jAlbum/Edit

This view mode allows you to view and edit images, videos and their meta data. The toolbar at the top offers a set of image editing tools, the panel to the right lets you view and edit various properties or the current image. The field below the image gives you more space to enter a caption. Hint: You can drag the divider to increase space for entering captions.

Navigation

Previous/Explore/Next: These buttons will appear when you hover the mouse over an image/video. They allow you to navigate back and forth between images and to exit back to Explore mode. You can also use the arrow keys or the page up/down keys to navigate through the files in the current folder.

1. View and edit properties (right hand side panel)

• Histogram: A graphical representation of the tonal distribution in a digital image that plots the number of pixels for each tonal value. You can view data for luminance, red, green or blue channels, RGB combined or luminance and RGB together. The histogram tool can only be used to check your image, it is best used in conjunction with some of the other editing options, such as when changing brightness, contrast and saturation. As a general guide the histogram should ideally span the full width of the display area. If you see vertical lines within a histogram it may be an indication that an adjustment has been overdone. These lines represent missing shades of color.
  
  This popup menu allows you to choose what data the histogram displays. The hidden settings to the histogram will be revealed by double clicking on the histogram. In this pop up you can choose what histogram to show by default, open the histogram in a separate window every time you start jAlbum and remember the windows location, you can change the visual style to iPhoto (the default is Photoshop) and the foreground color can be changes (black or white).

• General: This section provides information on, and allows the editing of, Name Title, Date, Time, Star Rating and Flag. The name is the actual file name of the item. The title is the text that appears instead of the base file name, if entered, on your album web pages that show a title field. Date is what your operating system reports as when the file was last modified. Rating is a star rating system ranging from zero to five star. Flag is a means of categorizing files and, along with the star rating, can be used to filter files as a means of aiding project review. Note, If, in Preferences/Album, write xmp metadata to files has been checked then the title text is written to your files.
• Variables: Variables can be predefined or user created and are added in two parts, the variable name and then its value. Once a variable has been added an empty row will appear, allowing further variables to be used. As an example, entering ‘maxThumbWidth’ as the variable name and then for its value, say, 100, would set the maximum thumbnail width for this item to 100 pixels, regardless of the setting in jAlbum/Settings/Images/Thumbnails. To create a custom variable you first have to define it in Settings/Advanced/User Variables. How custom variables work will depend on how well they are supported by a particular skin.
• Camera: Provides non-editable details on camera settings, hovering over the pane will result in further metadata being shown. For non-image files this will show just the file name.
• Description: This section provides, for the currently selected item, information on, and allows the editing of, Metadata, Creator, Keywords, Copyright, Copyright URL. Note, If, in Preferences/Album, write xmp metadata to files has been checked then the title text is written to your image files.

2. Image editing (toolbar)

The image editing tools are non-destructive, for example cropping an image does not remove pixels, it merely masks them so that the crop can be altered or undone.

1 Explore Exit from the edit mode, returning to the explore mode.

2 Exclude Exclude or include selected item(s) from the album. Excluding an item keeps it within the project but excludes it from the generated album, this button toggles the state. An excluded item has a red circle with a white bar in it, see figure 2.2 for an example of an excluded item.

3 Rotate Rotates the image 90° to the left or to the right. Rotation occurs as soon as you click on the tool icon, there are no options to adjust.

4 Crop Cut the edges of to improve the composition. There are several options within the crop tool, see figure 3.2, which, as for all tool options, can be hidden or revealed by clicking on the small right pointing triangle next to the tools name.

• Adjustment points: You can hover over the image and click and drag on any of the white adjustment points. The midpoints adjust just the width or height whilst the corner points adjust both. The cursor changes to indicate the type of movement allowed.
• Keep Ratio: If this option is selected then the predefined ratios (3.) are disabled, along with the height/width adjustment (1.) midpoints, and the aspect ratio is constrained to that of the un-cropped image. To crop the image click and drag on a corner adjustment point. You can also click on the image and drag the cropped area of the image around. With Keep Ratio un-checked the aspect ratio can still be retained by holding down the SHIFT key whilst dragging an adjustment point.
• Predefined Ratio: With keep ratio deselected you can click on this drop down menu and select from a range of crop ratios, such as Golden Ratio, 1:1, 4:5. Having used a predefined ration you can still manually adjust by clicking and dragging the adjustment points at will.
• Landscape/Portrait mode: The default orientation is landscape but it can be toggled to portrait. Changing the orientation will result in the crop selection being reset, so set this option first if needed.
• Apply: As for all of the edit tools with options, having previewed your edits you need to apply them before exiting the tools interface. That includes switching from say, the crop to the enhance tool.
• Cancel: Having previewed the changes you decide not to apply the effect, you can press cancel, which will exit the tool but leave you in edit mode, or you can go directly to another (enabled) tool.

5 Straighten Straightens the image, rotating to any given angle.

• Drag to rotate: You can click on the image and drag to rotate.
• Angle: You can enter any absolute angle, either positive or negative, to rotate the image a precise amount. For example typing 90 and then pressing Enter will rotate the ninety degrees clockwise, typing -90 would be counter clockwise. Alternatively you can click on the image and drag (see 1. in the figure) to rotate. A guide line will appear from the centre to the cursor and a second line will appear as you drag the cursor around. The rotation angle, between 0 and +/- 180, will be shown in the box.
• Background color: Selects the color of the canvas that the rotated image ‘sits on’. For example selecting ‘keep size’ or ‘enlarge’ as the Mode and rotating the image will result in the image bounds being filled with the selected color.
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  Mode: Crop, Keep size and Enlarge. Crop will expand the rotated image, within the original image bounds, so that there is no background showing. Keep size will rotate the image and add background pixels as required to fill blank spaces. Parts of the image will be cropped out. Enlarge will reduce the rotated image so that it all fits within the frame, adding background pixels ass required. See figure to the right.
• Show Grid: If selected a grid is overlaid to help visualize the rotation, for example to fix horizontal or vertical alignment. The grid color is fixed so it may help to adjust the background color to make the alignment and then change it again, depending on the mode selected above.
• Apply: Saves your edit.
• Exit: Exit without saving edit.
  

6 Flip Flip the image horizontally or vertically.

7 Auto correct: Instantly improve the look of the image by automatically adjusting the colors, levels and/or contrast of the image. You may want to open the histogram tool at the same time, to see the changes graphically. By selecting Enhance all, jAlbum attempts to correct colors, contrast and brightness, all in one go.

• Auto color: This tries to balance the colors thereby removing any color cast.
• Auto contrast: This ensures that the image uses the maximum range of values for brightness.
• Auto levels: This spreads the the range of values for each of the colors, ensuring the widest range possible is used.

8 Enhance: Adjust the brightness, contrast and saturation of the image to improve the look of an image. Sometimes the auto-correct tool does not quite do what you want, in these cases the enhance tool is better suited, as it gives you control over the adjustments. For all three controls the range of values that can be entered is -100 to +100, or drag the slider of each to adjust as required. It is recommended that you open the histogram tool at the same time, to see the changes graphically.

• Brightness: Moves the luminance values towards the black (negative values) or white point.
• Contrast: Compress (negative values) or expand the luminance values within the image. Increases or decreases the contrast between the luminous and the dark parts of the image.
• Saturation: Defines a range from pure color (+100) to gray (-100). Desaturates (negative values) or saturates the colors, making the image fully desaturated will remove all color information, resulting in a gray scale image. Saturation influences the vividness of the the colors in an image.
• Reset all: Returns all three settings to zero, leaving the image unadjusted.

8 Gamma: Change gamma value for each color channel: red, green and blue. Adjust the way highlights, mid-tones and shadows are treated, in a non-linear way, to correct for differences between source and target mediums. It is probably a good idea to open the histogram tool when adjusting the gamma.

• Gamma All: With individual settings unchecked the gamma all is active, the same adjustment is applied to all three color channels. If individual settings is checked this setting can still be adjusted but has no effect. The adjustment range is from 0 to 10.
• Individual settings: This option allows each of the Red, Green and Blue channels to be adjusted independently.
• Reset all: Returns all three settings to one, leaving the image unadjusted.

9 Effects:

• Red Eye: Removes the red eye effect often seen when a person is photographed with the camera and flash being too close to the subject. Click on the eyes suffering from red eye and the pupils should turn black. You can increase or decrease the size of the circle covering the eye by dragging it. If the effect is too strong, or too weak, enable the advanced options and change the settings. The strength of the effect is controlled by the sensitivity settings and the range of the effect by the maximum gap between pixels. Use small changes to the default settings to start with. You can remove an adjustment circle, if required, by selecting it and then clicking on the remove button.
• Gray Effect: This converts a color image to a gray scale image, there are no settings to adjust.
• Sepia Effect: This adds a sepia colored tint to the image, the strength of the tint can be varied from 0 to 100, not applied to full tint.
• Sharpen Effect: Applies a preset amount of sharpening to the whole of the image.
• Blur Effect: Applies a Gaussian blur to the whole image, with a strength setting of 0 to 100, no blur to completely out of focus.
• Invert Effect: Inverts the colors in the image, black becomes white, red becomes cyan. There are no settings to adjust.
• Pixelate Effect: Adds an effect that is a bit like looking through frosted glass, the size of effect can be adjusted fro 0 to 10.
• Text Effect: This allows you to add text boxes to your images, each text box can have its own font, size, weight, alignment, color, transparency and shadow effect.
• Arty Effect: This gives eight preset artistic effect filters for you to try. A thumbnail of your original is surrounded by the eight options. Hovering over each thumbnail reveals a tooltip that describes the effect. Clicking on a thumbnail will preview it on your image. Only one effect can be applied to an image.

11 Undo/Redo Undo last applied tool and redo last undone tool. You can undo back to the original state.

Video editing

jAlbum's video editor lets you trim the beginning and end of video files. You can also select what frame to use to represent your video in the album. jAlbum supports 164 video formats and converts them to mp4 format for use by most web browsers.

The figure to the right shows a grayed out play button, this is to indicate the file is a video, it is not a play button for previewing your video. Scrub bars 1.+2. and 3. only appear if video support has been enabled in Preferences/Album.

Adjusting the position of the green circle (1.) sets the start point, and the red circle (2.) sets the end point, of the video in your album. The white slider (3.) sets the frame of the video to be used as the thumbnail. The default thumbnail is from a frame one second from the start. For all three, click and drag slowly and the video preview will update to show the frame selected. Note, the time boxes do not update, they just just the length of your original video.

You can, depending on the skin, of course, enter a title and comment (caption), as you would for any other file type. The other editing tools here only affect thumbnails and slide images, not the actual video.