3. The Live Progress tab

This tab has 3 placeholders, each of which is used to follow the progress of the mosaic being built up, and the status of printing the pictures.

The image top-left shows the result of the processed image. In case a multiple page print was selected (as shown in the above screenshot), also the sequence number is shown (here #1 of 1). This number represents the progress of completing a print page with multiple images. For single print template the complete image, including template is shown (no progress number is shown).

The bottom-left overview shows the print queue. Here you clearly see prints of 2x3 images. The checkbox Automatic printing will send each ready available print to the selected printers (see here for more details of selecting multiple printers, and how to speed up printing). If this option is inactive, this overview will show a growing amount of images, waiting to be printed. To manually print images, you can also click on any of the images in this overview, and then press the Print sticker button. It will print the selected image, and remove it from this queue.

The large mosaic area on the right shows the progress of filling the mosaic. The sequence of placement is set in the tools section, where the user can select from 'optimized per tile', 'fully random', or 'sequenced, following a so-called density map image where the darkest pixels correspond to the locations that are placed first, gradually down to the white parts, which are placed last.

Note: Please be ware that the amount of RAM taken by the application will increase with increasing amount of images in the printere queue. Each image will be internally stored (as a thumbnail), before it can be seen in the interface. It won't be much, but as can be seen, already 200 MB is used by the application. The used RAM consists of internal bitmap processing (always uncompressed), templates and other ovehead data, such as mosaic viewers (there are 3 of them), and log data. Several hundreds, or even thousands of images can take a quite a lot of active RAM.

Zoom and pan the mosaic

The 'Live Progress' mosaic viewer has zoom and pan functionality. Below the viewer a 'Fill to fit' checkbox is seen. When ticked the mosaic image is completely filling the available area, and no zoom/pan is possible. When unticked a zoombar becomes visible. Now you can zoom in and out, and by press-moving the mouse also panning is possible. Re-ticking the 'Fill to fit' checkbox will disable zoom/pan again, while removing the zoombar.

4. The Inspection tab

Here you find two explorers:

• Left: the Waiting Room Folder. This explorer shows all the pictures that are grabbed by the #tag grabber, unfiltered.
• Right: the 'images' subfolder in the Watched Folder. This is the 'images' sub-folder in the 'Watched' folder as indicated in the Files tab.
• Ask for move confirmation: to assure that the image move action is completed, a confirmation is given. Default this is set to 'inactive'.

The box with file types on the left is a useful tool to select the images, where the checkboxes act as filters of the filetypes that are accepted by the application. The change of selection is immediate. Please be aware that .PNG and .PSD files can be transparent. Some .PNG files are incorrectly saved and may show large coloured stripes or blocks. The .PSD files are read as composite images, meaning: flattening all the visible layers. Also .GIF images are read, but when animated GIFs are found it will only take the first frame.

The left folder is used as a temporary watched folder. This 'Waiting Room' folder is the folder where your #tag grabber copies the images from the #tags, unfiltered. The Waiting room is actually a very elegant way to assure that only appropriate images are used for the mosaic. Only by selecting and dragging images from left to right, the watched folder does what it normally does: in case an image is found, the application is triggered to read, process and place the image in the mosaic, and adding it to the printer queue. Just like what has been described in the tutorial.

The elegancy of this approach is that you select your watched folder: if you select the 'images' folder as the 'Watched' folder then no inspection is done, and the images are processed when they arrive from your #tag grabbing software, unfiltered. If you select the Waiting Room folder as the target folder for your #tag grabber, nothing happens because the images are not automatically copied to the 'images' folder. Only manual interaction can now trigger the image processing and mosaic build-up.

A second feature of the Inspection tab is to ability to remove an image from the watched folder. This is done by selecting and dragging the (inappropriate) image from the right to the left folder. So basically you put an image back in the Waiting Room. Now, two actions can happen: you get an information pop-up indicating that the selected image was already placed, and that the image will be replaced. The other action is that the image is simply removed from the right, and moved to the left folder. In the latter case the image was not yet processed, and then a replacement image is not required.

A few aspects are important to share, and some basic rules must be followed:

• Only when the application is paused in mosaic creation and image processing, a removal action can take place. Multiple removals can be made in such a paused sequence. The application is protected against running removal actions.
• When you have removed an image from the mosaic (it has indicated such case) the user must complete the process, by resuming the mosaic build-up.
• A removal action will immediately remove the image from the mosaic location and placement data. This means that the old image is virtually removed from the mosaic, but still visible because no actual replacement was yet done.
• When you have removed an image, and then stop the show (or exit the application), the next time it will void the location of the mosaic, because the image was moved. A new image will then be found.
• For sequenced mosaic creation the next image will be the first replaced image in the sequence (details found here). In case multiple images were deleted from the current mosaic build, it will continue to replace old images. When no images are to be replaced, it will resume to follow the sequence again.
• For optimized image placement, the replacement of the image will be determined by the colour match of a new image. This might take some time, there is no prediction of which image will fit where in the mosaic. The application does not give priority placement to missing images, it will simply wait until a best replacement was found when new images arrive.

There are several ways to remove of change a placed image

In the above text, tile replacement is done from the Inspection tab. The tile selection takes place based on the image itself. There are different ways to replace a specific image, where you can replace a cerrtain image at a certain location. It is particularly useful if you want to select an image at a location, without having to search for that image in the inspection tab, as explained above.

There are three ways to identify an image on a spcified location:

• Indicate the location in the tab 'Add images', e.g. R5C1 (see example below). Then press the 'Add image' button to activate the replacement at the provided location. When the little icon on the right turns gree, the image location indeed contains an image, which be be replaced. If this image turns red, then either there is no image to replace, or the location is not within the boundaries of the mosaic size. The format must be identical to the one that is selected for ethis event ('RC', 'Excel', 'Plain sequence').

• Press the CTRL key, while moving your mouse over the mosaic viewer in the 'Live progress' tab. In the status bar you see the current mouse/tile location. If you now right click, a pop-up menu is shown, and you can select 'Replace this image'. By completing this action, the same effect is achieved as described in teh first approach. When you return to the 'Add images' tab, you will now see the information filled in, and the 'Add image' action started.

• Open the Billboard tab. Similar to the mosaic viewer you can select a cell/tile that you want the image to be replaced (use the CTRL key to activate the location follower). The same procedure as the msoaic viewer must be followed, and also here the activation is reflected back in the 'Add image' tab.

When you have correctly followed any of these three approaches, and you resume the mosaic build-up again, the next available image will processed and printed, and positioned in the indicated location. After the replacement is completed, the information will be discarded, and the 'Add specific image' data is removed, and the little (green) icon has disappeared.

Note: this way of image replacement does not work with the optimized image placement, only with sequenced placement.

5. The Detach Viewers tab

In this tab three key features are managed. The first (Viewer detachment) being the possibility to detach a viewer of choice from the application, meaning: a separate window will be opened and the viewer of choice will be shown in that window. The second is to add a countdown number. This number shows how many images still need to be placed. This may be a nice interaction with viewers at the event. The third feature is to also show winner locations (shown as small present logos). In case a winner position is selected, that uploader person will receive a small present.

• Mosaic Viewer or Live Viewer. This is the choice of viewer you'd like to detach from the application. The Mosaic Viewer differs from the Live Viewer by already showing the source image, while the Live Viewer only a white background is shown. The None option will close the viewer windows.
• The viewer of choice can be shown in a separate window (Show in window) and Full screen. To effectively use these options you first need to detach the viewer in a window, and then drag this window to the external monitor/screen, and only then activate the options. This way the viewer will be seen full size, and with no window any more (rimless). If you do not drag the viewer to an external monitor the viewer will be shown on your current screen, hiding all the controls (the application is hidden behind the full screen viewer in that case). To exit the viewer, use the ESC key on your keyboard.
• Viewer options. These options will set two visual aspects of the detached viewer. The first, Background colour, sets the colour of the monitor background, in case the mosaic does not match with the aspect ratio of your monitor. In our screenshot the background colour is black. Second, the Countdown timer. This timer shows how many locations are still open, and where a new image can be placed. The counter is therefore a countdown number. To hide the counter, you can uncheck the option Show Countdown to complete. Finally, the option Show Winner positions will make the winner locations visible in the viewer of choice. These are small icons, scattered randomly in the viewer. When a #tag image is put on such an icon, a visual announcement is made (text) to show that someone is entitled to a prize. This is optional, and is also explained in the Admin tab (here).