Fast Photos Readme

Welcome to Fast Photos

We hope you find Fast Photos an enjoyable and useful tool for preparing your auction photos! If you have any problems or questions about using it please don't hesitate to contact us.

Evaluation Version

21-day trial version of Fast Photos. If you want to keep using Fast Photos after that, you can purchase a registration key that will remove the trial version time limit. Once you have the key you can enter it when the program starts - there is no need to reinstall anything.

Installation Instructions

• Run the installer - double click on 'FastPhotos_Setup_nn.exe' where 'nn' is the number of the version you downloaded.
• To start Fast Photos, double click in the Fast Photos desktop icon or go to Start Programs | Fast Photos.
• To uninstall Fast Photos, go to Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs and uninstall Fast Photos.

Whats New in Version 1.1.1

Release Date: March 26, 2006

Bugs Fixed

• Browser navigation at startup to virtual folders such as My Documents now works correctly.
• Browsing images on the Desktop now works correctly.
• Browser refresh (F5) now correctly detects foldel deletes and adds.
• Resize command - custom resizing with non-proportional sizes now works correctly.

Whats New in Version 1.1

Release Date: November 12, 2005

New Features

Add Text

• Automatically position the text in one of 9 locations.
• Full control over font styles: bold, italic, and underline.
• Full control over font size:
• Predefined point sizes
• Arbitrary point sizes - type the size you want into the size control.
• 'Fit to Width' - will automatically make text fit any size image

Crop

• Crop tool has a single pixel border, making it much more precise now.
• Exact coordinates and size of crop tool are now shown.
• Can nudge crop rectangle with keyboard to position exactly.

Rotate

• Can rotate by degrees to adjust crooked images.

Resize

• Added 500 pixel width.

Publish - New 'Copy Tag' Button

• With the Copy Tag button you can now get the image URL back as a fully formatted HTML IMG tag, ready to paste directly into your auction descriptions.

Browser Sorting

• Browser can now sort thumbnails by name, date, image size, file size, and file type. To sort go to the View > Arrange By menu.

Browser Explorer Menu

• If you right click on a folder name in the browser folder window you will get the standard Windows explorer shortcut menu for that folder.

Sticky Save As

• Save As dialog now remembers last folder you used.

JPEG Compress

• Feature Clairification - note that the Quality Level setting you select will apply to all images that you save until you shut down Fast Photos. For example, if you set the Quality Level to 60, and edit and save 10 JPEG format image files, they will all be saved with quality level 60.

Launch eBay Button Configurable

• You can set the website URL the 'Launch eBay' button points at. This is set in the "eBay Path" section of the FastPhotos.ini file.

Bugs Fixed

• Browser can now save a floppy drive as the default drive. This is handy if you use a camera that store images on a floppy drive.
• Application launches faster.
• Fixed glitch in Add Border drop shadow
• Fixed a bug where Publish FTP accounts could not be saved.

Known Problems

• Some of the image editing commands have no effect on 8 bit greyscale images. The workaround is to convert them to 24 bit color format in another image editor before opening them in Fast Photos.
• Refresh Browse Window does not detect when drives have been added to your system while Fast Photos is running. The workaround is to restart Fast Photos.

Getting Started Using Fast Photos

Start up Fast Photos and take a look at the Start Screen. The Start Screen has a Quick Overview of the Fast Photos workflow. This is the best place to get oriented on how things work.

Getting Support

• Take a look at the Online Help - it has a lot of basic information on how to use Fast Photos.
• Go to the Pixby Support Page
• Or email any suggestions, questions, bug reports or problems to Pixby Support.
• If the software crashes, a utility program that zips up trace logs and other info and emails them to Pixby will launch automatically. If this happens, please send the email - it will help us resolve the problem quickly.

System Requirements

• Operating System: Windows XP, Vista, or 2000
• Disk Space - about 10 Megabytes
• Web Browser - Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.