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When I first designed met.a
it was pretty simple, all I thought I needed was to be able to
highlight some text and then save the image.
Bam. Now that was all well and good.
But what I didn't account for were the different image formats,
those being stuff like GIF, PNG, TIFF,
BMP and how only JPEG and TIFF,
as it turns out, are capable of storing metadata
and as you will have gathered met.a only works
if it can embed metadata.
So, what I found was when I was downloading images
e.g. I download this GIF image
I often wouldn't look at its extension
merrily on my way... and then I come back
and find that GIF was actually 'bald'.
What I consider to be 'bald' of information.
It was completely useless, in effect I couldn't trust met.a
I could't trust it ~and that was a real shame.
So some features I would like to draw your attention to are some new measures
which are preventative mesaures and some cures.
Go to "Tools/Preferences":
First of all were going to start with a prevention and its called
"Format Frown", a lot of this isn't going to make any sense.
Its all a play on words: "Format" is GIF/TIFF/JPEG...
and "Frown" is used to look negatively on that format.
So lets see how that works.
Lets look at this GIF image and you'll
notice as I'm hovering over the image a ToolTip pops up
with an unhappy face and the format (GIF) ..this just to let you know,
and here's a PNG image,
telling you the images your looking at are going to be a problem, this gives you a choice.
You can choose to have this on or off. So that's a prevention.
Now to enable the feature "Point-&-Click"
and that is basically where you hover over an image
while holding the ⌘/cmd (Mac) Ctrl (Win) key and clicking with the mouse
and you save it. Now listen to this noise, its important. (sorry deaf crowd)
and you save it. Now listen to this noise, its important. (sorry deaf crowd)
But when downloading an erronous format you get a different noise - (sorry deaf crowd)
a submarine sound. That is an audiable sound
to let you know your downloading something that isn't quite right.
There's the visual and the audio.
So, now were going to go the feature that will help you the most
and its called "Recorded Delivery", this again a play on words
of the UK British postal system where you can track and trace
your parcels. Enabling it,
with SFX, so you still get the sounds, (sorry deaf crowd)
what happens is now
when you download a PNG
and you wanted all this text,
(using "Point-&-Click" to download save the image)
this little icon (which is actually the met.a icon), pops up
at the bottom right, clicking it will then take you to the folder
where it downloaded the problem image(s).
Here is the metadata text and what met.a has done,
via the "Recorded Delivery" system, its actually given you all the information
met.a would have embedded were it a format that
accepted metadata, like a JPEG. The text file name
is actually the same name as the image file so they're next to each other.
Then you can use a third party application
to embed that data, if you have access to one.
Essentially this information is now not lost. You are now able to
faithfully trust met.a to download images
and keep all the data. But you can go one step further:
by enabling within
the "Recorded Delivery" option something called "Fodder Folder".
Drawing on from the play on words of "Format Frown"
this time the terminology of "cannon foder" is used to describe undesirables
this time the terminology of "cannon foder" is used to describe undesirables
at the front the line (in a War), blown up by cannons i.e. "Cannon Fodder".
That means these erronous formats are
contained seperately from the good stuff.
Chosing then a seperate location for a folder which will contain
all these erronous formats. I'm going to put it on the desktop.
(You'll notice it doesn't immeditely create a folder
but it will do, just as soon as
you start downoading problem formats)
(merrily downloading the good stuff (formats): JPEGs)
They get placed here (default Downloads folder),
(deleting erronous formats from the past)
these are all JPEGs (except that GIF).
Now you can be comfortable
that all these images are just fine.
(downloaded a GIF which created the "Fodder" folder) (note: "Fodder" is different in each language)
(examining the folder) the erronous format has its own folder titled by the format name
because that was the format that was just downloaded,
thus image formats are keept segregated.
This is the same with PNGs (downloaded PNG)...
(drawing attention to the met.a icon)
..because you might notice, after a big downloading session, this icon,
and then you know you've actually got images to attend to.
PNG: its got all the data
and then you can marry that data up with the image in a third party aplication.
Essentially it allows you trust met.a to download all the images.
Thank you.