JPEGCrops - Future

Current plans

While I've been lazy, the competition has improved. Filenames & captions based on EXIF data, lossless cropping and red-eye removal are more or less standard. Nifty features like nearly lossless red-eye removal and caption insertion has been introduced - take a look at BetterJPEG for that one. Evenso, JPEGCrops is still - as far as I know - the only program that handles multiple images like it does.

So, what now? First of all I'll try and make a stable version of JPEGCrops. Then I'll spend some time rewriting most of the code, as it needs a lot of restructuring in order to do what I want.

What I'm aiming for

Integrated browsing: Instead of adding images, the user can simply browse directories and choose to leave the images or crop them. This requires handling of several thousand of images at once (current limit due to the way Windows handles resources is around 150) and fast preview/load of the images.
Projects: A feature for experts: Instead of using integrated browsing, it should be possible to add images as it it done now and to save the list of selected images for another time.
Persistence: JPEGCrops should remember the settings for the individual images.
Red-eye removal: Minimal recompression, which means just the area around the eyes, and some sort of semi-automatic detection and elimination of red eyes is the goal.
Caption insertion: Again the goal is semi-lossless manipulation. Captions based on filename, EXIF data or just manually entered text should be possible.

Potential new functionality

Customsize in the aspect pulldown.
Del should remove the current image.
Renaming based on EXIF data.
Option: Store the settings in the registry.
Changing of the template for automatic renaming should change the name for images already loaded.
Add JPEGCrops to the right-click menu.
Nearly lossless adjustment of contrast and brightness.
Support for non-JPEG images.
Automatic rotation based on EXIF orientation tag.
Option: Rotate the source along with the target.
Option: The target directory always equals the source.
Set the timestamp for the cropped file to the timestamp from the EXIF data.
Check for new version.

Potential interface enhancements

A progressbar should be visible on View size change.
Useradjustable button layout.
Customizable hotkeys.
Change PageUp/PageDown to work as page up and page down.
Changing "Crop" to "Process" most places.
Better feedback messages on errors.
Changing the croparea size should move it too.
Resize of the croparea by grabbing the corners of the box.
Do not use "Open images...". Permanently display a filetree instead and open all images in the current directory.
Simplify the dialog for adding and editing aspects.
Free aspect should be locked by holding CTRL.
Make the emailaddress in the About box a hyperlink
Show estimated printermargin.
Show EXIF info.

Bugs to squash

Correct scrollbarsize in aspectlist.
The MCU boundaries are always assumed to be 16.
Updating the PPI doesn't modify XML embedded by PhotoShop.
There should be no manipulation of the crop area while editing text.
Tabbing through the images needs a tab more than necessary.
The croparea wanders upwards if the + key is pressed at maximum areasize.
Running JPEGCrops from the command line with more than 30 images as arguments gives an error.
The copying of file permissions fails if the source and the destination is the same.
Using JPEGCrops with Large Fonts makes the interface unusable.
The names of "free" and "none" aspects does not change with language settings.
Czech language under English Windows doesn't work properly.
Auto rotate aspect bug with portrait aspects

Discarded ideas