ID Photo Processor Batch photo processing User Guide 2015
Akond company 197342, Russia, St.-Petersburg, Serdobolskaya, 65a Phone/fax: +7(812)384-6430 Cell: +7(921)757-8319 e-mail: info@akond.net http://www.akond.net ID Photo Processor User Guide 2015. A.V. Povarkova Information in this document is subject to change without notice. This document is a property of A.V. Povarkova. It may be copied or transmitted to a third party only in its complete form with no omissions; all trade marks and copyrights be preserved. Any changes or amendments shall be agreed upon in writing with A.V. Povarkova. 2
Content Introduction 4 Software package and PC requirements 4 Software installation 4 ID Photo Processor operation 8 About company 26 3
1. INTRODUCTION Thank you for purchasing ID Photo Processor! ID Photo Processor is designed for batch photo processing (automatic face detection and crop). ID Photo Processor provides fast and accurate face finding on the source images, and face cropping according to the settings made by the user. ID Photo Processor can work as TWAIN driver and as stand alone application. 2. SOFTWARE PACKAGE AND PC REQUIREMENTS Software package includes the following: 1. Setup file (idphotoprocessor.exe), 2. User guide (IDPhotoProcessor_Userguide.pdf file), 3. Serial number to activate the software. PC requirements: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 Free 20MB on hard disk for inphoto Capture software files, If the software is supplied with the USB dongle your computer shall have the free USB port. 3. SOFTWARE INSTALLATION ID Photo Processor installation Run idphotoprocessorsetup.exe and follow the instructions you will get. Activate your license using on-line or off-line activation and enjoy working with ID Photo Processor. ID Photo Processor activation 4
When Software is installed and run for the first time the following window will be displayed: Figure 1. Activation window. Your have three options: Continue to use the software in the trial/demo mode, Activate the software, Close the software. Use Software in trial/demo mode: After the software is installed for the first time it can be used free for 30 days without activation. The trial period allows you to evaluate the software and make decision on purchasing it. The trial software has the following limitations: DEMO print will be typed on the processed images. When the Software is used in trial/demo mode the following information is displayed in the About window: "This product is not activated". 5
When your trial period is over the Continue with Demo button becomes not active and in order to continue using Software you shall activate it. For this press Activate Application button. On-line activation When you press Activate Application button the application will attempt to connect to server for on-line activation. If the attempt is successful the on-line activation window will be displayed. Figure 2. Online activation. You shall enter the serial number you received from your software supplier after payment and press Activate. The Software will be activated and you will get the correspoding message ("Thank you for taking time to activate your copy of application"). After the software is activated the serial number will be displayed in the About window. 6
If the application fails to connect to server for software activation (it happens if your computer does not have Internet connection), the offline activation window will be displayed (see Figure 3). Here you shall enter the software serial number you received from your software supplier after payment and press Generate. The activation code for your copy of the software will be generated. Write it down. Figure 3. Offline activation. Then using a different PC connected to Internet go to http://www.marssystems.com/activation/, enter the serial number and activation code and press Activate (see Figure 4). 7
Figure 4. Attention! Make sure to enter the serial number and activation code with the dashes! The Authentication code for your copy of the software will be generated. Enter this code to the corresponding fields of the Off-line activation window (see Figure 4) and press Activate. The Software will be activated. The Thank You! window will be displayed. After the software is activated the serial number will be displayed in the About window. If you get the error message please check the serial number you entered, make necessary corrections, and press Activate. If you still get the error message contact your software supplier. 4. ID PHOTO PROCESSOR OPERATION ID Photo Processor: what is it? ID Photo Processor software is designed for batch ID photo processing. ID Photo Processor provides fast and accurate face finding on the source images, and face cropping according to the settings made by the user. 8
ID Photo Processor recognizes a human face on the original image and crops the face area (the face itself and surrounding area). Thus the perfect identification photo is automatically produced. If you have a database of varying sized photos and wish to produce the ID cards with consistent image dimensions ID Photo Processor will do this job easily. Run ID Photo Processor and it will do the following: Open the original images one by one, Find the human face on each image, Crop the face area to get the pre-set image dimensions Transfer the cropped photos to TWAIN application Or Save the cropped photos to the target folder. ID Photo Processor menu ID Photo Processor menu includes four sections: File, Explorer, Actions, Capture. Options dialogue box Menu File Options displays Options dialogue box. The Options dialogue box has 6 tabs. On the General tab it is possible to select the options of ID Photo Processor start up and close process (see Figure 5). 9
Figure 5. Options dialogue box, General tab. If Close after processing box is checked the ID Photo Processor will be closed after the processed image is saved or transferred to the TWAIN compatible application. Check Hide to tray instead of close box to hide ID Photo Processor to tray when it is closed. It reduces the software activation time for the next image processing. Check / uncheck User Interface Settings to show or hide the Control Panel buttons. The Save file tab (see Figure 6) is used to define the save to file settings. It is possible to select the folder to save processed photos upon pressing Process to file button. 10
Figure 6. Options dialogue box, Save file tab. You can select the File options: remove original photos, overwrite them, etc. On this tab it is also possible to set the JPEG image quality and set the size limit and resolution for the resulting photo. You can select the file format from the drop down list (Destination format). If you select As is all modified files will be saved in the same file format as the source files. You can also select the folder where the processed photos will be saved. There are two options: 1. Place the processed files in the source folder: the processed (cropped) photos will be saved in the source folder. They can overwrite the original images, or can be converted to a different file format, or can be saved with a different name selected by the user. 2. Place the processed files in the specified folder: the processed (cropped) photos will be saved in a different folder. You can 11
select a destination folder or create a new one. If you wish to save the ID photos in a new folder, first create a folder on the PC disk and select it using the Browse command. The photo files will be saved with the original names. Files are always saved with the name of the original file. For JPEG files all EXIF information (tags) remains unchanged. The processed files will have same Exif as original file. Resolution information can also be converted to PNG and TIFF formats, and vice versa. File options Check Remove original files, and the original images will be removed. The original images are removed only if they are successfully processed (cropped). If the image processing fails, the source image will not be removed. Use this option with care! If the image processing is fully automatic the errors in face finding and crop may happen, and the original image will be lost! If you wish to overwrite the original images with the processed ID photos select Replace in Overwrite existing files drop down list. If you wish to save the source images select Skip in Overwrite existing files drop down list. The processed (cropped) image will not be saved, the next images processing will be continued. You can process the skipped images later. If you select Ask in Overwrite existing files drop down list, ID Photo Processor will ask you before to overwrite the source images with the processed ID photos. The Explorer tab (see Figure 7) is used to set the Explorer settings. 12
Figure 7. Options dialogue box, Explorer tab. The External tools tab (see Figure 8) is used to add External tools (external software) to send the processed / original photos for additional processing. Read more about External tools below. Figure 8. Options dialogue box, External tools tab. 13
The Language tab provides an ability to select the software language. New language settings will take effect after the software is restarted. The current version of ID Photo Processor supports 4 languages: English, French, Dutch, and Russian. The Processing tab (see Figure 9) contains controls to set up face detection and image processing options. Figure 9. Options dialogue box, Processing tab. Check Image Processing to enable image processing after the image is opened. The Show Processing Window group includes the following options: Never: the image processing windows will not be displayed (will be skipped off), and the image will be processed according to the last settings made. If the face has not been found automatically the full image will be saved. Use this option if the original images are good, i.e. the human face is clear, sharp, well located on the image, and the gaps between the face and the image frames are big enough. 14
Always: the Image Processing window is always displayed, and the user will have an ability to adjust the image processing setting if necessary. Use this option if you wish to have the full control over the photo processing. You will see the automatically processed photo and will be able to change the processing settings on each image. Show if necessary: the image processing windows is displayed when necessary, e.g. when the face is not recognized on the image, when the face is too close to the image frame, etc. If the face is found and cropped successfully, the image processing window is not displayed. WARNING! If you are not yet familiar with the software operation and use it for the first time we recommend select Always. Check Auto Face Detection to activate the automatic face recognition and detection. Menu Explorer: here you can select the Explorer settings. Menu Actions: here you see the list of Actions (External tools) created. Menu Capture duplicated the photo Processing options. ID Photo Processor window 15
Figure 10. ID Photo Processor window ID Photo Processor (Figure 10) window has two main areas: Explorer The Explorer area shows the image files and image folders. In the Explorer area you can select images or folders to be processes. ID Photo Processor supports the following file formats: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP. Control Panel By default the Control Panel has 6 controls: Process to TWAIN, Process to file, Process to Clipboard, Processing settings, Profile and Close. Click Process to TWAIN to send the processed images to TWAIN compatible application. In order to use this option you shall start ID Photo Processor from a TWAIN compatible application (Adobe Photoshop, XnView, Incardex, and others). Process to TWAIN button 16
will be disabled (grayed out) if ID Photo Processor is started as stand alone application. Click Process to file to save processed photos to files. Click Process to C lipboard to save processed photos to the clipboard. Click Processing settings to display the ID Image Processing window. In this window you will be able to setup the face crop and image enhancement settings. They will be saved and used by ID Photo Processor to process the images. Click Profiles button to select the required User Profile from a list of all profiles available. Read more about Profiles below. ID Image Processing window To display ID Image Processing window click Processing settings button on the Control Panel. Here you will be able to set the processing settings for all photos you are planning to automatically process. Figure11. Image Processing window: general view, Frame tab 17
The Image Processing window has the following areas: Source image area. If Apply Crop Frame is checked the human face will be outlined by the yellow frame (shows the face found) and by the green (or red) frame (cropping frame). Processed (cropped) image area. Information on the original image size. Information on the image resizing options. The crop frame parameters area. The photo enhancement and resizing area. Make the desired settings in the Image Processing window and they will be used for the automatic processing of the source images. Source image and crop frame The face area is automatically outlined by the yellow frame. The user can change the yellow frame size and position if necessary. The green (crop) frame outlines the result image area on the source image. The Crop frame is built automatically and can not be changed manually. This ensures a constant position of the person face on the resulting image. If the face on the image is not recognized automatically you have an option to outline the face area manually. If the face is located too close to the image frame and the area to be cropped is cut by the image border, the frame color will change from green to red. You can turn the crop frame on and off by checking Apply Crop Frame checkbox. 1. Zoom Using the Zoom slider set up the face percentage on the resulting ID photo. "70" value means that the human face will be occupy approximately 70% of the full cropped photo. If you use the same Zoom value for the photos to be processed you will get the consistent resulting images having the same size and the same surrounding area / face area ratio. The faces of a small child and a large adult person will have the same size in the resulting images. This is in full compliance with the requirements for ID images, and also allows 18
better identification when these images are used in electronic or printed form. 2. Position Vertical and Horizontal Position Vertical and Horizontal controls allow you to change the face position on the resulting image. Using these controls you can change the position of the yellow frame center to the crop (green) frame center. In other words you can shift the green frame horizontally or/and vertically. Adjust Position vertical and Position horizontal values to set up the face position on the resulting photo. The left bottom corner of the resulting photo corresponds to Position vertical "0" and Position horizontal "0". Set the Position vertical and Position horizontal to "50", and the face center will be located in the center of the resulting ID photo. Set the Position vertical to "25", and the distance above the face center will equal to 25% of the total photo vertical size. 3. Size Set the actual photo size. You can use either round values (e.g. 3 х 4) or fractional values (e.g. 3,5 x 4,5). 4. Frame effect. For now the Rounded corners option is available. New options will be added in the future. 5. Rounded corners. The ID photo corners can now be rounded. The corners color and roundness radius are optional. To reset all the settings to default values, click Reset button. Resizing You can customize the resulting image size in pixels. This allows all produced files to be the same size, as well as reduce file size. File size is important in order to save disk space or database size. In the case of large database ID image size reduction can strongly reduce overall database size, which prevents the slow down and improves its reliability. 19
Resizing in ID Photo Processor reduces the size of resulting image. Image enlarging is not possible. Resizing can also increase the image quality. You can process the image with maximum size, regardless of the size required, and then resize it to desired value. In this case resizing leads to improved output image quality. Figure 12. To enable resizing click Set button in Result Image Size box. In the Resizing options dialog box enable the corresponding checkbox and set the desired image size. All resulting images with the bigger size will be resized. Resizing always keeps image proportion. Actual image size after resizing will be displayed in the Result Image Size. Figure 13. Click OK to complete setting up resizing options and save it. Options will be applied to each processed image. 20
Image Correction On the Correction tab (see Figure 14) you can set enhancement options for the cropped images. Figure14. Image Processing window: general view, Correction tab The cropped photo can be enhanced if you are not quite satisfied with the image quality. It is possible to adjust image brightness, contrast, gamma, and sharpness using the corresponding controls. Brightness control allows you to make the image brighter or darker. Contrast is used if a face has little gradation. Gamma allows for both options - at the same time increasing or decreasing the brightness and contrast. Sharpness allows you to emphasize image details. It can improve the image when shooting was not enough in focus, or shooting conditions and camera quality do not allows to get a good focus image. For example, if the image was captured by the low-end webcam, the small 21
value of sharpness can help to improve the image details and make result image of better quality. WARNING! These improvements are only based on information obtained from the image. So they can not fix a broken shot, to restore the image, or to correct shooting errors. We recommend working with the images of good quality to minimize the necessity of any improvements. To reset all the settings to default values, click Reset button. ID Photo Processor operation To start batch photo processing make all settings described in the previous sections, run ID Photo Processor as stand alone or from any TWAIN compatible application. If you start it as stand alone the Process to TWAIN button will be grayed out. Stand alone operation. Select the image folder (or original images) to be processed, and press Process to file or Process to Clipboard. The first image from the source folder will open in the Image Processing window. The human face is found automatically on the original image. 22
Figure 15. Image Processing window. The ID Image Processing window provides an ability to crop the face area, and enhance the resulting image if necessary. The original image is processed according to the settings made (Processing settings button on the Control Panel). The face area is automatically outlined by the yellow frame. You can change the frame size and position if necessary. If the face on the image is not recognized automatically the user has an option to outline the face area manually by moving the yellow frame. The green frame outlines the image area to be cropped. The yellow frame / green frame ratio and position are adjusted by Zoom. If you do not need to crop the face, uncheck the Apply crop frame box. After the image is processed there are four options in the Image processing window: 23
Skip - the cropped image will be skipped and not saved in the Destination folder, the next image will open in the Image Processing window. Save the cropped image will be saved in the Destination folder, the image processing will continue. Back go back to the original photos. Close - the cropped image will be skipped and the image processing will be cancelled. During the batch processing ID Photo Processor shows a progress bar window and counts the files processed. You can interrupt the batch photo processing by clicking Cancel button in this window. Canceling the batch photo processing can take a time, wait for the report window confirming that the process is interrupted. After completion the batch photo processing the report window will be displayed. Figure 17. The window displays overall results of the batch photo processing. Work as TWAIN driver. If you start ID Photo Processor as TWAIN driver from a TWAIN compatible application, the Process to TWAIN button will be active (see Figure 18). Click Process to TWAIN, and the selected image(s) or image folder will be opened in the ID Image Processing window, cropped, enhanced and transferred to the TWAIN application. 24
(1) (2) (3) Figure 18. ID Photo Processor started from XnView software. 1 Select image and click Process to TWAIN, 2 ID Photo Processing, 3 Cropped photo transferred to XnView software. External tools 25
ID Photo Processor provides an ability create so called External tools in order to send the processed photo to a third party program for further processing or send them by email. You can create External tools in menu File Options External tools tab. Just add New tool and select the executed file (e.g. XnView.exe, Mozilla Thunderbird.exe, etc.) in the Target field. Check Run automatically after file processing box, and the processed photo will be automatically sent to the third party software. If this box is not check ed, the original (not processed) images will be sent to the third party software. You can create unlimited number of External tools, and you can select them in the Actions menu. When the tool is selected, click Process to file, and the original photo will open automatically in the selected External tool (external software). Profiles You can save the photo processing settings to Profile (s). To create a new Profile first select desired image processing settings in the ID Image Processing window (Processing settings button on the Control Panel). They will be saved in Profile. Then Click Admin button in the upper right corner of the software window, and select New Profile. Follow Wizard instructions, and create New Profile. It will be listed in the Profiles list on the Control Panel, and you will be able to select it if necessary. When you select the required Profile the ID Photo Processor settings are automatically adjusted accordingly. 5. ABOUT COMPANY We hope that you install ID Photo Processor software and learn how to use it with no problems, and that your work will be more effective and comfortable than before. Other software products offered by our company: ID Photo Software inphoto ID SLR 26
inphoto ID PS inphoto ID Webcam Camera control software inphoto Capture SLR inphoto Capture PS ID card software Incardex Information on all above products can be found on www.akond.net. Please feel free to contact us If you have any problems or questions concerning ID Photo Processor operation, If you have any comments on ID Photo Processor operation, If you need any help on selection of software and hardware for your application. We will be happy to help you. Akond company Russia, St.-Petersburg, Phone/fax: +7 (812) 384-6430 Cell: +7 (921) 757-8319 e-mail: info@akond.net http://www.akond.net 27