The Collection Viewer

When you use either the Catalog Explorer or Media Explorer to navigate through your images, or when you perform a search, the right area of the screen shows the thumbnails for your images. This thumbnail area is called the Collection Viewer.

Every thumbnail represents a small version of your original images. While there are many options available for you to customize the appearance of thumbnails to your personal preference, the default thumbnail image has the following components:

1	The small representation of the original image
2	The image caption This is the name of the photo. By default this will display the image’s file name. In the Options dialog (Tools -> Options -> Thumbs (2) -> Thumbnail Caption Shows) you can select whether the file name or no caption should be displayed here.
3	The image’s original recorded date By default this is the date the image was first recorded. This date will be read from the Exif. If there is no Exif available for the image, the image file’s last modified date will be used instead.
4	The image’s context menu This context menu can also be opened by right clicking the image. It contains the most important operations that can be performed on the selected image or a selection of images.
5	The describing indicator Click this icon (or press [Alt]+[Enter]) to open the Image Details panel for this image or the set of selected thumbnails. From the Image Details panel you can enter or alter the meta information (XMP/IPTC) for the image. IDimager fully supports the XMP standard, and after entering metadata in IDimager, it will be stored using the XMP format, and the XMP metadata will automatically be migrated to IPTC and Exif where applicable.
6	Catalog indicator By clicking this icon (or by pressing [F6]), you will open the Catalog Assignment tree for this thumbnail or the set of selected thumbnails. If you also show catalog information on your thumbs, this icon is one of two cube colors (orange or green), and it can also be enclosed within a dotted circle. In other words there are four states: orange, green, orange with dotted circle, or green with dotted circle. An orange cube (with or without a dotted circle) denotes that the image is "out-of-sync", which means that the database information is not the same as the metadata information stored in the image's file. A green cube (with or without a dotted circle) denotes that the image is "in-sync", which means that catalog data and file metadata should match. The dotted circle denotes whether or not the image has assigned catalog labels. If the catalog indicator has a dotted circle, this indicates that the image has one or more catalog labels assigned to it.
7	Preview indicator By clicking this icon (or by pressing [F3]), you can open a larger preview of the image, including a "100% window" that displays a full-sized magnified view for the area you hover the mouse over. This allows you to get a good impression of the image’s quality very quickly, even without opening the full version of the image.
8	Version indicator By clicking this icon (or by pressing [F7]), IDimager will open this image’s version bar. The version bar allows you to quickly see what other versions you have defined for this image.
9	Online indicator This indicator is either green, red, or blue. Green means that this image is accessible, red means that the image is not accessible (e.g. an image stored on CD/DVD but the CD/DVD is not in the drive), and blue means that the image should be accessible but is not found on the file system (e.g. because the file has been moved or deleted). You can not click this icon.
10	Star/Rating indicator Below the thumb image you see the rating bar, displayed with stars to represent your image's active rating/score. Ratings are defined on a 0 to 5 scale. The rating indicator displays large and filled star icons to visualize the existing rating. The small dotted icons are unassigned rating positions. Clicking any of the stars or dots will allow you to change the rating. A popup menu will appear that asks you what rating to apply. IDimager uses a popup menu to prevent accidental clicks changing your ratings. However, you can hold down the Alt-key and then click on a star or dot to instantly change the rating, e.g. hold down Alt and click the 4th dot to give that image a 4-star rating. Ratings also have direct keyboard shortcuts: [0] = no rating, [1] = 1 star rating, [2] = 2 star rating ... [5] = 5 star rating. Ratings can be applied on individual thumbnails or for a series of selected thumbnails.
11	Color Label Indicator The background area of the ratings bar displays the "Color Label". Color labels are essentially markers that you can assign to images. The meaning of each color is up to you to define (Tools -> Options -> Other Settings). Typically you use color labels to keep track of images with a certain condition. Examples are Yellow = Customer Pick, Purple = Printed, Red = Trash, etc.. The different color labels are: none, red, yellow, green, blue and purple. You can change the label by clicking the bar behind the rating stars/dots. A popup menu appears and allows you to select the color label you'd like to assign. Color labels also have direct keyboard shortcuts: [Ctrl]+[0] = no color, [Ctrl]+[1] = Red, [Ctrl]+[2] = Yellow, [Ctrl]+[3] = Green, [Ctrl]+[4] = Blue, [Ctrl]+[5] = Purple. Color labels can be applied on individual thumbnails or for a series of selected thumbnails.
12	Quick Assign indicator By clicking the quick assign icon (or pressing [Ctrl]+[F6]) in the upper right corner of the thumbnail, the quick catalog menu will open. This menu contains all label assignments for the currently selected images, the quick labels, the last used labels, and the catalog label hierarchy. Other menu items include maintenance options like copy/paste, synchronizing catalog information with metadata information in the image file. In the quick assign menu the catalog labels have selection boxes in front of each label. When that catalog label is assigned to the selected thumb or to all selected thumbnails, there will be a blue check mark in the selection box. When multiple thumbnails are selected and one or more thumbnails have that label assigned, but not all, then the selection box will be orange. You can select a catalog label to instantly change the label assignment for the selected image(s), and you can Ctrl+Click on a orange selection box to force a full assignment and change its color to blue
13	Speaker indicator This icon will only be shown when there is a related sound recording available for this image.
14	Bookmark indicator This frame indicates that the current thumbnail is bookmarked. An image can be bookmarked with the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl]+[Space].
15	Read-Only indicator This icon is displayed when the associated image file is read-only. You can not click this icon.

The Collection Viewer provides you with direct access to the images. By double clicking on a thumbnail or by pressing Enter, the image will be opened in either the Image Editor/Viewer (described in the next chapter) or the Full Screen Viewer. This preference can be defined in the options dialog (Tools | Options | Image Viewing | Images are opened in). The Image Viewer is described in a next chapter.

You can also open the selected image in the default application in Windows by pressing [Ctrl]+[Enter].

The Collection Viewer has its own menu inside the application’s main menu called “Collection”. This menu always relates to the active collection currently displayed in the Collection Viewer, and allows you to perform a range of actions on the active collection.

The Collection Viewer also allows you to do group-wise processing (also known as batch processing; so multiple images together). By selecting one or more thumbs and then right clicking on one of the selected thumbnails, most actions inside the context menu will act for every selected thumbnail; e.g. describe image properties, rename images, redate, rotate images, etc.

If needed you can always update a selection of thumbnails manually by pressing [F8].