Plug-ins are a way of extending Downloader's functionality. They can be run on each image after it has been downloaded. Plug-ins can be enabled and disabled and configured from the Plug-ins Prefences dialog. Downloader comes with three plug-ins: one to automatically tag JPEGs with color profiles, one to adjust the resolution of JPEGs and one to automatically create empty directories to support your workflow.
The JPEG auto profile plug-in allows you to automatically embed (or tag) a JPEG image with a color profile as it is downloaded. This saves time and possible confusion over color spaces when images are edited in color space aware applications such as Photoshop. You can specify different color profiles to use for different camera models using the setup screen below:
To add a new camera model to the list you can either drag a JPEG from that camera and drop it on the setup dialog or press the "Add camera..." button and use the standard Windows file open dialog to locate an example JPEG. Then click on the "Profile..." button to locate the color profile to be embedded in JPEGs from the selected camera model.
Select "Identify camera using user comment or serial number" if you have more than one camera of the same model and wish to assign different profiles to each. Normally this option will be left unchecked, but it is useful if you shoot using different color spaces with different cameras or have created individual color profiles for each camera.
JPEGs from digital cameras usually contain EXIF data which specifies the resolution of the image in DPI. Applications such as Photoshop and Photoshop Elements use the DPI value to calculate the print size of images (size in inches = size in pixels / DPI). The problem is that cameras often set the DPI to an unsuitable value. The JPEG resolution plug-in can be used to automatically change the DPI value to a user-defined DPI or dots/cm value. The plug-in will modify the EXIF XResolution, YResolution and ResolutionUnits values and add a JFIF header containing the new resoltion value.
To setup the plug-in simply select the resolution units from the drop down list (DPI or dots/cm) and enter the required resolution value.
This plug-in is designed to help create a directory structure to support your workflow. As images are downloaded the plug-in creates empty directories relative to the download directory. For example suppose images are downloaded to the directory D:\Photos and you wish to create a directory for images which require more work called "working", a directory for finished images called "edited" and a directory for images prepared for web pages called "web". You can do this using the directory maker plug-in as shown below:
Alternatively you may prefer to download your images to a directory named "originals" and have the additional directories at the same level. This can be done be prefixing the directory names with "..\" (".." is a way of specifying the parent directory).
e.g. Files are downloaded to the a new
download directory for each day by specifying "D:\Photos\%Y-%m-%D\originals"
in the Download Path preferences.
In the Directory maker plug-in setup page the following
directories might be specified:
This would result in the following directory structure after downloading images on April 21, 2004:
The images would be downloaded to D:\Photos\2004-04-21\originals and the empty directories edited, web and working would be created ready for processing the images.
Copyright 2003, 2004, Breeze Systems
Limited
www.breezesys.com