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Addons: Set Desktop Wallpaper


rsmith1

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Another user, Rene, had the idea of setting the Windows desktop wallpaper from inside Daminion, and Murat suggested it could be done using a custom Exporter. Here is the first pass at such an exporter. I have tried to accommodate all Windows versions from XP to 8.1 based on documentation, but I only have Daminion installed on Windows 7 for testing. The UI is hardcoded in English at this time. If anyone has a problem with this on their system, please let me know which version of Windows you are running. Also note that you must have permission to edit the Registry for this exporter to work (or to use Windows itself to set the wallpaper). If you are running as an account that does not have this permission, this exporter will not work.

 

To install this exporter, unzip the DLL from this zip file into the Addons folder under the Daminion directory, [Program Files]\Daminion Software\Daminion by default, and restart Daminion. The Export flyout menu should now contain an entry "Set Desktop Wallpaper"

 

You use this like any other Daminion exporter, except you only want to have one file selected (if you have more than one, the last one wins). The export option should default to "Full size JPEG". You can change this, but if you use the "Export Original File(s)" option it will not work if Windows cannot handle the original file format (e.g. raw files, DNG, etc.).

 

You can select the wallpaper mode using the dropdown. These modes are the same ones supported by Windows. XP and Vista will only have "Stretch", "Tile", and "Center" in the list. Windows 7 and above will also have "Fit" and "Fill". The mode defaults to "Fill" if it is available and "Center" otherwise.DesktopWallpaperExporter.zip

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I really don't want to spoil anything, but I think the developers of Daminion should be careful about adding such features. It takes a click or two to open any picture in some image viewer and set it as wallpaper. Perhaps Daminion should perfect things like cataloging, tagging and searching.

 

Most important for Daminion is, I think, to be reliable; it must never damage the pictures and metadata. It should improve step by step and have clear priorities. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with such an (optional) plugin, but I am not sure it should be implemented into the program.

 

Irfan Skiljan, for instance, is very picky about adding new features to his fast, little and very powerful image viewer. Any unnecessary feature can degrade usefulness of a program.

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Hello,

 

I totally agree with Jacal.

I understand Daminion as a DAM application to manage files with different media formats. All additional Add-ons should be carefully checked if they fit to a DAM or if this is a special function for system adjustment, changing of photos (substitution of functions that already exist in other programs) etc. I don't want to have a "Photoshop-light" in Daminion. There are many other formats to manage (documents, archivs, videos, presentation, drawings etc) and this should to be the focus.

 

Regards, Uwe

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Hey folks,

I understand your worries and agree with you.

 

Uwe as you said, you do understand Daminion as a DAM System. You can organize and view your pictures and other media files, but when you found the picture, you have to start to find it in the explorer view in order to make it a wallpaper. So this is the better solution.

 

And as I mentioned here or in the other thread, to have plugins availbale, like media streaming, export to wallpaper, etc. is a nice feature. Than every user can decide if he/she installs this. But for me they should be global.

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Well, the set desktop wallpaper is a system related function in windows, so I think that it's still in the boundaries of a DAM.

The plug-in solution is really a good one, you don't have to install them if you don't need a function, but it's available if you need it.

I'm working all the time on my computer with full screen programs, so I literally never see my desktop, so I will not use this, I think. :) But it's a good feeling that there is the possibility.

 

I don't want a ps light either, I hate it that every program focusing more on editing the images and not on managing them. I like that Daminion is focusing on the managing part.

But frankly, I don't care if there will be a ps light plug-in later or not, I will just not install it.

 

"There are many other formats to manage (documents, archivs, videos, presentation, drawings etc) and this should to be the focus."

 

Especially archives, and images in the archives. :) In read-only or some kind of offline mode, of course.

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I like also the idea of having a powerful application for managing my images. Then there are other tools for editing the images and plug-ins to do things that are on borderline of image management. The beauty of the plug-ins is also that the Daminion development team can focus in the core development and the community will create the plug-ins.

 

My suggestion for future development would be still in the image domain. As mentioned in another thread, I have added my vote to group images that make up a panorama or HDR into one logical image. I have also noticed that different image editing software create different sidecar files (e.g. Hugin has its .pto files, RawTherapee has .cpp files etc.) It would also be nice to add these sidecars logically to the image and maybe also the raw image and the jpeg.

 

-Juha

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When you find a picture, you just have to open it in a viewer of choice, like

 

Rightclick - open with IrfanView

 

If IV is set as Daminion's first viewer, pressing V is enough.

 

Ctrl+Shift+C is Irfan's hotkey for setting image as centered wallpaper (I had to check this, but wallpaper users don't have to.)

 

So when you choose an image in Daminion, you can set it as wallpaper by pressing V Ctrl+Shift+C. Or something similar with other viewers. It is done in two seconds and exporting via plugin could hardly be much faster.

 

Well, just an example. Have a nice day!

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So install another image viewer program just to get this function instead a plug-in you don't even have to use? :) Seriously, come on!

 

I wasn't suggesting that; I suppose there is an image viewer on every windows computer. And they all can put the image on the desktop. And they all can be launched from Daminion in a second.

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I wasn't suggesting that; I suppose there is an image viewer on every windows computer. And they all can put the image on the desktop. And they all can be launched from Daminion in a second.

 

Since I reinstalled my system months ago, I don't have any viewer besides Daminion, only that lame built-in windows viewer, but I never use that.

 

I used acdsee before that, and Daminion still needs some optimization in the full screen viewer area, but it's way better now than 1 year ago, so there is no need for another viewer anymore.

 

Okay, ComicRack had a big part in my decision to not install acdsee again. They released an iPad app last year, and I can sync my comics right away between the database program and the tablet via wi-fi. So it's the fastest solution now for comic reading.

Before that I often used acdsee as a comic viewer because I can view images in the archives with that program (and the cbr and cbz comic formats are renamed rar and zip files).

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Since I reinstalled my system months ago, I don't have any viewer besides Daminion, only that lame built-in windows viewer, but I never use that.

 

I used acdsee before that, and Daminion still needs some optimization in the full screen viewer area, but it's way better now than 1 year ago, so there is no need for another viewer anymore.

 

 

Well, interesting. And how do you open a single, just downloaded image, or some exotic formats, Daminion doesn't support? Is it possible to launch Daminion's viewer from a file explorer, via "open with"?

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Well, interesting. And how do you open a single, just downloaded image, or some exotic formats, Daminion doesn't support? Is it possible to launch Daminion's viewer from a file explorer, via "open with"?

 

I'm not downloading single images too often. I can't remember what I did in such case, I think last time I downloaded a single image there was acdsee installed.

Now I would download them in a "downloaded images" folder (with firefox save image in folder plug-in), and I would use the rescan feature in Daminion, it's fast enough now for that.

 

But I'll be really happy if I can finally finish tagging all of my existing image sets, i don't need new images, lol. :D But if I get new sets I'd always importing them anyway to work with the tags later.

 

Fortunately Daminion supports all image formats what I'm using. Which are mostly jpg files.

 

Edit: but anyway, the main goal of a DAM is that you don't need to use a file explorer anymore. :) You can do all the main tasks within the DAM, and faster because all of your images are in one place. (Okay, or in more catalogs, but that's another story. :D)

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We are obviously using Daminion (and our computers) in quite different ways. I use my default image viewer (and some others) all the time, same with file explorer (Q-Dir), and launch Daminion only when I need it. I edit, download, tag and delete many images before I import them (or not) to one of my catalogs. I work, for instance, quite often on .xcf (gimp) and .odt (open document) and similar files, where Daminion isn't very helpful. And since I prefer blank dark grey icon free desktop, probably can't really understand the need for desktop wallpapers.

 

But yes, lately I use Daminion more frequently. First I allowed in only to read metadata, now I trust it enough to let it write it also. There are some tags I miss and some I don't like and would maybe like to have more control here, but anyway, it seems to be a very promising program, so I am glad to see it's fast and successful development. Enough chatting, have a nice day!

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Well, I think our methods are always changing, they depend on the softwares.

Daminion is on a very good path, there is/will be a lot of wanted functions (unfortunatelly I already renamed all of my images I wanted before the renaming function, but in the future I can use Daminion for that too).

And with these plug-ins everyone can get the extra features.

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