Seize the storm

***Important Notice***

 Due to popularity of Photo Ops and upcoming features, Photo Ops will no longer be freeware.  This decision was made to ensure an even more quality release and enhanced customer support.  Please stay tuned for exciting news and enhancements under way!

***Important Notice***

Over 55 hours of development went into this latest release of Photo Ops.  It was definitely a monumental task and kept me up many nights after my wife announced that she was going to bed.  After holding the release back at least about 3 or 4 times, I decided that this was up to the caliber I wanted.  So why update the software and what are the new features, keep reading my friend, keep reading.

Photo Ops 1.3.1 received a lot of great feedback and praise.  As great as a time saver it was, the program was only a pliers or a screwdriver.  It lacked the handy-dandier time saving features that went beyond its original purpose.  This release compliments the original “amazing” features of 1.3.1 and adds a few more that soon will be a “can’t live without” feature.  So without further ado, here are the major enhancements for this release and a little explanation on them:

Reworked core code - I won’t go much into this as this is pretty much from a development stand-point.  If you were a programmer, you would probably really appreciate the lengths I went through to organize my code.  It will definitely aid in development for future development and cutting down new feature insertion time dramatically.

Vista - If you couldn’t tell, the screenshots do imply that Photo Ops is now Vista ready!  Don’t worry though, it still works on everything that it has run on in the past (Windows 2000, XP, etc).

Added Wizard mode - Some people are wizard fanatics, and others aren’t.  I wanted a method for informing the novice user as they went through the process.  It needed to have some directions without cluttering things too much.  The dialog might seem a little too busy, thus the need for the wizard.

Ability to move or copy photos - This will enable the user to move or copy photos from a source to a destination directory.  So what’s that mean?  It means that the user can insert their memory card and set Photo Ops to access that location and move the files to a destination directory of their choice - most likely this would be the “My Pictures” folder.  If the directory doesn’t exist, it will create it and plop all the photos in there before it executes the organizing process.

Settings removed from the registry - This was a rather large update.  Everything is now stored in XML format, which is pretty easily read and manipulated.  These files are stored in the User\Application Data\Photo Ops\ folder.  If you go and manually mess with them, the bugs aren’t my fault.  If you want to totally reset everything, just go to that folder and delete all the files.

Saved settings - This came directly from a user and was such a great suggestion, I held back the release so I could get this in.  Different sets of settings can be remembered.  This allows you to set up one run through Photo Ops specifically for emailing, another run for website pictures, and maybe one more still for professional pictures.  These are loaded, saved, and removed from the Settings menu.

Check for updates feature - This is a pretty small feature that simply goes out to Carpe Tempestas and scans the Photo Ops page to check which version is available.  If the local version is different from the online version, it pops up a prompt to go out to the website to check to see if there’s a new version.

Progress now shown as photos are being organized - Another simple, meaningless feature, but it sure helps to know how things are coming along and when we can expect them to be done.

Date insertion into file mask - A new checkbox was added to the renaming part of Photo Ops that can insert a formatted date into the file name mask.  The user will see a “{date}” added into the text box.  Rest assured the date will be in there and that it will be the one you select.

Multiple-line watermarks - I added another button right next to the copyright insertion button that will insert a new line.  These buttons will further be referred to as “Quick Picks”.  In order to get alignment to work, I had to change things a little bit more in the code.

Still Free - I finally found some other applications online that do some similar types of things that Photo Ops does.  They are selling the software for $20-30.  After a lot of thought, I remained steadfast that Photo Ops would continue to be Freeware.  I would very much appreciate any donations though.  It really makes my time worth it and spurs me on toward future developments.

Free of adware, spyware, and viruses - Certification by Softpedia.

With that, the overview of Photo Ops 2.0 is complete.  If you have any questions, you can contact me through the contact form. 

Here are the links to other important areas:

• Photo Ops Main Page
• Download Photo Ops

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