§ Progress report: 5.1

Movie thumbnails in SimpleImage 5.1 will sport a new look to make it easier to distinguish between video and still images at a glance:

5.1 will also let you set background, text and drop shadow colors for contact sheets generated from movies and browsers:

§ Sneak peek: SimpleImage 5.1

SimpleImage 5.0.4 hasn’t been out for long, but I’m already looking forward to releasing version 5.1. I’ve actually been working on it for a while, and I think its major new feature — image adjustments — is going to be very handy.

You’ll be able to bring up the adjustments window by double-clicking an image:

You’ll also be able save sets of adjustments as presets that can be applied to single images or multiple images at once.

Adjustments are treated like any other view setting, such as size or transformations: they’re preserved when viewing an image in SimpleImage, but they’re non-destructive, so you can tweak or remove them at any time, and they don’t alter the original image when it’s viewed in other applications. Like size and transformations, you can also choose to make them permanent by saving an image with them applied. You can even apply them live while previewing an image for printing.

§ Grayscale images

SI 5.0.4 will also fix some problems that earlier versions had saving grayscale images.

§ Progress report: 5.0.4

So I’m just putting the finishing touches on SimpleImage 5.0.4, which will be the last update before version 5.1.

The slideshow controls panel now has a button that lets you rotate items:

And with that I think the slideshow controls have enough inscrutable little doohickeys. :)

5.0.4 will also fix a couple of bugs:

– Orientation tags embedded in an image’s metadata are now cleared when saving.
– Saving JPEG 2000 images with transparency now works correctly.
– Saving Windows BMP images with transparency is now supported (in Leopard).
– The keyboard shortcuts in the ratings menu now update correctly if you change them during a slideshow.

§ Slideshow controls

A few changes to the slideshow controls in SI 5.0.3:

The options that appear when you click the title of the current item now stay visible until they’re hidden by clicking the title again, and they include a new control for setting the rating of the current item:

A new translucent overlay now appears momentarily when you assign a rating to a slideshow item:

Slideshows now also remember the last five soundtrack files you’ve selected.

§ Save for web

The Save for Web sheet in SimpleImage 5.0.3 will let you save files as PNGs or GIFs in addition to JPEGs:

(Click to embiggen)

The “Preserve transparency” option (née “Preserve alpha channel” — I changed the name to make it a bit clearer (pun intended :) )) now works correctly when saving GIFs. I deliberately ignored this option in earlier versions because of a bug in Leopard that causes a crash when trying to create a GIF from an RGB(X) bitmap. I’ve added a workaround in 5.0.3 that fixes the problem, so you can now save GIFs without transparency.

I’ve also added a small change to the Save sheet for images — the popup menu that lets you choose to save the image with its current or original dimensions now shows what those dimensions actually are:

§ Missing items

I’ve been giving some thought to the way SimpleImage deals with missing items (i.e., browser items that can’t be opened because the original files they reference can’t be found). Instead of displaying an alert for every missing item as it encounters them, version 5.0.3 will display a new window right away listing all the missing items you’re trying to access and the volume they were on the last time they were opened in SimpleImage, and give you the choice of skipping them or trying to open them regardless:

I’ve also extended this to apply to items opened from the Open Recent window.

§ Progress report: 5.0.3

If you have more than one monitor, SimpleImage 5.0.3 will include a new option that lets you choose whether the slideshow takes over every display or just the main one.

I’ve also increased the maximum number of recent items to 1,000, while capping the number that actually appear in the Open Recent menu (since there’s a limit to how many items you can put in a menu before it starts to become unusable).

§ Most important undocumented change in SI 5.0.2

The checkerboard pattern that appears behind partially transparent images no longer shifts as you resize or scroll the window, which was entertaining but inappropriate.

§ LCC Scroll Enhancer: doesn’t play well with others

If you’ve been getting generic icons instead of thumbnails in your browsers, or just file names when you display the Quick Peek panel, there’s a good chance it’s because of a notorious little input manager that’s installed as part of Logitech’s mouse driver. It’s called LCC Scroll Enhancer, and you may remember it from last fall when it caused some people’s Macs to go belly up after upgrading to Leopard. Logitech promptly released a new version that presumably fixes the belly-up problem, but introduces a bunch of new problems in the process and causes conflicts with various applications — including SimpleImage, which it prevents from communicating with the background agent applications that are responsible for generating thumbnails. (Ditto for slideshow soundtracks, which are also handled by a background agent application.)

Moving the ‘LCC Scroll Enhancer Loader’ folder in /Library/InputManagers/ to the Trash and restarting should fix the problem.