FrameIT Image Browser Intro Video

The image browser is a neat application that helps us find our images no matter where we've stored them, as long as the storage is live and the images tagged. I show off the browser after its seen some use. Most of my images are tagged, but there are always new options to tag and I also get new ideas for tags. I can be a never ending process depending on the size of your image library and archive. Yet, with the application, you'll see how quickly you can find that old photo of yourself, relatives or places you've been.

At one time my brother wanted some photo's of dad. I found it nearly impossible to come up with just a few photo's, and now with FrameIT Image Browser, they can all be found with the click of the button/tag that I've named Dad.



Follow up links:
SeaRisen FrameIT Browser

FrameIT Freedom Windows Icon Creation Video

As of the last blog, SeaRisen FrameIT Freedom has gone through a couple upgrades and is now at version 1.5. There really isn't anything that 1.5 has that 1.3 didn't in order to create this video. As the video hinges on the technology that has been present in FrameIT Freedom since 1.0, the framing of an image. Other than that, there is the ( Width by Height ) that is demonstrated in the video that is present in version 1.5 by a setting in the File -> Settings menu option. The menu was added in version 1.4 and if you are using the Demo, I believe, is restricted. If not, you can follow along too.



Follow up links:
SeaRisen FrameIT Freedom
Axialis IconWorkshop HomePage

Version 1.3 of SeaRisen FrameIT Freedom came out May 6th and since then I've had ideas and been working on Image history lists for the browser side of the application.

• Image History - The last 100 images visited.


• Recent Directories - The last 10 directories visited.


• Most Visited - The 100 most visited images.


• My Favorites - An unlimited list of favorite images.

At least some of these will be out in version 1.4, Image History and Most Visited are done. The My Favorites isn't hard to implement. It's partially done anyway just from the work it took to implement the others.

But this led me this morning into thinking about what I was doing and where I wanted to go with it. At least from the browser side of things.

These efforts were aimed at making it easier to switch back and forth between directories, as I found myself switching back and forth constantly. Mostly from my work images, like buttons and thumbnails of images and the images I would use for just general background fun. Now with Image History I can go back quickly to something I was looking at, or to a directory I know an image resides in and pull that up by an image that resides there.

Now I want to move towards a tag based library approach. Think of tags for every image, by person's name, place or any other descriptive name that you could think of. At least for now, the tag library feature will be something I'm investigating for a combined program into FrameIT Freedom and/or a separate application to help organize photos.

So far FrameIT Freedom's approach was to make viewing your photo album easier, but now I think we'll be seeing more photo cataloging options.

What do you think?

Send a Photo Image with Google's Gmail

Done creating an image and want to send it to a friend? You've set all the frame's, composed the image to your liking and saved it to you computer?

Google's email software, Gmail, now offers the ability to send image's within your email. Here's their release post: Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Inserting images.

Follow these simple steps to send your new photo:

• Open up your Gmail account and click Settings along the top right.
  
  
• Then click the Labs tab.
  
• Scroll down to where it says Inserting Images.
  
  
• Enable it, and then scroll to the bottom ...
  
• and click Save Changes.
  
• Now compose an image as you always have, insert your new image and then send it to your friend.
  

Don't have a Gmail account? Go here.

Custom Desktop Wallpaper Solution

In my last article, I mentioned the thought process that started me on the journey to building my desktop wallpaper program, FrameIT Freedom. What I want to get from is what is important to you in a desktop wallpaper program?

If your a professional photographer or play around with a pocket camera, is a simple to use editor that can right (rotate to upright) editor something you'd find helpful? And in what increments, 90 degrees or something smaller, something that could be fine tuned?

Feel free to write anything, I'm curious to what features you'd find helpful.

Desktop Wallpaper Made Easy

My first thoughts for FrameIT Freedom came when I bought a new computer that had Vista as the operating system. For a long time I'd used WWPlus32 that'd I'd bought to use on Windows 95/98 and had been using ever since. But with the move to Vista it didn't work any longer.

I tried out several trial desktop wallpaper solutions, and of course Vista comes with one. Everything I was seeing was small windows with a few check boxes for presentation. What I needed was an environment that was easy to manipulate the image I was viewing.

I'm a computer programmer and was now using C# for a client. I decided to have a go at creating a desktop wallpaper solution for Windows Vista. Using C# for .NET 3.5 as the base it wasn't too long before I had a rudimentary desktop wallpaper program up and running.

I had the basics, Tile, Center, Stretch, Resize (to fit the screen) and Seamless Mirroring. What was needed was a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. It's not as easy as you might imagine to populate a list of images and give them their sub-titles that is the file name. But once that was done, I already had buttons that were nondescript for resize and reset. What I needed to do was transform them into true WYSIWYG photos.

So now these photo images give a look-ahead view of what the image will look like were you to click on them. This method went towards the seamless mirroring images on the top right of the editor as well. Now looking at any image gave the WYSIWYG that I was going for. From there though was to add the true magic of the ideas I'd been churning over.

These were lines, borders, frames that could be moved individually (Patent Pending) to manipulate the image from. Unlike traditional drag a box to grab a section of an image, using these methods you can move the right side of the box over one pixel, you would have to redraw the whole box. Now just move that border/frame and all the other frame's of the crop (if there is any) stay where you positioned them previously.

Using this tool an image can be cut in half with the single frame border line. No longer do you have to try and get say the upper left corner and drag to encapsulate the part of the image you want, which is half and have all the way to the edges. You get this automatically with FrameIT Freedom.

Later following community feedback was the ability to Print, Rotate and Flip the image. All following the standard that had been set to this point, keep the original image intact.

Years ago I found, using another image editing program, that images degrade when manipulated and you could lose parts of the image over time, unaware of this until you tried to undo the changes. FrameIT Freedom keeps the original unchanged. All manipulations do nothing to the original, but every setting is remembered. Just as in photo-copying, the original is best to copy from than those gather defects as copy after copy is made. So FrameIT Freedom does the same drawing from the Original for every view.

This is really handy for photo images taken with a camera because often those images are taken when the camera is held vertically and the resulting image needs to be rotated for best viewing. So using FrameIT Freedom, the image viewed is rotated for viewing but the original remains unaffected thus keeping its integrity.

I think you'll find that FrameIT Freedom is revolutionary for a desktop wallpaper solution. I enjoy using it every time I want to manipulate a photo and position it to the desktop. I foresee that this could be used for other professions that need to project images using projectors, to rotate and or crop them to position their focus for everyone to view for best effect.

The Domain Name Game

You might think that when creating a domain, that it would be the easiest thing to do. If you've ever tried it, you will certainly have found that your first choice, and your second on down to your last choices have all been taken. That is unless you are going for something on the order of, "ThisIsMyMeChuckSavageDomain.com" name.

When I started my search, I found that every name that I could possibly think of Dot Com, was already taken. So I started a mental, emotion and spiritual search for names that meant something to me. Of course many of these were taken and some, even though available, well they were just wild thoughts and didn't have any real validity.

If I were to go at it again, I might take some current experience with the current name and maybe have a go at something else. Though now that I have a name and a company behind it, I wouldn't change, even though sometimes I'm tempted to go for something maybe a little easier to communicate.

Try telling someone you work for me, is that Crisen pronounced see-risen, or is it See-risen as I just used, or sea-risen which in fact it is. I can count on pretty much with every new contact that I have to spell the name several times before someone actually understands on the other end exactly what letters I am actually using for the name of the domain.

I like the name Searisen. My brother Steve, who is the CEO of EcoProducts Inc., asked me when I came up with the name, why those words run together. I explained that pretty much every picture in my home shows water and the sea. I love pictures of sailing, an old picture of an F-20 prototype reflected against water, or a picture of a surfer making life look simple while skimming some tube. Water is deep rooted in me, and so is the other half of the word, Risen. It's spiritual to me and implies triumph, victory and other very symbolic values.

What I was finding though was that Searisen, was being pronounced Sear-Isn by those that read the name without hearing it first, not the desired pronunciation. I'm not sure why mentally people see Searisen and come up with Sear-Isn, so I've had to go and make the R capitalized to better communicate the company's name.

I like the name SeaRisen and I'm sticking with it even with the difficulties. It might have been out of thin-air when first created, but it has meaning and substance now.