Spash Photo

[Big Daddy21]

Hello Good People,

Just downloaded the spash photo everyone was raving about, and I must say I was a bit disapopointed in the results...
I previously was using the Photo base from arcsoft, and granted the photos took a bit longer to upload, the quality was far superior. If i am doing something wrong please let me know, otherwise I will hop back on the arcsoft software....

Waiting for your wisdom..
Big Daddy21

[Pride Of Lions]

Dig.

Happy you tried my personal fave, SplashPhoto. Give it some more time.

Now, what exactly do you feel is inferior about it? You mentioned the photo quality, but with this whole hi-res screen thingy, is it the programs' problem?

One of the things I like about this app. (which, incidentally, is the same thing I don't like about it, but the good far outweighs the not-good.) is the SplashPhoto Desktop where one can customize and/or edit the photo to Palm TT screen size. I've had a few pictures saved as a result of this (not the ones I took. The ones I let other people take with my camera and they might have their finger in the shot or under/over-expose and it isn't up to my standards :D) where I can adjust the contrast and/or brightness and/or zoom in/out to perfectly compose the story I'm telling with the photo document.

(What I don't like about the SplashPhoto Desktop is that I need it. I bought my camera because (among other reasons) it takes the SD/MMC card format, thinking that I can take a pic., and immediately (if I want) swap the card into my TT and view the photo there.) (I don't think it works because the pic needs to be converted and/or adjusted with the SplashPhoto Desktop primarily.) (I like parentheses!)

Which brings us to the next point, into what format are you converting your photo documents? The SplashPhoto Desktop allows for conversion into either JPEG's or PDB's. Personally, I'm grooving on the PDB format, because it has more information to give us great looking pics. The desktop mentions how PDB's are bigger and slower than JPEG's, but especially with this wundabar processor, I never notice. All of my pics are on my 256MB SD card anyways, so it's not like space for my pics is a problem. Now space for my movies, on the other hand....
Also, do you choose the highest color-bit resolution? Yeah, it makes for a bigger photo file, but we sacrifice quantity for quality, because, unless memory is really a major concern, what's the point of choosing a lessor quality when one can enjoy truly the best that is offered?

And then there's the concession that the pics are of icky quality to start with. But we really don't think so, right?

So, let's say you take excellent photographs (which you do, right?). You convert and/or edit them as necessary with yon SplashPhoto Desktop (into PDB's with the highest resolution and color bit, correct?), and view them and impress your friends/co-workers to no end with the slideshow (of varying slide lengths, absolutely) on your TT's hi-res screen.

And if you still aren't impressed, then maybe the app. isn't for you. I know that some people prefer not to be limited to the Palm's screen, but would rather have the option to zoom and scroll their bigger-than-TT screen pics. I'd like, myself, the ability to edit pics also directly on the handheld and sync the changes along with the pic to my desktop like Docs-To-Go or something. Then, I could do the wonderful "take a pic with the camera and swap cards to have that info converted and transferred onto the handheld" idea I thought would work when I bought the camera. But I'll survive.

So, let us know what you're doing and if it's working for you or not. And, if necessary, we'll agree to disagree.

Cheers,
POL9A

[mmmkay]

Make sure you resize to 320x320 and 16bit colour when you use desktop app.

And.. loading the PDB's take much longer on the T than loading JPEGs in my experience. Plus they take up more space, and there is no noticable difference between them. The JPEGs take up an average of 30Kbytes of space on the SD card which is very good.

On the SplashPhoto site, they say that loading PDBs are faster than JPEGs, but I have a feeling they did this benchmark using older Palm OS devices (like the m505, m515, etc)

SplashPhoto uses ARMlets for decoding the JPEG images so it is almost instant!

[lamb]

is splash photo better than acid image? Thats what I am using at the moment.
what are the pros cons of both (coming from users with first hand experience)

[mmmkay]

I've only used ACDSee Mobile, PhotoBase, and now SplashPhoto.

[clare]

Oh drat! I've been meaning to try out SpashPhoto, hoping that it could display jpegs from other sources too (without needing a desktop conversion). That's really disappointing. I wouldn't even mind if it was slow, just a temporary measure 'til I got my photos home and converted them. Cuz sometimes you'd like to view *fresh* new jpegs on the road.

Does anyone know of any programs that can view unconverted jpegs?


--Clare

[mmmkay]

Actually...


Apparently you CAN :) It involves deleting some temp file that SplashPhoto uses to store its list of images. I read that somewhere but I can't remember where now. Whether or not Splashphoto will work with images that are not 160x160 or 320x320 remains to be seen. You could give that a try though.

[dwhoward]

SplashPhoto will work with JPEG images that haven't been converted with the desktop program. I just put three images on my card of varying dimensions and Splashphoto recognized them and showed them. It automatically sizes the photot as best it can to fit the screen. It does take longer to load the JPEG (on my M515) than it does to load the .pdb but it should work for taking images directly from a digital camera card and then swapping that card into the Palm. The only other thing you might need to do is to make sure the JPEG images are stored in a directory on the card that Splashphoto looks to. I think this includes /Palm/Programs/SlashPhoto as well as /palm/launcher If you had to, you could use a file manager program (e.g. McFile) to move the images into that directory from the Palm.

Dave

[mmmkay]

Yes they are usually stored in /DCIM on most digital cameras now. PhotoBase stores all its images in the /DCIM folder, but not as JPEG images. I think they're converted to bitmap and then saved in a PDB file since the files have an _bmp suffix and a .pdb extention, which may explain why it loads images so slowly (takes about the same time to load as SplashPhoto's PDB format)

[sleuth255]

You can display images on the SplashPhoto Palm app which haven't been loaded there by the desktop app by choosing "refresh" from the options menu. The application will automatically re-format each picture to fit the screen. I also believe that if you check "show all jpegs on card" in the prefs menu that it will scan all folders. Nice for viewing pics directly from a camera.

[Pride Of Lions]

Alright, dig.

Thanks to all your wonderful inputs, I've gotten to read images from the camera directly on the TT without the SplashPhoto Desktop mediary.

In case you're interested, here's what I did...

1) I formatted the 128MB SD card in the Palm, rather than the camera. That was my first mistake before, formatting the card in the camera first. Then when I popped the card into the Palm, it couldn't read it and asked if I'd like to format in the Palm, thereby erasing what's on the card. Couldn't do it then, but by formatting the card in the Palm, my camera can read the card and take pictures as usual.

2) Took some pictures with the camera, and checked playback in the camera to make sure the images "stuck." They did.

3) Popped the card into the Palm, but then realized that I don't have SplashPhoto on my Palm itself, but rather on my other SD card with all my other pics. Copied the app. to my Palm from the other card, then transferred it to the camera's card.

4) Opened SplashPhoto on the camera's card in the Palm. My pics displayed all super-wonderfully and everything. It did take a bit long to read them. Much longer than if I'd twiddled with them using the Desktop app., but I'm willing to put up with the slight delay for the convenience of pics-on-demand from camera to Palm. Also, as mentioned in this thread, the pics were re-sized, thus I lose the manuverability of editing my pics to properly tell the story I want told on the Palm's screen, but again, I'm willing to sacrifice that for the ability to see pics directly on the Palm screen. And I can always later convert them later if I want to.

So, finally, I can use my Palm and camera in concert and fully actualize my plans for both when I decided to buy a digital camera that used the SD/MMC flash card.

Thanks all.
Happy New Year!
POL9A