FastPictureViewer Tutorials & Videos

Learn how to install and use FastPictureViewer.

FastPictureViewer Professional is a photographer-oriented image viewer: it offers features specific to photo viewing and photographer's workflows (as opposed to general-purpose image viewing). The program was initially created to facilitate the first review pass (aka "culling") that most photographers do on their fresh images to select the "keepers" from the rest (and sometimes delete unwanted images). The software also goes beyond this in its own, unique way. Read on...

FastPictureViewer Professional (or FPV Pro for short) was designed primarily to...

• help quickly review many images efficiently (check overall composition, exposure, sharpness...).
• allow the user to rate and label images according to their subjective "value" (or flag them for deletion).
• copy, move or delete photos, one by one or in batch, according to the given rating or other criteria.
• quickly export web-ready small or medium size JPEG copies of some or all of the photos.

To reach those goals, the program features...

• professional color management with profiled monitor support.
• efficient use of computer resources and latest operating systems (ample memory, multiprocessing, 64-bit, optional GPU acceleration).
• streamlined used interface with 1-keystroke keyboard shortcuts for most core functions.

FPV Pro also support advanced functions such as tethered shooting, real-time folder monitoring and feature a simple slideshow mode. It can be used in many different scenarios and runs on a wide variety of hardware configurations, ranging from modest "netbooks" with small screens to multi-monitor, multi-processors 64-bit powerhouses. As examples, one of our customers at focusnature.ch told us he successfully culled 6'000 Canon EOS 7D raw files on a portable "netbook PC", in the back of a camping-car during a photo trip. At the other end of the spectrum, FPV Pro is used by many of iStockphoto' photo editors (the largest microstock photo agency in the world) and help streamline their massive daily digital image reviewing tasks.

The following section briefly describes the major features and functions of FPV Pro, beginning with a quick tour of the screen layout.

When started for the first time, the program window covers the entire screen and is laid-out as follow:

You'll notice the four floating windows, namely the XMP Metadata window, showing XMP rating, label and urgency (more on that later), the RGB Histogram window, the external Program Launcher window and the EXIF Metadata window, which displays shooting data such as shutter speed, aperture, date taken and more. The Taskbar can be found at the bottom of the main program window. The content of all these areas updates themselves automatically (and instantly) when images are displayed.

The floating windows and the taskbar can be left visible or hidden: the Program Launcher has a small "close box" that can be clicked to close the window, the three floating windows can be closed by right-clicking on their surface and clicking Hide in the context menu, as illustrated below with the RGB Histogram window:

Finally, the taskbar itself can be hidden by pressing the F12 function key (this feature is useful on netbooks, where the screen real estate is at premium).

It is also possible to hide / show all floating windows at once by pressing the F10 function key. All window positions and states are remembered and automatically saved. The position and state of the main program window is also remembered between sessions, so if you resize the program to takes, say, the left half of your monitor, it will start with the same size and position the next time round. If you have multiple monitors, you can move the program's window (or any of the small floating windows) to any of your auxiliary monitors and all positions will be remembered too.

One of the most important part of the user interface is the Taskbar, occupying the bottom of the program's window. The taskbar shows a wealth of information, as pictured below:

Another important feature to discover is the Taskbar Context Menu, that gets displayed by right-clicking on the taskbar itself:

The taskbar context menu gives access to some of the most important commands and features of the program. At the bottom, one can see the "Hide All" option (F10) already discussed, and also the Full Screen command (F11) along with the F12 command which allows to hide the taskbar itself. Switching to a true 100% full screen mode is easy: just press the F10 function key to hide all floating windows, then F11 to switch to full-screen, and finally F12 to hide the taskbar if desired. Those operations can be reverted by pressing the F12, F11 and F10 keys again. Let's briefly examine the menu options: Publish gives access to a submenu where you can mark images for web or FTP publishing. This function is present in the menu but there are no upload plug-in at this time, we'll add FTP publishing first, then web publishing in future versions (summer 2010). Photos can be marked for publishing by pressing the P key, and an overlay icon (at the bottom left of the window) says that the image was flagged. This flag can be used by the batch processor plug-in: it can act on files (copy, move, save-for-web) according to the state of this flag. The Batch Delete function does what its name says. You can access the related commands from the sub-menu, or use keyboard shortcuts, namely press the X key to mark an image for deletion, then later press the Ctrl+X key combination to delete all marked images. The batch delete function is covered in its own section below. Quick Bookmarks: bookmark let you mark particular images in the current image list, like you;d makr a page in a book to quickly locate it later. Likewise, the program let you quickly jump back to any of the bookmarked locations. This feature is useful when reviewing large quantities of images: you can mark a few images of particular interest, say cover-page candidates, and quickly jump back to them regardless of the total number of images currently loaded or your current position in the image list. The registered edition of the program remembers bookmarks between sessions, so they will be there the next day when you reopen the same image folder to resume an interrupted work session. The program also use an internal bookmark to remember the last image displayed: an option can be enabled to reopen the last used image folder on startup, and the program will attempt to locate the last viewed image, making it easier to resume a work session exactly where you left.

The Plug-In submenu gives you access to extended functionality added to the program in the form of separate add-ins, called "plug-in components". There is a plug-in that let you put the current image as desktop background (shortcut: Ctrl+W for Wallpaper). Another plug-in implements the very powerful batch file processor covered in another section on this page (shortcut: F for File utilities).

In the next section one can find the Rename... command, which can be very simple - just type the new name and press Enter - or very sophisticated with powerful renaming templates and macro-substitution, allowing complex renaming schemes based on EXIF data, user name and many other data elements, such as dates and more. The Rename command is covered in details in its own section below.

Delete... is a simple delete command. The user can chose to delete files immediately or to move them to the Recycle Bin (see the program preferences).

Note that the program recognize the special RAW+JPEG shooting mode available on some top cameras, where two files are written for each picture taken: the raw file (NEF, CR2, SR2 etc, depending on the camera brand) and a JPEG file with the same base name. The program intelligently detects this condition and groups (or "stacks") the two files together and treat them as one image. The consequence if this special feature is that the program does not show every images twice, once the raw then the JPEG, as general-purpose viewers do. Instead, the program displays only one "photo" and treats the two underlying files as one for rename, delete, copy, rename and move operations.

Auto-Advance is a "poor man's slideshow" function which simple move forward through the image list at pre-defined time intervals. The speed can be configured in the program options from about 30 images per second (suitable for very fast computers and relatively small images) to 1 image per hour.

The Tracking Mode is an advanced feature where the program monitors the current image folder and automatically displays the last incoming image. This function is invaluable in some scenarios, for example your camera might be uploading pictures to a folder on your computer using a Wi-Fi connection, and FastPictureViewer could be set up to display incoming pictures as they arrive: just open the folder into which the images are copied and press the T key to activate the tracking mode. This function also works like a charm combined with tethering software, for example with the Canon EOS Utility on Nikon's Camera Control Pro, just to name two, or to display incoming files sent to the local hard-disk over a network. The monitoring function works in real-time without consuming resources when idle, and instantly detects file arrivals anywhere in folder hierarchies of any depth, regardless of the number of images already present.

The MTP/PTP Tethered Mode is a function that let the program download and display images directly from your camera, through the USB2 connection, as they are shot. This feature relies on a special protocol, known as PTP/MTP (for Picture Transfer Protocol, or Media Transfer Protocol, respectively). This protocol is implemented by all current Nikon DSLR bodies and let FastPictureViewer Pro tether Nikon cameras directly, without any additional software, also in 64-bit. Your mileage may vary with other camera brands as some manufacturers (notably Canon) did not implement PTP fully yet, and disable camera controls when set in this mode, preventing the user to actuate the shutter (but there is hope, see the above paragraph about the tracking mode and manufacturer tethering software).

The last five options on the taskbar context menu are self explanatory: they just toggle the corresponding floating window on and off. Note that the Keywords/IPTC editor is a planned feature and will appear in a future version: we plan to implement a dictionary-based keyword editor (aka "controlled vocabulary") and an IPTC editor letting users add IPTC-compliant title, caption, author and copyright metadata to their images.

Below are illustrations of the XMP Metadata, EXIF Metadata and RGB Histogram photographer-specific information windows in action:

	The XMP Metadata floating window displays the current image's rating (as a "star range" and as a numeric value), the image XMP Label's numeric value and associated color, along with the Photoshop Urgency value, as a single digit number up to 9. XMP is an industry-wide metadata standard developed and promoted by Adobe Incorporated, the company that brought us Photoshop, and is widely used as an uniform information exchange mechanism across imaging applications. Digital asset management suites like Adobe Lightroom, IDimager, IMatch and many others are XMP compliant and will understand XMP metadata created by FPV Pro. FastPictureViewer Professional reads and writes XMP rating, label and urgency metadata elements, either from within the image file themselves or from external files known as "XMP sidecars" (when present, sidecars win). The rating functions can be enabled and configured in the program options.
The EXIF Metadata floating window displays shooting information about the image currently displayed. The shutter speed, aperture, ISO speed and exposure compensation (not shown), most important for photographers, are displayed prominently in large, bold characters. The windows also contains a host of other information about the picture, such as the camera's program and metering modes, flash and white balance settings, the lens' focal length, the EXIF date and time at which the picture was taken, along with color space information, image size in megapixels and corresponding pixel dimensions, camera model name and image comment, if space allows. This information window can be left displayed at all times and the data updates itself automatically (and instantly) when changing images.
	The RGB Histogram is an essential tool for some. It let users judge the exposure of an image by looking at the shape of the histogram curves. While describing the use and interpretation of an RGB histogram is beyond the scope of this overview, let's briefly say that the curves show certain statistics about the image: the horizontal axis reflects the brightness, with dark pixels (0) on the left-hand side and bright pixels (255) on the right side. The vertical axis reflects the number of pixels in the image that happens to be of a given brightness. A medium grey "image" will have a histogram looking like a narrow spike in the middle. An underexposed or very dark image will tend to have an histogram leaning toward the left-hand side, while a bright (or overexposed) image will have an histogram leaning towards the right-hand side. The exact interpretation depends on the subject and requires some experience. Lookup Google for RGB histogram interpretation and expose-to-the-right (ETTR) for more information about RGB histograms and their practical uses. Unique to FastPictureViewer Professional is the Average Luminance Indicator, in the form of a small arrow pointing down at the top of the histogram. The luminance gives a sense of the "overall brightness" of an image, and most well exposed natural light images will have this indicator fall in the central tier of the horizontal range. The tiny horizontal arrows on the sides show the "exit points" i.e. the value of the first and last columns of the histogram, respectively. They make it easier to see the value of the first and last columns on "busy" histograms. Pixels at the far left of the are "blocked dark", while the ones on the far right are "burned out": as a rule, you don't want much of either ones. The histogram at the left reflects a well exposed natural-light image, with no blocked pixels and very few burned highlights (a tad little bit on the red channel). This is a good looking histogram! The average luminance indicator depicts a slightly darker-than-average overall image, as the little arrow is at the left of the central tier. The overall left-hand-side shape of the curves reveals that most of the pixels are moderately bright on this photo, and agree with the average luminance arrow. The image we used for this histogram was taken with a Canon EOS 1D MkIV camera, see the original photo here on its author's blog.
The External Editors window consists of two parts, the upper zone, which displays the current image name and file size (pictured here: a RAW+JPEG "stack", which the program considers as a single image) and a lower zone, which contains a list of configured external programs than can be launched directly from FastPictureViewer (the Home Basic edition only allows 1 external program to be configured). The lower zone is initially empty and users must configure the program(s) they want to add to the list: right-clicking the lower part brings up a small context menu (pictured), and clicking "Add" on the menu brings up a standard "file open" dialog into which users can select the program they want to add to the list. When operating with RAW+JPEG stacks, it is possible to select the file format you want to launch the editor on by first clicking the file name in the upper zone. Double-clicking either a file name in the upper zone, or a program name on the lower zone will launch the program and pass it the file in question. You can also use keyboard shortcuts to launch external programs: Ctrl+F1 launches the first program in the list, Ctrl+F2 the second etc. If the file was edited externally, one can refresh the current image in FastPictureViewer by pressing the F5 function key.

Image folders and sorting

FastPictureViewer Professional was designed from the start to review entire folders of images and as such it behave a little differently than most existing image viewers, which were originally designed to view a single image at a time. In FPV Pro one start by opening a folder, not a file, and the program scans the entire folder and builds a list of all images it contains. By default, the program also scans all sub-folders contained within the image folder that was opened, and adds all images in all subfolders to the internal list too (it is possible to scan an entire drive or memory card at once). The folder scanning is very quick: on fast computers the program can easily discover more than 1000 images per second on local hard disks, so scanning a large folder containing thousands or even tens of thousands of photos only takes a few moments.

The program builds a list of all images it discovered during the scan and sorts the list alphabetically by folder and file name. It is also possible to sort the image list according to the file modification dates, or from the EXIF "date time original" or the GPS time stamp data written by the cameras, if present. When sorting by time, the program will show images in perfect sequence, even when the files reside in different subfolders. This is invaluable when reviewing images taken by multiple shooters on the same event, when a time-based sequence is preferable over a shooter-based sequence.

Top end professional cameras such as the latest Canon EOS 1D series and Nikon D3 series writes sub-second time information in the image metadata. FPV Pro reads such data and correctly sorts high frames-per-second sequences by time: images are shown in perfect chronological order down to the 1/100th of a second: one just have to make sure all cameras are perfectly time-synchronized before the event (Nikon D3 series cameras, for example, can set their internal clock from a GPS time source, making it easy to set multiple cameras to the exact same time) and FPV Pro will do the sorting for you.

Real-time folder monitoring

One of the many unique features of FPV Pro is its always-on, real-time image folder monitoring: once a folder is loaded from a local drive, any photo added to the image folder afterwards (or any of its subfolders) will be automatically detected and added to the internal image list, at the correct location in the image sequence according to the sorting mode in effect. This means that it is possible to add photos to a folder in the middle of a viewing session and that the program will grab new images, without ever missing a single one, without the need to reload the entire folder from the top or even interrupt the viewing session. This feature is critical in some scenarios, for example when a picture editor reviews images dumped to his/her hard drive from memory cards or Wi-Fi connections across a local area network during an event: pictures are continuously added, and can be viewed in perfect chronological order, without interruptions. In auto-advance mode (aka slideshow) the program also grabs any newly added images on-the-fly and adds them to the running show.

Once the first image is loaded, the program displays it in fit-to-window mode and awaits the user’s first command. It also silently prepares the next image in the background, so it’s ready to move forward in a snap when the user is.

Modern DSLRs images are typically much larger than usual computer monitors, and reducing the size of a digital photograph to make it fit the screen tends to make it look sharper than it is. As such, it is essential to check for sharpness at 100% zoom, where each pixel of the image gets its own pixel on the monitor screen, also known at 1:1 display ratio.

Zooming

FPV Pro has a unique spring-loaded zoom function that works very quickly: simply point the mouse cursor to an area of interest (for example the closest eye on a person’s portrait, or more generally on the region of the image supposed to be in focus) then click and hold the left mouse button. The program will instantly zoom to 100% level around the clicked area and will stay in zoom mode for as long as the mouse button is held down. The image can be panned by dragging the mouse, and the program returns to fit-to-window mode when the mouse button is released. When operating in GPU-accelerated mode, available with some graphic cards, the zooming and panning functions are instantaneous. Also unique is the program's ability to let the user change the current image, for example move to the next or previous image in line, while maintaining the current zoom and pan: when reviewing long sequences of high frame-per-second shots, common in sport shooting, it is possible to zoom and pan to some area on the first picture then to quickly move back and forth in the sequence, with the mouse wheel or keyboard, to compare sibling images and pick the sharpest or most decisive one. The program can be toggled to 100% zoom by pressing the Enter key (and pressing Enter again switches back to normal fit-to-window mode).

The right-hand mouse button also controls a spring-loaded zoom function, whose ratio is configurable from 10% (that is, a reduction) to 25’600%, a massive pixel blow-up. By default the right-click zoom is set to 300%, as it is a popular magnification value according to some of our pro users. The program does not smooth pixels when blowing up beyond 100% as this would ruin the ability to assess sharpness. It is possible to change the right-click zoom ratio from the program's preferences, or by holding the Ctrl key while right-clicking, and scrolling the mouse wheel. This setting - like all others - is remembered by the program until changed, and the right-click zoom function can be disabled altogether in the options. It is also possible to enable pixel smoothing if desired, and to enable an auto-enlargement function that automatically scale-up small images to make them fit the window.

Navigation

The program offers several ways to move back and forth in the image list. Several keys are assigned to the same functions, in order to accommodate various user's preferences. For example one can move forward by hitting the Space bar, the Tab key, the PgDn key, the "+" sign on the numeric keypad, or by scrolling the mouse wheel. Users having multimedia keyboards will find that the "next" key also moves to the next image, finally it is possible to click the "Next" button on the program's taskbar. Similarly, one can move to the previous image by hitting the Backspace key, the "-" sign, Shift-Tab, PgUp, Shift-Space, the mouse wheel, the "previous" key on multimedia keyboards, of by clicking the "Prev" button on the taskbar.

The Up arrow moves to the first image in the previous folder while the Down arrow moves to the first image in the next folded (when sorting by folder and file names). The Home key moves to the first image in the current folder, while the End key moves to the last image in the folder. Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End moves to the first and last image in list, respectively. Ctrl+PgDn moves 10 images forward while Ctrl+PgUp moves 10 images backward. There is a preference setting to enable "wrapping" (automatic roll-back to the first image when reaching the end) and to suppress the "beep" sound that can be heard when moving past the last image in the list. As a side note, there is no limit on the number of images the program can detect and list. If sufficient computer resources are available loading a ridiculous number of images, say 300,000 at once, is not a problem and the program intelligently manages the image pool according to available memory, preloading and unloading images as needed.

Clicking the small zone at the far right of the taskbar bring up the Quick Navigation Slider, which let users jump to any location in the image list simply by dragging the slider. The program displays image number and total images in list, the folder and image name, and, on Windows 7 and Windows Vista, also displays a square thumbnails giving a visual cue about the location pointed to by the slider. The thumbnail is not available on Windows XP as this feature relies on operating system functions introduced in Windows Vista. Releasing the mouse button causes the program to jump directly to the location. The navigation slider itself can be resized by grabbing the "handle" at the top of the slider's window: it can be convenient to make the slider longer if navigating a huge image list.

The Getting Started guide is to be continued, please check back in a few days! The thumbnail strip (available on Windows 7 and Vista) will be covered, along with the basics of XMP rating. You can check the short videos in the meantime and the detailed description of several key features below. Do not hesitate to explore the program functions, also have a look at the numerous preference options: the program's behavior can be customized in numerous ways.

FPV Pro is a mature and very stable application that can be used all day long, every day, as a reliable professional tool.

One of the most common customer request, both on the forum and on the email channels, was to provide the ability to act on files based on their rating. As a matter of fact, FastPictureViewer Pro is well equipped for fast previewing and rating of images, but, as of version 1.0, the program fell short of file management functions, relegating these duties to other application down the chain. Starting from v1.1, a powerful rule-based file management plug-in was added. If you are familiar with Microsoft Outlook-style message processing rules, you will feel right at home with the new plug-in as the principle is directly inspired from the Outlook solution, that works so well for millions of users. The File Utilities plug-in is extremely powerful, it would take an entire book chapter just to describe what it does, and another to explore the possibilities.

The idea behind rule-based processing is to offer maximum flexibility and power, while at the same time maximizing ease of use. Rules are constructed in a point-and-click user interface and can express multiple conditions and logic without the complexity associated with scripting languages, which requires programming skills (but the file processor can be scripted, as you'll learn). With the FastPictureViewer File Utilities plug-in, users can build their own processing rules in minutes. Rules can then be applied to the current image or (for registered users) to all images currently loaded in FasPictureViewer's image list, making it easy to apply processing instructions such as copy, move, save-for-web or delete, to many files at once, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands - it does not matter.

The plug-in is invoked by pressing the 'F' key while images are loaded in the viewer. The plug-in is initially empty of any rule and looks as follow:

Creating the first rule

As an example, let's say we are at the end of a long review session during which we viewed and rated thousands of images. Now we want to copy all files that were given a 5 stars rating to a folder, say D:\Images\Keepers\5-Stars. Let's create a rule to do exactly that. We first begin by clicking the "New..." button at the top-right of the window. This opens the rule editor as follow:

The screen consists in several part. From top to bottom we see the part where the conditions are set. A condition indicates, for example, that a file must have a certain rating. There can be multiple conditions, for example a certain Rating and a certain Label, and all conditions must be met together to trigger the actions, which appears in the second part of the window.

An action is something to be performed on the file, for example copy it, move it or delete it. As with any rules, they may be exceptions and the File Utilities Plug-in let users specify exceptions. For example if we don't want to copy files that were already copied to the Keep/Copy folder using FastPictureViewer's file copy mechanism, we can say so by setting the corresponding exception. Here we want to keep things simple and just copy the 5-starred images to our folder on D:, so let's enable the XMP Rating condition and the Copy action, as follow:

We notice that the rule display in the 4th part of the window, below the list of available exceptions, now contains a plain English sentence that says what the rule is supposed to do. In particular we see our XMP Rating condition and the Copy action, both followed by clickable (blue underlined) variables that we need to fill out to complete the rule. Let's click on the "to be specified" words next to the XMP Rating condition. This will bring up the Condition Editor for the XMP Rating condition. An XMP rating is an number from 1 to 5. The rating can net have been set al all on the image, or it can be 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. The Condition Editor let you precisely state the exact condition to be matched. Here we are only interested in images having a rating equal to 5, so let's say so in the editor:

Next, let's click on the underlined variable next to the Copy action and type our destination folder's name (note that the program suggests folder names as you type. You can also invoke a folder picker by pressing the small button at the right of the edit zone. Note the three options on the Copy Action Editor window: the program let you specify what to do regarding folders. If you want to re-create the image's folder hierarchy within the destination folder, you can say so by checking the first option. The second option let to tell the program what to do if a file already exists with the same name in the destination folder. The default is to NOT overwrite any existing file, but you can change this behavior and force the program to overwrite existing file(s) by checking the second option. Finally, of you work with XMP sidecar files and the XMP sidecar option is enabled in FasPictureViewer's XMP Rating options, you can tick the last box to also copy XMP sidecars, if any:

We can now give a descriptive name to this rule, and optionally a description, to help remind us what this rule is about. Take the time to write meaningful names and descriptions, this will help you stay organized later, when you'll have several more rules:

We can now close the Rule Editor and get back to the main plug-in window, which will show our new rule in the rule list. To make another similar rule, say for 4-starred images, simply highlight the rule you want to copy from and hit the Copy... button. The Rule Editor will open with a copy of the highlighted rule loaded. Just change the relevant parameters, update the rule's name and description and click OK to add your new rule. Below is an image of the plug-in dialog after the rule we just created was copied and modified, as just described, to handle 4-starred and 3-starred images. All we have to do is tell the program how to apply the rules.

A list of rules is called a "rule set". A rule set can contain many rules (here we depict only 3 but there can be many more, as many as you need). It is possible to disable a particular rule by unchecking it. Unchecked rules are ignored and the actions they contain are never executed. Checked rules can be applied in three manners: the first manner is to apply the rules only to the image currently viewed in FastPictureViewer. The second manner is to apply the rules to all images in the image list (in our screenshot, we see that the rules are about to be applied to more then 27,000 images). The last option applies the rules starting from the current image and until the end of the image list (in the image the viewer was positioned on picture number 22,747, and there was 4,508 images remaining in the list after the current one). Note that the last two options are only available to registered users.

All that is left to do now is to click the "Apply Now" button. The plug-in will take all files one by one and evaluate each rule in turn. If the conditions are satisfied for a particular file, the programmed actions will be performed. In our case, the 5, 4 and 3-starred images will be copied to the corresponding folders on our image archive on drive D:. Rules can be more complex than that. It is also possible to create very similar rules to copy a file to multiple locations, as many as you want in fact: just create a rule for each destination folder, set the appropriate conditions that tells the program what images to copy and the plug-in will perform those tasks quickly and reliably just be pressing Apply Now.

Rules and all options are remembered so you'll find them the next time the plug-in is invoked. For more advanced uses, for backup or to move rules between computers, it is possible to save and load rule sets to and from external files. Rule sets can also be seen as "Tasks" so it is possible to group rules into Tasks, say for example a "Backup and Export" task, and a "Dispatch and Delete" task, each containing several rules with different conditions and actions. Tasks (rule sets) can then be quickly retrieved and swapped using the "Rule Set" button.

The example above lists 3 separate rules for 3 separate ratings, for the sake of simplicity. More advanced users can take advantage of the macro-substitution facility which let them incorporate variables in the destination folder names for the Copy, Move and Save for Web actions. With macro-substitution, the 3 above rules can be replaced by a single one: "Where the image has an XMP Rating greater than or equal to 3 then copy it to the D:\Pictures\Keepers\{Rating}-Stars folder" with do exactly the same thing as the three separate rules shown above, and the {Rating} substitution macro appearing in the destination path will be replaced by the actual rating number at run time, creating the "3-Stars", "4-Stars" and "5-Stars" folders as needed. You can even use "path macros" to have the program automatically create a Year and Month subfolder hierarchy according to the date and time recorded in the pictures.

The File Utilities plug-in of becoming more powerful by the day. We have already added a "Save for Web" action which let users export lean and mean small to medium size JPEGs for web use. This action gets configured in the simplest possible manner, yet create JPEG thumbnails and web-ready images of the highest quality from any supported image formats, including raw files. The produced JPEG images exhibits a perfect balance between file weight, picture dimensions and image quality, with optional (and subtle) adaptive "unsharp mask" sharpening to give your JPEG exports an extra touch of crispness, making them perfect as low-resolution samples for customers, of for web upload as the plug-in automatically performs the necessary conversion to the sRGB color space.

Best of all, the export process is very quick, even quicker if you have a multi-core CPU such as Core2 Duo or Quad, or better processor (it is several times faster than similar export function found in other applications, regardless of their price, even more so on multicore hardware. The speed is particularly impressive considering the work involved by the best quality resampling, sharpening and color management performed during exports).

The plug-in takes advantage of multi-processing abilities of modern microprocessors such as Intel Core2 Duo, Quad, i5, i7 and other powerful CPUs to improve overall throughput and speed up its operations. We also have a number of ideas for upcoming builds and we already added a few, such as macro-substitution that can be applied to destination directories names, making it a breeze to dispatch files to some "C:\Pictures\Year\Month" folder tree by date taken, for example, along with new conditions on file size, file date, EXIF date, with some more to come.

The batch file processor makes it easy to create powerful rule sets corresponding to typical tasks, for example suppose that one want to create a task to import images from a memory card. For the sake of discussion, let's also suppose that the shooter has his camera set in RAW+JPG mode, and that the import task consists in copying all raws to 3 different folders on the computer (say, C: drive, D: drive, plus a network drive for backup), and all jpegs to a 4th, separate location, and finally to create 640 pixels "proof copies" of everything, saved to yet another location, for example for quick browsing or to create a customer proof CD.  You can create 3 rules with a "not JPEG" condition to copy only the raws to the 3 different locations, then create a "JPEG only" rule to copy the jpeg files where you want to, and finally a 5th rule that exports the files in 640px format to yet another folder. Optionally, you could add a 6th rule that deletes everything from the source location at the end, then save this group of rules as a Rule Set and call it, say, "Import Task". From this point on, running the import task boils down to opening the memory card (through a Mass Storage USB2 connection) in FastPictureViewer Pro, then hit F, recall the "Import Task" set if it's not already there, and apply the rules to all files. One can create simpler rules and rule sets, but also much more complex ones and quickly recall entire sets previously created, from the "Rule Set" drop down menu.

Recently added are conditions on image dimension (allowing to express conditions like if the image is smaller then x pixels then... and extraordinary powerful scriptable conditions and actions: it is now possible to write arbitrarily complex conditions based on a number of file and image parameters by writing scripts in JavaScript (or VB Script) language, with all the expressive power provided by a true scripting language. To give a quick taste of what's possible, let's say we want to select all files taken with a 200mm (or longer) lens. All it takes is to write a 1-line function that tests for the condition we are interested in and return 1 of the condition is met, or zero otherwise:

function Evaluate(context)
{
    return context("Meta.FocalLength") >= 200 ? 1 : 0; // Return 1 if focal length is equal or above 200mm
}

Below is a skeleton of the Execute() function where all action scripts begins:

function Execute(context)
{
    // TODO: do something with context("File.Name")...

    return 0; // Success
}

Scripts let you do the most bizarre things, like select only images taken at f/8 (just test the "Meta.Aperture" variable) or anything else you may think of. All other conditions can be combined with each other, so it's easy to build a set of conditions that would select only the images taken on a certain day, at a certain shutter speed, and at the same time having a certain rating etc, etc. The possibilities are limitless! Moreover, substitution variables and relative paths can be used for the script names, opening all kinds of scenarios, such as camera-model based scripts, or scripts relative to a certain image folder... Of course, writing script requires some programming skills, but on the other hand the flexibility and power is limited only by imagination. There is plenty of JavaScript expertise out there, as this is the language used to program all web browsers nowadays: every webmaster and web site author already has at least a passive knowledge of this language, so there is no need to learn yet another obscure little script language to automate FastPictureViewer. The script engines used by FastPictureViewer are the same as those powering Microsoft Internet Explorer (and underneath all script-based activities in Windows), so they are current, gets patched and maintained with the rest of your operating system and are well performing and tested. You can write huge scripts and also take advantage of functionality provided by external scriptable components, such as for example the HTTP Upload or FTP ActiveX components from Chilkat Software.

The Evaluate() function within condition scripts receives a context as parameter, a {name, value} pairs "dictionary" which is filled with nearly 50 variables containing information about the file being considered: its name, size, attributes and dates, EXIF data such as date taken, exposure bias, shutter speed, aperture, metering mode, program mode, ISO speed, camera manufacturer and camera model, XMP rating, label and urgency, image dimensions, bits per pixel and more, making it possible to write very sophisticated conditions based on any number of these ready-to-use parameters.

Likewise, script actions written in JavaScript or VB Script can perform almost anything on the files, as it is possible to instantiate scriptable ActiveX objects such as the FileSystemObject, the WshShell object and more, along with any 3rd-party scriptable object which may include ActiveX-based 3rd-party image processing libraries, 3rd-party file transfer utilities etc, anything both "ActiveX" and "scriptable" will do. Script actions starts from an Execute() function, which is called with the same context object as the script conditions, so it is possible to set new variable (or alter existing ones) in a "condition" script, and retrieve the modified or added values in the "action" script. This opens the door for even more advanced rules to be created. Scripts reside on disk and can be authored with any text editor such as Notepad (the program does not currently offer script editing facility).

Below is an indicative list of the variables currently available to script conditions and actions (more might be added in future versions, such as GPS coordinates):

FastPictureViewer Professional features a Batch Delete function allowing users to mark images for deletion (using the X key), then later delete all marked image at once (using the Ctrl+X keystroke). The commands are also available from the taskbar context menu, accessible by right-clicking the bar at the bottom of the program's window.

Images marked for deletion displays a translucent red "X" at the bottom left of the window, along with a "[Delete]" indicator on the right-hand side of the taskbar (see illustration below). Starting from v1.1.142, pressing the X key can also optionally cause the program to advance to the next image in line. This option can be enabled in the program's preference, by setting the "Automatically move to the next image after rating" in the XMP Rating tab. This makes it even faster to review images: X - reject, 1 to 5 rate, and the program advances automatically to the next image after the user input is recorded!

When  pressing the Ctrl+X keystroke, the user is presented with the following dialog window:

A choice is given to attempt to move files to the system's Recycle Bin instead of deleting them directly. This gives the opportunity to "undelete" files from Windows Explorer's Recycle Bin in case a deleted file needs to be recovered. Note that this option slows down file deletions considerably.

Upon pressing the OK button the program performs the requested operations, then the window closes and FastPictureViewer reloads the current folder (which may be empty if all images were marked for deletion and have been removed).

The program intelligently handles RAW+JPEG stacks, and also takes care of any XMP sidecar file, if the option to create such sidecars is enabled in the program preferences.