What

·           Filter, group and order your photo collection by using the metadata (like keywords, location and rating) embedded in the photos

·           View your geotagged photos on a word map, grouped by country

For who

·           For world travelers who have geotagged their photos

·           For serious photographers who have tagged their photos with keywords or ratings

Features

·           Imports albums from Picasa, OneDrive and Device

·           Does not alter the original photos

·           Reads keywords (tags), location, rating and orientation from the photos

·           Looks up country from location or keywords

·           Order albums by Name, Date or Photo Source

·           Search photos by (any combination of) country, keywords, date, rating and orientation and by using =, ≠, ≦ and ≧ operators

·           Order photos by country, date, rating or orientation

·           Semantic zoom for quick navigation

·           View photos on the map, grouped by country

·           Thumbnail and full screen view

·           Works on mobile and desktop

·           Supports jpg, png and tiff formats

·           Can hold thumbnails and metadata of more than 10.000 photos

·           Low memory profile: suitable for low memory devices (512 MB)

·           Low disk profile

·           Respects System Theme colors

Summary

PhotoOrganiser lets you view your collection of photos in various ways. To do so it must first import the photo albums from its original source. You can do this in the Import Album page. The source can be any album from the device (mobile or desktop), Picasa web albums or your OneDrive account. During the import, thumbnails and metadata (location, keywords, rating) will be read from the original photos and stored on the device. The metadata can then be used to filter, search, group and order the photos on a variety of ways. During the import, the original photos stay untouched. Photos with a location (latitude, longitude) attached will get a country tag, based on the location, so the pictures can be grouped and searched for by country.

 

Note that this app assumes that your photos already contain embedded metadata like location, rating and keywords. If not, the advanced search and filter capabilities cannot be exploited to its full strength, but you can still use it as nice photo viewer. To add or edit metadata to the original photos, you must use other applications.

 

Once the albums are imported, you can view the photos in the albums in different ways. The imported albums can be viewed in the Albums page. You can order the albums by Name, Date or Photo source. The photos in the album can be viewed directly by clicking/tapping on the album. However, to use this app to its full potential you should use the Search Photos page. This page offers you an advanced way to view exactly those photos that match the filter criteria that you provide. You can search your photos across all albums and across all photo sources. The photos are ordered and grouped by either Country, Date, Rating or Orientation. You can narrow down the photos to be seen by using different filter criteria. The filter criteria can be created by using different combinations of Date, Country, Keywords (tags), Rating and Orientation and by using operators like =, ≠, ≦ or ≧. The requested photos are shown instantly. Multiple filter commands can be used that will be “stacked” so that subsequent filter commands are accomplished to the filter commands already executed. The combined filter commands can be saved so that it can be used later.

 

The Map page lets you view your geotagged photos on a world map. The photos are grouped by country. The countries that contain photos can be tapped / clicked so you can zoom in to that country and see the photos from that country and the location of each photo simultaneously. You can also tap/click on a photo and see its location.

Import Album

This page lets you import photo albums from the following sources:

 Picasa

 OneDrive

 Device

Photo albums from OneDrive and Picasa must be enabled explicitly, which requires user credentials. You can do that in the Settings page. Each photo source shows you the number of albums you can choose from in parenthesis. The title shows you the total number of albums.

 

Clicking / Tapping on the source logo shows you the available albums for each source and for each album a thumbnail, the album title, the number of photos, the album date and the relative path. The title shows you the total number of albums for that source. Either Title, Date, Reverse Date or relative path is used to group the available albums. The group header shows the number of albums in parenthesis. The groups are organized in a semantic zoom so that you can navigate to an album quickly. You can change the ordering with the ordering commands in the bottom app bar:

    Order by Title

    Order by Date

    Reverse order by Date

    Order by Path

 

To directly import an album, you can hold / right click the album thumbnail and select the Import Album command. You can also select Show Thumbnails command or alternatively click / tap on the album thumbnail to first show a list of thumbnails of the album to be imported.  The Import Album thumbnail page shows you the album title and the number of pictures in parenthesis. You have the following options in the bottom app bar:

   Uniform Thumbnails / Square Thumbnails

  Small Thumbnails / Large Thumbnails

 

The Import Album command at the top of the page will actually do the import of the album. The status bar at the bottom of the screen will show you the progress of the import. For OneDrive and Picasa web albums, the import can take a while, because it must read the original image from the cloud to extract the metadata like location, keywords and rating. You can continue with the app while the metadata is being extracted, but it is necessary that the app is running in the foreground (not tapped away). As an extra feature, photos without location information but with keywords that also holds a valid country name will be assigned to the country found in the keywords. Note: The original albums and photos remain untouched!

Albums

The Albums page shows you all imported albums. The total number of imported albums are shown in parenthesis in the title bar as well as the number of photos. Either Title, Date, Reverse Date or Source groups the albums. The group header shows the number of albums in parenthesis. The groups are organized in a semantic zoom so that you can navigate to an album quickly. You can change the ordering with the ordering commands in the bottom app bar:

    Order by Title

    Order by Date

    Reverse order by Date

    Order by Source

 

Each album shows you the album thumbnail, the title, number of photos, album date and the source (Device, OneDrive, Picasa or Search result). To remove an album you can hold / right click on an album thumbnail and select the Remove Album command. Note that you cannot remove an album that is being imported. Removing an album does not delete the original album and its photos. To show the photos within an album you can tap / click on the album thumbnail. The photos are grouped by either Date, Country, Rating or Orientation. The group header shows the number of photos in parenthesis. The groups are organized in a semantic zoom so that you can navigate quickly.

 

You have the following options you can choose from in the bottom app bar:

     Show Metadata / Hide Metadata: this option shows or hides metadata in full screen mode (this option is not visible on small devices, but it is also available in the Settings page). When this option is selected, the full screen view shows all known metadata at the bottom of the page

    Uniform Thumbnails / Square Thumbnails: this option preserves aspect ratio of the thumbnails or fills them in a square tile (this command is not visible on small devices, but it is also available on the Settings page)

    Small Thumbnails / Large Thumbnails (this command is not visible on small devices, but it is also available on the Settings page)

     Order by Date

    Order by Country

    Order by Rating

     Order by Orientation

To show a photo full screen, you can click / tap on a thumbnail. When the Show Metadata option is selected, the full screen view shows the metadata as an overlay. You can swipe, use the scroll wheel or click on the navigation arrows on the side of the screen to navigate through all images. On mobile devices, you can pinch-zoom to zoom in on a photo. Clicking / tapping on the screen switches back to thumbnail view.

Search Photos

This page offers you an advanced way to search for photos that match the filter criteria that you provide. The filter criteria are based on all the extracted metadata. The total number of photos is displayed in the title bar. Navigation and grouping is the same as on the Album thumbnail view. The same command options in the bottom app bar apply.

Initially all photos for all albums are displayed. However, this page has an extra command bar at the top of the screen that you can use to create the filter criteria.

The command bar at the top of the page lets you search / filter your photos based on any combination Date, Country, Keywords (tags), Rating and Orientation. You can use the standard = (equal) and ≠ (not equal) operators, but also ≦ (less than or equal) and ≧ (greater than or equal) where appropriate. The following filter commands exist:

    Date Filter

    Country Filter

    Keyword Filter

    Rating Filter

    Orientation Filter

When you select a filter command, a dialog box appears that assists you to create the filter criteria. You can select from a list of all available values (either years, countries, keywords, ratings or orientations). In the right column, you will see the number of photos for that value. The list is ordered by the number of photos, but you can choose to order the list alphabetically with the Sort command. You can choose multiple values, in which case the values will be treated as an OR operator (e.g., when you select Year: 2008 and 2010, all photos taken in 2008 or 2010 are selected). The actual number of photos is shown below. You can also use the ≠ operators (e.g. All photos not taken in 2008 or 2010), ≦ operator (e.g. all pictures taken in 2010 or earlier), or the ≧ operator (e.g. all pictures taken in 2008 or later). The Clear command clears the selection; the Cancel command cancels the creation of the filter criteria and leaves the dialog box. The Accept command leaves the dialog box and shows you the selected pictures immediately. Note that the ≦ and ≧ operators are only applicable for the Date Filter and Rating Filter commands.

 

You can now use subsequent filter commands to narrow the results further. Each filter command is used on top of the previous filter commands, so subsequent filter commands allow you to choose from fewer values. All applied filter commands are shown in a list box that holds the type of filter command, the filter operator, the list of filter values and the number of pictures after applying the filter command. By clicking / tapping on any part on the list box, a menu is shown with the following options:

   Undo    Undo the last filter command

   Hide     Hides the filter commands list box (to give room for the thumbnails). However, the list box is shown again automatically after invoking a new filter command

       Clear    Clears all filter commands (and also hiding the filter commands list box)

   Save as Album         The search command (the list of all create filters) will be saved as a special album, labeled “Search Result” as the source and will be shown in the Albums page. The album name is composed as the current date and time to enforce a unique name. All search results in the Albums page are grouped together when the Order by Source is selected in the Albums page. Note that you can edit the Search Command from the Albums Page by right click / hold on the album thumbnail and choose the Edit Album command. This will direct you again to the Search Photos page.

Map

This page will initially show you a world map, where each country that contains pictures are marked as transparent red. These countries can be clicked / tapped. The page title shows you the number of countries you can select. By clicking / tapping on a country, the map zooms in on the country and it will show the following:

·           The country gets a border (to mark it as selected)

·           The country gets aCountry (  nrOfPhotos) button. Clicking / tapping on it will show the photos in a grid view, where you can also see the photos full screen

·           Photo locations are shown as Map icons :

·           The thumbnails of the photos for the selected country are shown below in a horizontal list view.

·           Selecting the country again zooms in on the map icons of that country.

You can select (click / tap) either a map icon or a photo from the list view.

·           Selecting a map icon, marks the map icon red and scrolls the photo into view (and mark it as selected)

·           Selecting a photo, marks the map icon red and scrolls the map icon into view (but it respects the current zoom factor).

 

Note that photos marked with an exclamation mark (!)  don’t have location information (but do have country information), so they cannot be shown on the map by a MapIcon.

You can pan / zoom by using the controls on the map (desktop and mobile), by using pinch zoom (mobile) or by using the mouse wheel (desktop).

Selecting the same country again will zoom out to “country view”.

Clicking / tapping outside a country zooms out to “world view”.

Clicking / tapping on another country will select the other country.

Settings

This page has 5 section which are organized in a pivot view:

·           Photo Sources

·           Options

·           Factory Reset

·           Info

·           About

 

The Photo Sources section lets you select or unselect the available photo sources (Picasa, OneDrive and Device). Selecting a photo source reads all available albums from that photo source and stores the albums on the device, so that you can import them later in the Import Albums page. Unselecting a photo source will remove all available albums from that photo source (an extra confirmation is required, because already imported albums can also be removed). It will never remove your original albums and photos. You can select the following photo sources:

·           Device:

o    Mobile:    PhotoOrganiser reads all albums and sub albums from the Pictures folder

o    Desktop:  You must select a root folder from where PhotoOrganiser reads all albums and sub albums (only sub folders containing pictures will be read)

·           Picasa:          You will be redirected to the Google site where you must login by using your Google credentials and where you will be asked to agree that PhotoOrganiser has permissions to read your photos. If you agree, the albums are read from picasa web albums

·           OneDrive:      You will be redirected to the Microsoft site where you must login by using your Microsoft credentials (if not done before) and you will be asked to agree that PhotoOrganiser has permissions to read your photos. If you agree, all the albums and sub albums will be read from your OneDrive Pictures folder.

Selecting a photo source will initially read all the albums from that photo source, but you can at any moment use the Sync command that re-read the albums again (e.g. when the source albums are updated). Synchronizing with the source can imply that albums removed from the source will also be removed from PhotoOrganiser.

 

The Options section allows you to select the following options

·           Thumbnail Size:       Small / Large

·           Thumbnail Mode:     Uniform / Fill (Uniform: preserve aspect ratio, Fill: cropped)

·           Meta data:              Hide / Show (used in full screen mode)

·           Map Animation:       On / Off (used in the Map page)

 

The Factory Reset section offers you the option use the Factory Reset command. This command restores PhotoOrganiser to factory defaults, which mean that all albums, all photos and all search commands will be removed from PhotoOrganiser). This command requires extra confirmation from the user to prevent accidental loss (but of course, the originals are always untouched).

The Info Section leads you to this manual.

The About Section shows you information about the license, version number, publisher and contact info.

Known Issues

·        Metadata extraction is done in the main application and will be interrupted when the application is tapped a way

Privacy Statement

PhotoOrganiser can read your personal photos and its metadata from your Picasa Web Albums account or your OneDrive account and will store them on the device. Photo locations will be used to lookup country information by using a web service. It will never send the photos to other parties.