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Help aaPhoto: How does it work? This software is a command-line tool. It can be run from a console window. It can even take parameters and filenames as an input. The right-click ability on Windows platforms is only a shell extension. It makes the usage more comfortable. Therefore the only goal and option from the menu is the automatic color correction. After right-clicking on the desired image and choosing "Auto Adjust PHOTO", the program creates a new image on the disk - renaming it to "_new" - next to the original one in the same directory. This will be the color-corrected one. It does not overwrite the original. This is for safety purposes. The original can be deleted by the user on demand. How to use the software after download? On Win32 platform, the program needs to be installed by a double-click and by following the instructions given by the installer wizard. Then after that it can be run by right-clicking on a supported image type and choosing "Auto Adjust PHOTO" from the explorer's context menu. On other platforms (like Linux and Solaris) it has to be unpacked first. For these platforms the tarball and zip archive types are used and can be unpacked by typing the following commands into a console window: gunzip filename.tar.gz tar xvf filename.tar Other third party programs can be used too (7-zip, Unzip, Gzip etc.). After it the software can be run from a console window by typing the name of the program and the rest of the parameters. For example: aaphoto --help aaphoto test.jpg Why does some pictures have less correction while others more? Different images need different correction, so the program adjusts these in various ways. Of course if a picture has good contrast, then it won't be adjusted, so the result will have less changes. Why does the result become worse in some rare cases? The program does the analyzation and recalculates the colors of the image. An automated algorithm has to make decisions as a task. But automation cannot produce good decisions for every input. So i intend to give a solution with which the program needs less decisions to make -so the result will have less dramatic adjustment- but the number of the wrong outputs will be less too. The main goal to keep on mind is not to make the photo wrong if the program cannot make it any better. Why does the program not have any extra switch that could change the correction process? The main and only goal for the program is to prevent users from having to use a lot of parameters and input values. The program has been made for this very problem, so the user can adjust every photo with only one command. And the development will go on toward this in the future too. There is a lot of other softwares in which images can be adjusted manually. Why are the images not shown right after the process, just like in an image viewer? The main goal is simplicity - therefore no efforts are being made toward increasing the current functions in a huge way. The program is being developed for only command line interface, but can be used for other softwares as a back-end solution. How can the resizing function be used? This function can be used only from the command line from a console window. The program has to be run with some given parameters. On Windows, from START menu click RUN, then type "cmd" to open a new console window. Then the program can be run with the desired parameters. Here is an example: aaphoto test.jpg --resize50% This command resizes the original image's width and height to 50 percent and writes the new image to the disk (new name will be "test_new.jpg"). How can it be run from a menu under Gnome and Kde environment? We simply have to associate the program to the corresponding file types in order to be able to run it from the menu. We can do this with the following steps (we can see examples clicking on the sample images): 1) Right-click on the corresponding file type (or folder for the folder association) and then choose "Properties" menu point. A window should pop up similar to 1st sample image 2) After this choose "Open With" menu according to the 2nd sample image 3) Then push "Add" button to create a new association according to the 3rd image 4) We can define a custom command here according to the 4th image. We can set here the path to the location where "aaphoto" can be found. It can as well be copied to the folder "/usr/bin" so it can be reachable from everywhere. 5) We have finished the process with this. So we can close the window here. To run the program just right-click on the file to bring up the local menu, then opening "Open With" menu we can run "aaphoto" submenu to execute it. The very same steps can be done on almost every desktop environment, let it be Kde desktop for Solaris or Linux system. Why does some platform compilations have only BMP support? Setting up many platform systems to be able to compile the program with all dependencies can be a harder task in the development. Other tips The followings can be useful to know while using the program: - Try to avoid having date on a picture. If there is, then the whole distribution of colors will be not naturally different that changes the result. - Try not to have a frame around the image (one color or patterned), because this changes the adjustment process too. - The input should be only colored, 24-bit RGB picture. Other color modes will not be processed, because for example in an 8-bit color image there are too little number of colors to produce a good output. - Instead of many files try to give the folder as an input. - With "--test" switch the histograms of the image can be seen drawn into the image itself that shows the state of the process before and after. (I don't generate this into a separate image cause i don't wanna have i/o operations for this.) 1. histogram: original state (yellow line shows where the histogram will be cut off for the contrast) 2. histogram: after contrast adjustment (yellow line shows where gamma needs to be pulled) 3. histogram: before saturation adjustment (yellow line shows how much saturation adjustment will be made) 4. histogram: state of the result 5. color circle: two line shows the direction and amount of colors for the black and white points that have been determined for contrast ...with any other questions or problem issues do not hesitate to get in contact-