Windows XP -- digital camera/photo features

Michael said:

Gail,

I purchased Photoshop Elements a week ago and had to re-install the
product and did not have to re-register. I have not read anything
in their doc that indicated that I needed to re-register the
product. Unless you are talking about having to enter the serial
number each time you install???

Click to expand...

According to two Adobe customer support reps I spoke with, one must obtain an unlocking code every time you reinstall the product in order to "relicense" it. Maybe this only deals with the trial version but I got the impression this was the case even if you purchased Photoshop Elements on a CD. I may, of course, have misunderstood.

http://www.adobe.com/special/store/tryouts/faq.html

Gail

Rick,

In my case, it's a Dell Inspiron 3700, using the ATI Rage Mobility M1 chip with 8mb of video memory.

Thanks for your help and for passing along the info.

Ali

Rick Turner said:

I don't have any idea about this, but I'll see if I can get an
answer for you.

Ali Zaidi said:

Rick,

Not entirely certain if this falls under the specific area that you
want feedback on, but I'll give it a shot anyway. It kinda falls
under video/imaging options, and I've seen other postings ask
questions related to driving external video... anyways, here goes.

I operate from a notebook, that obviously has a built in screen,
but additionally also has a separate vga out to a monitor.

Under Win98 SE, I was able to use the 8mb of video memory that my
laptop has to drive both the lcd as well as the vga out as
independent displays. If I understand correctly, the OS split the
video memory from the one built-in video card into two separate
banks of 4mb each to drive each display independently.

Ever since I upgraded to Win2K Pro, I have lost this capability. I
remember reading a Microsoft bulletin that specifically addressed
this and said that it had something to do with the way video was
addressed/handled under Win2K Pro.

My question is, will I get my two independent displays ability back
under XP? Will it let me drive two independent displays from one
video card again, as I used to under Win98 SE? This one feature
would help greatly in editing photos... being able to arrange tools
in one display while working on the image itself on the other
display.

Thanks,
Ali

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

gabriel white said:

Surely windows is grown up enough now to have icons displaying an
image ALL the time (as the mac has done since year dot). The
thumbnail view is good, though sometimes crashes or locks up on w2k
on my machine. IT can be a bit slow. I dont know if the thumbnail
view saves a cache for each directory but it should do. It need to
be faster really.

Click to expand...

The thumbnails are cached on Windows XP and is displayed fast after the initial view. I've never seen/heard displaying thumbnails in a folder crashing/locking up Windows 2000. What type of images are those?

angelman said:

Better than that though, image icons should have an option (maybe
on a per/directory basis) to ALWAYS display a small thumbnail of
the image as its icon (so then its viewable in all modes such as
details, just as the mac does). This would be in addition to the
thumbnail view which is different as it displays a larger view.
Would be cool to have thumbnail views of movies too (maybe
activated when the cursor passes over them...??)

Click to expand...

Thumbnail view is flexible system/folder wise.

When you open a folder and choose the thumbnail view, that is remembered and will always show the files in thumbnail (or whatever mode chosen) view from then on, until changed the next time. You may do that for individual folders of choice.

You may also bring up the folder window's Tools-> Folder Options... dialog box, switch to the View tab, and select Like Current Folder. This will make all folders on your system display the files in the same manner as the current folder (including display thumbnail view).

--svb

Reto Bolliger said:

The Pic-View in Explorer should support all common file types, not
just jpg (e.g. tif, gif, PhotoShop, CorelPhotoPaint, Kodak
PhotoCD(pcd), bmp, fpx, tga etc.)

Click to expand...

On your list of examples (and off the top of my head): GIF, TIF, BMP are also displayable. There are many more formats, other than JPG, that are already supported.

--svb

It would be nice to have the option to imbed the picture creation date into the photo print. The date would be most useful if it were right in the print, not in the border, where it would get cut off when the print is trimmed.
Thanks.

Rick Turner said:

I've been lurking around this wonderful site for a while. Thanks
for all the great content & information. I am the proud owner of a
Canon D30.

In any case, the reason I am posting today is the recently posted
review of Windows XP's digital camera/photo features. I am the UI
development lead for just about all the features mentioned in the
review, and personally wrote the Photo Printing Wizard. I wanted to
give something back to this site, and also get people's feedback on
our stuff (if people are willing).

A couple of ground rules:

(1) I can't be global technical support for Microsoft products, but
I'll help when/where I can.

(2) I'll eagerly accept any feedback, either positive or negative,
as long as it's polite.

(3) I can't always comment on future plans, but when/where I can, I
will.

So any comments or questions? Fire away!

Thanks.

-Rick

P.S. I also posted this info in the "News" forum but am trying to
move the discussion here as it seems to be the more obvious place
for it.

Click to expand...

Son VoBa said:

Thumbnail view is flexible system/folder wise.

When you open a folder and choose the thumbnail view, that is
remembered and will always show the files in thumbnail (or whatever
mode chosen) view from then on, until changed the next time. You
may do that for individual folders of choice.

You may also bring up the folder window's Tools-> Folder Options...
dialog box, switch to the View tab, and select Like Current Folder.
This will make all folders on your system display the files in the
same manner as the current folder (including display thumbnail
view).

Click to expand...

In Windows ME, you can also right-click in an open folder, click on "customize this folder" and use the wizard to access the Image Preview template. It adds a very basic viewer and the ability to preview all the photos in the folder as a slideshow.

gail

FYI on the media player/mp3 issue: I think the deal is that the new media player 8 with Win XP won't encode mp3s at greater than a 64K bitrate. I believe it will still play those recorded at any rate and other encoders will still work under XP, doubtless with the occasional compatibility problems associated with a new Microsoft O/S.

The reason they won't go any higher than 64k is partially because that is the cutoff point where, if they use any higher quality, they have to pay licensing fees to Fraunhofer (sp.?) Institute in Germany who owns the patent/copyright/whatever on the MP3 format. Basically, players can use the mp3 format for free, while encoders have to pay a small fee if they support higher quality than 64K, and Microsoft would naturally want to avoid that fee and steer people towards their own proprietary format.

I doubt Microsoft Win XP and their proprietary compressed audio format will do much to blunt the popularity of MP3s. I plan to cheerfully ignore them and continue using MusicMatch Jukebox and Winamp! I also have standalone CD players in my car and at work that play MP3 CD-ROMs.

Anyway, a thousand pardons for having strayed so far from the subject of digital photography!

Keith

Son VoBa said:

The thumbnails are cached on Windows XP and is displayed fast after
the initial view. I've never seen/heard displaying thumbnails in a
folder crashing/locking up Windows 2000. What type of images are
those?

Click to expand...

On W2k after the first viewing of a directory it does seem to display the thumbnails more quickly however its not quick enough! What I mean is that as you scroll down a directory it seems to load in more thumbnails. It start by showing the file icon and then replaces it with the thumbnail. In a directory with many files (jpg's maybe a tiff or two and a quicktime as I scroll down it seems to suddenly slow down even though I have just viewed the folder. Sometimes it slows down so much that I have to just kill that window from the task manager.

Son VoBa said:

Thumbnail view is flexible system/folder wise.

When you open a folder and choose the thumbnail view, that is
remembered and will always show the files in thumbnail (or whatever
mode chosen) view from then on, until changed the next time. You
may do that for individual folders of choice.

You may also bring up the folder window's Tools-> Folder Options...
dialog box, switch to the View tab, and select Like Current Folder.
This will make all folders on your system display the files in the
same manner as the current folder (including display thumbnail
view).

Click to expand...

Yes I realise that, however I was more thinking in terms of an icon view. It would be great to be able to change the size of the thumbnails too. Some programs like nikon view and photoshop save the image as an icon file associated with that file. However other apps seem to often overwrite this with their own icons. ie. if you use quicktime say as a viewer... it would be good to force windows to ALWAYS show pics files as icons made from the image itself as apple does...

Son VoBa said:

--svb

Click to expand...

Most likely, the codec it is looking for is Divx Mp4. This is the only codec that I have encountered that MS does not provide for files with AVi ending.

Rick Turner said:

Daniel Lauring said:

The automatic search for drivers, by Windows is slick, I only hope
it works better than the automatic search for video codecs that is
in Windows now. I always wonder why, when I click on an avi, and
Windows jumps onto the web to get the codec, it fails to find it.
Is it too hard for Microsoft to collect all the codecs? Is there
legal issues with some codecs that negate Microsoft holding them?
Are the codec writer's websites down at the time so the codec isn't
available?

Danny

Click to expand...

All of these are good questions regarding codec's. However, I
don't have any real knowledge about how this is done so I can't
shed any informative light on the subject. I will attempt to pass
along your comments, though.

Thanks for the feedback.

-Rick

Click to expand...

One possible solution to the balance between newbies and advanced users is to create a customizable profile for each user. Windows already do this to some extent, but I would like to see this expanded further.

After initial installation:

1. Run a wizard asking a few questions to determine the type of user they are. Whether they use the computer for digital photography, printing, work, games, etc.

2. Customize the different aspects of the computer to meet that profile. If the user is an advanced user, obviously make the menus and options less newbie-oriented.

3. Allow user to save their profile. This can be part of the MSN Passport where you login with your e-mail account and import the profile to wherever you go.

Can I get royalties if this idea sticks?

Rick Turner said:

In any case, we use wizards a lot because in our usability testing
people are really successful at accomplishing the desired task when
it is presented in a wizard. This is compared to almost all other
forms of UI.

However, your point is that we should think about ways to invest in
our users and teach them how to do more on their own is well taken.
Thanks.

-Rick

Daniel Lauring said:

It would be better if there was a wizard interface, that as it
asked the questions it showed the alternative method...highlighting
the boxes it was filling in so the user would know how to do it the
non-wizard way next time. A split screen with the "wizardease" on
the left and the printer option menu on the right might work. As
you answered wizard questions, on the left, you could see how that
selected or filled in the choices on the printer option menu, on
the right. It would even be neater if you could swap, back and
forth, between the two methods on the fly.

Danny

KanedaF3 said:

Nothing specific, just a general comment on the interface.

I hate Wizards. I have always hated wizards.

When I want to do something with the computer, I want to do it.
I don't want the computer to ask me one or two questions at a time
and maybe leave out a few options I did want.

Wizards are good because I know that many people don't know as much
about computers as my crowd, but along with the wizards I think
there should be a more technical way to do things. A screen
covered in options for the people that know what the options are
would be great.

Don't spend all of your time making it easy for people that don't
want to learn. Spend some time adding in some really great options
that pros/experts will appreciate.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Rick,

I don't run the XP beta, but if you're willing to think about a couple of features that would make me want to consider XP, a couple of suggestions:
1. support EXIF data.

2. Allow the image to be linked to a .icc profile, and convert from 1 profile to another (is this a Pro req?)
3. Allow huge spool files when I print at A3+, and make it as fast as possible

4. Allow colormanagement to done in windows/program or both, but assist in the prevention of double profiling.

5. Offer profiling services for monitor / printer / scanner / camera (perhaps an extra add-on that provides you the cards/sheets etc, ....ImagePlus?). Add-on should be priced very aggressively.
6. Allow me to point to a dir and say => make contact sheet for web or printer

7. Allow the user to optimize XP for image editing and printing, working with images eats RAM, so if the OS would have a instant 'very lean' mode, I wouldn't have to wait as much when editing images.

8. Like others have said, wizards might be a way of getting things done, but for me they do not provide me with work safisfaction. At best I do not learn, at worst I feel made dumb (like the OS knows what is right, I think not). Of course, for some tasks and users they are usefull, so offer me a choice here.

9. Support all the stuff I use ;-), might sound daft, but if printer/scanner etc. don't have XP drivers (or can use the 2000 ones) it won't take long to decide against. Same goes for my image editor. (If you want to know how the beta works, I'm afraid you'll have to provide the machine, current one cannot be risked for such a task .

Thanks for reading,

Chris

Rick Turner said:

I've been lurking around this wonderful site for a while. Thanks
for all the great content & information. I am the proud owner of a
Canon D30.

In any case, the reason I am posting today is the recently posted
review of Windows XP's digital camera/photo features. I am the UI
development lead for just about all the features mentioned in the
review, and personally wrote the Photo Printing Wizard. I wanted to
give something back to this site, and also get people's feedback on
our stuff (if people are willing).

A couple of ground rules:

(1) I can't be global technical support for Microsoft products, but
I'll help when/where I can.

(2) I'll eagerly accept any feedback, either positive or negative,
as long as it's polite.

(3) I can't always comment on future plans, but when/where I can, I
will.

So any comments or questions? Fire away!

Thanks.

-Rick

P.S. I also posted this info in the "News" forum but am trying to
move the discussion here as it seems to be the more obvious place
for it.

Click to expand...

Rick Turner said:

If your hardware config changes significantly enough that the code can't
be sure it's the same computer, yes, you're right that the current plan is
you'd need to "move" your registration. I'm not defending this particular
point, only passing on what I believe is the current state of affairs.

Click to expand...

I'm a geek. I am forever pulling and putting hardware in to my system. Espcially if I am teching a problem for my wife or a friend. It is not uncommon for me to pull my video and DVD cards out to put the video in to another PC to diagnose display issues.

I switch hard drives, memory, etc. That is a part of being a geek and playing with computers.

If an OS is going to hassle me when I do these things, then I will avoid that OS.

As I've said many times to friends and family (and even some of your co-workers), MS is where it is because it built better mouse traps. However, I think this time the trap is going to get MS. The registration process is going to hurt it.

I know a number of folks who have PCs that never connect to the outside world. These are stand alone system for very specialized work. My wife's laptop is that way. It has never been connected to the outside world. Having an OS that will require configuring and connecting to a web site to register will be more than she is willing to do.

I believe MS needs to re-evaluate this decision. Just like they are re-working .NET items to re-add some VB 6 functionality, they need to provide a means for folks to use the OS without connecting to their web site.

And I also agree with the poster who said the OS should not get in the way when and how I work.

That's all.

Thanks.

Tony

gail said:

Perhaps you can relate the problem: using the "clean up" feature in
system config utility deletes the optical mouse driver.

Click to expand...

Gail,

I know that I am always re-installing my scanner drivers. It seems that RegClean 4.1a removes them if I do not have the unit turned on. So I keep the driver setup installed on the HD to make this fast and less painful.

I have heard about MS not talking to folks who purchased PCs with the software pre-installed. That is plain wrong and needs to be corrected.

Thanks.

I'm glad to say that Windows XP does have these features, and the plan is that the interfaces will be public and documented in the SDK & DEVX soon.

The feature is "publish to the web."

-Rick

Pierre said:

What I'd like to see - it might already exists, is easyly available
documentation as to how to write/interface web site with the
wizard, so that it is possible for any Web developper to interface
with Windows XP and let people (or himself) publish digital picture
online.

The "walled garden" idea of restricting this possibility to choosen
third party will kill the feature, while letting everyone interface
to the feature will make it a real success.

A simple protocol to do it would be nice too (something like a
plain XML document exchange for example)

Click to expand...

Comment inline.

gabriel white said:

I have but a couple of points

1) It is very annoying to have to keep rotating images taken in
portrait format ready for printing out or more importatly for use
on the web etc. It would be great to have some software that could
automatically 'correct' this, maybe using some image analysis
technique. It would automatically correct this as images were taken
off camera... maybe other simple tasks such as this could also be
included to remove some of the donkey work.

Click to expand...

Yes, this would be great to have. Unfortunately, it's not in Windows XP. Thanks for the feedback. Oh, yeah -- FYI, the photo printing wizard will rotate images for best fit in the templates so you don't have to pre-rotate them to get them to print out best.

angelman said:

2) renaming images, this can be quite a boring process. It would be
great if some kind of renaming utility could be implemented. At the
most basic level to rename a number of images with a prefix or
suffix. (useful for many other applications such as for those
involved with film and video where this process is a real pain with
windows).

Click to expand...

This is not currently in Windows XP. Good feedback, though.

angelman said:

3) The links to online developes should be kept as open as
possible. Maybe MS could create a piece of linking software
(preferably free or at low cost to promote its use) for use by
online developers. This would then allow them to tap into XP. Users
could add their own choice of developer rather than rely on those
provided by MS such as ofoto. This would also ease localisation
issues. We dont all live in US!!! ie. we would just add our own
URL's (providing the site had your linking software installed on
their server.

Click to expand...

This is designed to be an open format/interace. It is my understanding that the list of photo finishers will be increased by the time we ship Windows XP.

-Rick

Like the thumbnail window. Would also want to compare 2 photos side by side by simply selecting 2 photos and clicking on a compare button. The comparison would of course be a full screen comparison. Expand this to any number of selected photos (say under 24?) so you can compare any set of photos. Photo imager kinda had this feature in that it would tile any number of open windows but the window slider bars, etc. made it messy. Loose the window frame, leave just the photo please.

Compupic has this feature in its Maxi Show but is limited to an X by Y matrix and connot do a 1X1 matrix so cannot compare two phots side by side. Comparing 2 photos side by side is a vital and elemetry feature we need to evaluate our photos - which is better, this one or that one? While your at it show the cammera settings for each photo.

Thanks,

Dennis

Rick Turner said:

I've been lurking around this wonderful site for a while. Thanks
for all the great content & information. I am the proud owner of a
Canon D30.

In any case, the reason I am posting today is the recently posted
review of Windows XP's digital camera/photo features. I am the UI
development lead for just about all the features mentioned in the
review, and personally wrote the Photo Printing Wizard. I wanted to
give something back to this site, and also get people's feedback on
our stuff (if people are willing).

A couple of ground rules:

(1) I can't be global technical support for Microsoft products, but
I'll help when/where I can.

(2) I'll eagerly accept any feedback, either positive or negative,
as long as it's polite.

(3) I can't always comment on future plans, but when/where I can, I
will.

So any comments or questions? Fire away!

Thanks.

-Rick

P.S. I also posted this info in the "News" forum but am trying to
move the discussion here as it seems to be the more obvious place
for it.

Click to expand...

Do you mean custom color profiles or custom layout templates?

If custom color profiles, if they are .icm or .icc, you can go to the printer properties and set the profile there. The photo printing wizard will use the profiles if they are installed for the printer.

If you mean custom layout files -- this feature is not supported in Windows XP for the photo printing wizard.

-Rick

hamsey said:

Rick Turner said:

I've been lurking around this wonderful site for a while. Thanks
for all the great content & information. I am the proud owner of a
Canon D30.

In any case, the reason I am posting today is the recently posted
review of Windows XP's digital camera/photo features. I am the UI
development lead for just about all the features mentioned in the
review, and personally wrote the Photo Printing Wizard. I wanted to
give something back to this site, and also get people's feedback on
our stuff (if people are willing).

A couple of ground rules:

(1) I can't be global technical support for Microsoft products, but
I'll help when/where I can.

(2) I'll eagerly accept any feedback, either positive or negative,
as long as it's polite.

(3) I can't always comment on future plans, but when/where I can, I
will.

So any comments or questions? Fire away!

Thanks.

-Rick

P.S. I also posted this info in the "News" forum but am trying to
move the discussion here as it seems to be the more obvious place
for it.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Hi Rick,

I don't want to add any more flame regarding the registration and piracy issues here. But I would like to point out that without private software (or "shareware" among friends and families), Windows won't be as popular as it is right now, or at least the market share MS is enjoying right now. Actually, MS should thank all the private to spread their OSes all over the world to lead to the present stage of dominance. Sure, hardware price is another factor that give MS a dominating position, but don't forget that hardware prices used to be pretty expensive until recent years. But MS already enjoyed over 80% of OS market share since Windows 3.1 or even earlier. Why? Private PC software! This is why Linux can gain such a tremendous user base in such a short period of time, and UNIX can't. When something is free, it will drive people at least to try it. If they like it, they will keep it. This is the nature of human being. No matter how good your scheme is, you just can't change the human nature.

For the OS point of view, I would like to see it to integrate as many features as possible, only if they are useful. Just like the IE and Windows Media Player, the integration is so good that I stopped using Netscape and RealPlayer/Winamp for a long long time. (Well, I mean the WMP7, the original WMP is sucks.) So if the new digital camera/photo features in XP is a standalone app, then I hope you will make it more sophisticated, to the level that we don't have to purchase photo software at all. PhotoDraw comes with Office 2K is not a very useful photo application.

I just wanted to add my two cents worth regarding Windows XP from what I've read about it from other (magazine) sources. I enjoy assembling and reassembling and upgrading PC's in addition to dabbling with digital photography. I have multiple operating computers and they are constantly being upgraded, changed, whatever. It's a hobby.

I don't care how good the imaging capabilities are for Windows XP if I cannot load enhancements on multiple machines as I can with current Windows versions. I own legitiamate licenses for Windows now (all versions back to 2.0), and will always keep it legitimate. But I will be darned if I am going to buy 14 copies of Windows XP and have to try to convince a tech rep to give me a new key code so I can possibly operate my system again as I make it better. In case you haven't noticed, contacting and communicating with tech services at Microsoft is no picnic as it stands right now.

I know you may not have responsibility for this area, but this extreme limitation on loading the OS to my machines will cause me to look elsewhere, keep my systems at the level they are for as long as I can, and influence my numerous PC friends to do the same. I hope you can transmit this message to the proper people. I know I am not alone in this feeling. I guess Microsoft can find a golden lining in a flop as well as in a success. It is a shame as this systems looks so intriguing.>

Where i live, if i were to come into a super-market, eat my fill, walk up to the store manager and say that i am not going to pay because the food does not taste that good, i'd write this note to y'all from jail. 8^)

--svb