Thumbnail Browsers anyone?

Have been lurking as a "reader" for a while - most useful forum! Just switched to digital (G1, natch) and am blown away by the possibilities.

I've also found a real gem for thumbnails-to-Web pages: THUMBER from http://members.tripod.​com/~tawba/thumber.htm

The program's strength is it's dead easy interface for organizing thumbnails into Web pages, linking them to full size originals, complete with selective EXIF info, all with a few clicks. The page is then a cinch to customize in any HTML editor. Also does simple, lossless tranforms retaining all EXIF info.

Did a trial of camera and THUMBER yesterday, example at http://www.netidea.com​/~teekay/thumbs/kiteda​y.htm

The images are nothing great - I was just testing settings under high contrast conditions.

Teekay

I also use Thumber, and am very happy with it as long as I stick with JPEG. It does not handle CRW or TIFF. With JPEG, though, it is very functional. Exports EXIF as text or csv; I use csv to build Excel spreadsheets of image directory data. Thumber also creates html files to look at your photos, and has a configurable rename function. This combination, while not "professional" standard, is very convenient for maintaining a personal directory. I plan to archive it on CDR when my zip disk fills up. Too bad it does not deal with TIFF and its image info, I have to do that manually. When I shoot RAW, I save the image info using Chris Breeze downloader, make a JPEG copy for Thumber to display, and enter the data manually.

I came across an excellent EXIF browser at

http://members.nbci.co​m.../mkowalski.1/index​.html

It will display all the photo and camera info, display thumnails and a whole lot more that I have not explored yet. A relatively small file for downloading. Oh and did I mention that it is lightning fast.

Leo

Leo:

I fixed your link. Does it work with CRW files?

Leo R wrote:
I came across an excellent EXIF browser at
http://members.nbci.co​m/mkowalski.1/index.ht​ml

Yes it works with Canon CRW files as well as jpeg and files already converted from crw to tiff or bitmap. You can toggle between a window that lists all the files in a folder along with the info about the picture eg camera, shooting mode, exposure, lens focal length, flash on or off, etc etc and a window of thumbnails. Clicking on a thumbnail gives a full screen view or other sizes by a zoom + or-. There are other features that I have not used yet.

The detailed file listings seem to be in a spreadsheet format and clicking on a column heading causes the list to be resorted by that heading-eg clicking on the exposure time heading, sorts the list by shutter speed used.

Leo

So, I'm totally confused now! Too many programs for viewing images. But I know what my question is... (damn it)

Reading all this thumbnail stuff, am I right in thinking that there's a 640x480 pixel version of the image inside the CRW file? So when I download an image from my CF card, via my MicroTech USB reader I get:

CRW_1055.CRW containing RAW image data and 640x480 JPG image, and
CRW_1055.THM containing JPG image possibly 120x180 or smaller.

There's EXIF data somewhere here, too, but I don't know where.

I currently use ACDSee to view the THM files to see if any photos are just so bad I don't want to deal with them. Then I convert all remaining images into TIFFS, view them, then delete those I find to be out of focus, or blurred, or otherwise flawed or uninteresting.

I think it would be nice to get that 640x480 JPG out of the *.CRW file and use that to make more informed decisions.

IF Im right, is there a way to get access to that larger thumb image?

cheers,

See the thread on YARC in this section. If you have a Windows PC, you can use it to automatically retrieve the jpg thumbs with exif. I use it and then use the Kowalski Exif Viewer or Max Lyons Thumber to view the exif and thumbnails.