ThumbsPlus includes new toolbar buttons and graphics
with a Vista/Windows 7 feel, improved menus, and a much wider selection
of buttons to choose from.
 
Image Viewing and Editing
ThumbsPlus Pro now supports 16 bit per channel images: loading,
viewing, editing and saving. The following functions work with
16-bit grayscale and 48-bit color images:
- Adjust Colors
- Color Depth
 Color
Balance
- Color Profile
- Swap Red & Blue
- Invert Colors
- Histogram
- Remove Red-eye
- Image Stamp
- Combine
- Compare
- Filters
- Processes
- Resize
- Rotate
- Rotate to Line
- Turn & Mirror
- Trim
- Autocrop
- Crop/Add Borders
- Cut, Copy and Paste
ThumbsPlus can now create, handle and view alpha channels in
24-bit and 48-bit images. Alpha channels will be loaded and
saved to TGA, PNG and TIF files. You can use the View | Channels menu to select which channels to display.
Edit | Create Alpha Channel will create an alpha channel
from the current selection.
A new View Bar is available, which displays three tabs:
- Channels - Displays information about the image data,
including channels displayed, position, RGB value at cursor,
channel and intensity histograms, and an image map, indicating
the portion of the image currently displayed and the current
selection.
- Info - Same as the Info tab in the main window.
- Comments - Image comments.
Image rotation and resize are significantly faster, and bi-cubic
is now available as an interpolation option for rotation.
Edit | Selection Mode allows you to select between rectangular,
elliptical or freehand selection styles.
A new View | Preferences tab, Editing, is available
where you can set various editing options.
A full Gaussian Blur filter is now available, which will blur
to any specific pixel radius.
You can now select a default color profile (ThumbsPlus previously
used sRGB) for viewing images. The selected profile will be
used for images that do not have a color profile. Options
| Viewing | Color Management
A new fly-out menu is available Image | Mode for quickly
switching between image modes (24-bit, 48-bit, 8-bit gray, 16-bit
gray).
A new menu selection on the main menu, Edit | Paste Screen
Shot will paste an image and convert it from monitor color
space to the current working space.
The channels histogram (Image | Histogram) has been
updated to look more like the view bar histogram and Photoshop
CS.
The operation previews for Filter, Color Depth, Save JPEG Options
and Save Jpeg2000 Options have been greatly improved, to allow
various zoom levels and switching between the original and the
changed or saved image.
File Formats - New
and Updated
The following image formats will be loaded as 48-bit color
(or 16-bit grayscale if appropriate):
- TIFF
- PSD
- DCR
- DCS
- PNG
- RAW
- Images loaded using Photoshop plug-ins
- Images loaded using new Cerious plug-ins
- Scanned images (TWAIN)
- Olympus Confocal TIFF
A new digital cameral raw plug-in (plug_digicam.tpp)
is available and in beta also, and file types loaded by this
filter will be loaded as 48-bit.
The ORF and MRW formats are now supported by the new camera
plug-in (plug_digicam.tpp) rather than directly in ThumbsPlus.
16-bit grayscale and 48-bit color images can be saved as PNG,
TIFF or JPEG2000 files.
JPEG2000 now uses the PolyImagePro library from PolyBytes.
Be sure "Load Using" is set to "PolyImage." 16-bit grayscale
and 48-bit color images are supported.
You can select a default color profile for loading CMYK TIFF
and PSD files that do not contain an embedded profile. (Options
| Viewing | Color Management)
ThumbsPlus now stores and recognizes EXIF and IPTC information
in JPEG2000 files, and will now store EXIF info in TIFF files.
(IPTC was already available in TIFF files.)
The latest Kodak libraries are available in the tp_kodak.exe
download (see the Beta Notes above).
The latest version of PolyimagePro is included for JPEG2000
and digital camera support.
A new EXIF option, "Rotate based on EXIF orientation" is used
for JPEG and TIFF files. (Previously, JPEG files were not rotated
based on EXIF orientation, and TIFF files were. This option
controls both.)
Some EXIF loading and saving problems were corrected.
Thumbnail Creation
and Storage
When ThumbsPlus makes thumbnails, it now calculates an MD5
digest of the entire file and stores this in the database. You
may view and sort by the MD5 digest (Options | Show for Files, Options | Sort By). You can limit the file size for which
MD5 digests are computed using Options | Preferences | Thumbnails.
You can also display the MD5 digest in the Info Tab. The MD5
digest is stored in binary format in the database (in the metric3
field). If you need a text value -- for example, if you're accessing
the database from another application -- you can can create
a user field with the name "MD5" and ThumbsPlus will store it
as text. The MD5 digest can be displayed or printed anywhere
that File Info is available (contact sheets, catalogs, the Info
tab, web pages, etc.).
Note that you must regenerate thumbnails for MD5 digests to
be computed.
You can display the database thumbnail ID (unique for each
thumbnail in the database) on the Info tab.
When sorting by Similarity (or right-click | Show Similar),
ThumbsPlus will show an equals sign (=) on images whose metrics
match the prior image exactly.
When sorting by MD5 digest, ThumbsPlus will show an equals
sign (=) on files whose MD5 matches the previous file exactly.
(This is almost guaranteed to mean the the files are identical,
as long as the thumbnails are up-to-date.)
Many additional third-party client/server databases are supported,
including DB2, MySQL, Postgres, and Pervasive. We're still working
on Oracle support; there is a major bug in Oracle's handling
of zero-length strings that may require significant source code
changes. No other database we've tested with has this bug. (Oracle
stores zero-length strings as NULL column values). Oracle does
work properly except for files in the root folders of disks.
For people using multiple databases, a "Recent Databases" history
is available from File | Database | Recent Databases.
File | Database | Export and Import have been
improved to include volume aliases. For import into earlier
databases, you must select the proper compatibility field when
exporting.
Other new features
The File | Properties display is now resizable and will
go backward and forward through all files in the folder (if
one is selected), or through selected files (if multiple files
are selected).
Options | Preferences has a new tab, Privacy,
which you can use to control the items stored in the INI and
TDO files.
The Tasks tab in the main window now shows the number
of running and waiting background tasks on the tab itself. If
a task reports errors, the icon will change to a red exclamation
point.
The Parent folder and Favorites buttons on the
Location Bar are now more obviously buttons.
Editing IPTC info from the main window (File | Edit IPC
Info...) will now retain the original file dates if the
option is selected in Options | Preferences | General (Retain original date/time...).
Options | Email will now locate MAPI e-mail clients
installed for the current user only (rather than system-wide).
A new option is available in Options | Viewing | Other to reverse the zoom in/out direction when using the mouse wheel
to zoom.
After moving files, ThumbsPlus was not selecting the next file
in the list.
A option was added to Thumbnail | Remove Orphans for
removing orphans in the current folder only.
Thumbnails of images with transparency (alpha channels) are
now rendered on a white background. I'm thinking about making
this configurable, but that will affect similarity matching.
Your input is welcome.
A new option is available to select all orphaned thumbnails
in the current display (Edit | Select by | Orphans).
You can now select Options | Sort by | Similarity as
a secondary sort order (hold CTRL while selecting it). Note
that sorting by similarity always changes the sort to ascending,
since "descending similarity" is essentially meaningless.
The File | Properties | Info tab remembers the last
selection (EXIF, IPTC, etc.) when changing images.
You can now set up file types as "linked" to other file types,
so that copying, moving, deleting or renaming the "master" type
will automatically do so for the linked types. Use Options
| Preferences | File Types to locate the type and defined
linked extensions. By default, .CRW and .MRW files are linked
to .THM files.
The edit background color can be defined differently from the
view window background color (Options | Viewing | Editing),
and there is an option to use white for bi-level images.
Options | Preferences | File Types now includes an option
for whether ThumbsPlus should attempt to resolve Windows shortcuts
to files.
Image | Batch Process now handles parent directory specifications;
i.e., "..\processed".
The last E-mail settings are now saved.
"My pictures" is now available as a tab in the folder tree.
Batch processing, contact sheets, and catalogs can now process
gallery trees.
Maximum JPEG Q factor for thumbnails is now 96, and 1:1 subsampling
(none) is used for Q factors >= 88.
JPEG quality and sampling can be automatically stored as user
fields in the database; the names of the fields are "Jpeg Quality"
and "Jpeg Sampling".
The Help | System Information dialog has been updated
to include the database and profile paths and installation type.
You can now replace the ThumbsPlus toolbar buttons. This requires
creating a "Toolbar.png" file in the ThumbsPlus installation
folder, with the following properties:
- The image should be 24-bit RGB with an 8-bit alpha channel
- The image should be 960 pixels wide by at least 240 pixels
high
- Each button is 48x48 pixels
The file toolbar_sample.png in the ThumbsPlus folder shows
the current buttons. You can use the menus or Options | Customize
| Toolbar from the main and view windows to see the order that
buttons should be placed in the image.
Windows 95, 98 ME and NT4
These operating systems are no longer supported.
Version 7.0 was the last version still capable of running on
Windows 95, 98, ME and NT 4.0. Version 8 is not compatible
with 95, 98, ME or NT 4.
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