When running on Windows 10 1803 or newer gPhotoShow Pro can display Heif files provided the Heif codec is installed.
First of all install Heif codec from Microsoft Store. After you have successfully installed the codec gPhotoShow will be able to load .heic and .heif files, open gPhotoShow configuration window and add file extensions "heic;heif" in the field labeled: "Additional file extensions"
When running on Windows 10 or newer gPhotoShow Pro can display webp files provided the Microsoft WebP codec is installed. If the codec is not installed you can find it in the Microsoft Store.
To display webp files open gPhotoShow configuration window and add file extensions "webp" in the field labeled: "Additional file extensions". if the codec is installed gPhotoShow will display your webp files.
gPhotoShow Pro can display any digital camera raw file provided the appropriate codec is installed in Windows. Nikon, Canon, Sony and Pentax provide such codecs, search on their web sites for "RAW codec" and check if they support your camera.
Starting from May 2019 Update (1903) Windows 10 natively supports a number of raw file formats. In this case manufacturer codec may not be needed. Windows 11 also supports most digital camera raw files. To use Microsoft codecs install the last version from Microsoft Store, open the store and search for "Raw Image Extension" install this item and restart your computer.
To last thing to do to display raw files is to open gPhotoShow configuration window and add your raw file extensions in the field labeled: "Additional file extensions"
gPhotoShow is not able to modify images to add rating or any other tag, however you can easily perform this operation using external tools.
First of install ExifTool by Phil Harvey, it's a command line tools that allows any kind of operation on image tags. Then open gPhotoShow Pro settings window ->Slideshow Options page, click on Keys Button ->Advanced page, click on "Editor & tools settings" and configure one or more tools in this way:
Tool: c:\fullpathtoexiftool\exiftool.exe
Parameters: -xmp:rating=5
gPhotoShow Window: No Action
Replace c:\fullpathtoexiftool with the real path where you installed exiftool:
Close all windows with OK.
Now you can use F5 to assign a 5 star rating to your pictures.
You have a wide monitor with 2.38:1 aspect ratio while most pictures have 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio, by default gPhotoShow Pro displays resizes only pictures with an aspect ratio near the one of the monitor, pictures with an aspect ratio very different will have colored bars. This behaviour can be changed, open the gPhotoShow Pro configuration window, Images->Display Options. In this page select the option "Stretch and Crop the image to fit the screen", choose the amount of strech/crop then click on the icon on the right of the limit value. This window allows you to easily calculate the limit used by gPhotoShow Pro to decide whether an image may be cropped/stretched or not.
The window displays the aspect ratio of your monitor, 2.38:1 in your case, usually you don't need to move the top slider since it is already set to the aspect ratio detected by gPhotoShow pro. To adjust the limit value move the second slider to the aspect ratio of the pictures you wish to be cropped/stretched. All pictures with aspect ratios on the left will be cropped/stretched as well.
It is very easy to remove the black bars by configuring gPhotoShow to stretch ( or crop ) your pictures. Open the gPhotoShow Pro configuration window then select the section "Images->Display Options". Here you can choose either "Stretch image to fit the screen" or "Crop image to fit the screen".
Depending on the aspect ratio of your images and your monitor it is possible you need to change the value in the field "Limit for image stretching/cropping:". If the default value doesn't work (ie. images are not stretched/cropped) try raising it, here are some typical values for the Limit field:
18 : Allows to stretch/crop images with 16:10 aspect ratio
28 : Allows to stretch/crop images with 16:10 or 3:2 aspect ratio
45 : Allows to stretch/crop images with 16:10, 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio
Bitmapped frames are simple jpeg files together with a small text files that tells to gPhotoShow where to display the image. To create your own frames is very easy:
1) Save your frame as jpeg file in the folder "Frames" under the gPhotoShow folder (usually c:\program files\gPhotoShow)
2) Find the coordinates of the rectangle inside the frame where the image should be displayed and write them in a text file with the same name as the jpeg file but with a .fsd file extension. The fsd file is a text file with this format:
[Frame]
Left=50
Top=50
Right=974
Bottom=718
FillBkg=1
Where Left, Top, Right, Bottom are the coordinates of the rectangle where gPhotoShow will display the image. FillBkg can 0 or 1, when 1 gPhotoShow will file that rectangle with the background color, when 0 gPhotoShow will not fill the background.
If you wish to change the display time for a specific image you must use gPhotoShow Image Properties:
- Set all your preferred options for the slide show
- In the "Advanced Options" section, enable the option "Use configured keys to..."
- Click on the "Keys..." button and set a key for "Open Image Property" action.
- Start the slide show (or the screen saver)
- When you see the pictures where you wish to change the duration time press the key you configured in step (3)
- Now a dialog is open, enable the option "Custom Duration", insert the time in seconds and click on the "Save" button
gPhotoShow will create a file with the same name as your image but a .gprop file extension.
EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format, and is a standard for storing interchange information in image files, especially those using JPEG compression. Most digital cameras now use the EXIF format to store additional information about the images.
When the checkbox "Automatically rotate images..." is enabled gPhotoShow rotates images accordingly with the info in the exif header, but some digital cameras (and most scanners) don't set this flag so gPhotoShow doesn't know how to rotate them.
gPhotoShow uses raw image codecs installed on the system and relies on them to get orientation information. Unfortunately raw codecs developed by Microsoft are a mess, some of them return correct orientation others rotate images AND returns orientation (so images are rotated twice), this happens also for the same file type (for example NEF) but from different digital camera. In additions Microsoft codecs work in different ways on windows 10 and 11.
So at the end automatic rotation of raw files is quite unreliable and it can't be fixed in gPhotoShow. Starting from version 9.0.6 gPhotoShow includes a setting to enable/disable automatic rotation of raw file, try with both settings and see which works best for your files.
Most photos taken with a digital camera have an exif orientation tag which specifies how the image should be rotated, gPhotoShow uses this tag to display photos with the correct orientation.
The problem arises when you manually edit/rotate a photo with a program that doesn't reset the orientation tag when this happens gPhotoShow load the photo finds the tag and rotates it again, this will result in a photo displayed in the wrong way.
The images you see rotated in the wrong way probably contains an orientation tag that doesn't reflect their real orientation, only solution is to reset that exif tag.
This orientation tag is stored inside the image itself and it is not easy to change, probably the easiest way is to manually view all pictures with a program aware of the orientation tag, ("FastStone Viewer" and XNView should work well) load them with your preferred editor and save them again removing all exif tags, all programs should have this option.
Please note that viewing thumbnails is not enough, usually they are correct because usually they are not changed when image is saved.
Another option is to use the command line tool ExifTool:
exiftool -Orientation=1 -n image.jpg
this command will reset the orientation tag on image.jpg but to use this ExifTool you need some skill in using command line programs.
