Renamed refresh

Applies to: All programs

Overview

The ability to refresh the image previews displayed in Images Mode is a long standing feature of Timestone Software. Refreshing essentially re-imports the images thereby creating new previews that reflect any changes that have been made to the original images.

In more recent times, refreshing is also used by photographers who use third party means to chroma key their images. The third party PNGs are placed into the job's images directory - replacing the original JPEGs. Refreshing the imaged will then cause Images Mode to display the transparent PNGs rather than the JPEGs. And, provided the root of the filename is the same (for example 1020.jpg and 1020.png) the software will know to look for and use the PNG for printing and exporting when it cannot find the original JPEG.

A 'normal' refresh will still cause the software to look for the original JPEG first but in the absence of the JPEG it will then use the PNG.

The behaviour above works well when all the JPEGs in the directory are to be replaced by PNGs, however the situation is more problematic when only some of the JPEGs are to be replaced since the photographer will need to find and replace only those JPEGS. This can be an arduos task.

Version 4.6 overcame this problem by introducing a new refresh method - Renamed refresh - where not only is the image refreshed but the complete image filename sought by the software is also changed at the database or tnj level. Thus if image 1020.jpeg is refreshed to 1020.png the software will preferentially use 1020.png instead of 1020.jpg even if the jpg remains in the images directory.

A 'Renamed Refresh' will change the software to look for the refreshed file - the PNG - first, even if the original JPEG is still present.

The new Renamed Refresh feature therefore eliminates the need to remove the original JPEGs from the images folder before adding the keyed PNGs. Furthermore the "new" filename is also used and displayed in other areas of the software such as Images Mode>Show filenames, various reports and in tsPortal.

Key points

• Renamed refresh updates the image filename to that of refreshed image
• Used when replacing JPEG images with chroma keyed PNGs
• Eliminates the need to remove original JPEGS from images folder