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If you have suggestions, feature requests or bug reports, don't hesitate to post them.
You can look for the latest version of PhotoProbe on the PhotoProbe
site.
If you're a fan of digital photography, you'll often take multiple
shots of the same subject with slightly different settings to be able
to later choose the best picture. You can find it by browsing through
all the photos. But when you find it, what were the settings you used
after all? Did they improve as the exposure time grew longer? Or was
the ISO speed the most important factor? To better get an idea of how
the different camera settings influenced your images, the easiest way
would be to have them laid down side by side, sorted according to
those settings. Then, a quick visual scan might suffice to tell you
what influence a particular setting had (all the more so if you are
still learning). PhotoProbe is an application that allows you to do
just that: compare different photos with different settings in an
immediate, straightforward way.
Well... nothing! This is an Open-Source project released under the
GNU General Public
License. There is something you can do to 'pay me', though: if you
like PhotoProbe,
post a message to let me know. Everyone likes to see their work appreciated by others...
You can find the distribution of PhotoProbe in two different
versions: an 'easy to install' windows version, and a generic version
for other systems and more 'computer-savvy' users.
Windows users just need to download
the appropriate zip file and unpack it to some directory in their
hard drive. Users of other systems should download
the source code, unpack it, and follow the instructions on running the cross-platform version of
PhotoProbe below.
Just run the 'PhotoProbe.exe' program in the directory you
unpacked the zip file. PhotoProbe works a bit differently from
ordinary applications. Its user interface can be accessed through a
web browser, by pointing it to http://127.0.0.1:7000. If you get an
error message, PhotoProbe hasn't started properly (don't forget to
run 'PhotoProbe.exe'). Otherwise, you'll be looking at the
PhotoProbe user interface! (NOTE: This address can
vary if you choose a different port for the PhotoProbe server on
the Configuration Pane)
PhotoProbe was developed using the Python programming language. To run
it using the generic version, you need to download and install the
Python interpreter. You also need the Python Imaging
Library to run PhotoProbe.
When Python and PIL are up and running, you must run the
'PhotoProbe.py' script. This will get the server started. Then,
pointing your browser to http://127.0.0.1:7000 should give you
access to the PhotoProbe UI.
Instead of using the HTTP server provided with the PhotoProbe
distribution, you should be able to run it using another HTTP server
(such as Apache and the like). Just place either the 'pmmain.exe' or
the 'pmmain.py' files and the 'pmconf.txt' configuration file
somewhere on your site and access them with your browser. When using
the source code file you might need to edit the first line to inform
the server where the Python interpreter is (and, of course, the server
must be properly configured to accept Python CGI scripts). The serevr
must also have write permissions on the directory where you placed
'pmmaim.py' or 'pmmain.exe'.
In the Explorer Pane, you can choose a photo EXIF
attribute for each axis (horizontal and vertical). When you press the
'Go!' button, the table with all the photos will be redrawn to reflect
your choices. In each table cell you can find a checkbox. If you press
the 'Filter!' button, you'll start exploring only the photos on the
cells where the checkbox was checked. A '(...)' link appears in the
cells where there more images belong than those allowed max. number of
images per cell setting (see below). Press it to see all relevant
images. You can then press the 'Back...' links to continue exploring
your photos.
The Photos Pane allows you can select what files
you want to explore. Enter a directory path and press 'Scan Dir!' to
see all photos located there. You can further filter them by
unchecking the respective checkboxes and pressing 'Update!'.
All images and image names are clickable, leading to a page where
the full-sized image is displayed, along with its histogram and a
list of all the EXIF information found in it
Finally, in the Configuration Pane you can change
the various settings of the program. You can choose the size of
the thumbnails, in pixels, and the size of the full-sized images.
Also configurable is the maximum number of thumbs per cell in the
explorer pane. These settings might help you prevent the clutter that
sometimes arises when dealing with large numbers of photos. You can
also choose what port the PhotoProbe server should be serving to
(if you're unsure of what this means, leave this setting
alone). Also, you can select the brand or model of the digital
camera with which the photos you're exploring were shot. This will
allow PhotoProbe to extract maker-dependant information from the
photos and enhance the ways in which you can compare them. Finally, there are
several skins you can choose to change the appearance of PhotoProbe.
Just below the main configuration area, you can also see the current
thumbnail cache size. If you feel it is getting too large, just presse
the 'Clean Cache!' button. Any thumbs that are needed will
automatically be regenerated. If you can afford the space, and often
probe the same sets of photos, then don't clean it, as generating the
thumbnails can be a time-consuming process.
To exit, use the
'Shutdown PhotoProbe' link on the top-right of
every page.
There are certainly some bugs to be ironed out in future versions
of PhotoProbe. Sometimes, when following a link, you'll get an error
message on your browser, or the page will appear but will look
strange. This seems to be casued by the way the Python HTTP server
class works and hopefully will be solved in future versions of the
language. Just press the 'Back' button and try again, or try reloading
a page. It whould end up working. If you want to save yourself all
this hassle, you can user another HTTP server
to run PhotoProbe.
Some upcoming features:
- Add templates to extract information from photos taken by other cameras.
- Make starting the program more user-friendly (a shortcut? batch file? another script?)
- Preventing multiple instances of the server
- Much, much more...
- v0.6.1 - 11/8/2003
- Solved bug: last cell ignored while filtering out photos on the 'Explore' pane.
- New skins: Fire and Ice.
- v0.6 - 7/8/2003
- New skin: Halloween
- Now stores all thumbs in the same directory, to allow the exploring of photos on non-writable media (CDs, etc.) and to prevent the proliferation of '.pp_thumbs' directories everywhere. Furthermore, now the thumbs expire if the original photo was changed.
- The skins are now read from a special-purpose dir.
- v0.5.1 - 30/7/2003
- Solved bug related to running PhotoProbe from directories with spaces in the name.
- v0.5 - 30/7/2003
- New skins: Sunny Day, Line Art, Underwater
- Skins are no longer hard-coded, but listed in the 'skins.txt' file instead.
- In fullsize view, you can now see the image's histogram.
- Now correcly encodes urls for file names with special chars.
- New directory browser can be used to select location of photos instead of filling it by hand
- v0.4 - 25/7/2003
- PhotoMatrix is now Called PhotoProbe (there already was a 'PhotoMatrix' at Sourceforge
- The project is now located at Sourceforge
- New parameter to control the width of the original photos when displaying them
- Added support for older Nikon photos (not all work though. Nikon 4300 produces weird results)
- Now displays EXIF data on the fullsize views and on the pics. tooltips.
- Now displays a small thumb near the name of a file in the 'Files' Pane.
- Shutdown now displays a friendlier goodbye message
- New skin: Strawberry
- v0.3.1 - 24/07/2003
- Solved minor bugs relating to table formatting in the 'Photos' pane
- Now you can click on thumbnails and photo names to get the full version.
- v0.3 - 24/07/2003
- First public release
PhotoProbe is ©2003 Daniel Gonçalves and is distributed
under the GNU
General Public License. Got suggestions? Bug reports?
Keep them coming!
PhotoProbe uses Gene Cash's 'exif.py'
Python module to extract information from the photos (Copyright
2002 Gene Cash All rights reserved).
The Windows version is compiled with the help of
Python Win32 Extensions
and McMillan Enterprises' Python Installer.
Disclaimer
PhotoProbe is a digital photo comparison and analysis program
Copyright (C) 2003 Daniel Gonçalves
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
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