Settings - Image Properties and Image Effects

Settings - Image Properties and Image Effects Image Properties

The Image Properties determines how the images would be processed. This forms the core function of Batch It! Pro.

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Image Format	The supported image formats are JPEG, JPEG 2000, TIFF, PNG, BMP, PCX, GIF, TGA, PPM, PGM and PBM.

Resizing Method	Batch It! Pro allows you to resize your images 4 ways, by pixels (upsize and downsize), by percentage (upsize and downsize), by ratios (upsize and downsize supported), by cropping and in frames.

	The In Frame method is a much requested feature which was introduced in Batch It! Pro v4.0. This method allows the system to create a frame based on the Width and Height dimensions and by setting the frame background color would resize all images so that it will fit within the frame. All images are resized while maintaining Ratio Aspects and in the center of the frame. We are made aware that some programs online and offline which requires all images to be of fixed dimensions or they would get truncated or can squashed. Using the In Frame method would allow all images to be rendered perfectly each time and every time.

imageinframe

Image Resizing set as By Frame and the Background Color set as Red

	Upsized images may degrade in image quality due to the lack of details and depending on how much larger the upsizing is.

Width	Use with Upsize or Downsize by Pixels and Keep Dimension Ratio Aspect, it defines the minimum or maximum width that would cause a trigger point. This is also used by the In Frame resizing method to determine the actual Width of the Frame Container.

Height	Use with Upsize or Downsize by Pixels and Keep Dimension Ratio Aspect, it defines the minimum or maximum height that would cause a trigger point. This is used by the In Frame resizing method to determine the actual height of the frame container.

Keep Dimension Ratio Aspect	When selected, the image would be ensure the images would retain its dimension ratio. You may set either width or height as 0 then the image width or height would be used as the maximum or minimum trigger point.

	If you uncheck this option, images would be upsize or downsize to the dimension specified with the Width and Height.

Swap Dimensions if Portrait Image	This feature is useful if you are working with both landscape and portrait images at the same time and you do not want the portrait images to be smaller than the landscape images.

	Digital cameras are made to take landscape images but by turning the camera clockwise or counter-clockwise, you can take portrait images. For example, if you want all landscape images to be saved as maximum 800 x 600 and portrait to be saved as 600 x 800 then select this option. If not, all heights would be set at 600 pixels and all widths as 800 pixels (minimum)

Frame Color	This is used by Resizing in Frame method to determine the background color of the frame.

Color Depth

Batch It! Pro allows to determine the color depth of the processed images. The current support is 1 bit (Black and White), 4 bits (16 Colors), 8 bits (256 Colors) and 24 bits (True Colors) mode. This will only work if the image format supports changing the color depth such as BMP. For format which does not support the selected color depth, the images would dither to that number of colors selected.

Resampling Method

Batch It! Pro offer 14 resampling methods. Each offering a different algorithm in getting you that picture perfect resized images.

We will spare you the complex mathematical computation in the various resampling method and just mentioned that each method would employ certain degree of color matching and averaging to select the best match. A degree of blur effect would be added to reduce the effects of pixelization.

For Best Image Quality use, Lanczos3, Hermite, Bell, BSpline, Mitchell, Nearest, Bilinear or Bicubic.

If you need a faster image loading especially for small thumbnails where image quality is not that critical, use Triange, Linear or FastLinear.

For Black on White image, use ProjectBW and for White on Black image, use ProjectWB. These basically set the images to black and white images which is good for black and white documents.

JPEG/PNG Quality	This sets the JPEG, JPEG 2000 or PNG image quality in percentage. Because of the lossy compression algorithm employed by JPEG, each time an image is worked on, the image quality would degrade and as such, Batch It! Pro would load and transform each image to Bitmap which uses a lossless compression algorithm to reduce the image degrading. And as such, all image saved would be considered new.

	A 100% JPEG Quality does not equate to exactly the same quality of the original as the image quality can be perceived as improved or degraded depending on the resampling method employed. As such, at 100% the image file size could increase. 'As Is' would use a prediction algorithm to determine the original image format.

	We recommend a JPEG Quality of between 75 to 95 as the best settings as it would represent the best mix of image file size and image quality.

	For JPEG 2000 images, feel free to set JPEG Quality down to as low as you want to so as to reduce image file size. Because of the wavelet technology algorithm, you will not notice any significant image quality loss as compared to the JPEG counterpart.

JPEG Smoothing (%)	JPEG Smoothing is a technique used to apply blur effect to the image edges to reduce pixelization. If possible, set JPEG Smoothing to 0%.

	We noticed that images with slanted straight lines such as roofs are not rendered correctly on digital cameras and during a resizing (especially at downsizing), the effects becomes more evident. Applying JPEG Smoothing of 5 to 10% would usually correct this.

JPEG Huffman Compression	By enabling this option, Batch It! Pro would use the Huffman Compression table instead of the standard JPEG Compression table for jpeg compression. The Huffman Compression would allow for a further reduction in image file size while retaining the image quality.

Progressive JPEG	Use Progressive JPEG option if you are using the images on the web. This will allow the image to progressive show while it loads so the viewer do not want to wait for the entire image to be downloaded before it is shown.

	This is however is not supported on pre-1995 image programs and may cause incompatibility issues.

Retain EXIF Header Info	Modern Digital Camera will include the camera parameters in the header of the image file, typically in JPEG images. This information is useful especially for those who wants to learn photography as it allows one to sharpen ones photography technique. However, this adds about 6kb to the file image size. If you do not require this header, you can uncheck this option to maximize the file image size.

Keep IPTC Header	IPTC Headers are used publishing houses to embed image description and articles into images like news headlines. If you are concerned about file size, you can uncheck this option, this will reduce the image file size by about 16 to 37kb.

	* To reduce image file size, uncheck both the 'Retain EXIF Header Info' and 'Keep IPTC Header' option.

Dots Per Inch	The Dots Per Inch option is usually not relevant unless you are using the images on desktop publishers or word processors to determine the image dimensions on the page. The higher the DPI, the smaller the image would appear on these media.

	Monitors usually have fixed DPI and would use the image pixel size to determine image sizes on screen. Modern printers would have interpolation algorithm to upsize or downsize images to fit to the page and would usually ignore the image DPI settings.

Set Background Color (from PNG/GIF)	When converting from an image format which support alphablending (transparent background) such as GIF and PNG images to an image format which does not support alphablending such as JPEG, TIFF or BMP, the original background color would show. By checking this option, it allows you to refine the background color to use.

Background Color	This option defines the background color when Set Background Color (from PNG/GIF) is checked.

Image Effects

The Image Effects determine the additional functions you want to apply on the images.

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Image Orientation

This setting sets the Image Orientation for the initial image orientation for the images being loaded to the filename manager in the Control Center. The actual image orientation used would be the ones set in the Control Center.

There are 6 options provided.

As Is	- Keep the image orientation as it is.
Rotate Clockwise 90°	- Rotate 90° to the Right
Rotate Anti-clockwise 90°	- Rotate 90° to the Left
Rotate 180°	- Rotate 180° from the Right/Clockwise
Flip Left	- Reverse Left with Right
Flip Down	- Rotate 180° from the Left/Anti-clockwise

Note : With the Rotate 180°, left becomes right and right becomes left while the Flip Down would keep the left as left.

To illustrate the difference.

original

Original Image

rotate180

Rotate 180 °

flipdown

Flip Down

flipleft
Flip Left

Image Manipulation The program offers 6 Image Manipulation methods which includes Sharpen, Sharpen More, Blur, Blur More, Emboss and As Is.

Setting Image Manipulation to As Is with apply no Image Manipulation.

emboss
Image Manipulation set as Emboss

Brightness

This adjusts the brightness intensity of the image. 0 represents no change in brightness. A negative brightness setting would darken the image and a positive brightness setting would brighten it.

Contrast

This adjusts the contrast intensity of the image. 0 represents no change in contrast. A negative contrast will decrease the image contrast and a positive setting would increase it.

Grayscale

This will convert the image to its grayscale representation. However, the image actual color depth will still remain as original.

grayscale

Negative

This will convert the image to look like the film negative.

negative

Old Picture

This reduce the image intensity and give it the 'old' look and feel as with prints which color would fade in time.

oldpicture

Sepia

This adds a 'browning' effect to the images.

sepia

Auto Equalize

The auto equalize feature will compute the median of the colors based on its intensity on the picture as a whole and auto adjust them to the median. Images which are too overly exposed or under exposed would benefit from this. But do use with caution if there are drastic color spike, it will upset the adjustment.

autoequalize

For those who are adventurous, you could apply all the four adjustments (Grayscale,Negative,Old Picture and Auto Equalize) it will give you a near InfraRed effect as taken through an InfraRed Filter.

nearir

Red Eye Removal

This function removes the 'red' effect on the images which is caused by the camera flash especially on the human eyes.

redeyeremoval

Add Border

With this option checked, Batch It! Pro will add an Border around the image. Border Thickness defines the thickness of the border in pixels and the Border Color defines the color of the border.

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Add Border with Border Thickness set at 8 and Border Color set as Black

Add Drop Shadow

Batch It! Pro allows you to add shadow frames to make your images stand on.

dropshadow

Drop Shadow with Drop Shadow Color set as Black and Opaque Percentage as 45 with Shadow Width set at 20

Shadow Size	This determines the size of the Drop Shadow.
Drop Shadow Color	This determines the color of the Drop Shadow.
Drop Shadow Opacity	This determines the Opacity of the Drop Shadow. 0 is full transparency and 100 is full opacity.
Drop Shadow Background Color	As you may want to place the images on various background such as on the web and your background color is different from the default white, you could use this option to select one which matches your background so that it would blend in.