Exif Thumbnails Problem with DPF

[Perry]

I have a new Digital Photo Frame (DPF) that I've bought
for my father. I'm having all sorts of 'new' problems, not
just with the DPF s/ware, but with image quality and display.

After conferring with the folk in my computer club, it seems
as if the Exif information may be implicated with my difficulties.

All camera pix are taken in macro mode, from a photo album.
All album pix are B&W, being 1940s era onwards, but are taken
without changing the camera capture format to B&W. I have
some doubts about the DPF's ability to display B&W jpg files.

In thumbnail view, the DPF displays pix as they were originally
taken by the Olympus camera, even though I've edited the
pix for clarity and even rotated some.

For reasons which I've yet to discover, the DPF displays some
pix, but not others. Those that are displayed, full screen, are
correctly shown as the edited/rotated pic.

Now when I look at the thumbnails, I notice that the pix that are
displaying on the DPF are in the centre of the cluster of photos
on that album page. As a wild guess, I'm speculating that the DPF
is 'looking' at the thumbnail and deciding what to display (or not!)
of the main jpg file. The ones that aren't displaying have thumbnails
that are a bit cluttered, or the pic is 'on its side.'

I'm in a bad position, because I need to do this job ASAP, as it's
my (88 year-old) Dad's 50th wedding anniversary in 2 days! Had
I known that I was likely to strike these difficulties, I'd've started
the project sooner.

The DPF is an ADS (advanced design systems). The chinglish
instruction manual is one of the worst I've encountered.

Anyone got any suggestions? E.g. (perhaps?) how to force the
file to update the Exif thumbnail after an edit session?

Now I'm off to see if ADS have a web site - in real English.

[Frank]

Hi Perry,

First try to use the search function of the forum!
There you can find a lot of possible answers!

Then (my suggestion) you can use JPEGCrops to crop your picture in your wanted picture format!
And as the last step it's helpful to resize all these cropped images (using batch conversion of IrfanView)
to the size which is supported by the digital photo frame!
(But attention: Save your original picture files before modification!

And your problem with some not displayed pictures could be an unicode problem!
See the search function! Try to rename such picture files!


regards
Frank

[Perry]

First try to use the search function of the forum!
There you can find a lot of possible answers!

What makes you think I didn't? 237 results for 'EXIF'
many of them in German language on the English forum area.

Then (my suggestion) you can use JPEGCrops to crop your picture in your wanted picture format!

Frank - you'll just have to trust me on this one.
I'm not a novice - except with DPFs.

And as the last step it's helpful to resize all these cropped images (using batch conversion of IrfanView)
to the size which is supported by the digital photo frame!
(But attention: Save your original picture files before modification!

Thanks for the warning. I cannot determine the max. size
supported by the DPF. The manual is almost a hazard! Apart
from a trial-and-error determination that over 150dpi is not
displayed and up to 1.3MB file size is OK, I'm still just plodding
my way through on a guess-what-might-work-next basis!

And your problem with some not displayed pictures could be an unicode problem!
See the search function! Try to rename such picture files!

Tried that, just in case. No change.

The DPF company has a web site. Although the language is USA
English and easier to read, rather than chinglish, it's still woefully
short of being helpful.

This is getting to be like a nightmare!

I wanted to buy a Jobo, (at twice the price), but the USA sellers
made it so difficult to achieve that I gave up.

[Skippybox]

Sometimes the shoe box works just fine.

I don't know much about your DPF problems, but if the EXIF is the issue then you can do some things. I can imagine that your edits are being saved, but you are retaining the original EXIF metadata.

First, have you tried dumping the EXIF? Do you need it or does the DPF? Check in your software for an option to keep/dump it when saving. You can dump it in IrfanView.

If you need the EXIF, then you might try rebuilding the embedded thumbnail when saving. If your software doesn't let you do this (IrfanView can't either), then try XnView which will. You can also see the embedded thumbnail in Xnview (can't in IrfanView thumbnails). XnView has many option for working with metadata. You can clean it, edit it, recreate the embedded thumbnail, or rotate the embedded thumbnail. Better yet, you can simply select the images you want and do them all at once without going through Save As.

You should be careful with EXIF, since you can easily get undesirable results. You can do lossless rotations yet keep the original EXIF, which would make the thumbnail out of sync. Also, software can sometimes rotate images based on their EXIF orientation tag, leading to incorrect rotations. If you don't reset the EXIF tag, then with auto-rotate engaged, the image will appear wrong, when it is indeed correct. Eeeek!

[Perry]

Sometimes the shoe box works just fine.

Sorry - you've lost me, there.

I don't know much about your DPF problems, but if the EXIF is the issue then you can do some things. I can imagine that your edits are being saved, but you are retaining the original EXIF metadata.

I'm finding this to be quite some learning curve.
It seems that the Exif data is a half-issue. By
that, I mean ignoring the Exif thumbnail as
displayed by the DPF is just a matter of learn-
ing. I.e. I know it 'lies' and that the image that
it displays, full-screen will be different.

First, have you tried dumping the EXIF? Do you need it or does the DPF? Check in your software for an option to keep/dump it when saving. You can dump it in IrfanView.

I see there are 2 references to Exif data in IV.
* Keep original Exif data,
* Reset Exif orientation tag.

Because they've never been an issue before, I'm
still working on figuring those two out, but it
does seem as if the first option 'updates' the
Exif thumbnail, as displayed by the DPF.

Please spell out the error of my guess, if that's
a wrong guess!

If you need the EXIF, then you might try rebuilding the embedded thumbnail when saving.

As far as I can tell, the Exif data is a sort-of
red herring. I.e. it's just a matter of me realising
that the thumbnails displayed by the DPF are
inaccurate in that they have not (when I've
edited the main pic in my graphics editor,
Ulead's PhotoImpact) 'caught up' with that
edit and the resultant altered image.

I don't want to 'play' with the Exif thumbnail,
just understand it or delete it!

I've been using IV for ages. This is the first time
that I've encountered (and needed to deal with)
Exif data. As in, I didn't even know of its very
existence till I started on this exercise!

FYI, the 50th anniversary celebrations are over.
I rushed down to my parents' place and took
several pix off proofs (using camera macro mode),
edited them and then got them into the DPF's
internal memory. These were displayed at the
function and warmly appreciated by those present.
The exercise was necessary because my Dad had
misplaced the wedding album. Mum was not pleased!

Although my experience is not yet over, I have
gleaned what seem to be - provisionally - some
informational experience.

1) If a pic is too wide for the DPF, it will scale it to fit.

2) If a pic is too tall for the ADS DPF, it will not
display it, either on the DPF or in the thumbnail view,
when drawn from either internal memory or a pen
drive in the USB slot. (I.e. it may do so from a camera
card, because I have not tested that, as yet)

3) To get computer-edited items encountering the
problem described in (2), above to display, it is
necessary to edit the pic so that its height is less
than or equal to 768 pixels.

I'm using RGB. At this stage, I do not know if taking
a camera pic in grayscale would work [on the DPF]
or be better quality, if the DPF would actually display
such images.

Observations
I edit/proof read books for certain publishers. I have
a better-than-average grasp of language usage, as may
be applied to books and novels and web pages. I proof
and edit items for USAmerican publishers/authors who
seek assistance with making their works more catholic
or cosmopolitan, for easier comprehension by inter-
national English-speaking readers.

I have yet to encounter a user manual as bad as the
chinglish offering that came with ADS DPF. As the
ADS DPF may fairly be regarded as a consumer item,
as opposed to (e.g.) a PC, which is inherently more
'nerdy,' I do wonder if ADS do themselves a great
dis-service? If the ADS DPF's manual was to be treat-
ed as a significant component in any word-of-mouth
referral, I suspect that it would be all bad.

Here's a sample of the type of historical pix which
I'm dealing with:

That's my Dad on the left and me on the right, some
50+ years ago! Scary.

Frank, Skippy - thank you for being patient with me.
Among other things I fill my hours with, I Mod at two
forums and Admin at four! Perhaps I have a better
than average understanding of many things, as
a consequence? Exif data being today's exception!!!

Techno-babble: The aircraft seems to be a marinised
Mosquito, (for use on aircraft carriers, hence the
folding wings) and so renamed a Hornet.

[Skippybox]

Sometimes the shoe box works just fine.

A bit of a joke. People use to or still do keep photos in a shoe box. So many are quick to choose technology over simplicity, despite the challenges technology presents. Many times the effort required of technology is more than the effort of the thing it replaces.

I see there are 2 references to Exif data in IV.
* Keep original Exif data,
* Reset Exif orientation tag.

Because they've never been an issue before, I'm
still working on figuring those two out, but it
does seem as if the first option 'updates' the
Exif thumbnail, as displayed by the DPF.

Please spell out the error of my guess, if that's
a wrong guess!

Keep original Exif data does exactly as it says, keeps it, thumbnail and all. The thumbnail is not updated when edits are made to the image. You can verify this in XnView. The second option just changes the orientation tag to Top-Left for auto-rotation purposes. When you rotate an image manually you don't want the image and tag to mismatch, otherwise the auto-rotate function will try and rotate the image even though you don't want it to. By making it Top-Left, it will not be auto-rotated because it thinks it is already in the correct position.

Nice photograph!

[Perry]

So the next question is simple.

How do I get the Exif data thumbnail to update,
post-editing of the main (related) graphic?

Dad's an album man - very organised. Dated,
annotated and all. Just that they seem in danger
of wear and tear problems and the DPF would
help with that.

Jobo DPF firmware allows organising into folders,
something I'd like. A workaround may be to use
camera cards, allocating pix to them by category.

[Skippybox]

XnView makes that very easy.

These are the directions for XnView, NOT IrfanView:

To see the embedded thumbnail, choose Tools>Options>Browser>Thumbnails>Appearance>Use Embedded thumbnail.

To update it instantly, select the files and choose Edit>Metadata>Recreate EXIF thumbnail.

Alternatively, when saving you can have this setting checked, Tools>Options>General>Read/Write>Write>JPEG>Rebuild embedded thumbnail. That same dialog is accessible in the Save dialog using the Options button there.

[Perry]

Thanks - I'll give it a try. BTW, Dad trained
at the bottom of your country - Pensacola.

[inshadowz]

XnView makes that very easy.
...
To update it instantly, select the files and choose Edit>Metadata>Recreate EXIF thumbnail.

That's just what I've been looking for! Put an end to a long, exhaustive search, and saved my day

It also looks like it leaves all other EXIF info unchanged, which is important ... or else this wouldn't have been an issue for me to begin with