or BlueRay disc.
Find duplicated image files.

Selecting Image Files from Gallery Windows
This procedure is used for all functions that operate on multiple image files. It is explained once here, and this topic is linked from each of the functions using this procedure.

This dialog is used to select multiple files for processing. Selected files are added to a list by clicking on gallery thumbnails.
The example above shows a gallery and a list of files selected from the gallery.
• add new files to the list: left-click gallery thumbnails
• add a group of files: click the first thumbnail, shift-click the last
• a file may be added multiple times to the list
• you can navigate to other galleries to select more files as needed
• files are added initially at the end of the list
• click a list position: file thumbnail is shown and a new list position is set
• new files are added at the current (last clicked) list position
• remove a file from the list: right-click the gallery thumbnail
• remove a file from the list: click the list position and press [delete]
• remove multiple files: press [delete] for each successive file to remove
• files deleted from the list are saved in an internal list of deleted files
• insert a previously deleted file: click a list position and press [insert]
• insert multiple deleted files: press [insert] for each successive file to insert
(deleted files are inserted in the same sequence as deleted)
• add all images in the gallery to the list: press [add all]
• clear the list: press [clear]
• use the KB up/down arrow keys to step through the list and view thumbnails
• page up/down and home/end keys also work
• find a file name in the list: click the list anywhere, type the file name

Menu Shortcuts
The Fotoxx menus are large. You may need time to get used to them and remember where the functions are located. There are three shortcut methods available for frequently used functions:

Right-click the main window or gallery window thumbnail.
A popup menu appears with some commonly used menu functions.
Keyboard shortcuts - these are documented in a table below.
You can change the shortcut keys and add new shortcuts for menu functions you choose.
Favorites menu - a graphic popup menu with your custom contents. You can add text and/or icons that link to any menu functions you choose. You can arrange these as you wish in a layout window. You can leave this window open and access any of these functions with a single mouse click.

Managing a Large Image Collection
You can use Fotoxx to manage a huge image collection and still be able to quickly find the images you want. Some effort to organize the images is required. Search methods include directory and file names (or partial names), image (photo) dates, file dates, image ratings, tags (keywords) (labels for persons, places, objects, events ...), captions and comments, and geotags (location names and latitude/longitude). This is done in a standards-compliant manner so that data can be shared with other applications. Options for how to organize a large image collection can be found in the topic Organizing Images.

Right-Click Popup Menus
Popup menus appear when an image or gallery thumbnail is right-clicked. Most of these functions are also contained in the main menus for image view and gallery view, as shown above. The popup menus can be more convenient.

File View popup menu	Right click on the current image in File View mode to get the following menu
View Meta	Show short form metadata report
Edit Meta	Edit key metadata items: photo date/time, rating, tags, captions, comments, geotags
Edit Any Meta	Edit any metadata item
Rename	Change the file name
Copy/Move	Copy or move the image file to another location (directory)
Copy to Desktop	Copy the image file to the desktop (monitor background)
Copy to Clipboard	Copy the image file to the clipboard (for other apps to paste)
Copy to Cache	Add the image file to the file cache for later pasting into an album
Replace Album File	Update album(s) after creating a new version of an image file
Upright	Upright the image that is turned 90 degrees
Trim/Rotate	Trim (crop) the image, level the image or turn 90 degrees
Resize	Resize (rescale) the image width and height
Voodoo 1 / Voodoo 2	Limited automatic image enhancement methods
Retouch	Adjust brightness, color, contrast, saturation, black point, white balance
Edit Brightness	Adjust the brightness distribution (flatten, broaden, change black and white points)
Flatten	Enhance contrast and brighten shadows, especially image areas with low contrast
Gradients	Enhance contrast and apparent brightness range by increasing brightness gradients
Select Area	Select an image object or area for separate editing
Show on Map	Go to Net Map view, zoom-in to image location (if geotag present in file)
Delete/Trash ...	Delete the image file or move it to the wastebasket

Gallery View popup menu	right click on thumbnail image to get the following menu
Popup Image	Show image in a larger window - resizable, movable, persistent until canceled. Zoom in/out using the mouse wheel. When zoomed small it disappears. Shift + left mouse click on a thumbnail: shortcut for Popup Image.
View Meta	Show short form metadata report
Edit Meta	Edit key metadata items: photo date/time, rating, tags, captions, comments, geotags
Edit Any Meta	Edit any metadata item
Rename	Change the file name
Copy/Move	Copy or move the image file to another location (directory)
Copy to Desktop	Copy the image file to the desktop (monitor background)
Copy to Clipboard	Copy the image file to the clipboard (for other apps to paste)
Copy to Cache	Add the image file to the file cache for later pasting into an album
Replace Album File	Update album(s) after creating a new version of an image file
Upright	Upright the image that is turned 90 degrees
Show on Map	Go to Net Map view, zoom-in to image location (if geotag present in file)
Delete/Trash	Delete the image file or move it to the wastebasket

Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are available for most functions. The notation "Alt+G" means press and hold the Alt key, then press the G key. Most of these can be changed, and new shortcuts can be added (see KB-shortcuts function). The following table is based on the default key assignments. Those that can be customized by the user are indicated.

General	custom
F / G / W / M keys	Yes	Change view mode: image File, Gallery, World map, Net Map
F1 function key	No	Display user guide for current or prior function
F10 function key	No	Toggle main window to full-screen and back. Menu and top panel remain.
F11 function key	No	Same as F10, but without menu and top panel. Useful for image viewing.
Escape key	No	Exit from an active dialog, Exit Fotoxx

Image File View
left / right arrows	No	Previous / next image (link)
'+' or '=' key	Yes	Zoom image larger (zoom amount adjustable in User Settings)
' - ' key	Yes	Zoom image smaller to fit within window
Z	Yes	Toggle: zoom image to 100% / fit image in window
S	Yes	Sync Gallery: set gallery from current image file
2	Yes	cycle through the two most recently seen image files
3	Yes	cycle through the three most recently seen image files
U	Yes	Undo current edit, or undo one edit step in the current image
Shift+U	Yes	Redo current edit, or redo one edit step in the current image
R	Yes	Rename Image File
K	Yes	View and edit keyboard shortcuts
L	Yes	Grid Lines on / off
T	Yes	Trim / Rotate Image
C	Yes	Retouch
Ctrl+S	Yes	Save current file (dialog for options)
Ctrl+V	Yes	Save new version (instant, no dialog)
V	Yes	View Meta

Gallery View
Home / End keys	No	move to first / last page of image gallery
Page Up / Down	No	move to previous / next page of image gallery
up / down arrows	No	move up / down by one row of image gallery
left / right arrows	No	move the current image (highlighted thumbnail)
'+' or '=' key	Yes	larger thumbnail size (keypad also)
' - ' key	Yes	smaller thumbnail size (keypad also)
Ctrl+H	Yes	toggle the display of hidden files and directories

Dialog Buttons
Ctrl+D	Yes	Done button
Ctrl+X	Yes	Cancel button or [x] button
Ctrl+A	Yes	Apply button
Ctrl+R	Yes	Reset button

Slide Show
B	Yes	blank / unblank window
N	Yes	if paused, go to next image, with transition
P	Yes	pause / resume
X	Yes	magnify image (mouse is movable loupe)

Mouse Functions

Image File View
left click	Zoom-in: magnify image, center at click position
right click	If image is zoomed: restore to window size. If not, popup menu with common functions.
mouse wheel	Zoom image in or out depending on wheel direction
left drag on image	Pan/scroll zoomed image, same direction or magnified opposite direction (like scroll bars)
mouse + Ctrl key	Mouse acts on main window instead of an active dialog, e.g. Select Area.

Gallery View
left click thumbnail	Change to F-view, show full-size image
right click thumbnail	Show popup menu with common functions
middle click thumbnail	Pop up a larger image which can be zoomed in or out using the mouse wheel
scroll mouse wheel	Scroll the gallery page up or down

World Map View
left click	If map zoomed small to fit window, zoom map large at clicked location
right click	Zoom map small to fit window
left drag	If map is zoomed large, drag map with the mouse
left click on marker	Change to Gallery View, show all images with geotags at corresponding location
mouse wheel	Can be used for zooming as described above

Net Map View
mouse wheel	Zoom the map in (2x) or out (0.5x)
left click on marker	Change to Gallery View, show all images with geotags at corresponding location
left drag	Drag map with the mouse

Command Line Parameters (long and short forms)

file or directory path		initial image file or directory (gallery) to open
-album "album-name"	-a	initial album (gallery) to open
-ver	-v	output release version and exit
-recent	-r	show a gallery of recently seen image files, most recent at the top
-new	-n	show a gallery of the newest image files (file modification date)
-prev	-p	show the last file viewed in the previous session
-blank	-b	show a blank window
-lang lc_RC	-l	language code (+ opt. region code) to use for GUI (de, de_AT)
-menu "func name"	-m	startup menu function - Fotoxx will start with this function active.
-index N		disable image indexing for faster startup (see below)
-home /.../fotoxx_home		use an alternate location for user data instead of `/home/<user>/.fotoxx`

-index N parameter
This command line parameter can be used at Fotoxx startup to partly or completely disable image indexing to obtain a faster startup time. N is 0 or 1 or 2, as explained in the topic User Settings.

Note: the first Fotoxx startup after a reboot may be slow if your image collection is very large. Subsequent startups will be much faster since file directories are now cached in memory. For very fast startup, you can bypass indexing entirely with -index 0. Search and map functions will be disabled until you allow the indexing process to complete normally.

-home parameter
The default location for user settings and data (tag names, bookmarks, albums ...) is /home/<user>/.fotoxx. The image index file is also here. The command: $ fotoxx -home /some/directory... will expect all this data to be in the designated directory. This allows you to have multiple image collections that are managed separately. If Fotoxx is started for the first time with a -home parameter, the initial image file indexing process will begin. You can preserve existing data and avoid re-indexing if you copy the files in /home/<user>/.fotoxx to the new home directory before starting fotoxx with the -home parameter.

Redirect Fotoxx home directory The default location for Fotoxx home is /home/<user>/.fotoxx (like other Linux applications). This directory is where user settings and data are kept. If you have multiple Linux systems on your computer, and you want them to share the same Fotoxx data, or if you want your Fotoxx data to be retained when you make a "clean install" of Linux, there is an easy way to do this. This is an alternative to the -home method described above. Create the file /home/<user>/.fotoxx-home as a one-line text file which contains the file name of the intended new fotoxx home directory. When fotoxx starts, fotoxx will look here for the user data. Copy the data from /home/<user>/.fotoxx to this directory before starting Fotoxx, to preserve all current data and avoid re-indexing. This directory would typically be on a mounted volume to keep it isolated from Linux installs. Putting /home on a separate volume is a common method to do this, but this has bad implications for multiple Linux systems sharing this same /home data: Linux applications with different release versions may expect different data here, and this can lead to application bugs and even crashes.

Top Panel Status Information
The top panel has status information about Fotoxx and the current image file.
The following strings can be present, in approximately the following order.

CPU: 123%	current CPU load (e.g. 240% means 2 processors fully loaded and a 3rd 40% loaded)
MB: 123	current real memory usage by Fotoxx
2345x1234x8	current image width x height x depth (bits per color)
3.45MB	image file size (updated when a modified image is saved)
56%	zoom status, image % size (window pixels / image pixels)
edits: 3	3 edits have been made and can be reversed with the [undo/redo] button
blocked	some menu functions are blocked until the current function is completed
area active	a select area is present and enabled - edits are confined within the area
dialog open	a dialog is waiting for user input (if not visible, look behind other windows)
BUSY 45%	some long-running functions show this simple progress indicator

File View Menus
The following are the menus and buttons seen in the File View mode.

Favorites (File View > Favorites)

This is a graphic popup menu which you can populate with your frequently used functions and arrange them on the window using the mouse. An initial popup window (left image) is supplied. Right click an empty space on the window to define a new menu entry. Right click an existing entry to modify it. Use the resulting dialog (right image) to define or change the menu entry. The example above has mostly text menu entries, but the example 'retouch' entry was given an icon.

menu text	text for the popup menu - optional if a menu icon is used
menu func	the Fotoxx function to use - the exact menu name
menu icon	menu icon - /directory.../filename.png - optional if a menu text is used
icon size	if an icon is used, its size can be 24x24 to 64x64 pixels
close window	checkbox: option to close the popup window when this menu is selected

Left drag a menu entry to move it somewhere else on the popup window. The popup window can be resized to fit the contained menu entries. Left click a menu entry to select the menu. If "close window" was checked, the popup window will close. All menu settings and icon files are saved in a configuration file whenever the popup window is closed. The configuration file and saved icons are located in the directory:
/home/<user>/.fotoxx/favorites.
You can use either the English menu names or their translations for your locale. The menu names must exactly match the Fotoxx menus, but case is not significant. The menu text may include "\n" to represent a newline character.

Icon library: Icons for many image edit functions can be found here:
/usr/share/fotoxx/images/edit-funcs

File Menu (File View > File)

New Session (File View > File > New Session)
Start a new instance of Fotoxx in a new session, slightly offset for visibility. This is useful to compare images or to work with more than one image at a time. Both windows can be used to edit images. The new session will initially have an unmodified version of the current image file. If the same image file is edited in both windows, neither instance will see the changes made by the other, and the final result is the file saved last.

Sync Gallery (Gallery View > Menu > Sync Gallery)
Replace the current gallery (recent files, search results ...) with the directory of the current image file shown in the File View window. The default shortcut key is [S].

Recent (File View > File > Recent)
The 100 most recently seen image files (viewed or edited) are shown in a gallery, from which you can select files to view or edit. To replace the recent files gallery with the directory of the chosen file, use the function Sync Gallery.

Newest (File View > File > Newest)
The 1000 most recently added or modified image files are shown in a gallery, from which you can select files to view or edit. You are given a choice of using the EXIF photo date or the file modification date to determine the newest images. If the EXIF date is chosen, image files having no EXIF date are ignored. To replace the newest files gallery with the directory of the chosen file, use the function Sync Gallery.

Open (File View > File > Open)
This function changes to gallery view. Click on a thumbnail to open the image file, or navigate to another directory and select an image file. The selected file is opened in the Fotoxx main window where you can view or edit the image file using the menus and buttons. The main window title bar always shows the file name and directory of the current image file.

Camera RAW files can also be opened. This may need a few seconds depending on file size and processor speed. You can proceed to edit the RAW file like any other image file. RAW files are also included in thumbnail galleries, as long as a .jpeg thumbnail image can be made from the RAW file (normally true). When saving a RAW file, you must specify a type TIFF or PNG (8- or 16-bit color), or JPEG (8-bit). In order to be included in the galleries, a RAW file type (file extension) must be included in the list of known RAW file types in Tools > User Settings.

Cycle 2 (File View > File > Cycle 2)
Open the previously opened image file. Repeating this menu will alternate between the two most recently opened files. This differs from the button [Prev/Next] which goes to the previous or next image file in the current gallery (directory, search results, album). This function retains the current image zoom size and position, which is ideal for rapidly comparing two edited versions of the same image. Zoom-in on the area to compare, and use this function to alternate between the two images. The keyboard shortcut key [2] is assigned by default.

Cycle 3 (File View > File > Cycle 3)
This works the same way as Cycle 2, but alternating the last 3 opened files. The default KB shortcut is [3].

Raw Therapee (File View > File > Raw Therapee)
Select and open a RAW camera file using RawTherapee, a specialized editor for RAW files. A file open dialog will start. Select a RAW file. RawTherapee will now open with the selected file, and you can edit the file normally with RawTherapee. When finished, save the file as TIFF-16 and exit RawTherapee. This file is now opened in Fotoxx and can be further edited, saved as JPEG, etc. The RAW file type (file extension) must be included in the list of known RAW file types in Tools > User Settings.

View 360° Panorama (File View > File > View 360° Panorama)
The current file is opened with a special viewer for 360° panorama files. The file width is assumed to correspond to 360°.
Use the mouse and keyboard as follows to control the view:
    • Mouse-drag the image - it will turn through 360° and wrap-around at the ends
    • Left and right mouse-click will zoom-in and zoom-out
    • Use the left and right arrow keys to pan quickly
    • Keys [1] and [2] select two alternative projection types (keypad keys do not work)
    • Use the [Q] key or Escape to exit the special viewer
Panoramas with less than 360° can also be viewed, but the wrap-around will show a false joining of the two ends.
This function can be used to view Google 'photosphere' images.

Rename (File View > File > Rename)

Rename the current file (file view), or the file of a clicked thumbnail (gallery view). Enter a new name and press [apply]. This function can also automate the process of renaming a series of image files using a root name (e.g. an event or place name) and a sequence number. Open the first image file in the series, input a new name, and press the [apply] button. Use the [next] button to move to the next file if wanted. You can use the same name again by pressing the [previous name] button and then add a suffix or sequence number. Press the [add 1] button to increment the sequence number. A file version number (.vNN) in the previous file name is not copied, and if the file being renamed has a version number, it will be retained.

Blank Image (File View > File > Blank Image)

Create a blank image with specified pixel dimensions and color. This can be used as a background for cutouts taken from other images (via Select Area) and annotation text (via Add Text). Input a file name, choose a background color, and set the desired pixel dimensions. See also the Mashup function.

Blank Window (File View > File > Blank Window)
Blank the F-view window. If already blanked, restore the current image file. Assign a keyboard shortcut to have a "one button" blank and restore function. Sometimes this is called a "boss button".

Copy/Move (File View > File > Copy/Move)

The current file (file view), or the file of a clicked thumbnail (gallery view), is copied to the given location. This location can be entered directly or chosen by a file open dialog if the [browse] button is used. Select the copy option to copy the file and leave the source file in place, creating a duplicate. Select the move option to move the file from the original location to the new location. A group of files can be rapidly processed by clicking each thumbnail followed by [apply].

Copy to Desktop (File View > File > Copy to Desktop)
The current file (file view), or the file of a clicked thumbnail (gallery view), is copied to the desktop (/home/<user>/Desktop).

Copy to Clipboard (File View > File > Copy to Clipboard)
The current file (file view), or the file of a clicked thumbnail (gallery view), is copied to the clipboard where other applications can access the image, if paste from clipboard is supported by the application.

Copy to Cache (File View > File > Copy to Cache)
The current file (file view), or the file of a clicked thumbnail (gallery view), is copied to the image cache. The image cache accumulates images that can be later pasted into an Album. See Manage Albums.

Show on Map (File View > File > Show on Map)
Fotoxx changes to Net Map View and the location of the current image is shown. The map may need a few seconds to show up, depending on internet response time.

Delete/Trash (File View > File > Delete/Trash)

The current file (file view), or the file of a clicked thumbnail (gallery view), is deleted or moved to trash, depending on the option selected. Fotoxx uses the Linux desktop standard for trash. If this works, trashed image files go into the standard trash location and can be recovered later if wanted. Otherwise, Fotoxx puts trashed images into a desktop directory named "fotoxx-trash". You can delete it or move it to your Linux-specific trash. If both standard and desktop trash do not work, you must trash the files outside of Fotoxx. If you have multiple files to remove, you can leave the dialog open to avoid opening it for each file selected. If another file is opened, the file name in the dialog updates itself. In gallery view, if another thumbnail is clicked, the dialog updates itself.

Print (File View > File > Print)

The print menu brings up a standard Page Setup dialog where you can select a printer, a paper size, and orientation. After using the [apply] button, another dialog starts for entering paper margins and an image scale. The margins can be used to shrink the image or shift it on the page. Image scale can be set in the range 5-100%, where 100% means print the maximum size image that fits within the margins. Smaller values will shrink the image proportionally. The actual print size (image width and height) is updated in the dialog as margins and scale are changed, and this can be used to reach a desired printed image size. After the margins dialog, a Print dialog starts for the actual printing. This includes paper type and quality inputs, and a preview of the printed layout which can be accepted or rejected.

Print Calibrated (File View > File > Print Calibrated)
This function works like Print Image File described above, but before printing you are asked to supply a calibration file name which is used to adjust image colors prior to printing. The purpose is to compensate for color distortions caused by the printer. See the topic calibrate_printer for details on how to create a calibration file.

Save (File View > Save)

In the first dialog, select one of the three options: new version, new file name, or replace file.

New Version: Save the current image file with a new version number. File names with version numbers are formatted "filename.vNN.ext" where NN is a version number 01 to 99. The 4 characters .vNN are inserted between the file name and extension. If the file name has no versions, version .v01 will be created. If file versions are already present on disk, then the next higher version number is used. If the file is a JPEG file, the default quality is used (this value can be set in User Settings). A keyboard shortcut can be assigned to this function if desired.

Replace: Save the current image file back to itself. If a JPEG file, the default quality is used (this value can be set in User Settings).

New File: The 2nd dialog shown above will open to save the current image file to a selected file, which can be the original file, another existing file, or a new file. An edited image file can be saved in formats JPEG, PNG and TIFF. JPEG is normally the best option, since these are compressed to reduce space. You can choose a JPEG quality value in the range 1-100. Lower values give smaller files and less image quality. Values above 70 are generally hard to distinguish from 100 (highest quality, largest file size). PNG files are compressed without any loss of quality and are larger than JPEG files of the highest quality. TIFF files are uncompressed and larger than JPEG or PNG. TIFF and PNG files may be saved with 8 or 16 bits per color. The 16-bit formats only makes sense for files converted from a RAW format having more than 8 bits per color. It is rare that the difference between 8 and 16 bits per color can be seen with the eye. However, an image with greater bits per color has more latitude if an edit function radically alters the brightness distribution. PNG-16 files are smaller than TIFF-16 but slower to save due to the compression process. Saving a file as TIFF or PNG can be quite slow for a large image and a slow computer. If an image has transparency information (e.g. a Warp function creates a non-rectangular image shape with transparent margins), you should save the image as a PNG file if you want the transparent areas to be preserved for some later operation. If you use JPEG, these areas will be black and opaque. JPEG does not support transparency.

If make current is checked, the saved file (new file name) will become the current file. The source file (old file name) remains unchanged. If not checked, the file is saved with the new name, but the current file remains the source file (old name). In either case, the edit history is retained (i.e. Undo and Redo will still work).

File sizes for a 15-megapixel image are roughly as follows (depending on image detail).
The jpeg numbers are the quality value given when the file is saved to disk.

tiff-16	tiff-8	png-16	png-8	jpeg-100	jpeg-90	jpeg-80	jpeg-70
112 MB	38 MB	78 MB	21 MB	8 MB	2 MB	1 MB	0.7 MB

The default JPEG quality is used unless you change the value in the New File dialog. The default value can be set in User Settings (initially 90). You will not be able to see a difference between a file saved with quality 90 and one with 100, but the difference in file space is huge. The Technical Notes section describes potential loss of image quality from repeated open, edit and save of JPEG images. At the default quality of 90 this issue can be generally ignored.

Prev/Next (File View > Prev/Next)
Keyboard left and right arrow keys
Click with the left or right mouse button to open the previous or next image file in the current gallery. If the current image has unsaved edits, you are warned and given the option to cancel this function. If you proceed, the edits are lost. You must save an edited image before moving to another image. The keyboard left and right arrow keys have the same function.

Directory Jump
If you attempt to go beyond the first or last image in the current gallery (directory), a popup message informs you. If you try again to move in the same direction, the last image file in the next preceding gallery, or the first image file in the next following gallery, will be opened. If there is no preceding or following gallery, or if it has no image files, then nothing is done other than a popup notification. Note that only the next preceding or following directory in the parent directory of the current directory (gallery) is searched. There is no extended search into further directories or subdirectories. If the current gallery is not a directory (e.g. the Newest Images gallery), then there is no preceding or following gallery.

Metadata Menu (File View > Metadata)

Metadata means text data that is stored inside an image file. Digital cameras create some data automatically, such as date and time, technical data about the camera and photo parameters, and location data (if the camera has a GPS receiver). Other data can be added by the user, such as captions, comments, ratings, and tags (keywords) (e.g. persons, places, things, events).

Fotoxx can search your image collection using any metadata (along with directory and file names or partial names), producing a gallery of matching images. In most cases, the search is almost instantaneous. There are several alternatives for organizing a large image collection so that it can be easily searched. It would be good to review these before choosing an organization system for file and directory names and metadata tags, captions, ratings, etc.

View Meta (File View > Metadata > View Meta)
View All Meta (File View > Metadata > View All Meta)

The View Meta functions will display available metadata for the current image file. EXIF metadata contains the date and time of a photo, shutter speed, focal length, pixel dimensions, etc. Digital cameras store this data inside the image. IPTC metadata contains tags (from Fotoxx, Photoshop ...) and captions (frequently found in published images). If an image is edited and then saved, the metadata is updated and stored with the new image. The View Meta report outputs the most commonly needed data, including the photo date and time, user-assigned tags and star rating, comments, caption, and a history of Fotoxx edit functions that have been applied to the image. The View All Meta report reports all metadata available. The [Extras] button on the short report opens the dialog shown on the right, where you can add extra items to the short report. Any item you see in the long report can be added to the short report. Click an item in the left column to add it to the right column and to the report. Click an item in the right column to remove it. Click the entry "Other Item ..." to type-in any item name not contained in the default list, which is limited to the most likely needed items.

Fotoxx uses the following EXIF/IPTC data items for image editing and searching:

Key Name	Fotoxx data input method
Date/Time Original	Edit Meta function - image date
Keywords	Edit Meta function - image tags
Rating	Edit Meta function - image stars
User Comments	Edit Meta function - comments
Caption-Abstract	Edit Meta function - caption
Geotags	Edit Meta function - location, geocoordinates
Image History	Fotoxx edit functions append data automtically
(any key name)	Edit Any Meta, Delete Meta

There are also several batch functions for entering data into many image files at once. These are found mostly in the Process menu.

Tags Overview
Image files can have identification or classification tags (keywords, labels) assigned to them. These can be used to search a large image collection for those images having desired tags. Typical tags: the main subject of a photo, the associated event, the location, the persons or things contained, etc. Tags reside inside the image metadata (IPTC keywords). Tags are normally one word, but a short phrase with embedded blanks or other delimiters can be used. Commas and semicolons are recognized internally as delimiters (separators) between tags, and therefore cannot be used within a tag. A compound tag like arizona scenery is allowed, but you should use two tags instead for more flexibility: you can search for images having either tag or both tags.

Regardless of the physical organization of your images (directory and file names), tags can be used to create other organizations. All images having a desired tag or tags can be found quickly and displayed in an image gallery window, where you can further review the images and choose those for viewing, editing, or changing their tags. If you have used directory and file names in a meaningful way, you can search for images using these names as well as tags. You can also search images by date, rating, location, and other metadata items. These need not be duplicated in tags. See Search Images below.

Managed Tag System
This is appropriate if you are starting from near nothing and you are able to plan your tag system before adding tags to your images. In this system, you create a limited number of tag categories (e.g. people, places, things, events, travels, art, scenery ...). You then plan the tags or types of tags that will go into each category. Tags are created and assigned to a category as needed during the process of tagging images. An image is tagged by pointing and clicking on the list of available tags, which is organized by category and alphabetically within category. If a new tag is needed, it is created when first assigned to an image. The total number of tags should be less than about 500, to keep the list small enough for rapid visual location of tags to click on. Searching images by tags is also done by pointing and clicking on the list of available tags.

managed tag system advantages
• prevent inconsistent tag names (e.g. 'landscape' and 'scenery')
• prevent alternate spellings and typos (e.g. 'susan', 'susy', 'scenery', 'scenrey')
• prevent tags that logically include other tags (e.g. 'landscape', 'lake')
(this can be planned and deliberate, but should not happen by accident)
• searching is more reliable because tags do not have the above errors

A large tag list (over 500) slows down the process of tagging images due to the time needed to visually find the tag in the long list (possibly in a scrolled window). This problem is mitigated in two ways: (1) Up to about 10 most recently used tags are shown separately in the edit dialog, where they can be easily seen and chosen. Since a series of photos made at the same time will likely share many tags, adding tags to such a series is made easier and faster. (2) When adding tags to an image, you may simply start typing a desired tag name. A popup list of matching tags appears as soon as there are only a few possible matches. You can then click on the desired tag to add it to the image. If there are no matching tags, you have the option of adding the new tag to the list of available tags.

If tags are broadly defined and fewer in number, search results for tags will be larger, but using the search results (image gallery window) to find a smaller subset of images can be quite fast. Physical file organization is preserved: image files located together in their directories will also appear together in search results.

Images downloaded from the internet often contain tags. These of course have no organization and are collectively chaotic. If you use a managed tag system, it is best to review such images and clean up the tags to conform with your system, or delete them. Whatever tags are present will be automatically added under the category "nocatg". If you notice unwanted tags in your tag list, use Search Images by tag to find the images needing tag deletion or renaming.

Random Tag System
You may prefer to invent tags as needed with no particular system in mind. Or you may already have thousands of tags, making a conversion to a managed tag system difficult (but not impossible: Fotoxx has a function to mass convert tag names). In this case, you can simply type tags into your images, creating new tags as needed. There is still a limited capability to keep tags organized: existing tags matching the characters you input are shown as soon as there are only a few possible matches. Example: you type "lan" and a list of existing matching tags is shown: 'landscape', 'landscapes', 'Langley' ... If one of these is your intention, you click on it to select the tag. If not, you keep on typing and eventually press Enter to create a new tag. When searching images for tags, you can type desired tag names or pick them from the list of available tags. Available tags matching the first few letters you type are shown, and you can pick from this list. You cannot enter a search tag that does not exist somewhere in your images.

Geotags Overview
Modern cameras can record the location of each photo, using an internal GPS receiver. Latitude, longitude, city or location, and country are recorded in the EXIF metadata of the image JPEG or RAW file. The Edit Meta function also allows location data to be entered or revised. Locations may also be specified by clicking on a map. There are three functions that can find images for a specified location or region: Search Images: find images by location name (also multiple names and partial matches). Places/Dates: find all images for a country, a country and location, or a country, location and date range. Images by Map Location: click on a map to show all images within a range of the clicked location. The location names (city or other place name, and country) from the camera GPS are not standardized and may be chaotic (e.g. Munich, München, MONACO). How best to deal with this is discussed below.

Edit Meta (File View > Metadata > Edit Meta)
The Edit Meta function is used to add basic metadata to an image.
Please read Tags Overview and Geotags Overview (above) before using Edit Meta.

Edit Meta is used to edit the most frequently used metadata: image date and time, rating, caption, comments, location data, and tags. The dialog initially shows existing data for the current image. After making additions or changes, press [Apply] to update the image file. There is no automatic file versioning for metadata changes, but if you want a new version, use File Save > New Version before using [Apply].

The dialog shows the metadata for the current image in File View, or for a clicked thumbnail in Gallery View. The dialog updates itself when a new image is opened or new thumbnail is clicked.

The date of the image, if available, is shown as Image Date. This may be entered if missing, or changed. You can enter a full date in the format yyyy-mm-dd or a shorter format yyyy or yyyy-mm. A missing month/day is logically equivalent to 01/01 when used as a low limit for searching, or 12/31 when used as a high limit. The [Prev] button fills-in the date from the previous data entered. This is to allow easy dating of a series of images. If time is important, you can include a time using the format hh:mm[.ss].

You may enter a caption, a comment, and a stars rating for the image.

If the location data is available from any previous image file, enter the first few characters and press [Find] to get a list of locations to choose from. For the first time entry of a location, or to add location data to many files at once, see the topic Adding Geotags below.

Existing tags are shown in Image Tags. Available tags are shown in the Defined Tags window below. One of these tags can be added to the image by clicking it. A tag can be deleted from the image by clicking it in Image Tags. Tags recently added are shown in Recent Tags. This is a convenience to make adding tags to a new batch of images easier, assuming that many of the same tags will be used repeatedly. Point and click the same way.

If the list of defined tags is long, it may be easier to type the desired tag into Enter New Tag. Existing tags matching what you have typed so far will appear in Matching Tags, and you can point and click one of these to add the tag to the image. If the input tag is new (no matching tag is shown), press [Add] when the tag is complete. It will be added to the image and to the list of defined tags under the category "nocatg".

If you are using tag categories, you can select a category, and only those tags will be shown in the list of defined tags. If your tags list is huge, this can reduce the list to a manageable size for pointing and clicking.

The [Apply] button writes the data to the image file and to the metadata index file used for searching images.

The [Prev] button can be used to load all available data from the previous image viewed or edited. This can be used to speed-up the processing of a group of images sharing much of the same data.

The [Manage Tags] button starts the Manage Tags dialog.

Manage Tags Dialog

This dialog starts from the button [manage tags] in the Edit Meta dialog. You can also assign categories to tags to help organize them and locate them more quickly when adding tags to images. They are optional and they play no role in tag searching: only the tag is stored in an image, not its category. Typical categories are people, places, things, events, scenery, buildings, art, etc. To add a new tag with a new category, enter the category and the tag, then click [create]. If the category is blank, the tag will be assigned to "nocatg". To assign a tag to a different category, click a category (bold text) or enter a new one, click the tag, and press [create]. The tag will move from the old to the new category. To delete a tag, click the tag and press [delete]. Tags used in images but not assigned to a category will appear under "nocatg".

Note: a newly created tag is appended to the end of the tag list for its category. The next time Fotoxx is started, all categories and their tag lists are sorted alphabetically, except that "nocatg" is always last.

Use the [orphan tags] button to list tags that are defined but not assigned to any images. These may be deleted if no use is planned.

Adding Geotags
The Edit Meta dialog shows the location data for the current image, if any. For an image with missing or incorrect location data, enter a location name (city, park, museum ...) and use the [Find] button to either complete the data in the dialog, or get a list of matching locations to choose from (e.g. London, United Kingdom and London, Canada). The list of locations comes from your image files, so a location will not be known until it is assigned to an image for the first time. Partial matches are found, so you can usually enter a leading substring, e.g. "hono" for Honolulu. Use the [Apply] button to enter the data into the EXIF metadata for the current image, and also into the metadata index file for later searching by location. Use the [Prev] button to fill the dialog data with the last location used. If the [Find] button does not find a location (it is not present in any other image), you can use the [Web] button to find the location data from an internet web service (MapQuest Open for now, but this could change). The location data is completed and returned into the dialog. The web service names are not standardized in format or language, so check the returned data for reasonableness and change the spelling and capitalization if needed. The [Apply] button will add the location data to the image, and this location will be available for future use by the [Find] button. If the [Web] button fails, you can find the location using an internet service, and enter the location data into the dialog.

Here is a web sites to look-up a location/country (there are many others):
   http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/findlatlong.htm

Note for non-English locales: If a comma is used for a decimal point in latitude/longitude, this is accepted but converted to a period internally. The web service always returns periods.

Blank the latitude and longitude if you want to save only the location and/or country name in the image file. If the latititude/longitude data is changed from the values returned by [Find], the new values are saved for this image file. If a location is saved without latitude/longitude, there will be no location marker on a map, and finding photos for this location by clicking on a map will not work (Images by Map Location). The two other method to find photos by location, Search Images and Places/Dates, will still work.

Note: The EXIF keyword "city" is used to mean any location name: city, park, museum, lake, etc. Fotoxx uses the term "location" to avoid confusion (e.g. city = Yellowstone Park). Internally, "location" is converted into "city" for metadata storage or retrieval.

If you change to one of the map views and click on a location, this location will be inserted into the Edit Meta dialog. If you click within a marker (red dot), the location name and latitude/longitude for that marker will be used. If you click outside a marker, the clicked latitude/longitude will be used, and the location name will not be changed.

If you use the [Find] button to set the dialog location data from a known location, there are two possible outcomes: if there is only one geocoordinate (latitude and longitude) associated with the location, this is returned into the dialog. If there are multiple geocoordinates, the Net Map is shown and zoomed-in to a scale where all markers for all geocoordinates associated with this location are shown. Click within one of the markers to choose the corresponding geocoordinate, or click outside any marker to set a new geocoordinate for this image file. The location name now has a newly associated geocoordinate.

You can use Batch Add Geotags (see below) to quickly add location data to many image files at once.

Summary:
• Enter (or change) a location name (possibly abbreviated) in the dialog.
• Use [Find] to find the location and auto-fill country, latitude, longitude.
• If there are multiple matches, choose from the list.
• If there are too many matches, add more letters or supply the country and try again.
• If there are zero matches (not found), try the [Web] button (country is required).
• If still not found, add more letters to the location.
• If still not found, use the above web service and input the data manually.
• Use [apply] to update the image file and make the location available for future use.
• If there are multiple geocoordinates for a given location and country, click on a map
       marker to select one, or click elsewhere to add a new geocoordinate for this location.


Edit Any Meta (File View > Metadata > Edit Any Meta)

This is a dialog for editing any metadata for the current image file. The most likely metadata key names are listed. Click one of these to retrieve the current key value. Change the value if wanted and press [Save]. The metadata is updated. To edit a key name not in the list, enter the key name and press keyboard "enter" to retrieve the present value, if any. Then enter or change the value and press [Save]. You may enter the key name in lower case and with or without spaces between the words, e.g. "Bits per Sample" and "bitspersample" will both work. To see all present keys and data, use View All Meta

Delete Meta (File View > Metadata > Delete Meta)
Specify the key name to delete, or select All. The metadata is deleted. Use All to clean an image of any identifying information that might be in there. Some keys are not deletable, e.g. File Name.

Captions (File View > Metadata > Captions)
Show the metadata items IPTC Caption and EXIF User Comments at the top of each image displayed. This menu is a toggle switch - the display of captions and comments is set on and off alternatively. If neither is available, nothing is displayed. If only one is available, it is displayed. If both are available, they are displayed on two lines. The lengths are truncated at 200 characters. To see up to 1000 characters, use the View Meta function. If Show Captions is switched ON, captions and comments are also displayed during a Slide Show.

Places/Dates (report) (Gallery View > Metadata > Places/Dates)

This is a fast way to find all photos made at a given location or location and date range. In the dialog, select the desired level of grouping: by country, by country and location, by country and location and date, or by date and country and location. In the last two cases, you can select a date range for grouping of images having nearby dates. A number N will group images together with dates that are N days or less apart from other images in the group (i.e. gaps are <= N days).

A popup window shows all locations found and the dates of photos taken in those locations. The count of photos taken is also shown. In the above example, 29 photos are from Grindelwald in March 2008. Click on a line in the report to get a thumbnail gallery of those images, and from there you can click on any image to view or edit. Note that this method uses only location and country to find the images. Earth coordinates are not used. If you have images with missing or inconsistent earth coordinates for a given location, use this function to get all of them, and then use Batch Geotags to make the earth coordinates consistent.

You can also use the keyboard up/down arrow keys to rapidly step through the report lines and view the gallery for each line. The page up/down keys and the home/end keys also work. You can enter other keys from the keyboard to jump to matching lines in the report. This is a fast way to find a desired location.

Timeline (report) (Gallery View > Metadata > Timeline)

This report produces a timeline of image counts by month. Click on a year and month in the report to get a thumbnail gallery of all images with a photo date (EXIF) in the selected month. The example here shows 377 images for May 2016. You can also use the keyboard arrow keys (up/down/left/right) to step quickly through the months or years and view the corresponding galleries.
Year null is for images without a photo date.

Search (report) (Gallery View > Metadata > Search)
Use the Search Images function to find images having any desired metadata. A metadata index file is used for searching, which makes it possible to search thousands of images per second. The index contains a subset of the EXIF and IPTC metadata in the image files. Some of this data is automatic, created by the camera. Other data, such as tags and star ratings, can be added by the user.

There are two report formats: a gallery of thumbnails showing all images that match the search criteria, or a metadata report which combines thumbnails with metadata text. Here is an example of the metadata report format:

Search Dialogs

The main dialog is on the left. If the button "search other metadata" is used, the dialog on the right appears. This can be used to select metadata that is not available in the main dialog. Details are given below.

In the main dialog, select which images to search, either all (the entire image database) or current set, meaning the images in the current gallery list, which can be a directory, album, or the results of a prior image search. Then choose what to do with the matching images found: new set means replace the current set with the images found, add means add them to the current set (gallery), and remove means remove them from the current set. To remove images, you must search the current set.

Select the desired report type. The gallery report is a page of thumbnail images, as long as needed to hold all the images that match the search criteria. The metadata report has both thumbnail images and a list of metadata items beside each thumbnail. These are some standard items (date, rating, tags, geotags, captions, comments) and any items you added in the optional search metadata dialog.

Enter your search criteria. Select desired tags, dates, star ratings, text (comments, captions), file or directory names, and location names. More details about these are below.

Press the [proceed] button to perform the search. The output is a standard gallery of thumbnails, or the metadata report format shown above. Choose images to view or edit by clicking the thumbnails. Navigate this set of searched images using the navigation buttons in the gallery view window, or the [Prev/Next] button in the file view window. You can save the searched images as a permanent album, which can be further edited to add or remove images (see Manage Albums).

Available tags are shown in Defined Tags and can be chosen with point and click. If the list of defined tags is long, it may be easier to type the desired tag into Enter Search Tag. Existing tags matching what you have typed so far will appear in Matching Tags, and you can point and click one of these to add the tag to the search list. If you type a tag with no match (it does not exist in any image), the list of matching tags will be empty.

If you are using tag categories, you can select a category, and only those tags will be shown in the list of defined tags. If your tags list is huge, this can reduce the list to a manageable size for pointing and clicking.

A date range may be entered to restrict the search to images within the date range. Choose photo date (EXIF, from camera) or file date (last file modification date). The format is yyyy-mm-dd. Images are selected which have a date on or after the first date, if present, and on or before the second date, if present. Missing month/day default to 01/01 for the low date limit and to 12/31 for the high date limit. Times may optionally be specified using the format yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm. Missing times default to 00:00 and 23:59.

To search for images having no EXIF photo date (e.g. scanned or downloaded images), use "null" in the first date input.

A pair of star ratings may be entered to restrict the results to images having a star rating within the given range. A missing low value implies no stars, and a missing high value means the highest rating, 5 stars.

If last version only is checked, image files with multiple versions will be filtered to include only the last version of each file. This depends on the Fotoxx version naming convention: The original file name is normally filename.ext, and edited versions are filename.v01.ext, filename.v02.ext, etc. If no versions are present, the original file is selected. Otherwise, the last available version is selected.

If all versions is checked, then all versions of image files selected will be included. Use this option to see sets of images that have been edited, including the original image and all edited versions.

Directory and file names may be searched. In the field search files, enter any number of names used for your image directories and file names, separated by blanks. An input of [ egypt cairo ] would match all image directory or file names containing either of these strings. Substrings will also match.

Image comments and captions may be searched. Enter the words to search for in the dialog search text field, separated by blanks. These will be matched to every word in the comments and captions of all images, and matching images are selected. Substrings will also match.

To search locations, enter one or more location or country names in the search locations field. Only image files with geotags matching one of the entered locations will be selected.

The radio buttons all and any apply to tags, text, file names, and locations. You can select images having ALL the entered strings, or ANY of the entered strings. Example: if the location search field is "new york" and "any" is selected, then images located in New Mexico or York, PA would be included. If "all" is selected, then only images located in New York would be selected.

If you wish to find images with missing data, you can enter "null" as a match value.

Starting with release 17.04, the tag "fotoxx" is automatically added when an image is edited. This enables you to search for edited images by specifying the tag "fotoxx" along with whatever other criteria you need.

Search Metadata Dialog
You may use this dialog to search for "extra" metadata items not present in the main dialog. The items available for any given image file can be shown using View All Meta. These include camera make and model, exposure time, F-number, ISO, metering mode, focal length, shooting mode, etc. etc. You can enter shortcut names like "exposuretime" instead of "Exposure Time". You may also enter match criteria, if wanted, so that only the images with matching metadata are reported. For example, if you enter "model" with the match value "DMC-FZ28" (a Panasonic camera) then only the images taken with this camera will be reported.

The matching logic can be selected for each metadata key:

match method	match value(s)
matches	one or more metadata text values to be selected, separated by commas
contains	as above, but any metadata containing these text values will be selected
number =	a single numeric value - equal metadata values will be selected
number =>	a single numeric value - equal or greater metadata values will be selected
number <=	a single numeric value - less or equal metadata values will be selected

Wildcard matching
The 'matches' method allows the use of wildcards in the match criteria. An asterisk ( ⁕ ) can be used to match any sequence of characters, including zero characters. A question mark ( ? ) can be used to match any single character.
Example: the string "mar?⁕ony" would match "mark antony" but would not match "marony". "mar⁕ony" would match both.
The screenshot example above requires a string containing "proj" followed by "cylin" somewhere after "proj".

Performance (SSD, 3 GHz computer)

Report Type	metadata search items	search speed	report speed
gallery	indexed items only	>1000/sec	>1000/sec
gallery	some non-indexed items	90/sec	>1000/sec
metadata	indexed items only	>1000/sec	130/sec
metadata	some non-indexed items	90/sec	130/sec

Search speed is the speed to screen the entire image collection to find matches. Report speed is the speed at which matching images are output to the report window (thumbnail and reported metadata).

There is a separate topic for image organization options, which explains the options for optimizing image searching.

Search Results (album)
The output of Search Images is automatically saved in the album Search Results. This is for convenience. You may perform a search and then perform other functions which change the current gallery, replacing the search results. If you need to refer to the previous search, this is instantly available in the album Search Results. Rename this album if you want to keep later searches from replacing it.

Limitation: The search function is limited to 20,000 results (images found that meet the search criteria). If this limit is exceeded, you are notified and the search is truncated. This limit exists because the space for a scrolled page in GTK is limited, and an attempt to create a larger page results in a crash.

Area Menu (File View > Areas)

Overview
Edit functions normally apply to the entire image, but it is possible to edit part of an image (an "area") and leave the rest unchanged. If an image area has been selected, then most edit functions will work only within this area. Some functions (e.g. Resize) ignore a selected area. An area may be selected before starting an edit function, or while an edit function is active. The selected area is immediately active, prior edits are retained, and future edits will apply only within the area. If another edit function is started, the selected area remains active, so it is possible to carry out a series of edits on one area.

"Layers" in Photoshop and Gimp are "areas" in Fotoxx. Instead of selecting something from the image, making a separate layer from the selection, performing edit functions on the layer and finally merging the layers, you select something in the image and perform edit functions on the selection, with WYSIWYG feedback during the edit. Areas can also be saved to a file, loaded and pasted into other images, and edited there.

Select (File View > Areas > Select)

The Select Area dialog is started with the menu Areas > Select. Select one of the 8 methods (explained below). Each method selects image areas in a different way. You can change methods at any time, and the selected areas are accumulated. An outline of the selected image area(s) is shown as you add or remove areas from the selection. The [Finish] button is used to make the area ready for subsequent image edits within the area. The [Hide] button removes the area outline, giving you better visibility of image edits and area edge blending. Use the [Show] button to show the area outline. The select area dialog can be exited and re-started later to modify an existing area or start a new one.

Line Color
The color used for the mouse selection circle and the area outline can be changed at any time by clicking one of the color buttons. This allows you to maintain good visibility during area selection, regardless of the image brightness or color.

Methods
The following methods are used to enclose one or more image spaces that will belong to the final area. These methods may be used in any sequence to define spaces that are either joined or detached.

Rectangle	Drag the mouse to enclose a rectangular area.
Ellipse	Drag the mouse to enclose an elliptical area.
Freehand Draw	Drag and click the mouse to draw lines that outline an enclosed space.
Follow Edge	Click or drag along the edge of an image feature to draw lines that follow the edge.
Replace	Drag the mouse near an area edge-line to move the edge to the mouse.
Select area within mouse	Left/right drag to select/unselect all pixels within the mouse circle. Selection is independent of image colors.
Select one matching color within mouse	Click on the image to select a color. Left/right drag to select/unselect pixels inside the mouse circle that match the selected color within "match level".
Select all matching colors within mouse	Left/right drag to select/unselect pixels surrounding the mouse circle that match the color of any pixels inside the mouse circle, within "match level".
Controls for mouse selection methods	"mouse radius" sets the size of a selection circle around the mouse pointer. "match level" sets the color match (0-100%) required for pixel selection or deselection.

The following paragraphs explain the details of each method.

Rectangle
Drag the mouse from one corner to the opposite corner of the desired rectangular area to select. A rectangle is drawn to enclose the area. Right-click to delete and start over. Repeat the process to select more rectangular areas.

Ellipse
This works the same as rectangle selection, except that the area enclosed is an ellipse. The drag start location is the center of the resulting ellipse.

Freehand Draw
Drag the mouse (left button down) to draw a freehand (curvy) line, or left-click to connect a straight line from the last point drawn to the point clicked. Continue around the target area until it is surrounded with connected curves and lines. Right click to remove previous lines (mistakes). A right click will remove the previous clicked or dragged line, up to 50 pixels. Right click repeatedly to remove more. A new clicked line will always connect to the end of the previous line. A new dragged line will connect to the previous line if it is started close to the end of that line. If it is started elsewhere, a disconnected line will be drawn. You can start a new drag from far away and draw back to meet the previous line. If a clicked line connects to an undesired point (i.e. you don't want to connect to the last line drawn), right click to erase it and then use drag to start a new sequence of lines. A right-button drag can be used to erase small segments: right-drag closely along a line to erase it, then left-drag to re-draw the line. At the end, an area must be fully enclosed, with no gaps. Lines that overlap a little at the ends are OK. Gaps can be difficult to find and correct, so work at 100% image size or greater and be careful. A series of lines automatically connected with left clicks will not leave gaps, but deviation from this sequence is likely to create gaps. To reduce the possibility of gaps, use deliberate overlaps when manually connecting lines. There is a gap detection utility described below - Find Gap.

Follow Edge
High-contrast pixels (likely image feature edges) between the last point drawn and a newly clicked position are found and connected. This is effective for clear edges that are not too irregular. Fuzzy and ragged edges may not work well and freehand draw will be needed if high precision is necessary. The rules for connecting lines are the same as explained above. Dragging the mouse instead of clicking works like freehand draw. There is a special tool for very irregular edges described below - Select Hairy.

Replace
Drag the mouse near and along an existing area edge-line. The line will be erased and redrawn at the mouse pointer. This is a faster way to make a small adjustment in an existing line.

Select area within mouse
Left click or drag will select the pixels enclosed by the mouse circle. A right click will unselect the last selection (repeat to unselect more). A right drag will unselect the enclosed pixels.

Select one matching color within mouse
Click on the image to select a color. The color is shown on the color button. You can also use the button to set a color directly. Left/right drag to select/unselect pixels within the mouse circle that match the selected color within match level. Adjust the match level down/up to match a greater/lesser range of colors.

Select all matching colors within mouse
Left/right drag to select/unselect pixels inside the mouse circle. Pixels beyond the mouse circle are also included if they meet these conditions: 1) their color matches any color inside the mouse circle, within the current match level. 2) they are within search range of the mouse pointer. This is a factor of mouse radius, e.g. if mouse radius is 20 and search range is 3, then the search range is 60 pixels from the mouse pointer. Drag the mouse over new areas you want to include. Watch the selected area expand into areas with colors matching those inside the mouse circle. If you go too far, right click to remove the last selection. Repeat if needed to remove more previous selections. Reduce the radius or increase the match level to gain finer control - the selection will expand more slowly and stay closer to the mouse circle. A small radius and high match level can be used to follow along an image feature edge and select pixels up to the edge with good precision. Change to a larger radius and/or lower match level to select larger areas after the fine work is complete. Right drag acts as an unselect: pixels inside the mouse circle and matching pixels within the search range are unselected. If a selection goes too far, it is often easy to correct this by unselecting from outside the selected area. You may need some practice to get a feeling for this and be able to work efficiently.

Mouse Radius and Match Level
These two controls apply only to the select within mouse methods described above. Mouse radius defines the size of a circle around the mouse pointer. Pixels within the circle are selected, or they provide a set of colors for matching and selecting pixels outside the circle. Match level defines a degree of match (0-100%) to select pixels based on their color and brightness. 0 means anything matches, and 100 means a perfect match is required.

Select all matching colors - Summary

left drag	select pixels inside mouse circle and those with matching colors within search range
right click	undo previous selection, repeat to unselect more
right drag	unselect pixels inside mouse circle and those with matching colors within search range

Blend Width
Edits made within an area can be blended with the unmodified image over a distance called blend width. At the edge of the selected area, the image is the original (unedited) image. At a distance of blend width from any edge inside the area, the image is the edited image. For distances in-between, the pixels are a mix of original and edited pixels with a gradual transition. Use the Blend Width control to set the blend width for the current or subsequent edit functions. Zero blend width gives a hard edge to the area edit. Increasing blend width makes the edges of the edit more gradual and harder to distinguish from the original image. Changing the blend width value for the first time after editing an area will cause the edge distance to be calculated for each pixel in the area. This is normally fast (a few seconds), but it may take minutes if the area is large and has a complex geometry (a very long edge). Whenever an area is re-edited or inverted, the edge calculation is discarded and must be repeated if blending is wanted. If the edge of a selected area is within 4 pixels of the image edge, it is no longer considered an edge for blending. If a selected area includes a portion of the image edge, and you do not want blending along this edge (the normal case), be sure the edge of the area is within 4 pixels of the image edge.

Edge Creep
An area that has been finished (see below) can be expanded or contracted in 1-pixel steps. The area remains finished, but blend width is no longer valid and must be repeated if needed. This can be helpful to reduce edge effects when an area selected by matching colors is edited in a way that changes its brightness. Selection by color may leave a narrow band of underselected or overselected pixels along an edge where color has become mixed with background. Expanding or contracting the area a pixel or two can produce a cleaner looking edge.

Show/Hide
Use [Hide] to hide the area outlines. This is useful when editing the image/area, to better see the effects of the edit without interference from the area outlines. Use [Show] to show the outlines and resume editing the area.

Finish

An area is not effective for edits until it is successfully finished. The finish process finds all the areas enclosed by your drawn outlines. When you are finished outlining areas, use the [Finish] button to complete the process. A popup dialog will ask you to click the mouse inside each enclosed area in sequence. The enclosed areas are temporarily colored so you can verify that the final result is what you intended. Press [keep] when all selected areas have been clicked and correctly colored. Press [Undo] if a colored area does not match your intention - the original area outline is restored. If the outline of an enclosed area has a gap, the pixel selection and coloring process will "leak out" and areas outside the enclosure will be colored. In this case, press [Undo] to go back to the original outline. Find the gap in the outline and close it, then try [Finish] again. See the function Find Gap below for a fast method to find gaps.

Any enclosed area can be selected, even those not explicitly outlined - if you have a donut with a hole, you can select the donut, the hole, or both.

Areas selected using one of the select within mouse methods are automatically finished whenever you click inside any enclosed area. These areas are mapped during the selection process, whereas areas selected with one of the line drawing methods are mapped only when you click inside them.

If you draw a line from one image side to another, you can click on either side of the line to make an area of all pixels on that side of the line. Example: draw a horizontal line on the boundary between sky and land. Click above the line to select sky, below the line to select land.

Disable/Enable
Disable the current area and keep the data so that it can be re-activated later. This allows you to alternate edits within a selected area and edits for the entire image.

Invert
This function inverts an existing area: the entire image is selected except for the existing area. Using the function two times returns the original selected area. Inverting a selected area invalidates the edge calculation which will be repeated if edge blending is selected.

Unselect
Discard the current area permanently.

Select Hairy (File View > Areas > Select Hairy)

colors to select


colors to deselect
This is an area selection function for complex boundary cases like hair or plants, where selection by color may not work well, and manual selection would be very tedious. The objective is to deselect background pixels, making them transparent, while keeping foreground pixels opaque. The resulting "cutout" can be copied and pasted where needed, without the background.

This function is not very intuitive, and you will likely need practice to become fast and effective.

Follow these steps:

Choose a window background color (User Settings) that contrasts with the complex area to be selected. In the example above, a white background was chosen to contrast with the dark hair. The background color can be changed during the selection process when different colors are being selected.
Use Select Area to select the entire area to be copied, including the complex boundary areas.
Start this function, Select Hairy.
Set a suitable mouse radius for painting over the boundary areas.
Left-click on an area representative of the colors to be selected, but away from the irregular edge. About 100 pixels will be sampled from the clicked position. The selected colors are shown in the corresponding dialog color box.
Right-click on a background area to choose colors to be deselected. These are shown in the other color box.
The colors to select or deselect can be changed at any time by left or right clicks on the image.
Choose a mode: select, deselect, or parallel (both options checked). Most of the time you will likely use both.
Left drag over the boundary to select/deselect pixels. Deselected pixels become transparent and the background color will show through. Selected pixels will remain opaque, or become opaque if they were previously deselected.
Right drag to restore the original pixels, to correct errors.
The select and deselect sliders determine the selection and deselection sensitivity. Move right for a more narrow match to the colors shown in the box, move left to select similar colors more widely. If the foreground and background colors are close, you will need to use narrow color matching to separate them.
When done, save the completed area with the Copy button (for subsequent Paste) or the Save button (for subsequent Load).
To paste the area into another position or image, use the menu Paste or Load.

When the area is pasted into the target image, the paste dialog can be used to further blend the edges if needed. The pasted area remains active and can be edited with almost any edit function.

Find Gap (File View > Areas > Find Gap)
If an area outline was created by freehand drawing using multiple strokes, it is easy to leave small gaps in the outline that are not visible below 400% zoom. An attempt to finish such an area will fail because the mapping of the interior pixels will leak out through the gap and cover large areas not intended as part of the area. If the Finish function fails, use this function to find the gap. Click somewhere on the outline of the failed area. The outline will be slowly re-drawn in one direction from the clicked position, until an "end pixel" is found. This is where the gap is. The outline is then drawn in the opposite direction until the gap is encountered. You can see the gap position clearly. Zoom-in on the gap and close it using freehand draw, then test again to see if the full outline can be drawn without stopping. This function can be used in parallel with the Select Area function (both dialogs active).

Show and Hide (File View > Areas > Show, Hide)
Show or hide the outline of the current area. Hiding the area is useful when the area is being modified with an edit functions. This makes it easier to judge the effects of the edit. These are also available as buttons in the Select Area dialog.

Enable and Disable (File View > Areas > Enable, Disable)
Disable the current area and keep the data so that it can be re-activated later (Enable menu). This allows you to alternate edits within a selected area and edits for the entire image. These are also available as buttons in the Select Area dialog.

Invert (File View > Areas > Invert)
Invert an existing area: the entire image is selected except for the existing area. Using the function two times returns the original selected area. Inverting a selected area invalidates the edge calculation which must be repeated if edge blending is desired. This is also available as a button in the Select Area dialog.

Unselect (File View > Areas > Unselect)
Permanently discard the current area. This is also available as a button in the Select Area dialog.

Copy and Paste (File View > Areas > Copy, Paste)
A selected area can be saved to a cache file using the menu Areas > Copy. This area can be pasted into the same or another image using Areas > Paste. Click and drag to position the pasted area. The dialog controls can be used to resize, rotate, and change the brightness of the pasted area. The edge blend control allows you to blend the area edges into the background image if wanted.

Load and Save (File View > Areas > Load, Save)
A selected area can be saved to a file using the menu Areas > Save. You are asked to supply a file name. A PNG file is created. The PNG file has an alpha channel for transparency information. The image is a rectangle enclosing the selected area. Selected pixels are opaque, and others are transparent. These files reside in /home/<user>/.fotoxx/saved_areas by default, but you can save them anywhere. Use the menu Areas > Load to load a saved area from a file and paste into the current image file. The background image will show through the transparent parts of the pasted area. Click and drag to position the area. The dialog controls can be used to resize, rotate, and change the brightness of the pasted area. The edge blend control allows you to blend the area edges into the background image if wanted.

Undo/Redo Button (File View > Undo/Redo)
If an edit function is active and the image has been changed:
• left mouse click will undo the current edit
• right mouse click will redo the edit
This allows you to rapidly compare the "before" and "after" images for the current edit function.

If no edit function is active, but one or more edits were made to the current image:
• left mouse click will undo one edit step per click
• right mouse click will redo one edit step per click
• if combined with the A-key, undo/redo ALL edits (compare original and final images)
• middle mouse click pops-up a list of all edit steps - select any step to return to
This works only if the current image file has not changed since being edited. If you open another file, the saved edit steps for the current file are discarded. Of course any saved file versions (created during the edits) are not discarded.

Edit 1 Menu (File View > Edit 1)
The most commonly used edit functions are in this menu.

Trim/Rotate (crop) (File View > Edit 1 > Trim/Rotate)

This function is used to remove unwanted image margins (crop) and/or rotate to upright or level the image.

When the dialog opens, a selection rectangle is placed over the image. The areas outside this rectangle are darkened and represent the parts of the image that will be removed. Drag any side or corner of the rectangle to move that side or corner. The dialog box shows the current width/height ratio of the selection rectangle. If the box lock ratio is checked, then moving a side or corner will also cause another side or corner to move, so that the ratio is maintained. You can also drag from the middle of the rectangle to shift the whole rectangle without changing its dimensions. You can use the width and height spin buttons to adjust the pixel dimensions (or type-in new values), and the selection rectangle will adjust to these.

You can use the keyboard arrow keys to move a side or corner of the selection rectangle in 1-pixel steps. The last side or corner moved with the mouse is the one that is moved with the keyboard.

The [Max] button resets the trim rectangle to the full image size (useful if you want only to rotate the image). The [Invert] button will invert the width/height ratio (e.g. 2.0 to 0.5). The [Prev] button retrieves the width and height values last used for a previous image (useful for setting multiple images to the same size, e.g. to fit a monitor or beamer).

The [Auto] button will automatically set the trim rectangle to omit transparent margins left over from combine and warp functions. These functions leave transparent margins where images did not overlay or were bent away from the edge. [Auto] tries to find a maximum rectangle within these margin areas. This may or may not be the desired margins, so you can keep them or move them with the mouse before committing with the [Done] button.

The six ratio buttons allow you to choose a preset width/height ratio. You can change the ratio button names and the corresponding ratios with the button [customize] which starts a new dialog shown on the right. Enter desired button labels in the first row, and corresponding width/height ratios in the second row (the default names are the same as the ratios, except for "gold"). The [gold] button uses the golden ratio, about 1.62:1. You do not have to keep it.

To level a slanted image, use the mouse to drag the right edge up or down until the image looks level. Use the 90º and 180º buttons to upright an image made with the camera turned. The degrees control can be used to set any angle, -180 to +180 degrees. No resolution is lost with 90 degree rotation. For other angles, the loss of resolution is about 1/2 pixel. The level button can automatically level the image if the camera used provides EXIF 'roll angle'.

A left-click on the image will add vertical and horizontal guide lines to help with image leveling. Use right-click to remove them.

Resize (rescale) (File View > Edit 1 > Resize)

This function resizes the image to a new pixel width and height. You can input the new dimensions directly or choose a percent change. Buttons are present for setting the new size to a simple ratio of the original size. Using one of these will minimize loss of resolution. The [Prev] button recalls the previous size, a convenience if multiple images are being set to the same size. If the lock ratio box is checked, the current width/height ratio will be preserved if either width or height is changed. The change is made immediately, but the image will look the same unless it becomes smaller than the window. The image file size in the top panel is not updated until the modified image is saved.

Retouch (File View > Edit 1 > Retouch)
This function handles all aspects of adjusting image brightness and color: overall brightness and contrast, brightness curves (overall and per color), color saturation, color temperature, white balance and black level.

brightness curves, overall and by RGB color
horizontal line is the neutral value (no change)

This example shows an decrease in brightness for
darker image areas, and an increase for brighter areas
(i.e. more contrast)

Use the sliders for brightness and contrast to optimize
the image. This may be adequate for most photos.

To fine tune brightness and contrast, edit the curves
using the mouse.

amplifier	increases or decreases the effect of the brightness edit curves
brightness	moves the entire curve up or down
contrast	moves the curve lower and upper parts in opposite directions
low color/high	increases or decreases color saturation
warmer/cooler	adjusts color temperature (reddish <--> blueish)
dark areas/bright	apply color changes to darker/all/brighter image areas
brightness distribution	show a brightness distribution graph in the curve edit window
click to set white balance	click on a gray or white area to adjust the white balance for the whole image
click to set black point	click on a dark area to set this color as black - this is subtracted from all image colors
Settings File	dialog settings can be saved in a file and loaded later for use with other images

After making initial adjustments using the sliders, you can fine tune brightness and contrast by editing the curves with the mouse to change which parts of the image have increased or decreased brightness or contrast. The ALL curve adjusts all colors, and the RGB curves adjust individual colors. Use ALL first, then make revisions using RGB.

Dark - Bright image areas
This modifies the operation of the color adjustments to affect primarily darker or brighter image areas. Leave in the middle to adjust all areas equally.

Brightness Distribution
If checked, a brightness distribution graph is drawn inside the curve edit window. The graph is live and changes as the dialog controls are changed. The edit curve overlays the graph and may still be edited.

Click for white balance or black level
If checked, mouse clicks on the image are used to set a black point and/or white balance (otherwise clicks on the image will zoom the image as usual). When a spot is clicked for while balance, the RGB colors will be shifted to make this spot pure gray or white. This is the easiest way to correct a photo with an overall color tint because of bad lighting. You can use the warmer-cooler slider after clicking, and this correction will be added to the prior result. When a dark spot is clicked for black level, the RGB values are used as a black set point, and image RGB colors will be shifted down to make this spot black. This is one way to reduce fogginess in a photo, or make the background night sky look black instead of gray.

Settings File
Load button - load all dialog settings (including the curves) from a file chosen by the user
Save button - save all dialog settings to a file chosen by the user
This can help speed up processing when the same or similar settings can be used for multiple photos made under the same conditions.

Buttons
Reset - set all controls back to a neutral position - image is also reset
Prev - set all controls to the values used for the previous image
Done - finish the edit, close the dialog, save the control settings
Cancel - cancel the edit, reset the image, close the dialog

You can use the [Prev] button when processing a series of images made under the same lighting and therefore needing the same or nearly the same adjustments.

Sharpen (File View > Edit 1 > Sharpen)

click for larger image

This function has four methods to sharpen a blurry image.

Unsharp mask: a fast and effective method also found in other image editors. A technical description can be found via Google. This method can make visible 'halos' around high-contrast edges.

Gradient: steepens brightness transition areas directly, somewhat like the Gradients function.
Effectiveness is comparable to unsharp mask, but 'halos' are reduced.

Kuwahara: small neighborhoods of pixels above, below, left and right of each pixel are compared to each-other. The pixel is given the mean color of the neighborhood with the smallest variance in brightness. This forces pixels on a blurry edge to move to one side of the edge or the other. Edges are made very sharp. Image may appear 'blocky' if a large radius is used.

Mean diff: pixel brightness is compared to the mean of pixels within radius. The brightness is increased or decreased for pixels respectively brighter or darker than the neighborhood mean. Effectiveness is comparable to unsharp mask, but 'halos' are greatly reduced. This is the only method that works on each RGB color separately. It can sharpen a color transition even if there is little brightness change.

The radius value limits the distance over which pixels around an edge are changed. It should be small for images that are slightly fuzzy and larger for poorer images. Amount controls the strength of the modification. Threshold suppresses changes to low-contrast pixels: a higher values reduces the amplification of low-level irregularities (image noise, uneven skin tones, etc.).

Choose the method, set the parameters, press [apply] and wait a few seconds to see the result. Make changes and repeat the process until satisfied. You can go back and forth among the methods to compare which is best for a given image. Use Select Area to operate on different parts of an image with different methods and parameters.

Blur (File View > Edit 1 > Blur)

click for large image

Choose a method with the corresponding check-box, input the required parameters, press [apply].
If a Select Area is active, only the selected areas are affected.

Normal	Mix each pixel with surrounding pixels within radius. Closer pixels have a higher weight.
Radial	Mix each pixel with pixels along a line from a chosen center. Length sets the size of the lines. Choose the center by clicking on the image.
Directed	Pull a position on the image using the mouse. The area around the mouse will be blurred in this direction. Span determines the size of the area blurred. Intensity determines the strength of the blur.
Graduated	Only pixels with less contrast than the given contrast limit are blurred, and the blur radius ranges from 1 to the given value for pixels with a corresponding contrast ranging from the given limit to zero. In short: low-contrast pixels are blurred more than high-contrast pixels. This can be used to smooth skin tones without blurring hair or reducing the sparkle in the eyes. Taken to extremes, it produces a "cartoon" effect.
Paint	Blend image pixels together by painting with the mouse. Radius sets a circle around the mouse pointer which shows the image area being blended. Use left drag to blend, right drag to restore. Power determines how fast the image is blended or restored, at the center and edges of the circle.
Background a new dialog is started	Blur the background image while leaving the foreground sharp. Use Select Area to select one or more areas that are to remain sharp. After selecting the foreground areas, invert the selection so that the background is now selected - use the [invert] button in the Select Area dialog - this area is the one that will be blurred. There are two blur methods available: Constant blur uses a constant blur radius for all areas blurred. Increase blur with distance uses the minimum blur radius for pixels adjacent to the foreground (i.e. on the edge of the background area), and the maximum blur radius for pixels at the maximum distance away from the foreground. This requires that the edge-distance for all background pixels be calculated, which can take considerable time for a large image. This is done automatically if required. Blur radius can be varied without recalculating the edge distances. Tilt-Shift Effect: You can do this by selecting a horizontal rectangular area to remain sharp, and increasing the blur with increasing distance from this area.

Denoise (File View > Edit 1 > Denoise)

This function reduces the noise in photos taken under poor lighting conditions, making uniform surfaces appear speckled. It also works for scanned prints, as in the example here. Multiple methods are provided because the best method varies with noise characteristics. Mixing methods (using one and then another) is often helpful. Choose the method, set the radius or threshold parameter, and press [apply]. Each new [apply] uses the modified image from the previous [apply], so each use will have increasing impact. With a large image, some methods may be slow. To save time, select a small area and experiment with the different methods and settings until you make a decision, then apply the chosen method to the entire image.

The dark areas slider can be used to restrict the process to darker image areas, which are most prone to noise. If left at the right end, all areas are processed.

Here is a short technical description of each method:

Flatten	Pixels are compared to the mean and sigma of pixels within a radius. Those outside one sigma are moved slightly back toward the mean.
Median	Pixels are set to the median value of their neighbors within a radius.
Top Hat	Detect outliers by comparison with surrounding pixels at a distance. The distance is increased in steps from 1 pixel to the radius limit. Outliers are flattened slightly.
Wavelets	RGB brightness (with noise) is converted into a series of wave functions that nearly sum to brightness and represent an approximation with less noise.

The wavelets algorithm was adapted from code found in a Gimp plug-in.
The initial version was written by Dave Coffin for the program Dcraw

The [measure] button starts the lower dialog to measure the actual noise level. Move the mouse over the image to show the RGB noise levels within the mouse circle (radius 10, about 300 pixels). This must be a featureless area so that noise is the only variation present. A gray sky is a good source, or a badly out-of-focus image area. To measure camera sensor noise, use a RAW image (JPEG images are processed inside the camera to reduce noise). The graph shows pixel deviations from the regional mean. The solid line corresponds to the mean, and the dotted lines are at brightness levels +5 and -5 from the mean, on a scale of 0-255. The center to edge axis is logarithmic from 0 to 10, with 7 at the midpoint. The numbers at the bottom show the mean RGB brightness and noise levels for the area within the mouse.

More information about camera noise in RAW images can be found in the technical notes.

Red Eyes (File View > Edit 1 > Red Eyes)

This function reduces the red-eye effect from electronic flash photos. Two methods are provided. The first is faster but may not handle difficult cases. The second method is more robust but also needs more time and care. To use the first function, left-click on a red-eye one or more times until satisfied. If the darkened area is too small or off-center, do a right-click to undo the change and then left-click more precisely on the center of the red-eye. If a red-eye cannot be fixed correctly, right-click to undo the change and then use the second method. The second method can better handle difficult cases where the red-eye is only slightly red and the color difference with the eyelids is too little for the automatic algorithm to distinguish. Place the cursor over the center of the red eye. Hold the left mouse button and drag the cursor down and to the right. A dotted ellipse will appear enclosing the red eye. Repeat if needed to get the red eye centered in the ellipse (roughly). Note that the shape of the ellipse depends on the direction of the drag, which can allow more precise enclosure of only the red-eye. Left-click inside the ellipse repeatedly while watching the red eye darken, and stop when it is dark enough. If you go too far, the eyelids may start to darken. Right-click to undo and repeat if necessary.

Color Mode (File View > Edit 1 > Color Mode)

Use this function to make a black and white or color negative, or convert a negative image into a positive image, or convert to sepia coloring (for an aged photo effect).

Select one of the buttons:
    reset - return the image to the original state
black/white positive - convert a color image to black and white
    black/white negative - convert to black and white and invert brightness
    color negative - replace each RGB color with its compliment
    RGB -> GBR - red/green/blue colors are replaced with green/blue/red colors
    sepia - convert to a modified black and white for an aged photo effect

The slider can be used to apply the effect incrementally, from 0% (no change) to 100%.

Each button acts on the current state of the image, e.g. pressing [color negative] twice makes a color positive (i.e. no change from the original).

Color negative: Each RGB color is replaced with the maximum value minus the RGB color value. For example, if the RGB colors (% of maximum) are 20/40/60, then the negative color is 80/60/40. Doing this twice brings back the original colors. For pure RGB colors, red becomes cyan, green becomes magenta, and blue becomes yellow.

Color Sat (File View > Edit 1 > Color Sat)

There is one slider control to adjust color intensity or saturation from zero (black and white image) to 100%. The neutral point is in the middle. Retouch also includes an adjustment for color intensity which does the same thing.

Adjust RGB (File View > Edit 1 > Adjust RGB)

This function is used to change overall brightness and contrast, or that of selected colors. The settings are retained within and across Fotoxx sessions, so this function can be used to process multiple photos made under the same lighting conditions and needing the same (or nearly same) adjustments. Use the [reset] button to restore all inputs to neutral values.

Brightness	Increase or decrease overall image brightness
+Red - Cyan etc.	Increase or decrease the brightness of one color and change complimentary color in the opposite direction
Contrast	Increase or decrease the overall image contrast
Red, etc.	Increase or decrease the contrast of individual RGB colors

Adjust HSL (File View > Edit 1 > Adjust HSL)

Change a selected range of colors in an image using an HSL color chooser (Hue, Saturation, Lightness). This function can be used to fix a color caste or change one color to another (e.g. an overexposed sky - too white). If you are not familiar with the HSL color model, I suggest you read the Wikipedia article about this.

Begin by selecting a target image color to match and adjust, using shift + left-click on the image. This color will be the center of a range of colors that will be selected for adjustment. Select what color attributes will be matched using the checkboxes for hue, saturation, and lightness. Each of these will narrow the range of selected colors. If none are checked, all colors are selected. Match Level can be used to further widen the range of selected colors. 100% means only closely matching colors are selected.

The Output Color controls (hue, saturation, lightness) are used to set the new output color which will replace or blend with the selected input colors. You can also set this color from the image, using shift + right-click. The resulting color will be a mix of the original color and the new color. The new color part is determined by the Adjustment slider which can be set from 0 to 100%. Use the HSL checkboxes to determine which HSL components of input color are replaced with the corresponding HSL components of the output color. Use the sliders for output color HSL to adjust the new color. The output color is shown in the smaller box on the left, which is updated as you move the sliders.

Move the sliders and watch the live image updates to optimize the result. This is not very intuitive, and practice will help.

Hint: begin by matching on hue and saturation, and replacing only hue - this means that the output color saturation and lightness will be copied from the original image colors, and only the hue will be replaced.

This function (like most others) can be used with Select Area to restrict the change to selected image areas.

Add Text (File View > Edit 1 > Add Text)

This function writes text directly on the image. Enter the text into the dialog. Multiple lines can be used. After entering the text, left-click the mouse where you want the text on the image. Click or drag to move the text elsewhere. Right click to remove the text. Use the [Font] button to select a different font. Use the [Size] control to increase or decrease the text size. Use the [Angle] control to change the slant angle of the text. The other controls allow you to provide a background color around the text, a text outline color, and a shadow effect. You can select the color and transparency for all of these. The width control adjusts the width of outlines and shadows. The shadow angle control sets the slant angle of the shadow.

You can initialize the text from any available metadata in the image file. Enter the metadata key (e.g. "user comments") and press [Fetch]. You can abbreviate key names, e.g. "usercomments" instead of "User Comments".

The [Open] and [Save] buttons start a file chooser dialog with which you can load or save all text data from or to a file. All the items in the dialog are loaded or saved, so you can keep a collection of often-used text strings and settings.

The buttons at the bottom work as follows:

Clear	Clear the text and metadata fields to blank.
Replace	Image with added text replaces (overwrites) the current image file
+Version	Image with added text is saved as a new file version
Next	Open the next sequential image file and place the same text at the same position.
Apply	Complete the edit and start over. A new text string can now be added to the image.
Done	Complete the edit and exit the dialog. The edited image file must now be saved.
Cancel	Abandon the edit. Previous use of [Apply] is not reversed.

To add the same text to a series of images: prepare and position the text, press [Replace] or [+Version], then [Next], then [Replace] or [+Version], then [Next] ...

Making a Watermark: Use a text transparency of 70% or more and a background transparency of 100%. The text should be faint but readable. To add a "relief" effect, use Select Area to put a box around the text and Emboss to give the text an appearance of depth.

Add Lines (File View > Edit 1 > Add Lines)

This function writes lines or arrows directly on the image. Enter a line length and width into the dialog, and select an arrow head if wanted. Left-click the mouse where you want to place it on the image. Drag the ends of the line/arrow to position it on the image. Right click to remove it. The dialog controls allow you to provide a background color, an outline color, and a shadow effect. You can select the color and transparency for all of these. The width control adjusts the width of outlines and shadows. The shadow angle control sets the slant angle of the shadow. The [apply] button makes the current line/arrow permanent, so you can start a new one without leaving the dialog.

The [Open] and [Save] buttons start a file chooser dialog with which you can load or save all line attributes from or to a file.

Upright (File View > Edit 1 > Upright)

This dialog is a faster way to upright an image that is turned 90 or 180 degrees.
The [Upright] button will take the correct action automatically if the image EXIF data is correct (normally yes).

Mirror Image (File View > Edit 1 > Mirror)

Choose either horizontal or vertical mirror from the dialog. The image is reversed (mirrored) vertically or horizontally. Repeating the mirror restores the original image. Doing both a horizontal and vertical mirror is the same as a 180 degree rotation.

Paint Edits (File View > Edit 1 > Paint Edits)

Use this function in combination with some other edit function. Start an edit function and leave the controls in a neutral position. Then start Paint Edits. Specify a mouse radius and power factors for the mouse center and radius edge. The mouse pointer will be surrounded by a circle with the specified radius. When the mouse is left-dragged over an area of the image, the current edit function is applied within the circle. The strength of the function is regulated by the center and edge power factors. Typically you will use a high value at the center and zero at the edge, meaning that the strength of the edit will be maximum at the center, changing gradually to zero at the edge of the circle. As you drag the mouse over the same area repeatedly, the edits are slowly accumulated. For example, if the edit function is Retouch, and the brightness curve is moved upward (brighten), then the image will slowly brighten in the area where the mouse is dragged. This is called 'dodge and burn' in some image editors.

Use the [undo] and [redo] buttons to monitor the change, which may be hard to notice at first. Set the center power to 100 to make faster changes (with less fine control). Use a right-drag to weaken the edit or ultimately erase it. When done using one edit function in one or more image areas, use the [done] button on the edit dialog to complete the edit. Use the [reset area] button on the Paint Edits dialog to erase the active area that is now left over from the mouse dragging. If you leave this area active and start a new edit function, the results may be strange (the new function applies immediately to previously painted areas).

A suggested approach is: (1) start an edit function and make the initial settings, (2) start the Paint Edits dialog, (3) drag the mouse over the desired areas and watch the effect, (4) adjust the edit settings, (5) alternate between the previous two steps. (6) Exit from the edit function, then from Paint Edits.

This method to "paint" edits incrementally can improve selected areas of an image quickly and easily. It works with the following edit functions: Retouch, Flatten, Gradients, Sharpen, Denoise, Color Mode, Shift Colors, Adjust RGB, Adjust HSL, Color Depth. Others may be added in the future.

Lever Edits (File View > Edit 1 > Lever Edits)

It is sometimes effective to apply an edit function "leveraged" by some image attribute, e.g. apply noise reduction to darker areas of the image while leaving brighter areas alone. To do this, use Leverage Edits. Choose brightness or contrast as the lever. This may be for a single RGB color or all colors. The editable graph controls how subsequent edits are applied to the image. The x-axis is the selected lever, from minimum to maximum value. The y-axis value governs how strongly an edit function affects a pixel having the value on the x-axis. Example: apply Gradients primarily to dark pixels: Start Gradients, then start start Leverage Edits and drag the curve so that high values are on the left (dark pixels) and low values are in the middle and on the right (bright pixels). You can edit the leverage curve or the Gradients curve while watching the resulting image.

This function can be used with the same list of edit functions listed in the Paint Edits topic above.

Edit 2 Menu (File View > Edit 2)

Voodoo 1 (File View > Edit 2 > Voodoo 1)
This is a fast automatic image enhancement with limited capability. This is sometimes effective and "good enough" for rapidly processing many photos. There is no dialog - the modification is simply done when the menu is selected. Reject the change with the [undo] button if desired. The modification consists of a slight flattening of the brightness distribution, an expansion of the brightness range if less than the full range is used, and a slight increase in the color saturation, more for darker areas of the image than brighter areas. The effect is sometimes minimal or even negative.

Voodoo 2 (File View > Edit 2 > Voodoo 2)
This is an alternative automatic enhancement, using the flatten method described below.

Brightness (File View > Edit 2 > Brightness)

With this function you can directly alter the shape of the brightness distribution. Move the sliders and watch the image to find the optimum settings.

Cutoff: If the distribution is low or zero at the dark or bright end, you can stretch the distribution to make it extend more into the dark or bright end, or both.

Flatten: This is a fast and easy way to compensate for a common limitation in photos: the brightness range is inadequate, or areas of the image have nearly the same brightness and details are lost. Pixel brightness is redistributed so that each brightness level is more equally represented. Technically, the brightness distribution is made more uniform (flatter). You can flatten any or all three ranges of brightness.

Stretch: The selected low/mid/high brightness region is broadened, which necessarily squeezes adjacent areas. For example, if you broaden the low brightness region, darker areas of the image will have more contrast at the expense of mid- and high brightness areas.

Gradients (File View > Edit 2 > Gradients)

Gradients increases the apparent brightness range of an image by increasing local contrast. It is especially useful to improve HDR images, but can also be applied to any image. Gradients increases the contrast between nearby pixels without increasing the overall contrast. It relies on the nature of human vision: contrast within a small angle is perceived more strongly than contrast over a large angle. Gradients can bring out subtle details (low contrast) that would otherwise be hard to notice. Other methods can also be used: Retouch can increase the contrast for a selected brightness range (at the expense of others). Flattening the brightness distribution can spread the available contrast (brightness range) more evenly. These methods operate globally or within a zone: all pixels of a given brightness are processed the same. Gradients processes pixels relative to nearby surrounding pixels, and is more effective at enhancing detail and the perceived brightness range.

In the dialog, the graphic curve determines how much local contrast is increased depending on initial local contrast. The left end of the x-axis corresponds to low-contrast pixels and the right end high-contrast pixels. Raise the left side of the curve to increase the contrast of low-contrast pixels (but this will also enhance low-level noise). The Amplify slider below the curve regulates the internal algorithmic calculation, from no contrast amplification on the left to full amplification on the right. If moved too far to the right, the image may show ugly artifacts, so push it back until these disappear. The curve can be dragged with the mouse and its effect on the image will show up in a second or so (depending on image size and CPU speed). The Amplify slider also needs time to show up in the image. If more contrast is wanted, raise the curve. If uniform areas (e.g. sky) become mottled, pull the left end of the curve down to reduce amplification for low-contrast pixels. In some cases it will be best to select different areas of the image and process them separately, e.g. more conservative for sky, more aggressive for textured surfaces like stone walls and vegetation.

Flatten (File View > Edit 2 > Flatten)

Flatten enhances visible detail in areas having poor contrast. The revised brightness for a pixel is based on the brightness distribution for nearby zones. A larger zones count calculates new pixel values from closer areas. Flatten controls the strength of the effect, and deband moderates darker or brighter image areas. This function can amplify noise in uniform areas like sky. If the deband control is insufficient, use Select Area and Denoise. Alternatively, use Select Area beforehand to select sky (or other areas to omit) and then invert the selection prior to using Flatten.

Technical Explanation (optional)
The image is divided into area zones according to the input zone count. Each pixel is adjusted based on the 9 closest zones, the 3x3 zones surrounding the zone of the pixel. More zones means smaller and closer zones. The brightness of a pixel is compared to the brightness distributions of the nearby zones, and the brightness is adjusted up or down in the direction that would flatten the distribution of these zones. The influence of the 9 zones are weighted based on their distance from the pixel being calculated. The influence of the leftmost zones goes to zero for a pixel on the right edge of its zone. The same is true for the topmost zones, etc. This prevents abrupt transitions that could be visible. The nature of human vision hides the radical alterations in pixel brightness, since the eye also judges the brightness of a spot based on its surroundings. A larger number of zones will make each pixel brightness adjustment depend on areas closer to the pixel.

Global Retinex (File View > Edit 2 > Global Retinex)

Global Retinex can improve color and contrast for images with extreme fog/haze or color cast (e.g. a 100 year-old photo). Try the [Auto] button first. The image is searched to find the brightest and darkest RGB colors present. The darkest RGB values are subtracted from all pixels and the resulting RGB values are scaled up so that the maximum RGB values are near 255. Of course this may not be initially optimum. The spin buttons are set to the dark and white RGB limits found, and you can changes these to optimize the resulting image. You can choose your own dark and bright points by selecting the corresponding option in the dialog and clicking on the image. The multiplier spin buttons are set to 1.0 by default, and you can change these values to adjust the relative brightness of each RGB color. In the above example, the 1st image is the original, the 2nd image was made using the [Auto] button, and the 3rd image was made by selecting a bright spot on the turtle's shell as the bright point and the shadow under the front left foot as the dark point. The rightmost column of spin buttons will adjust all buttons in the same row together - use the mouse wheel or the KB up/down arrow keys.

The blend slider is used to mix the input image and the retinex image in any ratio. The reduce bright slider is used to attenuate the effect for brighter image areas, especially sky, where Retinex can produce strange looking results.

The algorithm was derived from concepts first published by Edwin Land in the 1970s. Google 'retinex' to find more information.

Zonal Retinex (File View > Edit 2 > Zonal Retinex)

Zonal Retinex can increase visible details in dark image areas and other areas having low contrast. The brightness range of a zone around each pixel is used to rescale the pixel brightness as though the entire zone were rescaled to cover the entire 0-255 brightness range. Zonal Retinex can produce dramatic results where Global Retinex is weak.

The blend slider is used to mix the input image and the retinex image in any ratio. The reduce bright slider is used to attenuate the effect for brighter image areas, especially sky, where Retinex can produce strange looking results. The example above is about 60% original image + 40% retinex.

Zonal Colors (File View > Edit 2 > Zonal Colors)

This function can be used to make complex color corrections, whereby different parts of the image need different corrections. Select up to 9 control points on the image by clicking them with the mouse. The points are added to the list in the dialog window and to the image window, with labels 'A' to 'I'. The current RGB values are shown (or EV or OD units if selected). Change the RGB/EV/OD values in the dialog, and the image will be changed to match. Each pixel in the image is influenced by all the control points in the dialog, with the closer control points having more influence than those farther away. The slider Blend determines how widely the control points spread their influence. If delta is checked, the values shown are the deltas (differences) from the original image.

Match Colors (File View > Edit 2 > Match Colors)

This function matches the colors in one image to those in another. A small spot, determined from a mouse click, is sampled from each image. The spot on the 2nd image will be made to have the same average color (RGB values) as the spot from the 1st image. The factors used to make the RGB values the same are then applied to all the pixels in the 2nd image. The most common use is to remove a color cast from an image by marking a spot on the image that should have a given color which was taken from another image.

Procedure: The dialog lists 5 steps to take in sequence.

Set a radius for the spot sample.
The resulting mouse circle is the spot area that will be sampled.
Open the 1st image (press the [open] button for a file open dialog).
If the current image is already the one you want, this step can be skipped.
Click on the image to take a color sample from the spot area enclosed by the mouse circle.
You can change the radius and click again if wanted.
Open the 2nd image by pressing the [open] button.
Click on the image at the spot you want to match the spot color from the 1st image.
The image colors will change within a second or two.
You can change the radius and click on another spot - the colors will change accordingly.
Click the dialog [done] or [cancel] button to finish.

Color Depth (File View > Edit 2 > Color Depth)

This function changes the normal 16 bits per RGB color to any value between 1 and 16 bits per color. At 8 bits per color, there are 16.8 million total color combinations. At 4 bits per color there are only 4096 total colors. Use 1-4 bits for an interesting "poster" effect.

Smart Erase (File View > Edit 2 > Smart Erase)

This function can be used to erase small objects that can spoil a good photo, such as power lines, trash on the ground, a sign, etc. The unwanted object is replaced with pixels taken from the surrounding area. This is sometimes very effective (side-effects almost invisible), and sometimes not. It works best for small or narrow objects in the photo. Radius controls the size of a circle around the mouse pointer, defining the area to select and erase. Drag the mouse to enclose all or part of the object to be removed. Left-drag selects and right-drag unselects. Press [Erase] to erase the selected area, replacing the pixels with the nearest pixels from outside the selection. If the selection was not precise enough, use [Undo], adjust the selected area, and [Erase] again. Repeated selections and erasures will accumulate until you use [New_Area] to start a new selection. The prior erased areas are now fixed and [Undo] will only work for the current selection. As with all edit functions, the main menu buttons [Undo] and [Redo] can be used to review all changes. It is likely best to work with an image zoomed to 200% or more. The Blur control adds blur to the replacement pixels. This can reduce visible side-effects, since the replacement pixels may be sharper or have more contrast than the surroundings. Change the Blur setting and repeat the [Erase] button. The [show] and [hide] buttons can be used to show the outline of the current selection or hide it to better judge the results after erasing.

For long thin objects (e.g. power lines), you can click on two ends and everything in-between will be selected. The selection works in a straight line, so for curving objects you will need to click at intervals to follow the curve.

Brightness Ramp (File View > Edit 2 > Brightness Ramp)

This function varies brightness or color across the image. You can use this to compensate for uneven lighting or a color cast that varies across the image. The direction of change is determined by drawing a line on the image. Create the line by clicking on the image, then drag either end to set the direction wanted. In the example above, green is increased in the direction of the line. Edit the All curve first to adjust overall brightness (all colors), then adjust the individual RGB color curves if needed. The image reacts quickly to both line changes and curve edits.

Paint Image (File View > Edit 2 > Paint Image)

This function paints over the image with selected colors, using the mouse.

The Paint Color button shows the current color. Click this button to choose a color using the standard Gnome color chooser dialog. You can also shift + left-click on the image to choose a color from the image.

The palette button opens the dialog shown in the middle. Here you can select an image file where you have saved colors for recall. Click on the image to select the color at that position. The image shown above is the default. You can use any image as a color source.

The HSL button opens an HSL color chooser shown on the right. This dialog can represent any possible color. Move the sliders to get the color you want, and press Select.

The brush size control sets a circle around the mouse pointer which shows the area being painted or erased. Left drag on the image to paint with the current color. Right drag over a previously painted area to erase (undo the painting). The opacity controls determine how rapidly the color is applied (or erased) at the center and edges of the mouse circle. 100% opacity applies the full color immediately, and a low value allows you to gradually change the color using multiple drags (analogous to spray painting from a distance). Erase also works this way: use 100% opacity to immediately erase, and a low value to erase gradually.

NOTE: zoom the image to 100% or more when using a small brush. If the mouse steps are larger than the image pixels and a small brush is being used, some pixels may be skipped by the mouse and cannot be painted.

If paint over transparent areas is selected, painting over transparent areas will reduce or eliminate the transparency, depending on the opacity controls. If this option is not selected, only opaque areas of the image are painted.

The [undo-last] button reverses the last paint or erase operation, and this can be repeated to remove many recent edits. Each new mouse drag operation is a unit of work that can be separately reversed. The memory for undo is limited, so only the most recent paint and erase steps are kept. [undo all] will put the image back in its initial condition.

You can use the zoom image buttons to zoom the image larger or smaller as needed. If drag image is selected, you can pan or scroll a zoomed image by dragging it with the mouse. This stops the drag from painting or erasing.

If a select area is active, the painting is confined within the area.

Wacom Tablet Operation
With Paint Image, you can use a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse. Dragging the stylus in contact with the tablet surface will paint as described above. If one of the stylus buttons is held down while dragging, the operation will be erase instead of paint. You can also set paint or erase mode using the radio buttons in the dialog. Holding down a stylus button is cumbersome, which is why the radio buttons are there. Adding pressure to the stylus will increase the opacity, so you can make lighter and darker strokes without adjusting the opacity controls.

Copy Pixels 1 (File View > Edit 2 > Copy Pixels 1)

This function paints image areas by copying from elsewhere in the image. This method can