Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

Tag: FotoWare

  • Two options on how to work with images in FotoWeb Desktop plugin for Adobe CS

    You can either check them out, or download a local copy. Here’s how:
      (more…)

  • How to: Use synonym lists to modify search results

    By modifying the thesaur.xml-file, Index Manager will return hits containing synonyms to the specified search words.
     
    Say, for example, that you want to search for fast food, and want your search results to also find more specific kinds of fast food, such as pizza, hamburgers and french fries. Included with every installation of Index Manager is a file called Sample-THESAUR.XML, which can be modified to achieve this. To make your own synonym list, and enable them for search, follow these steps:
      (more…)

  • FotoWare Connect supports upload to and download from FotoWeb Archive Agent

    One of the many options when setting up a server in Connect, is to set it up to use FotoWeb Archive Agent. To set it up, simply create a new server, and select FotoWeb Archive Agent when selecting which protocol to use.
     

     
    When setting up the server, you have options to select which archive the image should or come from. This can be used in many ways, for example to clean up an upload area at set intervals.
     
    Keep in mind that the connection to FotoWeb does not allow deletion of files in the FotoWeb archive. Instead, Connect has some internal logic to avoid processing the same files over and over again, based on modification date.
     
    Caveat lector: I used to work with support at FotoWare. This blog is my own space, I am not paid to write it. I write about FotoWare and FotoWare products because I believe in them.

  • FotoWare Color Factory checks whether a share is offline

    In Service Release 4 of Color Factory 7, FotoWare introduced a new feature, enabling it to check whether a network share is offline. When it finds that the share is offline, the channel is temporarily stopped, allowing other channels on the server to keep running.
     
    When a share is found to be offline, this will be logged and displayed on the Operations Center status page.
     
    For some shares on non-Windows systems, this check may appear to fail even though the share is online. From Color Factory 7.0.511 and later builds, this function may be turned off on a channel by channel basis, on the error handling tab of the channel:
     

     
    Caveat lector: I used to work with support at FotoWare. This blog is my own space, I am not paid to write it. I write about FotoWare and FotoWare products because I believe in them.

  • The FotoWeb Demo site

    FotoWare maintains a FotoWeb demo site at fotoweb.fotoware.com, which is publicly accessible. You can use this site to test the features in FotoWeb as well as the Desktop application, Office plugin, Adobe extension and the iPhone app.
     
    Caveat lector: I used to work with support at FotoWare. This blog is my own space, I am not paid to write it. I write about FotoWare and FotoWare products because I believe in them.

  • FotoWare Operations Center goes “SilverLighter”

    Another of the changes brought about in FotoWare 7, SR 4, is a decreasing dependency on SilverLight in Operations Center. By running less of it in SilverLight, access to OPC is a lot quicker.
     
    When you load OPC, it will load the front page first, then load the subsequent pages. If you switch from the settings pane to the log pane of a service, this is stored if you switch to a different service, then go back.
     
    Additionally, as OPC loads all of the OPC pages, they will remain loaded as long as you have OPC open. This makes for not only quicker loading of OPC, but also for quicker work and switching between services.
     
    Caveat lector: I used to work with support at FotoWare. This blog is my own space, I am not paid to write it. I write about FotoWare and FotoWare products because I believe in them.

  • FotoWare Operations Center says “bye-bye” to IIS

    One of the really nice new features in FotoWare’s fourth service release of version 7, is that the Operations Center is now run as its own service, shedding the need for IIS on the server running the FotoWare suite.
     
    This has a few practical upshots: (more…)

  • FotoWeb Desktop for iPhone

    It has been an exciting few months, seeing the development of FotoWare’s app for iPhone. Launched at the Tech Days at Palma de Mallorca, it received many excited murmurs.
     
    The app does a few things that have been asked for. First off, you an search in your FotoWeb archives, and create alerts for these searches, enabling you to quickly see when new images come into the system. In addition, it contains a star rating system, allowing you to rate photos on the go.
     
    However, easily the most exciting feature is the upload feature. You can upload images straight from your iPhone (or iPad) to the archives, editing metadata before upload. The app is straightforward and intuitive to use, and, best of all, it just works!
     
    The app stores the searches so that they are available from the search box, and searches can be updated by pulling down and releasing the search window. In viewing mode you have sideways scrolling between photos. When you reach the end of an archive (or the hits within one that match your search), you can move to the next archive, simply by continuing to scroll sideways.
     
    The iPhone app will be available for free from the app store as soon as it has gone through the approval process, and is supported by FotoWeb 7 SR4. If you’re interested in seeing how it works, ask me, and I will give you a quick demo!
     
    Note: the screenshots in this post are from the beta version of the app, the app will look somewhat different when uploaded to the AppStore. The Album and Pinned options on the front page have not yet been implemented.
     
    Caveat lector: I used to work with support at FotoWare. This blog is my own space, I am not paid to write it. I write about FotoWare and FotoWare products because I believe in them..

  • FotoWeb: Notify administrator when a user registers to the site

    One of the products I support at FotoWare is FotoWeb. I will post articles with tips and tricks in the various FotoWare applications, in addition to my usual subjects.
     
    In order to enable automatic notifications being sent to a site administrator when a new user registers on the site, follow these steps: (more…)

  • FotoStation Actions: Send to Flickr

    Last week, I detailed how I built a custom Metadata editor that shows me only the fields I can use for Flickr. However, that’s not the only thing I’ll be using FotoStation for.
     
    While FotoStation is not able to talk directly to Flickr’s API, it is able to call on other applications, and so, by installing the Flickr Uploadr and creating a simple action that sends the images to Flickr Uploadr, we have a semi-automated upload process.
     
    We could make this a simple Launch application action, which just launches Flickr Uploadr and loads the images there, or we could create one or more checks of fields, such as Keywords (Tags), Object Names (Title) or Caption (Description). We can even allow or bypassing required fields, depending on how rigid we want to be.
     

     
    The above screen capture shows three actions, two that looks alike (Check required text fields), and a simple Launch Application action. The Check required text fields actions check different fields (the first one just checks Keywords, while the second checks both Object Name and Caption), and only the second one has the option “Allow to bypass when a required text field is missing” enabled.
     
    The order of operations matter here, anything I want FotoStation to do, needs to be listed before the Launch Application action. Likewise, any modifications to the file, such as cropping, resizing, Sharpening and Watermarking should be followed by a File Format or Save File action before the Launch Application action. If not, the changes will not be saved.
     
    The reason why we don’t need to do that for the Check required text fields action, is that, when triggered, it opens the metadata editor, where you can make and save the changes before the image is sent to the Launch Application action.
     
    Caveat lector: I used to work with support at FotoWare. This blog is my own space, I am not paid to write it. I write about FotoWare and FotoWare products because I believe in them.

  • 2010 roundup

    Almost past us, I think it is time to take a look back and take stock of 2010, and see what the year brought.

    (more…)