XnView Software

There's a really useful feature in XnView, that is ready to be used but many novice users will never find it and use it: EXIF auto rotation.

I know that activating EXIF auto rotation can cause problems (see section "Important hint" in topic "How to rotate images automatically?". Nevertheless I think it's time to activate it. If you have a camera with orientation sensor, you will no longer have any problems and will just love XnView for automatically rotating your images.

What do other people think? Did/do people here encounter problems when activating this setting?

helmut wrote:What do other people think? Did/do people here encounter problems when activating this setting?

No problems with this great feature!

IMO the thumbnail option "Use embedded thumbnails" should also be activated by default.

I agree.
It's a very convenient feature, and problem should not arise while using only XnView (and most people stick to 1 software). Moreover: more and more softwares will do the rotation correctly (reset EXIF), wich will save any issue.

It is actually a 'killer feature' for photographers, both Experts (who prefer not to touch their original files) and to Beginners (who don't know how to adjust them, or don't won't to spend time to do it).

Olivier

I use this feature and love it, but the drawback is it won't show you which pics *need* to be rotated. Novice users will use their pics as-is because they are displayed correctly, but they will end up looking wrong in generated web pages, contact lists, emails etc.

Isn't there an obvious symbol on the thumbnail to show that the image is oriented according to the EXIF ?
[Shame on me: I haven't tried 1.80RC yet... ]

Might be worth showing the same symbol somewhere in the window (Title Bar ? ) for the currently selected image as well, for people who don't use thumbnails.

Olivier

Lesmo16 wrote:IMO the thumbnail option "Use embedded thumbnails" should also be activated by default.

Only one report/suggestion per topic please. Makes it easier for Pierre and Helmut to track them =)
If I may give my opinion on this here: It's a very nice feature, I use it and it seems to sensibly speed up thumbnail display in not-yet cached folders (just a feeling - i haven't scientifically timed this yet).
That being said, if it was made default, we should really test at least 2 points:
- Do most/all cameras generate good quality embedded thumnails?
- What happens to quality when XnView thumbnails have been set much bigger/smaller than embedded thumbnails? Are they decently enlarged/shrinked?

Olivier_G wrote:Isn't there an obvious symbol on the thumbnail to show that the image is oriented according to the EXIF ?
[Shame on me: I haven't tried 1.80RC yet... ]

Right. For those images that are rotated automatically an info symbol is shown at the bottom right of the thumbnail. So you can easily see.

Olivier_G wrote:Might be worth showing the same symbol somewhere in the window (Title Bar ? ) for the currently selected image as well, for people who don't use thumbnails.

That's a good idea. Somewhere in the status bar would be the right place, I think.

... it seems to sensibly speed up thumbnail display in not-yet cached folders (just a feeling - i haven't scientifically timed this yet).

Yes, I also found a sensibly speed-up, but there must be a drastically speed-up.
Pierre announced a 10 times faster thumbnail reading speed.
Unfortunately I can't confirm this advantage.

[Edit]
After using a stop watch, I must admit that there is a really big advantage in thumbnail display!
[/Edit]

- Do most/all cameras generate good quality embedded thumnails?

If there aren't any embedded thumbnails, a hook on that options CheckBox would be ignored,
and the 'normal' thumbnails will be displayed.

- What happens to quality when XnView thumbnails have been set much bigger/smaller than embedded thumbnails? Are they decently enlarged/shrinked?

Shrinking makes sense for sure - enlarging doesn't.
Exactly that's the actual behaviour - fine!

helmut wrote:

Olivier_G wrote:Might be worth showing the same symbol somewhere in the window (Title Bar ? ) for the currently selected image as well, for people who don't use thumbnails.

That's a good idea. Somewhere in the status bar would be the right place, I think.

I agree.

Maybe show some warning message for the 1st image, with "[x] Don't show this message again" - as for "multiple pages" images.

Dreamer wrote:Maybe show some warning message for the 1st image, with "[x] Don't show this message again" - as for "multiple pages" images.

Right. I've asked Pierre to have a tipp dialog at startup. In the tipp dialog, we could inform users about such things: Special formats, EXIF auto rotation, ...

helmut wrote:Right. For those images that are rotated automatically an info symbol is shown at the bottom right of the thumbnail. So you can easily see.

You're correct, I had disabled this option.

After a few tests, I don't see any reason against having "EXIF auto rotation" and "Use embedded thumbnails" ON by default.

Only problem I see is thumbnails not being rotated in browser, until their folder was deleted from cache then added again.

Everyone agrees?

Everyone agrees?

I do

But please read my post (5 above) and find out the speed-up with checked "Use embedded Thumbnails" for yourselves.
IMHO it must be quicker!

ok i'll try to assess the speed gain.

Thank you all for your comments. Think for EXIF auto rotation the decision is clearly: Yes, activated by default.

For embedded JPG thumbnails we should still wait a bit and see what other people think.

If in doubt, Pierre should simply activate it in the RC3 and see what happens for people testing the RC3 (sure enough this will only work if people have no xnview.ini file, yet).