Photobie Forum

admin · Site Admin Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 34

Finally, I get time to finish this long waiting tutorial to help you get familiar with Photobie User Interface and let you know what each button does in detail

Before I start, I want to give you a brief idea how Photobie is designed.
I developed initially for editing my daughters digital photo. I usually take hundreds photos each week, and I upload some nice photos to online gallery to share with my friends. Thus, I need a tool that can do batch resize, batch rotate. Also I need a nice image directory viewer so that I can browse the directory to check each image in a quick simple way. When I find some pictures that need some color adjustment or finishing, I want to invoke a powerful photo editor that support multi-layer editing, without multi-layer, your can't really do much. Meantime, I need some most useful paint tools for photo editing.

That is why Photobie is built primarily for photo editing, it comes with a simple image directory browser supports batch resize, rotate as well as other features as the Microsoft image and fax viewer. You can open up several directories and switch between them easily. EXIF image info is also showed under the corner. From this browser I can get the picture I want to be adjusted or finished, simply press "Enter" key, I get that picture into
Photobie main editing interface and starts working on it.
Here is a tutorial for using image directory browser
http://photobie.myfreeforum.org/ftopic43.php

I will usually save it to Jpeg (.jpg) file with 90 quality, which is good enough and the file size is much smaller. Sometime, I can't finish my work, I will then save it as POB (.pob), Photobie's internal retouching format, which keeps all layer setup.

You may also notice, Photobie has very convenient screen capture tool. Photobie support up to 8 screencapture hotkeys to let you to quick shot for whole screen, active window, predefince region with/without cursor and export it to clipboard/Photobie/other software. Photobie also provides a quick screencapture menu under the right bottom notification bar of your window. Simply right click the Photobie icon and you will get a menu options that allow you to catch a screen in all kinds of shapes.
Here is a tutorial for using screen capture tool
http://photobie.myfreeforum.org/ftopic42.php

If you have similar working process, you will find the Photobie really a handy and powerful tool. I am using it all the time by myself, and I can do almost anything with it.

Now lets begin the tutorial:
This is based on latest version of Photobie 2.2.1

Photobie main user interface consists of three toolbars:

1. The first toolbar is the main toolbar located on the top of the window with many buttons on it. Please see following picture for details:

One thing I want to point out is that, Photobie supports image directory browser, but it doesn't show on the main toolbar, it is available under the main menu File >> Open >> (Image/Directory Album/Selected Image Album) the second and the third will lead you to the image directory browser. The difference between the second and the third is that, the second option will only let you select a whole directory, while the third one allows you to select multiple images.
This may be very useful feature to you. I am using it all the time.

When you create a new image from scratch, Photobie let you import background texture or image besides the background color. You can find lots of texture images following the Image Resource index on this forum.

You might be confused by the Global Transparent Color. Actually, you shouldn't worry much about about it if you are not going to copy/paste non-recangle shaped images. Such color is used as background color to fill those corners, it will be automaically set as the layer transparent color so that it won't show it.

Photobie provides complete set of selection tools, please check this
picture for these selection tools:

You can use "Union" or other selection mode to create a real complex region.
All selections can be moved/resized, just be sure it is in "Single" selection mode.

2. The second toolbar is the Paint Toolbar. It consists of many popular and useful tools related Photo editing. Please check following picture for detail:

Be aware that Photobie will generate new layer for most paint operation if the "auto layer generation" checkbox is check on the layer manger tool bar. Since Photobie's undo/redo works on each layer level, new generated layer can't be removed by undo, you have to remove it or hide it.

Also, keep an eye on the right top Green panel, it is updated for different paint tool with setup options.

3 The third toolbar is the most complicate Toolbar, It contains all tools that related to layer operation. layer resize/rotate/move/color adjustment tools are all located on this tool bar. Please check following picture for detail:

This toolbar looks complicated. However if you simply try them, you will feel very comfortable with it. Once you master this toolbar, you will beome a real Photobie expert.

Well, if you have any trouble understanding some of these feature, please write to me or simply post on this forum, I will be very glad to answer your questions.

So enjoy Photobie!
--Cheng

amgrapher · Guest

Wow, it has lots of nice features!

Thanks for sharing it.
:D

mark1s · Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 5

Thank you for the information, for me it is extremely helpful being someone new to this.
I have a question regarding printing the tutorial, on the screen it shows everything, but when I preview it to print, I cannot get the entire page to print, I am missing a good percentage of the information. I cannot recall how to do this. If someone could please assist me with this it would make this easier for me.
Thanks.

Cheng · Site Admin Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 104

Hi, Mark1s,

I guess you are using IE as web browser, IE won't work well for preview/print this page. If you switch to Firefox browser, it will be perfectly ok, you can print the content neatly.

I use firefox all the time since it is much faster and works very well. You can downloas firefox at http://www.downloadfirefox.net/

Hope you like firefox :)