MeTV Scan Chooser
=================

Version 0.3 2018-04-15

INTRODUCTION
The MeTV Scan Chooser application is intended to ease the task of selecting
images for inclusion in a photobook, such as those marketed by Blurb.
It is intended to help those scanning large collections of photographs.

Scan Chooser walks a tree of folders containing images and presents each
image to the user as a thumbnail along with "Yes" and "No" buttons to indicate
whether the user would like to select the image for the photobook. If the
user selects the image then Scan Chooser copies the image to a folder called
Blurb_pending on the desktop.

Scan Chooser keeps a record of which images it has presented to the user in
previous runs, so you can run it in multiple separate sessions.

INSTALLATION
Get the latest version from
  http://metv.org.uk/scanutils

Scan Chooser is a standalone application. Simply download the
Scan_Chooser.exe/Scan_Chooser.app file to a convenient location, such as your
desktop. It is then ready to run.

To uninstall Scan Chooser, simply delete the Scan_Chooser.exe/Scan_Chooser.app
file. The MeTV Scan Chooser does not write any data to the Windows registry.

USE
1. Start the application by clicking on its icon. You can also drag a folder
   on to the icon.
2. The application asks you to select the top-level folder in the folder tree
   containing the images that you would like to see presented as candidates
   for selection. Navigate to and select that folder. This won't happen if
   2.1 You launched Scan Chooser by dragging a folder icon on to the Scan
       Chooser icon.
   2.2 You already have a Blurb_pending folder on the desktop from a previous
       run. In this case, Scan Chooser will use the parameters from the
       initial run that created the folder.
3. The main GUI then appears. On the left is a thumbnail of the first image
   for consideration. To the right are three buttons
   3.1 Yes: Copy the image into Blurb_pending on the desktop and move on to
            the next candidate image.
   3.2 No: Move on to the next candidate image without making a copy of the
           image.
   3.3 Quit: Exit the application. The application keeps a record of the
             folder that you are working on and the images that you have
             already considered.
4. As soon as you click on Yes or No Scan Chooser will move on to the next
   candidate image.
5. When you reach the end of the images in the folder tree, Scan Chooser will
   ask you to click Quit to exit. Do so.

SHORTCUT KEYS
     y or Y - Same as clicking "Yes"
     n or N - Same as clicking "No"
 h, H or F1 - Show this help
q, Q or Esc - Quit

NOTES
1. The meTV Scan Chooser offers as candidates files with the following
   case-insensitive extensions:
   .JPG
   .JPEG
   .TIF
   .TIFF
2. The GUI is fixed size, suitable for (1600x900) monitors or larger. This
   is simply to make writing the code easier.
3. There is no 32-bit Windows version because anyone doing serious scanning
   is likely to have a moderately recent and powerful computer.
4. If a Blurb_pending folder already exists then Scan Chooser will use the
   folder and any other parameters from the previous run, ignoring any
   parameters from the current run.
5. Scan Chooser ignores images that are too small to be included in a photo
   book. By default the threshold is at least 1800 pixels high or wide. This
   corresponds to a 12"x12" page at 150dpi.
6. There is an advanced mode which is only accessible from the command line.
   This allows you to specify the mininum acceptable resolution and a range
   of dates within which candidate images must lie. If the user specifies a
   date range then Scan Chooser will examine all the images in the tree
   before presenting candidate images. See the COMMAND LINE section for
   details.

COMMAND LINE
Expert users can launch Scan Chooser from the command line, as follows:

usage: Scan_Chooser.py [-h] [-H] [-c] [-x] [-r MINRES] [-d MINDATE]
                       [-D MAXDATE]
                       [target_directory]

GUI to select images from a folder tree

positional arguments:
  target_directory      Folder containing candidate images for selection.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -H, --fullhelp        Print detailed help and exit.
  -c, --copyright       Print copyright statement and exit.
  -x, --deletepending   Delete Blurb_pending folder and exit.
  -r MINRES, --minres MINRES
                        Minimum image resolution. Declares that at least one
                        of the X and Y resolutions must be at least this size.
                        Defaults to 1800. Valid values are 500-20000.
  -d MINDATE, --mindate MINDATE
                        Earliest date on images to be proposed. In YYYY-MM-DD
                        format. Must be accompanied by -D.
  -D MAXDATE, --maxdate MAXDATE
                        Latest date on images to be proposed. In YYYY-MM-DD
                        format.be accompanied by -d.

CHANGELOG
  2018-04-15 V0.3 Initial revision

CONTACT
Bug reports and feedback to:
  mail |at| metv (dot) org (dot) uk