JPEG Saver 4.7
Published
This is the first released version of JPEG Saver compiled with Visual C++ 2010. The previous version was compiled using the 2003 compiler, so I've avoided adding too many new features into this version in case the compiler change has caused any problems. The change of compiler also meant an update to the latest version of the DirectX 9 SDK, so this version relies on “d3dx9_43.dll” instead of “d3dx9_39.dll” - so I recommend ticking the “DirectX update” option in the installer.
I've improved the on-screen feedback in this version, so when you press one of the interactive keys that does something behind the scenes you will see a message in the middle of the screen that fades out after a couple of seconds. Pausing and resuming will display the standard pause and play icons in the bottom-right of the screen too.
There are a few new interactive features added - the “s” key will create a shortcut to the current file, and the “1”-“5” keys along the top of the main keyboard will set the image's rating, as used by Windows 7 and others. Rating is disabled by default since it modifies the image files, so you must enable it in the new interactive options dialog that is available via a button on the main tab. You can also set where the shortcuts are created in this dialog, instead of creating them on the desktop. The other new interactive option is a “help page” - a list of all the keys will be displayed for 10 seconds when you press the “h” key.
Rating images uses the Windows Imaging Component. This is available on Windows 7, is supposed to work on Vista, and possibly works on Windows XP (though it doesn't appear to work fully on my copy). Rating is currently only supported for JPEG images, and it can only rate images that you have permission to write to.
This version is also the first to support loading GIF and TIFF image files. Windows has had built-in support for loading these file types for a long time, so it was fairly simple to add this support into JPEG Saver. Windows supports loading JPEG images directly too, but I am still using the Independent JPEG Group's JPEG library for various reasons.
The updated installer is available from the downloads page.