The upper left side of the window is used to navigate through the pc's directory structure, including a local network. The lower left side shows a list of “albums” that the user can create. The right side shows the images in the selected directory or album. Splitter bars enable the three subviews to be resized. The currently selected directory name (its full path) or album name appears in the window's caption bar at top. Notice that two thumbnails are highlighted above – this is because they’ve been selected. Information about the selected picture appears in the window's status bar, at the bottom, and includes the picture name, its size (width and height), and last modified (or created) date and time.
Double-clicking on a thumbnail takes you to that image in the Slides viewer. More than one image can be selected at a time by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking another image. Dragging and dropping selected thumbnails over the "Layout" or “Collage” tab adds them to that view. Selected image files can be moved to another directory by dragging and dropping them over a directory in the upper left view. Holding down the Shift key while dropping will copy the files. Similarly, selected images can be added to an album by dragging and dropping them over the album name in the lower left view. To create a new album, right-click on the albums list and choose “Add new album…”
Several options control the appearance of the thumbnails. These are available under menu "Thumbnails" and include:
An album represents a collection of image files. Use the albums list’s context menu to access commands to create a new album, or delete or rename an existing album. Files may be added to an album by selecting thumbnails and either dragging them over the album name or clicking on menu item Thumbnails/Add selections to Album. An album is a virtual folder – files are not actually copied anywhere.
Several options are available, under the "Slides" menu or through the image's context menu. Use PageDown and PageUp to cycle through the images in the current directory. You can easily add the picture you are looking at to an album, or to the Layout or Collage views by choosing the appropriate menu item under “Slide”. Choose "Show timed sequence" to start a slide show that automatically cycles through all the pictures – press ‘Esc’ to stop the slide show.
You can zoom in and out of the image (use “I” and “O”). You can also move (pan) around the image by clicking and dragging the mouse (or using L, R, U, D – for left, right, up, down). For example, here's the same picture zoomed in quite a bit and panned to show the lower right portion. You can quickly return to the fullscreen view by choosing "Scale Best Fit" or "Scale Fit to Window".
Regarding scale modes, there are three settings available:
Since the image is small, it is not resized in the first view (scale best fit) whereas it is resized to fit the view in the second (scale to fit window). In the third view (scale to fit over window), the image is sized so that the width fits the view but now the height is larger than the view so it is cropped. (The picture is of an outdoor pool and grounds at Hearst Castle in California.)
In general, either of the first two scale modes are recommended for the Slides viewer. ‘Scale to Fit Over Window’ is more helpful in the layout and collage viewers where pictures will typically be resized and cropped.
The Layout view is intended to make it easy to print photos. Here is one example scenario. You want to print a number of photos and most of them are digital images. Use the settings in the third picture above. Go to the thumbnails viewer and find the pictures you want. Drag and drop them over the “Layout” tab. Choose the “Layout” tab to see the pictures laid out on the page. You may want to zoom in and pan one or more pictures. Then choose menu item Layout/Print. Cut the page in half and each half-page in half and you have 4 quarter-page prints.
Some interesting effects can be achieved in layout view, using rotation, zooming and panning, to print pictures without having to use an external editing program. For example, here’s a page with 4 pictures ready for printing:
The first picture is of two birds (Parson’s Finches). Note the picture is automatically rotated. The second picture is the same as the first, except it’s been rotated, scaled to fit over, and panned a little to one side. The third picture is of a rose. The fourth picture is the same as the third but it’s been zoomed in and then panned so that it’s centered.
The following options and commands are available via the main menu (under ‘Collage’) and the Collage viewer’s context menu:
The easiest way to add pictures to a collage is, like the Layout view, to select the views in the Thumbnails viewer and then either drag and drop them over the ‘Collage’ tab, or use Menu item Collage/Add selections to Collage. Initially, with AutoResize and AutoPosition on, as you add images, they will be automatically resized and positioned to fit on the page. At this point, there will likely be additionally sizing and other adjustments to make. The following examples illustrate some possible approaches and techniques.
A simple collage: In this example, images do not overlap and there is a gap between them. However, the intent is to fill the paper (except for the spacing between images) in an interesting way. This particular example memorializes the night a huge tree branch fell on my wife’s car (fortunately she wasn’t in it). The first step is to choose a number of pictures in the thumbnails viewer, drag them over the ‘Collage’ tab and drop them. The Collage view looks like this:
The next step is to reorder the pictures. This is done via drag-and-drop. Drag a picture and drop it on the picture you want it to follow. After some rearranging, the Collage view looks like this:
Notice that the images have been resized to fill the page. The final step is to resize those images that have whitespace near them – i.e., the third and fourth images can be taller, and the last two images can be larger. Select the third and fourth picture and press “T” (for taller) till they are the same height as the images next to them – remember to press the Ctrl key down to make smaller size adjustments. If you make them too tall, press “S” or “Ctrl-S” to make them shorter. Then select the last two pictures and press “T” to make them taller, till they reach the bottom of the page, then press “W” to make them wider so they fill the width of the page. With AutoPosition on, if you make them too wide, the last picture will spill off the page, in which case just press “Ctrl-N” to make them a little narrower. The Collage view now looks like this:
A complex collage: This example follows the same steps as above, and then some. The intent is to present a more traditional collage, where images are of varying sizes and overlap each other. Gap is set to 0 and images are arranged similar to the above example. After that, it is mostly a matter of the user’s “designing eye” in determining what pictures to size, move, pan, and overlap. The final collage is shown below. (Pictures are of Coit Tower and views of San Francisco, including the East Bay Bridge, Treasure Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Angel Island, tall and other sailing ships, and a pretty native girl.)
The other support provided is to rename digital photos. These are photos whose filenames begin with “DscnXXX.jpg” where XXX is a number. Nickel Viewer will rename all the files with names like this to just the number portion. The command “Sequence digital originals” is available through the context menu of the Directory window on the Thumbnails viewer.
For Slides: I Zoom In O Zoom Out For Layout, in addition to the above, the following apply to selected images: L Pan Left R Pan Right U Pan Up D Pan Down For Collage, in addition to the above, the following apply to selected images: + Size Larger - Size Smaller W Size Wider N Size Narrower T Size Taller S Size Shorter Arrow keys (left, right, up, down) - Move (left, right, up, down) Home - Place image in front of all others End - Place image behind all othersNote that “Zoom” means to change the size of the image within its containing rectangle, “Pan” means to move the image within its containing rectangle, “Size” means to change the size of the containing rectangle, and “Move” means to change the position of the containing rectangle. In all cases, pressing the Ctrl key while pressing one of the above keys will have 1/10 the intended effect.
Layout and Collage views have multiple context menus. Right-click on an image for a context menu specific to that image. Right-click on the area outside the page area for a context menu specific to the viewer. The thumbnails portion of the Thumbnails viewer has no context menu, but the views on the left side (folders and albums) do have context menus.
If you can figure out how drag and drag-and-drop works across all viewers, you’re good. For us mere mortals, here are some pointers: In thumbnails view, dropping selections over a directory will copy or move the file(s). Dropping selected thumbnails over another thumbnail changes the order of the thumbnails – this is useful when you want to change the order of pictures in an album. As mentioned previously, dropping selections over the layout or collage tab loads the selections into those views. In slides and layout view, dragging a picture just moves the picture within that view. In collage view, dragging an image (or selected images) and dropping them over another image changes the order of the images if AutoPosition is On. If AutoPosition is off, there’s no effect.
Have fun! If you have questions, comments, suggestions, corrections, etc., please let me know.