http://www.hexcat.com

ViewIt Help

General description

Table of Contents:

1. Keyboard and mouse navigation

• Common key combinations
• In Image View (only)
• In Thumbnail View (only)

2. Basic Tips

3. Plugin architecture

1. Keyboard and mouse navigation:

• In Image View (only):

/ zoom normal * zoom-to-fit - zoom out + zoom in 1 ... 9 move around the image (hold Alt for faster moving)

• In Thumbnail View (only):

2. Basic Tips:

1. ( ! ) Fake serial numbers are being reported to us. By using these numbers you are killing my software.
2. To scan files and/or folders drop them on ViewIt window or icon. For better efficiency place ViewIt in your dock.
3. If files you dropped onto ViewIt appear in a random order, sort them by choosing appropriate menu option.
4. Groups are delimited by image path and name. File names that have common first letters are considered to belong to the same group unless they are in different folders. You can aid this option with sorting images by path.
5. (Preferences) Thumbnail Manager indexes previews for the images that currently appear in your list. All information is stored in ~/Library/Caches/ViewIt, original files are not being modified. TM uses smart caching mechanism and tries to keep your cache file below 20MB. TM offers two options:
• Any View - ViewIt tries to index all images that are currently in the list. This causes program to run a little bit slower. If you often switch between views, this can be handy.
• Thumbnail View - Program runs faster, but will not create any thumbnails unless any view that shows thumbnails is being displayed.
6. Place the mouse over the file name in tools view to see full path of current file. You can also ⌘+click window title to open any folder that contains current file.
7. You can sort out your images to many different folders very fast by using Quick Destinations. Just press ⌘D or ⌥1...⌥8 (main keyboard), to set your destinations, and then by pressing 1...8 (main keyboard) you can move/copy current image to one of these destinations. If you do not intend to use QD, we suggest to clear all of destinations, so your files won't be moved/copied accidentally. QD never overwrites or renames any files.
8. "Open With ▶" menu can open current image with active background application or with any recent application. While browsing images you may wish to open many of them with some background application without activating it. This can be easily achieved by assigning keys F1-F4 to desired applications and turning off Bring Called Application To Front.
9. (Preferences) When Become Owner Of Added Files is set, program will try to set image creator to ViewIt. Double clicking on this file will open it in ViewIt. This applies only to files that can be modified by the user.
10. You can select a part of image while holding down ⇧ (shift). Current image or selected part of it can be copied (⌘C) to the clipboard. Copy will always preserve rotation of the original image. If there is no selection, entire image is considered to be selected.
11. File aliases are always being resolved. Folder aliases residing inside scanned folders/disks are not being resolved for safety reasons.
12. Hard links (UNIX hard links) can be created only if preferences option Allow Creating Hard Links is on. Any file is a hard link to some data on the hard disk. Newly created hard links are similar to aliases. However, a file cannot not be deleted unless all hard links pointing to it are deleted (including the original itself). Hard links do not occupy additional disk space although it may look like they do in Finder. Inexperienced users are advised to leave this option turned off.
13. You can rescan dropped items by choosing Images/Refresh Dropped. This is virtually equal to choosing Remove All and dropping same items once again onto ViewIt.
14. By default, dragging selected files out form ViewIt window will cause them to be copied. When preferences option Drag&Drop Can Only Copy is off, files will be moved (even to Trash) instead of being copied. By holding ⌥ (Alt) dropped files will always be copied regardless of preferences setting.
15. Use mouse wheel for faster moving around images in list.
16. Images imported from a digital camera and images added to ViewIt library are being stored in (Home)/Pictures/ViewIt folder. At any time they can be quickly loaded into ViewIt with Add ViewIt Images menu command.
17. You can easily create photo albumns on your CD's. Just organize all images in some folder "X". Open them with ViewIt. Wait until all thumnails are created. Save image list inside folder "X" with options: Save Cached Thumbnails and Image Paths: Relative. Burn this folder on some CD. This list will remain valid and you will be able to browse any images very quickly.
18. Image importing from cameras made simplest possible. Just plug in your camera to have all your photos downloaded even if ViewIt was not running before. Just set preferences options: General -> Digital Cameras -> Automatically Start Download and General -> Digital Cameras -> Automatically Launch ViewIt and everything will be done for you automatically.

3. Plugin architecture

Plugins used by ViewIt appear in Tools menu. You can add new plugins to the program by putting them in folder:

~/Application Support/ViewIt

They should be built using SDK, which is available on HexCat web page. Tools can use various destinations for processed files. If you choose Same as original, your original images may be replaced/renamed by the tool if applicable. Otherwise original files should never be modified and should be copied to the destination. HexCat plugins will always conform to those rules.

1. Rename Sequentially - a simple way to quickly change names sequentially. You can specify base name, starting number and step.
2. JPEG Apply Lossless Rotations - this plugin will transform images according to your current rotation/flip setting in current image list. Just rotate/flip images the way you want to have your files transformed and activate this plugin. In some, seldom cases, if images have non standard sizes a few pixels at the edges may be clipped. Plugin is based on library made by Independent JPEG Group. Caution, this option doesn't rotate built in image previews.
3. Convert to different format - this plugin converts files to the most popular formats:
   • JPEG - best for natural images - photographs - very small files
   • PNG - loseless compression for computer graphics
   • TIFF - loseless compression for any graphics - big files