Manage Captures

Pixtel manages images and screen captures/recordings in an efficient way. Images and captures stored in the application can be browsed/searched and external images can be imported easily. Multiple files can be selected at a time and exported to Office documents such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Even with a large number of files, users can easily find the required file using properties such as categories, created dates, tags and display names which will be explained in detail in this document. All management functionality can be accessed from the middle section of the left-hand side, as shown below:

Home

Home fly out shows the dashboard with image counts for captured, imported, shared and the amount of space taken by the stored files. In addition to statistics, Get Started section in the Home fly-out has help links available in the bottom section. These quick help links take the user to online documentation and training videos.

Browse

Browse flyout helps to browse the images maintained by the application. Browse can be done by "Recent Captures", "Recent Updates", "Category" and "Created Date". A commonly used one is "Recent Captures". Captures and imported images are ordered by captured/imported date time. Most of the recently captured images are available in the opened tabs. However, if closed images need to be obtained, it can be done reviewing the Recent Captures or Recent Updates. The number of recent images can be selected from the drop-down in the fly-out. See the Recent Captures and Recent Updates views below:

In these views, a set of image thumbnails can be selected and right-click to see the Context Menu as shown in the right side image above. Selected thumbnails can be opened in Tabs or can be deleted. In addition, Select All/Unselect All perform respective operations on the selected thumbnails. If the selected thumbnail is already opened in the tab, it will not be opened again. 

All images are organized based on category and sub-categories. It is easier to find images by category view if the category and sub-category are known. Select browse by 'Category' to see the flyout view as shown below:

Explorer view facilitates viewing images. The main level contains all top categories and the second level contains sub-categories associated with the category. When the sub-category node is expanded, all images in that sub-category show up. Clicking on any image, a thumbnail preview is displayed at the bottom. Selected images can be opened in tabs using the context menu → Open in Tabs menu-item and deleted using Delete Selected menu item. A selected image can be renamed directly by pressing F2 and (or) opened by double-clicking on it.

Another option in Browse by is 'Created Date'.  This organizes images in year→month view. This is very useful to review and find images by year and month. 

Search

Images can be searched by Created date, Category, Rating, Flag, Bookmark, Name, and Document Id. Pixtel supports loading a maximum of 1000 images in one search operation. The number of files fetched through the search will be displayed. Providing appropriate Category and Tags reduces the search time. If the result size is set to a large number,  search and retrieval time can go to a few minutes. Unless it is required, it is recommended to limit the search result size to 250 or lower.           

• Select Category - subcategory, enter tags applied on image and choose the result set size to be fetched from the drop-down (10, 25 ...).
• Click to reset the fields.
• Click to search. Results are displayed in the thumbnail viewer.
• Thumbnails of images through the search will be displayed in the bottom section. 
• Context menu in the thumbnail view has options to open images by choosing Open in Tabs, to select all images obtained from the search by choosing Select all, to undo the selected images by choosing Unselect All and removes images selected by choosing Delete selected. Delete Selected will also close tabs if any of the selected images are already opened. Export to Office will export selected images to Office documents like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Export (Save)

Pixtel provides a greatly simplified approach to exporting images. This is the most frequently used feature in the product. Most of the time, the current image needs to be exported out into another format. Instead of selecting File→Save As, providing a file name, and selecting format, it can be done in one place using Export flyout panel. Click on Export icon, , to open export fly out shown below:

Filename to be exported into is shown on the top. The default filename is set to image display name which can be changed. In the case of multiple images selected from the Grid view, a filename with timestamp is auto-generated, which can be changed as well. Image format to be exported is auto-selected based on the internal image format, which can be changed as well. If files are to be shared in Pi format retaining all annotations, select Pi file format. Pi files can be imported in another Pixtel and all annotations are available for editing. In other formats, all annotations are flattened before exporting/sharing. The Pi format is helpful for collaborative work where two or more users need to work on an image and make changes to the annotations. Each file/image in the application maintains a unique global signature that acts as an identifier. When a Pi file is imported, the application will ask if an existing file with the same signature needs to be replaced or a new file needs to be created. Overwriting content will reduce unnecessary files in the application as well as saving storage space.

In the case of exporting multiple image files, selecting options for Zip file and for creating sub-folders helps to package all images in a zip package, which can be shared easily. 

Image(s) can be saved/exported into standard folders directly by just clicking any of the standard folder buttons. These are Windows standard folders that are available by default. For example, to export an image in Png format on desktop, just click the Desktop button, . The current image gets saved on the desktop directly. 

In addition, often files are exported/saved into recent folders. A list of 20 recent folders last used for exporting is maintained in the application. Just select a recent folder from the drop-down and click the Save button to export the files. If a new folder needs to be selected, click on the folder icon to open the folder selection dialog.

Contacts

Contacts are managed by Pixtel for enabling adding email addresses to contacts without requiring to remember contact email address every time. This flyout panel helps to create and manage a contact list. Once contact is defined, it can be used in To, CC fields of mail sender interface. Contact flyout panel is presented below:

To create a new contact, simply enter the field values in the form and click on Save button. For editing, select an email address from the Email field and change the values. Clear button clears all field values. Contacts can be viewed by Nickname and by email address. Selected contacts can be removed by clicking on the delete icon button. Whenever a new email address is added for sending an email, it will get automatically added to the contact list. 

Import

Import functionality enables importing existing images and pictures into Pixtel easily from local directories. A copy of the original files are managed by the application and original files are not impacted with any changes on the images unless they are explicitly replaced by saving them again back. File names become display names after import.

Import can be performed using a file explorer type of interface which shows all available drives and associated folders. Folders and subfolders available are displayed. Only supported file types, Png, Jpeg, Tiff, Gif, Bmp, are displayed in the explorer view. Gif files are internally converted as Png and will be displayed. Gif file animations are not imported.

The thumbnail view of any selected file is displayed at the bottom. However, if there are several files to preview before import, it can be done by selecting Full view menu item. This will open an image viewer to review all images before importing. See image viewer below:

Once the list of images to be imported are selected, click on Import Files menu item to open the import file interface. In addition to selecting individual files, a folder can be selected to import all files in that folder. 

In the Import Files interface, Category- Subcategory, Tags, Rating, and Flag values can be set. They will be set to all imported files. If the number of import files is less than 10, they can be opened in separate tabs by checking Open Files in Tabs after Import. To maintain the imported files created or modified dates, check Keep file created/modified dates.  If there are any files that are in Pi format, Overwrite matching Pixtel formatted files flag helps to check if there are any files with the same signature and replace the content without changing any other image properties such as category and subcategory, etc. If there are a large number of files to be imported, progress is displayed on the dialog. Import can be canceled at any time. The remaining files will not be imported.