FrameSize

Format and optimise your digital photos for your digital photo frame

Digital Photo Frames are great, and becoming increasingly popular. However, typically they come in widescreen (16:9) sizes, which is great for movies, but less great for digital photos which are commonly taken by digital cameras in a non-widescreen format (usually 4:3). This results in the photo frame having to display the image with ugly black bars down the sides, or having to zoom in on the image losing the top and bottom of the picture.

FrameSize is an application that allows you to quickly overcome these limitations and produce high quality images from your digital photographs that are formatted properly and perfectly optimised for your digital photo frame.

Loading FrameSize optimised photos onto a digital photo frame has several  benefits:

• The photos being displayed on the frame will be in the correct aspect ratio for the frame, removing the need for the frame to 'guess' how to crop each photo or display the photos with black bars at the sides.

• The photos being displayed on the frame will contain exactly the correct number of pixels for the frame, making each image file much smaller than the original. This means that many more photos can be stored in the frame's internal memory or on a memory card.

• The photos may optionally contain information such as the date the picture was taken, the picture title or the filename overlaid across the top or bottom of the image. 

FrameSize allows these transformations to be performed on individual photos as a one off operation, or on multiple photos if, for example, you need to reformat many photos in one session.

FrameSize Options

Before FrameSize can be used it needs to know the dimensions of the photo frame that is to be used (in pixels). This information should be available in the photo frame manual or web site. Common sizes are 720 pixels by 480 pixels, 480 pixels by 234 pixels and 480 pixels by 260 pixels. This information can be set in FrameSize by selecting 'Options' from the 'Tools' menu.

Figure 1 - The Options Menu

Figure 2 - The Options Screen

It is also possible to change the default output folder of the application if desired and specify the output quality at which the output files should be saved (lower quality output results in smaller files - meaning more files will fit in the frame's memory).

It is also possible to specify that data associated with the image is printed across the top and / or bottom of the image so that it is displayed on the frame. Printing data onto the output images is discussed later on this page.

Formatting a Single File

To open, format and save a single digital photo, select 'Open' from the 'File' menu.

Figure 3 - The Open Menu

FrameSize will then allow you to browse for and open an image file. If files are not automatically displayed as thumbnails when browsing this can be achieved by right clicking in the options menu and selecting 'View' followed by 'Thumbnails'. When the file is opened with the 'Open' button, it is displayed in FrameSize's main window overlaid with a selection frame.

Figure 4 - The Selection Frame

The selection frame will have the same aspect ratio as the intended photo frame but will initially be the same width as the photograph.

If the photograph is less wide than the intended photo frame (this is often the case) then there will be space not enclosed by the frame towards the bottom of the photo.

The selection frame can be moved by clicking with the mouse anywhere inside the frame boundaries and dragging the selection frame down the photograph.

If the picture is not the correct way up, because it was taken with the camera held vertically rather than horizontally this may be corrected before moving the selection frame by clicking the 'Rotate' button until the orientation is correct. (Each click of the rotate button rotates the picture 90º clockwise.)

When the desired area of the photograph is highlighted the save button can be pressed to save the output file.

Figure 5 - Selecting a portion of the photograph

Figure 6 - The output image

The output file will be written to the folder specified in the 'Options' menu. By default, this is the 'My FrameSize Pictures' folder which will be found in the 'My Documents' folder.

It is possible to resize the selection frame by dragging any of its edges. It will retain its aspect ratio (the same aspect ratio as the intended photo frame) but will get bigger and smaller as the edges are dragged inwards and outwards. It is still possible to drag around the resized frame by dragging from any point within the selection frame.

It is not possible to resize the frame so that it is bigger than either the width or height of the photo, nor is it possible to resize the frame so that the number of pixels in the resulting image would be fewer than the number of pixels in the intended photo frame.

This is useful because photo frames typically have a much lower resolution than the photos taken by digital cameras. This means that areas of the picture can be 'zoomed' to create an output file of a small detail from within the image without losing any quality when displayed on the digital photo frame.

Figure 7 - Selecting a smaller portion of the image

Figure 8 - The zoomed in output image

Formatting Multiple Files

To format more than one photo file in a single session, instead of selecting 'Open' from the 'File' menu, select 'Open Sequentially'

Figure 9 - The Open Sequentially Menu

A window allowing you to open files will appear and will allow you to select multiple files from within any folder. Once the folder containing the files has been navigated to, multiple files can be highlighted by holding down the Ctrl key whilst clicking the filenames, or all files in the folder can be selected by pressing the Ctrl and 'A' keys at the same time.

When the desired files are selected, click the 'Open' button. Each selected file is then presented in turn in the FrameSize main window. The selection frame works exactly as before, but the Save button has become a 'Save and Next' button.

When each picture is saved, the next selected picture is immediately presented with its selection frame. This continues until all selected photos have been presented.

If you decide not to produce any output from a particular selected photo, the 'Skip and Next' button can be used to move to the next photo without saving any output or if you would like to move back to the photo displayed previously, the 'Back' button may be used.

Figure 10 - Framing and saving multiple pictures

Figure 11 - Output files from saving multiple pictures

Any image files created by FrameSize are placed in the FrameSize output folder. This folder can be changed on the Options screen. By default it is the 'My FrameSize Pictures' sub folder of the 'My Documents' folder.

The files in the folder are optimised for your photo frame and should be used instead of the original images when copying the photos to the digital photo frame.

Note: It is important to keep the original digital photograph files, as, whilst the quality of the files produced by FrameSize is of the highest quality the digital photo frame is capable of displaying, the quality of the output files is not good enough to display on a high resolution computer monitor or to make digital prints from.

Writing information about the photos onto the output images

FrameSize allows you to optionally specify that information about the photograph is written unobtrusively onto the output images so that the information can be read when the photos are being displayed on the frame. This is configured on the Options screen.


Figure 12 - The 'Write file information onto output images' options on the Options screen

Before FrameSize will print any information onto the images it outputs, the 'Write file information onto output images' check box must be checked.

When the 'Write file information onto output images' check box is checked, further fields become available. Each line of fields allows the user to specify which data elements will appear at the top and / or the bottom of the output image.

The fields in the example above show the date taken and the time taken being displayed at the top of the image and the picture title and camera model being displayed at the bottom.

There are also right justification text boxes to allow the user to specify that the text at the top and / or the text at the bottom of the output image is right justified.

The settings above produce the following result:

Figure 13 - Information about the picture written onto the output image

When writing information about the photos onto the output images, the data is obtained from the following locations:

• Date Taken: The EXIF data stored as part of the photograph by most digital cameras
• Time Taken: The EXIF data stored as part of the photograph by most digital cameras
• File Name: The original name of the file that was loaded into FrameSize
• Picture Title: The 'Title' field from the properties page for the file, saved by Windows
• Picture Subject: The 'Subject' field from the properties page for the file, saved by Windows
• Picture Author: The 'Author' field from the properties page for the file, saved by Windows
• Camera Make: The EXIF data stored as part of the photograph by most digital cameras
• Camera Model: The EXIF data stored as part of the photograph by most digital cameras

Saving and Loading options

Once FrameSize has been configured with a set of options including the dimensions of the frame, the output folder, the output quality and any text that is to be written onto the output images, it is possible to save the configuration to disk for later retrieval.

This is useful if photos for several frames are to be maintained on the same computer. It is possible to save a set of options tailored to each frame - including a separate output folder so that the photos that will be placed on each frame are kept separate on the computer.

To save a set of options, select 'Save Options' from the 'Tools' menu. You will need to provide a name for the options set before they are saved to disk. It is suggested that this name is a description of the frame that the options are tailored for.


Figure 14 - Saving the configured options

To load the options set again at a later time, select 'Load Options' from the 'Tools' menu. You will be able to choose from any previously saved options.


Figure 15 - Loading previously saved options