You can download
the ThumbsPlus v4 manual in PDF
format.This is the same manual that we ship with the software.
Note: You
must have Adobe
Acrobat Reader to open and read
the manual. You can also purchase a printed manual for $5.00
plus S&H by calling 877/CERIOUS (877/237-4687) or faxing
your request to 704/529-0497.
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You can show a slide show on your TV as long
as you have a graphics card with "TV out" capabilities built
into it. Check the manual for your card or eyeball the front
of your card. You are looking for a few BNC type connectors.
If they are there, then you are in luck and all you need is
the software to drive it. These graphics cards are generally
a specialized item, so you would probably know if you have
one or not. If you don't have one, you can pick them up relatively
cheap and most have other cool video features included. Just
tell the salesman you want a reasonable quality, medium priced
"TV Out" capable Graphics/Video card. If your card has the
necessary connectors, then it's likely you will also have
the software you need to tell it to display to your TV or
Video Recorder.
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You can name either an MP3 or a WAV file with
a corresponding name as the associated image file, and the
sound file will play while the image is on the screen. You
can also name a MIDI file slide.mid and place it in the directory
on which you want to run a slide show. The MIDI file will
play throughout the slide show.
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Go to Options
| Viewing | Window and select Reduce
to Window under the
Initial Stretching
heading. For slide shows, go to Options
| Viewing | Slide Show and
select Reduce Bitmaps to Screen.
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You can convert a file individually by opening
the file and going to File |
Save As. ThumbsPlus will write
to any of nine formats including BMP, ICO, PCX, GIF, PNG,
TIF, JPG, TGA and WMF. You can also convert your files in
a batch process. To batch convert your files, select all the
files in the folder you want to convert. You can select all
the files at once by hitting CTRL-A or select files manually
by holding down the CTRL key and clicking once on each file
you want to convert. Once you have selected the files, go
to Image | Batch Process.
You can perform many functions such as rotate,
resize, color adjust, crop, add background, flip horizontally/vertically,
adjust the resolution, add comments and many others as well.
On the last page of the wizard, you can choose your output
format and destination directory.
In v4.10, we added a new feature, Quick Process.
To use this feature right click over a highlighted thumbnail(s)
and go to Quick Process | Convert
to on the fly-out menu. You
can convert file(s) to any of the nine formats T+ will write
using this feature.
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You can resize a file individually by opening
the file and going to Image
| Roate/Resize. To batch resize
your files, select all the files in the folder you want to
resize. You can select all the files at once by hitting CTRL-A
or select files manually by holding down the CTRL key and
clicking once on each file you want to convert. Once you have
selected the files, go to Image
| Batch Process. On the third
page of the wizard, Batch Steps, go to Add
| Transform | Rotate/Resize. 
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The Print Catalog
feature, located in the Image
menu of the main interface, allows you to print one or many
files to each page. In the print catalog, you can set the
thumbnail sizes, margin sizes and what to include with each
file, i.e. filename, file size, file time, dimensions, keywords,
annotations, and/or resolution. As you make changes to these
settings, the preview will change to show how many files it
is able to print on each page.
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The print catalog feature is designed for
printing only. You can save the catalog to a PRN file and
later use MS-DOS to print the file. We offer another feature,
Contact Sheets located
on the Image menu of the main interface, that is designed
to create digital representations of your files in the same
style as the print catalog. The settings are basically the
same. The major difference is that you save the contact sheet
as a file, which can be thumbnailed, opened, e-mailed and
printed if necessary although we do not recommend this.
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A new feature has been added in T+ v4.50.
This feature will print to any number of preset sizes (i.e.
3.5 x 5, 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8 x 10, 16 x 20 and a few more!) You
can also fit the image to stretch in the set print size while
constraining it to the original width-height aspect ratio,
expand and crop the printed image or completely fill the set
print size while ignoring the original width-height aspect
ratio. The print feature is available through the File
| Print menu.
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You can not sort the files manually within
the folder itself, but you can create galleries and manually
sort the files within the gallery. A ThumbsPlus gallery is
a logical container for a group of thumbnails stored in the
database. All information about a gallery is stored internally
in the database as well. Galleries may reference files across
multiple directories, hard disks, and even networked computers.
You can create a gallery by right-clicking on a group of selected
thumbnails in the thumbnail view and selecting Create
Gallery from the displayed popup menu. You
can also create a gallery by simply dragging the selected
thumbnails to the Galleries folder group icon in the folder
tree. In the Name field, enter the gallery name. This name
will be displayed underneath the Galleries folder group at
the bottom of the directory structure in ThumbsPlus. Select
the sort order (in the Order by combo box) and descending
checkbox if you wish to modify the default sort order when
this gallery is selected for viewing. Gallery thumbnails may
be reordered into any sequence desired by dragging them around
in the thumbnail view, right-clicking on the gallery in the
folder tree and selecting Save Gallery
Order. Galleries will ONLY display using a
reordered sequence when Manual Order
is checked. You may change these gallery properties at any
time by right-clicking on the gallery in the folder tree and
selecting Properties
from the popup menu.
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The Image Stamp feature, located on the Image
menu of the view window, allows you to apply either another
image or text to the current image.
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The thumbnails you see in the thumbnail list
are not actual files. They are only previews of the files.
There are 2 different ways to accomplish your goals in trying
to make thumbnail size files.
1-Edit | Select All
and then Image | Batch Process.
On the 3rd page of the batch wizard, go to Add
| Transform | Rotate/Resize. The default thumbnail
size is 96x72.
2-If you are creating thumbnails for web pages, go to Image
| Web Page Wizard. This option creates pages
of thumbnails with links to the actual image along with the
web page itself.
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To add an external program icon to the ThumbsPlus
toolbar, go to Options | Customize
| Toolbar | External Program.
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You can use the Find By Query, Edit
| Find by Query, to search for thumbnailed
pictures based on file name masks, keywords, user fields,
advanced SQL, and optionally image similarity. This produces
a list of thumbnails for files that match the query criteria
you enter. You may also restrict the search to the current
directory or the current tree if desired.
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You can use the Advanced tab in Find by Query
to search for files that have not been keyworded or files
without certain keywords.
- To find all thumbnails without a single
keyword: not exists (select idThumb from (keyword inner
join thumbnailkeyword on keyword.idKeyword = thumbnailkeyword.idKeyword)
where keyword.keyword = 'keyword' and thumbnailkeyword.idThumb
= TN.idThumb) (replace 'keyword' with the one desired.)
- To find all thumbnails without any of several
keywords: not exists (select idThumb from (keyword inner
join thumbnailkeyword on keyword.idKeyword = thumbnailkeyword.idKeyword)
where keyword.keyword in('kwd1', 'kwd2', 'kwd3') and thumbnailkeyword.idThumb
= TN.idThumb)
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1. Query up the files that have the keyword.
2. Select those from which you want to delete the keyword.
3. Use Edit | Invert Selection
to select all the ones where you want to keep it.
4. Assign a new keyword with some arbitrary value to those
files.
5. Use File | Database | Edit Keywords
to delete the first keyword from all files.
6. Use File | Database | Edit Keywords
to change the new keyword to be the same as the one you just
deleted.
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The Image Similarity
feature, located on the Edit | Find
by Query menu of the main interface, will
find duplicate and similar images regardless of the file name.
This feature finds similar images in relation to a file you
have selected. Any images to be found must have already been
thumbnailed in ThumbsPlus.
The Find Similar Images
feature, located on the Edit
menu of the main interface, will locate images that are similar/duplicate
based on the thumbnail metrics created by ThumbsPlus. This
does not work in relation to a selected image but rather compares
all of the thumbnail images in the current folder, current
tree or entire database.
(No, sorry, we will not tell you how this works!)
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You can search the thumbnail annotations by
selecting Edit | Find By Query
from the main ThumbsPlus interface. On the File tab, enter
an optional file mask and select either Current Folder, Current
Tree (checks sub-folders as well) or Entire Database. Next
click on the Advanced
tab. On the drop down menu for the Field section, select tn.annotation
and then one of the operators = or like. After selecting the
operator, this text string (without quotes) will appear in
the edit box: "tn.annotation like "
Next, simply click on the edit box and complete the text phrase
by entering your criteria. Delimit your search text with right
single quotes apostrophes '). Also the * (asterisk) can be
used as a multi-character wild card. Once you are finished
entering your search text, click [Ok] and the search will
begin. Once completed, you should have a new entry called
"Found Files" under the "Found Files" folder tree group. Clicking
on this entry will show you the results of this "Find By Query".
Annotation Search Text Examples:
tn.annotation like '*vacation*' (finds all thumbnails with
annotations containing the string "vacation")
tn.annotation like 'Cerious *' (finds all thumbnails with
annotations that start with the string "Cerious ")
tn.annotation = 'computer graphics' (finds all thumbnails
with annotations that are exactly "computer graphics")
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The modified and the creation date will both
change if the file itself is changed and saved. If the file
is copied, it will only change the created date, leaving the
modified date intact. If the file is moved, neither date changes.
These are Windows functions. Most people tend to ignore the
created date altogether and just use the modified and accessed
dates for reference. The date shown in the T+ thumbnail list
is the modified date, and there is no way to change this.
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The easiest way to move the database, the
thumbs.td4 file, is to make sure you have the exact same directory
structure with the exact volume labels, so the thumbnails
and keywords will match up with the files. If this is not
possible, you can open the database on the new system, and
you will see grey drives and grey folders. If the directory
structure is the same, you can drag the grey drive to the
new drive. If the directory structure has changed you will
need to drag the folders individually as long as the contents
of the folders has not changed...even if the folder name has.
If you are not concerned with the TP database, it's easiest
just to install ThumbsPlus on the new computer.
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We do offer a lossless JPEG rotation. This
feature is available on the right click menu from the thumbnail
view. Select the thumbnail(s) of the files you want to rotate,
right click and go to Quick Process
on the pop-up menu. You can rotate the image(s) 90º clockwise,
90º counter-clockwise or 180º. Using this feature
will not recompress the image thus saving quality usually
lost when making any changes to JPEG files.
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You can search for files by date by going
to Edit | Find By Query | Advanced.
To search for files by a specific date, use
the syntax shown in this screen shot.
To search for files between specific dates,
use the syntax shown in this screen shot.
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You'll have to create a certain set of user
defined database fields with specific names. When ThumbsPlus
creates its database information of a file containing EXIF
data and the database contains these specific fields, the
EXIF information is copied to the user fields and thus accessable
whether or not the real image file is present. The fields
themselves should be text fields (at least 40 characters long,
each) and be named:
