Cropping in Faststone

[Dazz1]

I know some of you use FastStone and so might be able to help with a small issue.

How do you go back and adjust a crop? I mean, if I initially use the crop board to crop an image, then do some other adjustments, I then might want to go back and tweak the crop. But when I re-open the crop board, it shows the cropped image. Let's say I wanted to enlarge the are I am seeing to include more of the original image, or maybe just remove the crop. How do I do that?

[ameerat42]

Open up "Help" in FS and then click on "Download Tutorial".
It will lead you to this page.

(I suggest you) download the PDF version for ease of use.
(You can save this for future ref.)

I found the section on cropping there (in the contents) but didn't get an answer to your Q

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, hang on!!
As long as you don't do anything else, you can hit the Edit/Undo to restore the image,
then go back to the crop board.

There is no "History" setting you can use like there is kn Photoshop (and others) that I can
find.

But... It will stay "Undo"able if you just use the "Crop" button on the crop board. I have not gone
past this step to a save of the cropped version.

[paulheath]

I found the section on cropping there (in the contents) but didn't get an answer to your Q

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, hang on!!
As long as you don't do anything else, you can hit the Edit/Undo to restore the image,
then go back to the crop board.

There is no "History" setting you can use like there is kn Photoshop (and others) that I can
find.

But... It will stay "Undo"able if you just use the "Crop" button on the crop board. I have not gone
past this step to a save of the cropped version.

One of the reasons I use Lightroom & PS

[Dazz1]

But... It will stay "Undo"able if you just use the "Crop" button on the crop board. I have not gone
past this step to a save of the cropped version.

Yep that's all I can find as well. Of course you'd have to undo any other edits you have done post crop first.

[ameerat42]

I have just confirmed that any type of saving of the cropped version cannot be
undone, and that if you "Crop to Clipboard", the crop only goes there.

So, Paul's statement...

One of the reasons I use Lightroom & PS

...must refer only to this part of mine:

...There is no "History" setting you can use like there is kn Photoshop (and others) that I can
find....

Ie, FastStone is just like any other program but for the History.

[Dazz1]

Ie, FastStone is just like any other program but for the History.

Hmmm, but with Darktable, for example, I can go back and adjust the crop. It isn't really undo that I was referring to, just the ability to re-crop and not lose other adjustments.

[arthurking83]

One of the reasons I use Lightroom & PS

LOL! hardly a fair comparison.

Fastone is a small lightweight quick image viewer with the ability to do very basic editing. From memory the entire program only needs about 4Mb or so of hard drive space, and can be run as a portable program .. ie. off a USB thumbdrive or whatever.

LR & PS require close to 1Tb of HDD space, take hours to load, takes control of all your computer resources to effect minimal processing steps, infests your hard drive space with hundreds of Gigs of useless data files, costs the earth .. every year and requires a PhD in computer science just to effect some simple editing steps(eg. Why obfuscate PC usage with Cntrl+E to effect a 'save as' routine, when the industry standard has been Cntrl-S since the dawn of the PC!!).

@ Dazz! It needs to be remembered what Fastone is and does.
It's priority is fast/small/lightweight/absolute minimalism!
To allow the ability to have historically categorised edit steps requires resources.
Fastone doesn't do that. They use the KISS principle!
If you want to be able to undo, you have to do it 'manually' every time.
That is: make an edit and save the image as a different file to the original one.

As an example; do that 8 times(so that you can always go back and re edit it in 8 different methods) that means you kind'a need 8 different versions of that image stored somewhere on the computers storage system.
That method of editing requires storage space. This is what most software companies do. At a rough guess, if you have 100Gig of images, and you've reviewed them all and edited 50% of those images in some way, chances are that your preferred editor has stored about 1-10Gigs of useless 'app data'(PC speak) on your hard drive(s).
Fastone on the other hand may have had to store 1-2Mb in the same general HDD area.

Not even a few months back(school hols), son asked me to help him free up space on his school tablet/laptop thing. Has a 120G SSD. Can remove some things, but it was admin locked, so we had to find other ways to free space.
App data being the easiest to work with. Luckily he had access to app data, and we found that Adobe's app data folders all had a bit over 10G of space used up .. basically for the purpose of allowing the user the ability to go back to an image and 'undo' some edit step that they've forgotten about and most probably don't want or need!
That 10% of disk space made the underpowered device pretty much unusable.
No option from adobe to clear up all that space. Cache is a separate area too.
They don't have LR on their tabletops, just PS of some flavour. Plus Acrobat!

I've had Fastone's FSViewer for years. I think one of the first programs I install on my PC builds .. every time.
Firsly I didn't even think to see how much space it uses in the app data area .. didn't think it actually does(thought it all goes into the temp folder). But after about 2 years and very heavy usage, I see that it's used up 29Mb of space in that area.
When I had LR a few years back, I used to fully delete the entire Adobe folders in the app data area, and free at least 1-5G every time.
Nikon can be worse in some ways, but I used to use Nikon software much more than Adobe's .. so it was expected.

So with Darktable:
it needs to save an original version of the image you want to be able to un-edit(or uncrop) as wel as a version of the one you're currently working.
AND it needs a list of the edit steps you're doing, and have done for it to be able to undo them all at a later date.

For Fastone: you have to make an edit and save that copy as another file. Make another edit save as again .. and so on.
Been there myself, and for all of my tutorials I've done here, if I've added a screen shot, that screen shot has more likely been created with Fastone than with any other of the software I've used or tried.
Many times I've borked a screen shot, added an arrow the wrong way, or made too many text boxes, or arranged them badly .. just go back and do it ALL again to the last saved version.
Once all done, delete all versions so that they don't build up into a mountain of issues later on.

[paulheath]

LR & PS require close to 1Tb of HDD space, take hours to load, takes control of all your computer resources to effect minimal processing steps, infests your hard drive space with hundreds of Gigs of useless data files, costs the earth .. every year and requires a PhD in computer science just to effect some simple editing steps(eg. Why obfuscate PC usage with Cntrl+E to effect a 'save as' routine, when the industry standard has been Cntrl-S since the dawn of the PC!!).

Cntrl-E in lightroom brings up Edit in Photoshop.... Ctrl-S in PS brings up SAVE.... as you say ..since the dawn of the PC...

- - - Updated - - -

Fastone doesn't do that. They use the KISS principle!









So with Darktable:
it needs to save an original version of the image you want to be able to un-edit(or uncrop) as wel as a version of the one you're currently working.
AND it needs a list of the edit steps you're doing, and have done for it to be able to undo them all at a later date.

For Fastone: you have to make an edit and save that copy as another file. Make another edit save as again .. and so on.
Been there myself, and for all of my tutorials I've done here, if I've added a screen shot, that screen shot has more likely been created with Fastone than with any other of the software I've used or tried.
Many times I've borked a screen shot, added an arrow the wrong way, or made too many text boxes, or arranged them badly .. just go back and do it ALL again to the last saved version.
Once all done, delete all versions so that they don't build up into a mountain of issues later on.

doesnt seem so KISS

[Dazz1]

So with Darktable:
it needs to save an original version of the image you want to be able to un-edit(or uncrop) as wel as a version of the one you're currently working.
AND it needs a list of the edit steps you're doing, and have done for it to be able to undo them all at a later date.

For Fastone: you have to make an edit and save that copy as another file. Make another edit save as again .. and so on.
Been there myself, and for all of my tutorials I've done here, if I've added a screen shot, that screen shot has more likely been created with Fastone than with any other of the software I've used or tried.
Many times I've borked a screen shot, added an arrow the wrong way, or made too many text boxes, or arranged them badly .. just go back and do it ALL again to the last saved version.
Once all done, delete all versions so that they don't build up into a mountain of issues later on.

Appreciate the long reply Arthur. A couple of things though. Darktable uses non-destructive editing. It only saves a 'recipe' of edit instructions, not a copy of the image.

Also, changing the crop is just changing the co-ordinates to which all the subsequent edits are to be reapplied. I suppose that could get messy too, but that's what it seems to do.

Your point about Fastone is well taken. It is a lightweight image viewer/processor, and I tend to forget that. It really does a lot of things very well.

[arthurking83]

Cntrl-E in lightroom brings up Edit in Photoshop.... Ctrl-S in PS brings up SAVE.... as you say ..since the dawn of the PC...

...


.... doesnt seem so KISS

Ah! my bad. Can't really remember PS too well, other than the annoyance of not supporting raw files directly.
So Adobe can get that right, yet stuff it up in LR.
it was LR that confounded me for a while trying to work out how to do a simple save as.
(then again, I am easily confused too tho! )

But in terms of simplicity it actually is simple, in that you know you've created several copies if you're unsure of how you want to edit the image. Once done tho, you know where all the flotsam is located .. you then have the power to delete(more easily).
Doesn't clog up valuable space on an SSD.
And it should be remembered that most folks aren't geeky to the point that they go chasing wasted drive space in hidden system folders like 'app data'(again, Windows example here). . and the first they know about it is when Windows update fails due to some arcane error .. which is usually a lack of space on the drive.

.... A couple of things though. Darktable uses non-destructive editing. It only saves a 'recipe' of edit instructions, not a copy of the image.

....

if they did that, I'd say it probably isn't optimal in terms of rendering performance or something.
That is, there will be a very slight delay in displaying the image after an edit is made, and the save time will also be increased.
Can't ever remember using Darktable, so can't comment, but most editors will have an already rendered bitmap image of some type simply to display the image speedily.

Some programs have taken to using a database type rendering engine, so that al the images that have been edited/created/saved/historically attributed, will almost certainly be contained within this one file .. they are the usual perpetrators of space usage.
When I was mucking about with LR, I used to regularly delete the database(actually the entire app data contents it created) .. which helped with space.

Of the programs I have used, they all have a pre-rendered image hidden somewhere, with no clue as to what type of image it actually is(could be some proprietary type) with a string of characters and no file extension.

The two worst perpetrators for that were Affinity Photo, and Nikon's Capture NX programs.
Affinity used a proprietary format which was TIF based(can't remember the format extension tho)

... and CNX used a large file name format and no extension, and I worked out it was a tif file.
Added the .tif extension to the file name and turned it into an instant tif file.
Which then explained why it only took a sec or so to convert a raw file to a tif file(fastest program I ever used to do so for NEF file types).

I've recently been converted to DxO's PhotoLab(great software by the way!) .. and have just found(as in only just explored) it's workings.
it also creates multiple locations in the app data area.
In one area it creates a cache setup. I reckon I've played with(not seriously tho) about 100 images and it's already stored 150+Mb of data in that area alone.
Only half(at the moment) at 79Mb are cached images .. the other half is modules.
Modules will only inflate if I(or they) add more, but I can imagine if I reach the 100K mark again in terms of edited images(as I've probably done in CNX2) .. many hundreds of gigs of cached images will need to be stored.
At least they've made it easy to see them, even tho they've convoluted the process by using intricately deep directory structures.

Then they use multiple database files, some located in the same app data area, others in another app data folder.

I restricted myself to a 256G SSD of notable quality for the C drive(which is where all this crap gets stored).
But I also got a 256G SSD simply for use as a cache location(all caches).
What's more annoying(for me) is that they don't really offer a way to set the location for all their program data(app data and all!) to a location of your choosing.

If you run FSV in the portable mode, it doesn't do any of that hidden folders crap above. It keeps it all contained in the folder that the portable version is run from.
But in saying that, I've used FSV for years, and on it's current install, many thousands of images viewed and too many to remember edited in some way as well.
It's app data count has only reached 29Mb, most of which is a database file(where I assume it keeps it's preview images stored)

If mult-terabyte sized, multi-gigabyte per second SSDs were as cheap as magnetic drive .. the above wouldn't be a problem.
But there's a limit as to how much space should cost (for the overall system) for us mere mortals playing from home on the occasional basis.

[Dazz1]

[QUOTE=arthurking83;1448692


if they did that, I'd say it probably isn't optimal in terms of rendering performance or something.
That is, there will be a very slight delay in displaying the image after an edit is made, and the save time will also be increased.

.[/QUOTE]

Yep they do. ALL edits are stored in a smal XML sidecar file. They have spent some effort making it fast and efficient, and so the delay in rendering the image is quite small and tolerable. The advantage is that the original RAW file is NEVER altered. "Save" time is very fast as all they do is save the sidecar file. Exporting an image, say to jpg, involves reading the RAW file, applying all the edits and saving as a new file, but they have done a good job and it is FAST.

[John King]

Arthur, I don't use LR, but I've used PS for the last (about) 14 years. On my main workstation, I have around 70,000 images. The Bridge cache is ~56 GB. A complete install of CS6 Premium takes up around 5GB for 32 and 64 bit versions combined. A bit short of the TB that you mention.

I currently use my 240 GB SSD for the Bridge cache on the 64 bit Win7 Pro PC I'm building to replace my very aged main PC. It's 12 years old, running 32 bit Win XP Pro. My main complaint about PS and Bridge is their really, really lousy memory management. My "new" workstation has 16 GB of RAM, and never uses even half of that. I may buy a second SSD for caching in the future, but certainly not necessary ATM. Even with the Bridge cache on the existing one, there is still over 100 GB of free space.

64 bit Win 7 Pro needs a bare minimum of 4 GB RAM, just to work (slowly). 6 GB makes it fine for Office type programs and Internet use. 8 GB is fine for CS6, but better to have 16 GB, which is really overkill, IMHO.

However, I usually have about 8-12 Internet browser windows open at once, with between 2-10 tabs in each window. With 16 GB, the "new" PC (it's actually nearly 8 years old!) runs like a scalded cat. Amazing what just adding an SSD and plenty of RAM does with an old CPU (E7500 2.93 GHz dual core) and a memory-challenged video card (512 MB). The SSD is only running at SATA2 speeds due to motherboard limitations. It loads PS6 from a standing start in 13 seconds (after a cold reboot). Not bad for an old girl! The 'additional' RAM makes sure that the aforementioned video card has plenty of space available to use the 4 GB (?) of system RAM it can use.

AND I cannot complain about the price. Apart from the USB3 card and internal USB3 card reader ($70), 16 GB of DDR3 RAM ($320) and decent quality Kingston SSD ($125), these PCs were given to me by a client for nothing. I spread my existing RAM around to build three very useful PCs for my own use, and gave one of them to a friend and built it to the specs mentioned at his cost. All my data HDDs will migrate from my existing PC to the "new" one.

As for FSV, my only complaint about this otherwise excellent program is its file save routine, which is obscure, to say the least. I use it so much, I even donated some dough to its author years ago. I have a licensed copy .

[arthurking83]

.... On my main workstation, I have around 70,000 images. The Bridge cache is ~56 GB. A complete install of CS6 Premium takes up around 5GB for 32 and 64 bit versions combined. A bit short of the TB that you mention.

....

Yeah, but have you checked the appdata directories it creates too?
There should be one in local and one in roaming(from memory).

.... As for FSV, my only complaint about this otherwise excellent program is its file save routine, which is obscure, to say the least. I use it so much, I even donated some dough to its author years ago. I have a licensed copy .

Obscure?
if you can describe the anomaly.

All I do is Ctrl+S, and press enter (to overwrite the file) .. or add an suffice of some type(eg. -1, -edit, or -alt, or any other suffix at the end of the name) and press enter.
You can set it up to not ask if you want to overwrite the file, but by default it always asks if you're sure you want to overwrite the file, if you accidentally try too.

Only other alteration to the above workflow(s) occur if the saved file needs to be compressed further, to decrease final file size(eg. upload file size limits).
Getting more rare nowadays .. but even that is a very simple process using the quality slider, which gives you a realtime final file size output to help with balancing file size and quality.

[John King]

Adobe - Yes.

FSV - Using the SAVE/SAVE AS menu pick on the left hand menu does not work as one would expect. Just idiosyncratic.

[arthurking83]

....

FSV - Using the SAVE/SAVE AS menu pick on the left hand menu does not work as one would expect. Just idiosyncratic.

Still confusing me as to how a simple process is deemed idiosyncratic.

Ctrl+S is the same as using the 'Save As' menu items(there are two depending on which mode you're using FSV).
There is no 'Save' menu item in FSV, nor a shortcut to 'Save'.
I think their idea behind only having a Save As option only is that you don't accidentally overwrite a file.

So use the Save As menu only brings up an dialogue box, with the file name of the file you want to save highlighted in blue.
If you hit Save at the bottom of this dialogue box, it then asks you if you're sure you want to overwrite the original file.

I can't understand why this is 'idiosyncratic' .. or confusing in any way!
Makes good sense to make sure that the operator is 101% sure that they know what they're doing.

If you are 102% sure you know exactly what you're doing you can remove the confirmation on overwrite with a simple check box in the settings .. helps to save about 0.015s during the save process.
I leave it enabled, coz sometimes I do forget to remember that last 1-2%

I'm curious now as to how that 'Save As' menu should work.

My workflow with FSV is:

Cntl+S, [Enter], [Y] .. saved.

Takes all of about 0.30s to achieve a save .. and I can speed that up to 0.15s if I uncheck the setting to confirm overwriting, ie. remove the need for the momentary internal thought process and physical second [Y] key press.

On my part tho, maybe it's just all the other programs I also use, that have a similar(maybe slightly different key to press), but overall similar process flow.
Ctrl+S, Enter, Enter or whatever .. if you're sure you want to overwrite a file.
Some other programs I regularly use do have a different shorcut key combo to open the 'Save As' option .. for example it may be Ctrl+Alt+S, or Ctrl+Shift+S .. or whatever it may have been(can't remember exactly) .. but generally don't use them.
For those types of programs, I make a Save As icon shortcut in their toobars and use that instead.
Basically trained myself to just use Cntl+S as my save process.
I think that's what bugged me about LR as much as it's insistence on cataloguing stuff I didn't need cataloguing .. and importing

[John King]

Arthur, the oddity I am referring to is this:

When saving a file with a different filename in FSV, FSV does not switch to the new file (filename). It continues working on the original filename. In order to work on the new filename, the original filename must be closed in FSV and then explicitly open the new filename file.

This is completely different from every other editing program I have ever used (lots ... ), where the new file (filename) is open by default and the original file is closed without saving any changes made since it was last explicitly saved.

I hope this makes sense, and explains what I was referring to.

[arthurking83]

Fair'nuff John!
Strange point of view .. from my point of view tho!!

I guess that comes from what you've become accustomed too.

in what you describe above, FSV follows the same logic I get in my main image editors tho .. so to me it makes more sense that they do it the way they have:

DxO's Photo Lab, and Nikon's software use that same principle where you save something as, and it assumes you've finished with that file.

Personally I prefer that method of file workflow.
Can't really say how other editors methods work in terms of workflow .. I've stopped trialling any and all that I'd come across.

... although saying that I was curious about Darkroom (coming up for discussion in this thread) and had to give it a test run. Didn't really work .. in fact at all!! ... for me.
Opened all my raw files with about +5Ev exposure compensation, which obviously rendered them equivalent to a snowflake in a snow storm .. on a foggy day!
Have no idea on what it was trying to do, but I couldn't get it to work.
Opened the extracted jpg up fine tho. But I went searching for how it's innards operate, but lost interest due to the technical above technical issue.

ATM I pretty happy with DxO's editor due to the way it works .. only annoyance is it's Lightroom method of saving files .. export style .. not save/save as style. Slight annoyance, but I get over it fairly quickly.

On a similar, but opposing note to your preference for file saving .. I prefer the FSV/DxO/Nikon method for handling Save As file handling.
I use LibreOffice for my spreadsheets(and most Office related docs). It's is the most heavily used program on my PC due to the work timesheet spreadsheet.
I do Save As steps in that program and in a way it drive me balmy!

For me a Save As routine means I want a copy saved to a new location, more so for the safety of having a backup copy(which is my main usage), or just an alternate copy of a file (eg. for testing stuff).
And then I can continue on, if need be, on the file I was already working on.
So with LibreOffice(for my purpose) it operates the way you prefer it too, which (used too) drive me nuts.
Used too, because I eventually found that Save Copy does it the way I prefer, so I use that instead now I save to multiple locations and I sometimes save multiple version of the timesheet with very slight variations.
So, using (preferred)your method of Save As, I have to navigate back to the original sheet, or if making the variant sheets need to remember which one I'm in before continuing on with more variations .. etc.
To me that gets confusing.

I do understand your point of view tho, in that the traditional photographers edict that you don't work on the original file comes to mind on this topic.
That's not the way I work tho ... has to do with the terminology used I guess.

[John King]

Arthur, as a matter of logic, versioning should always work from past to present.

That is, if you SAVE AS five times, the original should be the oldest (and preferably unmodified in the case of a photograph of third party draft of a document), and the current working version should be the newest.

Almost all of the hundreds of different programs I have used over the last 40+ years have worked this way, including WordPerfect (IIRC), which did almost everything backwards!

[ameerat42]

...which did almost everything backwards!...

Was it a drawback?

Don't worry! - See my lament on Hugin, and you can now add GIMP to that, saving in its
own format as default and MAKING you have to export to other formats!

The price of progress is eternal vehemence!!

[Gazza]

Darryl, just getting away from the cropping thing for a minute...I use 'faststone' to preview all my images after moving them from my camera to PC. It's very quick and so easy. While looking through and deleting (all) the disasters I can press 'C' to copy to a folder of choice (possible keepers) or 'M' to move that image and it saves on doubling up/cluttering hard drives. I can also press 'E' if I get all excited about an image and it'll open/start the file in PS for me.

A very handy allround viewer in my humble opinion.

Thanks @ameerat42 for mentioning/suggesting it a few years ago -