PicturePerfect 5.1 Users Guide

If you're using version 4.0, the User Guide is here.
(See Album, About to check your version number)

Overview
Copying Pictures to your Pocket PC
Creating Albums and Adding Pictures
Viewing Pictures
Changing Picture Properties
Deleting Pictures
Adding Sounds and Text to Pictures
Rotating and Reducing Pictures
Making a Slide Show
Viewing Thumbnails
Customizing the Hardware Button
Importing PowerPoint Presentations
Sorting and Reordering Pictures
Sharing Albums using Packages
Finding Pictures
Opening and Closing Albums
Using QuickLaunch to Open Images, Albums, and Slide Shows
Making PicturePerfect the Default Image Viewer
Purchasing PicturePerfect

Overview

Welcome to PicturePerfect, the easy-to-use photo album software for your Pocket PC. PicturePerfect is designed to make it easy and fun to show off your photos to others. It also makes a great companion to your digital camera.

Here's an example of how PicturePerfect displays a photo:

You can do some wonderful things with this software, including:

• Build electronic photo albums.
• View and organize pictures.
• Create slide shows with music, sound and cool effects.
• View thumbnails of your pictures.
• Rotate and reduce images.
• View pictures full-screen.
• Import PowerPoint slides.
• Package albums into a single file for easy distribution to others.

Any BMP, GIF or JPEG file can be viewed as a picture. You can also add captions, sounds and text to any picture.

Copying Pictures to Your Pocket PC

Before viewing your own pictures, you'll need to copy them to your handheld device. There are several different ways to do this, but if you're a novice user, the following process will work well for you.

To copy image files from your PC to your Pocket PC :

1. On your PC, right click the Start button, then click Explore. This opens a window into the file system of your PC.
2. Find the image files you want to copy to your Pocket PC, select them, and choose Edit, Copy from the menu.
3. Connect your device to your PC.
4. Open ActiveSync, and click the Explore button. This opens a window into the file system of your Pocket PC.
5. Navigate to the folder where you want to put your files.
6. Click Edit, Paste from the menu, and the image files are copied to your device.

Creating Albums and Adding Pictures

All pictures and photographs in PicturePerfect reside in Albums. Image files (in JPEG, GIF, BMP) format can reside anywhere on your Pocket PC, but you must place them into an album before viewing them. You can create albums in three ways:

• From a folder on your device.
• From the Storage Card (Compact Flash or Memory card).
• As an empty album.

To create a new album from a folder on your device:

1. Select Album, New, From Folder from the menu.
   The folder select dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Pick the folder where your image files are located, then tap OK.
3. A new album is created in the folder you chose. The album is named Album.alb.

Note: When you add or delete image files from a folder, you can update your album by selecting Album, Manage, Update Folder. This adds the new photos to your album, and deletes photos from the album that are no longer present in the folder.

To create an album from the Storage Card:

1. Select Album, New, From Storage Card.
2. All image files located anywhere on your storage card are added to the album. The album is created as \Storage Card\Album.alb.

To create a new empty album:

1. Select Album, New, Empty Album from the menu.
   The new Album dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Enter the name of the album.
   The album will be stored with an Alb extension in the \My Documents folder on your device.
3. Add pictures to your album by selecting Picture, Insert Picture or Insert Folder.

Album Hints:

• You can rename your album by choosing Album, Manage, Rename Album from the menu.
• You can delete an album by selecting Album, Manage, Delete Album from the menu.
• You can find out what album you are viewing by selecting Album, About from the menu.

Adding Pictures to an Album

You can add pictures from anywhere on your device to an album. You can add a single image file or an entire folder.

• Use Picture, Insert Picture to add a single image. (The image file must reside in \My Documents, a subfolder of \My Documents, or in the storage card under \My Documents.)
• Use Picture, Insert Folder to add the contents of an entire folder to your album. The folder can be anywhere on your device.

Viewing Pictures

Once you've added pictures to an album, you're ready to view them, and share them with your friends.

Navigating your Album:

• Use the left and right arrow buttons on the menu bar to move backward and forward through your album.
• Or use the big navigation button (or side rocker button) on your device to move backward and forward.
• Or select Picture, Go To to quickly jump to a specific picture.
• Or tap the Thumbnail icon to choose a picture to view.

Viewing Photos Full-Screen

You can utilize the entire screen to view images.  When you do this, the menu bar and top caption bar disappear.  Do this in two ways:

• Select Picture, View Full Screen from the menu.
• Or tap the full-screen view icon on the menu bar.

To restore the menu bar and top caption bar, just tap anywhere on the screen.

Zooming and Panning

You can zoom in and out of photos by tapping the zoom icons, or by selecting Picture, Zoom In or Zoom Out from the menu. Once you have zoomed into a picture, drag the stylus to move the viewable portion of the image.

The zoom factor and position of the picture are remembered permanently. You can reset the picture view by selecting Picture, Properties, Reset Zoom and Position from the menu.

Changing Full-Screen Caption Display

When viewing pictures full-screen, you can have captions appear at the top or bottom of the screen, or not appear at all by selecting Album, Settings, Preferences, Full-screen mode caption location from the menu.

Optimizing Pictures for 12-bit Devices

The HP Jornadas and Compaq iPaq have 12-bit graphics displays, and may not normally show the best quality images. PicturePerfect can optimize JPEG images for these devices to make better looking pictures. Select Album, Settings, Preferences, Optimize JPEGs for 12-bit devices to experiment with this setting.

Smart Rotation

PicturePerfect has a setting called Smart Rotate when not Docked. When the device is not in the cradle, PicturePerfect can have your pictures automatically rotated if doing so would show more of the image. This option is available from Album, Settings, Preferences. 

Occasionally, Smart Rotate needs some help from you to make the picture or caption appear properly. Here's how to fix common problems:

If the image appears upside-down:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Extended from the Menu.
   The Extended Properties Dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Tap Flip JPEG.
3. Tap OK.

If the caption in full-screen mode is oriented wrong:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Extended from the Menu.
   The Extended Properties Dialog appears.
2. Tap Fix Caption Position.
3. Tap OK.

Changing Picture Properties

There are two dialogs that allow you to change how each picture is displayed. You can find them under Picture, Properties, Basic and Picture, Propertied, Extended.

Here's the Basic Properties dialog:

Here's the Extended Properties dialog:

You can control the appearance of each picture using the following settings:

• Image file
• Transition Effect
• Scaling
• Caption
• Slide Show Time
• Search Keywords

To Change the Image File:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Basic from the menu.
2. Enter the name of the image file, or tap Browse for Image File.

The image file name is relative to the folder where the album file resides. For example, if your album is in \My Documents\Pix, and the image file is "\My Documents\Pix\photo.jpg", the image file name should be simply "photo.jpg". This allows you to move folders that contain album and image files.

Transition Effects

When moving from picture to picture, PicturePerfect lets you choose from a variety of special effects, including wipes, fades and dissolves. To set a transition effect:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Basic from the menu.
2. Choose a transition effect.

If you choose Use Default, then the effect chosen under Album, Settings, Global Defaults will be used for this picture.

You can also make all transition effects go faster or slower from Album, Settings, Preferences.

Scaling

PicturePerfect gives you several options for scaling:

• As Is -- this does not do any scaling, and displays the picture pixel-for-pixel.
• Fit Display -- this scales the image so that the display shows the entire image with a minimum of wasted space.
• Best Quality -- the image is scaled for minimal loss of quality, but some parts of the image may be cropped.
• Use Default -- use one of the above scaling options from Album, Settings, Global Defaults.

To change the scaling:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Basic from the menu.
2. Choose a scaling option.

Captions

Each picture has an optional caption. When you first create the album, the caption is the file name without the extension. You can modify the caption as follows:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Basic from the menu.
2. Edit the caption.

You can also determine where the caption displays in full-screen mode, or have captions hidden as follows:

1. Select Album, Settings, Preferences from the menu.
2. Select an option under Full-screen mode caption location.

Slide Show Time

When playing a slide show, you can set the duration for each picture (amount of time each picture displays) as follows:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Extended from the menu.
2. Enter the duration in milliseconds (1000 milliseconds = 1 second).

If you enter 0, then the duration used is the one under Album, Settings, Global Defaults.

Search Keywords

You can add keywords to each picture for use when using Picture, Find. To add or modify keywords:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Extended from the menu.
2. Enter the keywords.

Note that both the caption and search keywords are used when searching via Picture, Find.

Deleting Pictures

You can remove individual pictures from your album, or remove several quickly by using Quick Delete mode.

To remove a single picture:

1. Navigate to the picture to remove.
2. Select Picture, Remove from the menu.

To remove multiple pictures rapidly:

1. Select Album, Manage, Quick Delete Mode from the menu.
2. A warning message appears. Tap OK after reading it.
3. Navigate to a picture to delete, then tap the red 'X' icon on the menu bar.
   Repeat this process until you are done deleting pictures.
4. Select Album, Manage, Quick Delete Mode to return to normal viewing.

Note: "Deleting" a picture just removes it from the album. This does not delete the image file. You can use the File Explorer program to delete files.

Adding Sounds and Text to Pictures

PicturePerfect lets you annotate your photos with optional sounds or text. For example, a photo of a family member might also play her voice, or a photo of a house for sale can have a description attached to it.

To create a sound for a picture:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Play/Record Sound.
   The sound record bar appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Tap the red circle to start recording.
3. Tap the black square when finished.
4. Tap the green triangle to play the sound.

To delete a sound for a picture, select Picture, Properties, Delete Sound.

To add text to a picture:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Edit Annotated Text.
2. Enter the text, then tap OK.

The first two lines of text will display when viewing the picture. Tapping the text shows the entire text. You can also edit text this way.

To delete all text associated with the picture, simply erase all the text.

Technical information: These annotations are stored as .wav files for sounds, and .txt files for text. If a picture file is named photo.jpg, then the sound file is named photo.wav, and the text file is named photo.txt. You can create your own .wav or .txt files on your PC and copy them to your device, or create them right from within PicturePerfect.

Rotating and Reducing Pictures

PicturePerfect lets you rotate or reduce the size of your picture and save it on your device. Plus, there's also a Smart Rotate option that will automatically rotate the picture to best fill the display when the device is not in the cradle. (See Viewing Pictures for more on Smart Rotation.)

Reducing a picture does not affect the display quality, but will significantly reduce the amount of memory necessary to store the picture. Plus, this is handy when you want to email photos from your device.

To rotate a picture:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Rotate Left or Rotate Right.
   Rotate Left rotates counterclockwise, and Rotate Right goes clockwise.
2. You will be asked if you want to create a new image file. Select Yes to create a new file, or select No to overwrite the original. Select Cancel to abort the operation.

When the image is rotated, the resulting file is always reduced in size from the original.

To reduce the size of a picture:

1. Select Picture, Properties, Reduce Image.
2. You will be asked if you want to create a new image file. Select Yes to create a new file, or select No to overwrite the original. Select Cancel to abort the operation.

Making a Slide Show

PicturePerfect allows you to turn your photo album into a slide show, including audio.

To view a slide show, select Album, Play Slide Show from the menu. You can then decide whether you want the slide show to loop, or just play once.   When you run a slide show, the entire screen is used to display your pictures. As the slide show is playing, you can tap the display to make the menu bar reappear.

Setting the Playing Time for Pictures

When you first create an album, the duration for each picture during the slide show is in Album, Settings, Global Defaults as shown here:

You can change the duration frame-by-frame from the Picture, Properties, Extended menu. A zero value in the slide show time field makes the duration use the global default setting.

Playing a Soundtrack with your Slide Show

When you play a slide show, PicturePerfect looks for a .MP3 or a .WMA file with the same name as your album, and then plays it if it finds such a file. For example, if your album is \My Documents\Album.alb, if a file named \My Documents\Album.mp3 exists, it is automatically played with your slide show.

Turning Audio On and Off

Select Album, Settings, Preferences from the menu. The Preferences dialog appears:

If the Play Sounds Automatically item has a check mark next to it, then sounds associated with each picture will play. (This doesn't affect the Soundtrack, however.)

Ending a Slide Show

To end the slide show, tap the screen to make the menu bar reappear, then tap the red square on the menu bar. (The red square appears only when a slide show is playing.)

Viewing Thumbnails

PicturePerfect lets you view "thumbnails", or miniature images, of all the pictures in your album. You can change the number of images shown (2x2, 3x3 or 4x4), and also display thumbnails in enlarged or normal views.

To View Thumbnails
Tap the Thumbnail icon on the bottom of the screen, or select Picture, View Thumbnails from the menu. The Thumbnail dialog appears:



Tap 2x2 on the bottom of the screen to show thumbnails in a 2 by 2 grid as shown here:

Tap Enlarge to change between Normal and Enlarged views. Enlarged view is the default -- this crops the picture, but gives you more detail. Normal view shows the entire picture. Here's how Normal view appears:

Tap any picture to view it and to exit Thumbnails view.

More About Thumbnails

Thumbnails may load slowly at first, depending upon the size of your images and the speed of your device. However, PicturePerfect saves thumbnail images as .thn files in the same folder where your pictures reside. When you view thumbnails a second time, they will appear much faster than before. You can disable this behavior by selecting Album, Settings, Preferences, then unchecking Save Thumbnails.

Customizing the Hardware Button

You can make the large hardware button (or side rocker button) on your device perform functions of your choice. The Up, Down, Left and Right options are customizable, and the Action (pressing the middle of the large button) and Exit (present on some Casio devices) buttons are customizable as well. (Note that some buttons may not be present on all devices. For example, the Jornada does not have Left and Right, and the iPAQ does not have an Exit button.)

To customize the hardware button:

1. Select Album, Settings, Button Assignments.
   The Button Assignments dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Choose the function for each button.
3. Tap OK when finished.

Importing PowerPoint Presentations

PicturePerfect is a handy way to keep PowerPoint presentations in your Pocket PC. It's easy to export your presentation to your device for viewing. Because PowerPoint can turn slides into JPEG files, it is easy to move them onto your device for handy viewing.

To turn your PowerPoint file into JPEG slides:

1. Open your PowerPoint presentation file on your desktop PC.
2. Select File, Save As.
3. For the type of file, choose JPEG.
4. Choose the directory where your JPEG files are to be saved.
5. Click OK.

To move slides to your Pocket PC:

1. Open ActiveSync.
2. Click Explore.
3. Create a new folder for your slides.
4. Move the JPEG files to the directory you just created.

To make your PowerPoint slides into an album on your Pocket PC:

1. Open PicturePerfect.
2. Select Album, New, From Folder from the menu.
3. Pick the folder where your PowerPoint files are located, then tap OK.
4. A new album is created in the folder you chose. The album is named Album.alb.
5. Tap OK.
6. Select Album, Manage, Sort Album, PowerPoint Slides.

Your presentation is now ready to view as a slide show. All slides are in the proper order.

Notes: You may need to experiment with different methods of scaling your slides for maximum readability. PocketPC.com has an excellent article by Jason Dunn on importing PowerPoint slides here.

Sorting and Reordering Pictures

It's easy to reorder pictures in a PicturePerfect album or slide show.

To sort pictures:

1. Select Album, Manage, Sort Album from the menu.
2. Choose one of the following options:

• By File Create Time -- this places the oldest image files first.
• By Caption Text -- this sorts by the text of the image caption.
• PowerPoint Slides -- use this to sort slides created by PowerPoint.

To change the order of pictures in your album:

1. Select Album, Manage, Sort Album, Manually from the menu.
   The Organize Pictures dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Highlight the name of a picture to move.
3. Tap Move Up or Move Down to change the location of the picture in the album.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for any other pictures you wish to move.
5. Tap OK.

Sharing Albums using Packages

PicturePerfect makes it easy to share albums with other PicturePerfect users by letting you build packages. A Package is a single file that contains everything in an album, including the album file, the image files, any text and sounds associated with each image, thumbnail files, as well as a soundtrack if the album has one.

Using PicturePerfect, you can build a package file from any album. When another person opens the package file using PicturePerfect, the album is created exactly as it was on the original device.

This is a great way to distribute specialized photo collections to other Pocket PC users. There are no royalties due to Applian Technologies when using packages.

To build a package:

1. Select Album, Manage, Make Package.
2. The package file is created, and the package file name is displayed.

To open a package:

1. Select Album, Manage, Open Package.
   The Open Package Dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Tap Browse for File to locate the package file, or enter the name of the package.
3. Select where you want the package to be opened -- either under \My Documents, or on the Storage Card (if present).
4. Tap OK.

The package is opened. The album and all associated files are extracted to a folder with the same name of the package, either on your Storage Card, or under \My Documents.

Finding Pictures

You can locate any picture by searching for the caption or keywords associated with that picture. The Find Picture function searches the current album to locate a picture.

To find a picture:

1. Select Picture, Find from the menu.
   The Find Picture dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Enter keywords to locate the picture, then tap Find.

The first picture that matches your search appears. The search looks for matching text in the caption or keywords for the picture.

To find another picture that matches your search request, select Picture, Find Again from the menu.

Opening and Closing Albums

PicturePerfect allows you to have an unlimited number of picture albums. It's easy to switch between them.

In addition, you can close an album if you like. This ensures that a blank screen will appear the next time you open PicturePerfect. You do not need to close an album before opening another -- this is strictly for your privacy.

To open a different album:

1. Select Album, Open from the menu.
2. Choose the picture album file you wish to view.

To close an Album:

1. Select Album, Close from the menu.
2. A blank album appears.

Using QuickLaunch to Open Images, Albums, and Slide Shows

PicturePerfect and QuickLaunch were designed to work together perfectly. QuickLaunch lets you open programs and files with a single tap, and QuickLaunch uses PicturePerfect to view image files, photo albums, and slide shows.

Once PicturePerfect is installed, you should set it up to become the default viewer application for BMP, GIF and JPG files. (See Making PicturePerfect the Default Image Viewer.)

Opening an Image or Album with QuickLaunch

1. Enter QuickLaunch.
2. Assign a button.
   This opens the Assign Button dialog.
3. Tap Browse to pick a file.
4. Next to "Type", select PicturePerfect Album to view albums, or JPEG file to view images.
   You can also select All to view all files.
5. Pick the image or album file you want to view.
6. Tap OK to close the Assign dialog.

To run a Slide Show from QuickLaunch:

1. Pick an album file using steps 1 to 5 above.
2. In the File/Command line field, insert "-s " before the name of the album file.
   For example, the File/Command Line field would look like "-s \My Documents\demo.alb" (without the quotes).
3. Tap OK.

If you want to launch a looping slide show, insert "-l " instead of "-s " in step 2 above.

Making PicturePerfect the Default Image Viewer

When you tap an image file using File Explorer, it can be displayed with PicturePerfect instead of the currently assigned image viewer.

To make PicturePerfect the default image viewer:

1. Select Album, Settings, Image File Viewer.
   The Image File Viewer dialog appears.
   
   
   
   
2. Select PicturePerfect.
3. Tap OK.

You can also use this option to reset the default image viewer.

Purchasing PicturePerfect

If you haven't yet purchased a registration code for PicturePerfect, you will be limited to a maximum of 5 pictures per album. Once you register, you can have up to 500 pictures per album.

To purchase a registration code:

1. Point your browser to www.applianmobile.com/register
2. Follow the ordering process for PicturePerfect.
3. You will receive a registration code once you place your order.
4. Select Album, Register from the PicturePerfect menu.
5. Enter your registration code in the space provided.

If you have questions, you can always email us at info@applian.com, or click the Support tab on our Web site at www.applian.com.