Phota 3.8

Phota 3.8 is a comprehensive tools developed for archiving and annotating your images into attractive, interactive photo albums. It is an ideal application for people with digital cameras, who wish to immediately enjoy their uploaded photos, without spending much time and effort in creating and formatting albums. Images can be added very quickly with a Mass Load feature, optionally from IPTC and/or EXIF image data. A versatile Page Designer screen contains intuitive controls for building and formatting album pages. Audio and video sequences can also be incorporated into albums, and display sequences can be captured to video files.

A handy Photo Index provides a quick scan through all of the photos in an album, with options to display thumbnail or full-screen images, show photo descriptive information or skip to a selected page. Photo Search can be used to find all photos containing a particular string of text within their descriptions. Album pages or individual photos can be viewed as a slide show, with various options.

The Gallery feature transforms the display into 3D perspectives, with album photos exhibited along the walls of Gallery rooms, constructed in various styles. Explore can be activated to automatically stroll through Galleries, pausing to admire each photo in turn.

Major Features:

1. The Gallery feature exhibits a collection of photos in dynamic 3D perspectives.  Explore can be activated to automatically stroll through a Gallery, pausing before each image to admire it, and then on to the next photo, until a door to the Next Gallery  is reached and passed through.
2. Phota Create Album A Navigation Bar contains most of the controls needed for the basic operation of Phota. Creating an Album is very simple, with screens that guide you through the process.  Photos on album pages can be clicked to display full-screen images.  Left and right arrow keys can then be used to scan back and forth through full-screen photos.  Click again to return to album page display mode.
3. Mass Load Photos A Mass Load Photos option allows images from one or more directories to be added to an album very quickly, either by selected groups or all at once.  Photo Description items can optionally be automatically filled in with appropriate IPTC and/or EXIF fields.  Album pages can also be easily copied from the same album or merged from other Phota Albums with the Copy Album Pages feature.
4. Albums Catalog The Albums Catalog provides a handy index and summary of your Phota albums.  Options are available to quickly open albums, browse through album pages and list album photos.
5. Photo Index A Photo Index feature lists Title, Photographer, Date, Location and Occasion information for all of the photos in an album.  An individual photo in the index can be clicked to display a thumbnail image.  Buttons are available to display a full-screen image and show Photo Information for a selected photo.  Pressing another button will skip to the album page on which a highlighted photo occurs.
6. Album descriptive information, including Title, Author, Category, Time Period and Comments, can optionally be displayed on the first page of a Phota album.  Intro Audio and Intro Video clips can optionally accompany the Album Description.  An album can contain virtually an unlimited number of pages.  Photos are automatically sized within a page to most efficiently use the available screen area, based on the current page layout and display options.
7. Photo Information Each photo can be annotated with Title, Photographer, Date, Location, Occasion, Keywords and Comments.  Photo Info buttons Info can optionally appear beside each photo on an album page to allow quick access to Photo Information.  Audio and Video files can be associated with each photo. The Photo Information screen also provides convenient access to any IPTC and EXIF Data that is encoded within image files.  Both the Photo Information and the Mass Load Photos screens provide options for loading Photo Description items from relevant IPTC and/or EXIF fields.
8. Using Photo Search, an album can be quickly scanned to list any photos that contain a specified text value within their descriptions.  Optionally, all albums in the Albums Catalog can also be searched.
9. Page Designer While using the Format Mode feature, convenient controls for page and photo manipulation are available along the bottom of the screen.  Images within the current page can be rearranged by clicking and dragging them with the mouse.  A versatile Page Designer screen provides options for adding and deleting pages, inserting and removing photos, moving photos between pages and other page formatting functions.
10. Album Appearance Phota Album Appearance can be customized to suit individual tastes, including the overall interface style, the text font type, size and color, and color or pattern of the background that surrounds album image displays.  The Phota Menu and Photo Info buttons can be removed to maximize screen space for displaying images.  A Popup Menu, accessed by right-clicking the mouse, includes all of the same options as the Phota Menu, and provides an alternative means of accessing these functions when the menu has been removed.  Titles can optionally be displayed beneath each photo.
11. The Audio Player Audio can play most common audio file formats, as well as audio CDs.
12. Phota Video The Video Player Video can play most common Video files.  Animated Phota scenes can be captured to AVI or WMV Videos, or as sequences of still image files, according to Video Options parameters.  An Image Sequence Player is also available to play Image Sequences as animations, and record those animations as Videos.
13. For computers that have more than one display screen, the Multiple Monitors Display option can be used to transmit Phota scenes to the secondary monitors.  Menus, controls, cursors, dialogs, etc. will only appear on the primary monitor, so that only album photos are seen on any secondary screens.  This option might be used, for example, to exhibit your image collections on a large projection display, while you control the slide show from the primary computer, perhaps a laptop.
14. Album pages, individual photos or Gallery scenes can be printed.
15. Either Album pages, individual photos or Gallery scenes can be chosen to serve as Wallpaper for the Desktop background.
16. A Slide Show feature allows album pages or individual photos to be displayed automatically, in sequential or random sequence, with a specified time interval between displays.  An Animate Colors option performs a sequence of color shifts on the images and/or background of Slide Show displays.  Alternatively, a Slide Show can be set to use Explore Gallery mode to exhibit the album in a 3D environment.  Options are available to control how Audio and Video sequences are incorporated into the Slide Show.
17. Also included is a screensaver version of Phota, which can display slide shows of any Phota album.  The Phota Screensaver can be freely distributed with Phota albums composed of your own photos.  The free Phota CD/Screensaver Builder program can be used to create Screensaver and CD installation packages. 

Enhancements:

• Vista Compliance =>  Although Phota  previously ran on Vista without serious problems, it could not be considered truly 'compliant' with Vista UAC (User Account Control) and 'Least-Privileged User' principles.  With this version, Administrator capability is no longer required (except to run the installer program), so people shouldn't be pestered by annoying Vista security prompts.  Configurable options and parameters are stored at the User level in the Registry, and data files (images, audios, etc.) are stored in Application Data areas (rather than in the Program Files directory).
• Phota Create Album Album Creation and Interface Enhancements =>  Creating new Phota Albums has been greatly simplified, with screens that guide you through the process.  Buttons have also been added to the Navigation Bar to provide more convenient access to several common functions.  The Albums Catalog, Audio Player and several other screens have been redesigned.
• Phota Create Album Pager =>  A new Pager control can optionally reside at the upper right corner of the display window.  It shows miniature album pages that can be quickly scanned through.  Buttons are available to navigate backwards and forwards through pages, or a specific Page number can be entered and skipped to by typing the TAB key.  Press the Go to Page button to display the full-sized album page that matches the current Pager scene.  Any of the tiny images shown on the mini page can be clicked to select that photo.  The button will access the Photo Information screen for the selected photo.  It can be shown as a full-screen image by pressing the button.
• Phota Create Album Video Capture =>  Phota has always provided options for including Video files within Albums, and for playing them with the Video Player.  Now it is also possible to capture Phota animated scenes to Video files or as sequences of still image files, depending on Video Options settings.  Sequences of still image files can be played as animations with the Image Sequence Player.  Video files can also be recorded from the Image Sequence Player while playing animations, which can produce high quality Videos that might be used to create DVDs.  (A similar Image Sequence feature will be included with the next versions of both Liquib and Kaleider.)