Logoing / Watermarking and XnView Deluxe?

ltl · Post by **ltl** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:52 am

I am new to XnView and I think it's about the best image viewer I have ever used.

I was even more impressed by all the additional USEFUL things it can do. Many viewers are filled with needless add ons that are not very useful. Everything in XNView seems useful to me and hasn't just been added for no reason.

However, I have a couple of questions:

1. I think it's really missing a feature to use a graphic as a logo. In other words like the Add Text feature in the batch conversion tool but instead it asks for a filename. When provided it asks where to put the graphic (top left, top right, bottom left or bottom right) and also whether the graphic should be applied with transparency and whether any x/y offset to the corners should be applied. Then when the batch is run the graphic should be combined with each file as specified. This seems something very obvious and maybe being new to XNView I have missed the feature somewhere. But I can't find it. If it's there - could someone tell me where?

2. I have seen XnView DeLuxe mentioned. What is this? It seems to be a commercial pay product... but what are the differences between XnView DeLuxe and regular XnView?

Finally the ONLY thing I found lacking in XnView was no support of the Genuine Fractals STN file format... But this is really unimportant considering all the great things it does do!

Thank you in advance for any answers!

ckit · Post by **ckit** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 2:02 am

XnView DeLuxe 2 - http://www.xzeos.net/site_xnview_uk/index
They have a comparison table for XnView Deluxe however, XnView Freeware isn't compared which leads me to believe XnView Deluxe isn't worth paying for but hey thats their loss

Pierre and Helmut are more fun to play with too

ltl · Post by **ltl** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 2:16 am

ckit wrote:They have a comparison table for XnView Deluxe however, XnView Freeware isn't compared which leads me to believe XnView Deluxe isn't worth paying for but hey thats their loss Pierre and Helmut are more fun to play with too

Well ok - but that doesn't really tell me what XNView Deluxe is. Is it written by the same people? Is it the same product (it looks identical). I don't understand why it exists? Did someone rip off the code and try to make a commercial product from it? Or what? It seems odd it's not really mentioned or documented on this website although it's mentioned in passing in a few posts...

I am open minded about it - if it has additional features I could use (such as logo/watermarking) I would consider buying it unless there is some reason not to. But it's hard to know if it's of any interest when there is no information and I don't really know what it is exactly in comparison to regular XNView.

Thanks for pointing out the URL anyway.

ckit · Post by **ckit** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 2:22 am

ltl wrote:
ckit wrote:They have a comparison table for XnView Deluxe however, XnView Freeware isn't compared which leads me to believe XnView Deluxe isn't worth paying for but hey thats their loss Pierre and Helmut are more fun to play with too
Well ok - but that doesn't really tell me what XNView Deluxe is. Is it written by the same people? Is it the same product (it looks identical). I don't understand why it exists? Did someone rip off the code and try to make a commercial product from it? Or what? It seems odd it's not really mentioned or documented on this website although it's mentioned in passing in a few posts...

I am open minded about it - if it has additional features I could use (such as logo/watermarking) I would consider buying it unless there is some reason not to. But it's hard to know if it's of any interest when there is no information and I don't really know what it is exactly in comparison to regular XNView.

Thanks for pointing out the URL anyway.

At the core, it's the same product with just more features.
Pierre, gave or sold someone permission to create a commerial product or XnView.

ltl · Post by **ltl** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 2:44 am

ckit wrote: No it's not written by the same people.
At the core, it's the same product with just more features.
Pierre, gave or sold someone permission to create a commerial product or XnView.

Ah OK - that explains a lot then.

From the sound of it I'd be better off sticking with regular XNView. As you say - the fact that their comparison sheet doesn't compare XNView Deluxe to XNView seems to suggest there are probably few real differences.

I'd rather stay with the code set that's closer to the original author (having been a commercial product programmer myself I have inside experience of what these commercial ventures can be like sometimes

)

Post by **xnview** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 9:00 am

ckit wrote:Is it written by the same people?

Yes, i'm the author of XnView Deluxe too!

ckit · Post by **ckit** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 9:56 am

Ok, I made a mistake on that one.
I'm sorry! Theres no mention of XnView Deluxe on XnView's website at all which is why I thought it was done done by a different author or company.

ltl · Post by **ltl** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 12:21 pm

xnview wrote:Yes, i'm the author of XnView Deluxe too!

So what are the differences between XNView and XNView deluxe? What additional features does deluxe offer?

Also what about logo/watermarking? Can this be done in XNView? Or is it something that is missing at the moment?

Thanks!

Lostclown · Post by **Lostclown** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 1:35 pm

The two language specific pages
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.html
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/xnview/frhome.html
that are linked from http://www.xnview.com
both mention the Deluxe version in the lower part of the page (although not mentioned in the menu part on the left).

They also list features that to my understanding are not part of the freeware version and should give you some idea of the differences.

Lostclown

ltl · Post by **ltl** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 1:52 pm

Lostclown wrote:They also list features that to my understanding are not part of the freeware version and should give you some idea of the differences.
Lostclown

Thanks - that was useful. It doesn't look like an exhaustive list but it seems there are some differences. I guess trying out a trial version is the only real way to see everything that isn't in the freeware version.

helmut · Post by **helmut** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 9:44 pm

ltl et al,

first, thank you LostClown for shedding light into this and linking to the correct infos. Pierre and I should have explained right away or even before this questions was posed at all.

In addtion to LostClown's info above, some more infos:

XnView DeLuxe and XnView are both developed by Pierre. In case of XnView DeLuxe Pierre works for Xzeos, so XnView DeLuxe is a product of Xzeos. In some countries, e.g. U.K. and Germany XnView DeLuxe can be bought in shops.

XnView DeLuxe is worth while having a look, since it provides good extra features for more advanced users.

Pierre or I will place more details in this newsgroup, soon, and place a link, here.

ltl · Post by **ltl** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 9:58 pm

helmut wrote:Pierre or I will place more details in the newsgroup, soon, and place a link, here.

Thank you Helmut - I assume the deluxe version also doesn't do logoing in the way I want? I don't really want to install deluxe in case it messes up my install of the freeware version and I think logoing is about all I would be interested in that would make me buy a deluxe copy.

It seems a shame because XNView almost does everything I do with 4 or 5 different applications every day which makes it very useful. But this one thing which it seems unable to do still means that I have to use another application to do that.

I wonder how hard it would be for me to program it myself as a plug in? I would need it to come up as a filter option in the batch processor so it could be invoked after resize etc.

Is there any information anywhere as to how to program plug in's for XNView? I use Delphi and Visual C - but both compilers are quite old now (I dropped out of programming a few years ago to persue more enjoyable business).

helmut · Post by **helmut** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 10:08 pm

ltl wrote:... I assume the deluxe version also doesn't do logoing in the way I want? I don't really want to install deluxe in case it messes up my install of the freeware version and I think logoing is about all I would be interested in that would make me buy a deluxe copy.

AFAIK, XnView DeLuxe doesn't do logo'ing (=adding logo to an image), either. I find logo'ing a very important feature and I think that it's high up on Pierre's to do list for XnView. But I don't know when this feature will actually make it into XnView.

ltl wrote:... I wonder how hard it would be for me to program it myself as a plug in? I would need it to come up as a filter option in the batch processor so it could be invoked after resize etc.

Can't tell you how much effort it would be, but this feature really makes sense only if it is fully integrated into XnView, including batch conversion (=multi conversion).

ltl wrote:Is there any information anywhere as to how to program plug in's for XNView? I use Delphi and Visual C - but both compilers are quite old now (I dropped out of programming a few years ago to persue more enjoyable business).

I'm not in XnView programming, just contributing. I think Pierre can answer this one.

ltl · Post by **ltl** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 10:22 pm

helmut wrote:Can't tell you how much effort it would be, but this feature really makes sense only if it is fully integrated into XnView, including batch conversion (=multi conversion).

I agree - but I thought it may be possible to write a plug in filter - so it would appear with all the other filters (where ADD TEXT, RESIZE and all those things are). If the batch processor then hands the current graphic to a filter - then it should be possible to make it fairly well integrated... however, if there is little documentation it may be more trouble then it's worth to do it (i.e. may be much quicker to continue using another program and wait for Pierre to do it

).

helmut wrote:I'm not in XnView programming, just contributing. I think Pierre can answer this one.

Ok I'll wait for Pierre's comments. Thanks for your help.

Post by **xnview** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:09 am

ltl wrote: I wonder how hard it would be for me to program it myself as a plug in? I would need it to come up as a filter option in the batch processor so it could be invoked after resize etc.
Is there any information anywhere as to how to program plug in's for XNView? I use Delphi and Visual C - but both compilers are quite old now (I dropped out of programming a few years ago to persue more enjoyable business).

If you want to make plugin for filter, currently it's not possible.