FAQ for Mapivi (last update: 2016-08-16) 1. What should I do, if a dialog pops up saying: "Error in mapivi" "image "imageXX" doesn't exist at ..."? Press OK, and update the thumbnails by pressing . If there are still problems, exit Mapivi with . This problem may occure, when you are working with Mapivi while it's still busy e.g. loading the thumbnails. 2. What's about the memory size of pictures, when adding comments and IPTC infos to pictures? It's like you would expect it: about one byte per char. Example: adding a comment of 30 chars to a 1MB picture will increase the file size about 0.03%. 3. How many comments are allowed in a JPEG picture? From the wrjpgcom man page: The JPEG standard allows "comment" (COM) blocks to occur within a JPEG file. Although the standard doesn't actually define what COM blocks are for, they are widely used to hold user-supplied text strings. This lets you add annotations, titles, index terms, etc to your JPEG files, and later retrieve them as text. COM blocks do not interfere with the image stored in the JPEG file. The maximum size of a COM block is 64K, but you can have as many of them as you like in one JPEG file. 4. How do I work with comments? Simply select a picture to comment and press , enter the comment an press Ctrl-x to close the dialog. Example: you have three pictures to comment, one with Tom and Tim, one with Tom and Peter and one with Tom and Linda. They were taken at Lucy's party. Here is what I would do: select all three pics, press , enter "Lucy's Party Tom", press Ctrl-x. Now all pics have the comment "Lucy's Party Tom", now select the first one and add "Tim", the second and add "Peter", and so on ... 5. I've added several comments to my picture, I can see them with Mapivi, but not with my other tool. Why? Some viewer tools only support the first comment of a JPEG picture. You can use the join comments function of Mapivi to join all comments to one. 6. I can manipulate pictures with Mapivi, but why is there no "Save" or "Save as"? When manipulating pictures (image-processing), Mapivi serves as a frontend to the ImageMagick tools. The manipulation is done directly on the file, so there is no need to save. But there is also no undo, so better keep the option "Create backup of original picture" enabled. You can also force a backup with the menu File->Make backup. If there is already a backup, Mapivi will ask you to overwrite it. The backup of file.jpg will always be named: file-bak.jpg. If you delete file.jpg and there is a backup named file-bak.jpg, Mapivi will ask to rename the backup file to the old file name. This is also done when renaming the original file. If a file has a backup file the string "[bak]" is shown in the size column of the thumnail table. 7. What's the picture rating (IPTC urgency tag) for? The urgency is an IPTC field to specify the importance of a picture. The urgency may be used as a search or sort criteria. I use it to seperate the really good and important pictures from the rest. That's my reflection: My grandma has about 5 photo albums of her whole life, that number of pictures can be viewed in some hours. Since I own a digital camera the number of photos I take is exploding (even if I really try hard to sort out about the half of them). So when I keep on taking so much photos I never will have the time to look at them, when I am older. That's where the urgency tag comes into play, I simply mark the best or most important pictures with a high priority. Later I can choose a view to see only the best pictures of e.g. my children. This can be done in the search dialog by selecting the proper urgency and e.g. the Name of the person to search for in the pattern field. 8. How can I get the Mapivi Icon under MS Windows? Use the MapiviIcon32.ico (this is located in the directory pics of your mapivi packet) in the properties dialog of the windows explorer. 9. How do I open a directory not accessible with the dirtree on the left? (This may happen when running Mapivi under MS Windows) Press , or use the menu File->open directory. 10.Is it recommended to do image manipulation with pictures in JPEG format? Usually image manipulations should be done with a image manipulation programm, like The GIMP or Photoshop. They support lossless image formats (like XCF or PNG). The disadvantage of JPEG is the fact, that every time you save a JPEG picture it has to be compressed again. This compression is NOT lossless, so with every step your picture quality gets worser and worser. It may be appropriate to use JPEG for some basic image manipulation like the functions provided by Mapivi if the source and the target format is JPEG anyway. Mapivi tries to support the manipulation of JPEG files as much as possible by lossless operations (rotation, cropping, adding of comments and IPTC infos) and lossy one-step-manipulations. It's e.g. possible to apply several filters and color adjustments to a picture while adding a border. So there is just one recompression to the picture. This should produce the same results like manipulating the picture with the GIMP and then saving it as a JPEG file. If it's necessary to do several steps, set the quality to 95% (more just increases the file size, not the quality). 11. How to compare details on two similar pictures Switch the autozoom option of (menu: Options->Window->auto zoom) or open the pictures and press to zoom to 100% for each. Click on the thumbnail of the first and than on the thumbnail of the second picture. Now you are able to move the picture in the canvas, when you switch back to the other picture you will see the same part (e.g. the lower right corner) of this picture. Another possibilty is to build a difference picture of two pictures. This can be done using the menu "Extra->build difference picture". You can toggle the display between selected pictures using . 12. What the meaning of all the special info in the thumbnail table? Let's start with the EXIF column: [s] the EXIF info has been saved to an extra file use the menu to restore it back [t] there is an EXIF thumbnail embedded in the picture this is optional (press to view the thumbnail) date the date and time the picture was taken 18mm the focal length of the lens (27mm) the focal length of the lens in 35mm film equivalent F2.8 the aperture 1/60s the exposure time ISO100 the ISO speed rating +0.3 the exposure bias value the size coloum: [bak] the file has a backup (e.g. file-bak.jpg) 1143kB the file size in kB (1kB = 1KiB = 1024 Byte) 2048x1536 the picture size in pixels 3.15MP the amount of pixels in mega pixels (1MP = 1000000 pixel) 2.69 b/p the bits per pixel value (kind of quality value) [3:4] the aspect ratio date the file date the rest should be obvious, I hope. 13. Panic! Where is my backup file? A backup file (named e.g. pic-bak.jpg) is only created, when the "Create backup" button was selected. If the backup is not shown directly after a conversation, please press to update the thumbnail table. Hint: If a picture has a backup this string: [bak] is shown in the size coloum. 14. I've rotated my pictures manually, but the rotate flag is wrong now. What should I do? Clear the rotate flag (see menu Edit->Rotate->Clear rotate flag). 15. I've rotated my pictures, but the EXIF thumbnail is still in the old wrong possision. What should I do? There are two possibilities: a) lossless Press to open the options dialog, go to the Thumbnails pad and deselect "Rotate EXIF thumbnail when rotating picture". Now rotate the picture to match the EXIF thumbnail (press to see the EXIF thumbnail). Now select "Rotate EXIF thumbnail when rotating picture" in the dialog noted above and rotate the picture again. b) fast Just build a new EXIF thumbnail (see menu Edit->EXIF info->(re)build thumbnail) 16. I want to save a copy of a picture in the same directory, with a different name (Save As ...). How to do this with Mapivi? Select the picture (e.g. pic1.jpg), use the menu: File->make backup. A new file named pic1-bak.jpg will be created, select this picture and press (or use the menu: File->rename) and rename the picture to the new name. 17. If I resize the Mapivi window the pictures do not resize. What's wrong? Nothing is wrong, zooming is slow, so Mapivi just rezooms on user request. Press (Shift-u) above the picture and it will be reloaded and zoomed to the new canvas size. This is also needed to update the display after you processed a picture in e.g. GIMP. You may also try (fit picture in canvas) or (display in original size = 100%). 18. Mapivi is great! Why is it free? Because I like and use a lot of free open source software myself and Mapivi is my contribution back to the community. 19. How can I reuse the saved EXIF infos or IPTC templates from the pre 0.7.0 Mapivi versions? The only way is to use an old Mapivi version, restore the EXIF infos to the pictures and apply the IPTC templates to certain pictures. Quit the old Mapivi version. Then start the new Mapivi version (>= 0.7.0) and save the EXIF infos (if needed) and the IPTC templates again. 20. How to use hierachical keywords and categories? If there is no tree visible in the "edit keywords" or "edit categories" dialog, follow these steps. Quit Mapivi, use a file manager or the shell, change to directory ~/.maprogs/mapivi/ and rename file keywords to keywords.old and file categories to categories.old Then restart Mapivi, open menu: Edit->IPTC Info->edit keywords ... and you will see an example keyword tree. You may edit this tree using the context menu (press the right mouse button to open it). A double click on a keyword will insert it in the IPTC info of all selected pictures when "Add" mode is selected. 21. Is it possible to search for pictures stored on an external media (e.g. CD, DVD, USB-Stick, external HD)? Yes, of course, if Mapivi knows about them. Follow this procedure: 1. Insert the media 2. Press F7 in main window (directory tree will show up) 3. Select media root folder (e.g. /media/dvd for UNIX or D:\ for Windows) in Mapivi directory tree 4. Select Mapivi menu: Search->build database ... to add the pictures stored on the external media to the Mapivi search database Hints: - As Mapivi will just show the path to the picture (e.g. /media/dvd/pic1.jpg or D:\pic1.jpg) it is recommended to use a CD/DVD folder structure with unambiguous naming e.g. dates like 2005/200510/20051026_Party/ this will help you to find the right CD/DVD - If you didn't use Mapivi for deleting the pictures you should select Mapivi menu: Search->clean database ... to update the Mapivi search database 22. When I find pictures stored on external media (e.g. CD, DVD, USB-Stick, external HD no thumbnails are shown. Can this be changed? or: Is it possible to show the thumbnails of pictures stored on an external media in the search dialog? Yes, it is possible. Follow these steps: 1. Insert the media 2. Press F7 in main window (directory tree will show up) 3. Select media root folder (e.g. /media/dvd for UNIX or D:\ for Windows) in Mapivi directory tree 4. Select Mapivi menu: Extra->build thumbs in all sub directories ... Mapivi will store these thumbnails in a central folder if the media is not writable. 23. Does Mapivi store the thumbnails? Where are they stored? Yes, Mapivi tries to store all produced thumbnails. They are stored depending on the configuration in a) a sub folder of the current folder named .thumbs or b) in a central folder (for UNIX: ~/.maprogs/mapivi/thumbDB/) 24. What is the dotted line in the menu for? When you select the dotted line you will get a so called tear-of menu. The menu will become a new window and you may place it anywhere on your desktop. This is very handy if you need some functions several times.