Hi Cetin - and also Sergey,

Thank you very much for your code! It perfectly solved my problem. Now quickly to the question "why":

Later: Somehow when writing my answer, I ended up writing way too much. You don't have to read it all. It's more of a description of the project that I'm working on and that handles complexities, which can be greatly reduced by using short-cut files as a solution to thoses specific problems.

In any case - I appreciate your and Sergey's responses very much. They have helped my greatly and even though I haven't been active on the Universal Thread for a few years I am again amazed about how the Foxpro Community works - and world-wide at that.

Teddy



Here the details I wrote when I didn't have enough else to do <g>:

Of course, it makes much more sense to use my database - which at this point contains about 270.000 records (only 1/2 a hard drive of 3) - for whatever processing I need to do with it (that can be done with VFP). What this short-cut/link-file business has to do with is stuff I have to do externally with other applications.

The images are contained in directrories for each "session". A session has anywhere from 50 to 1500 images in various "incarnations" in more or less well structured subdirectories . The original RAW and JPG imgages, generally (at smaller resolution) two conversions (black/white and color) and two variants (as-is and automatically corrected for color and contrast). Thus for a group of 300 pictures I have about 1800 variants in different subdirectories inluding certain selected files that are modified in photoshop for further processing.

The problem are those conversions, which at this point are done in Breeze Browser Pro (since it allows me to group the processes best in the fewest number of steps). Unfortunately each process (generally about 4 conversion processes that I still have to run for most of the older sessions) has to be done for one directory at a time. This means in practical terms: I have to run conversions which take sometimes 30 minutes and sometimes 7 hours to run through larger sets of images. Here is where my link approach comes in. In VFP I can simply and automatically create a directory of links to a whole bunch of directories of images. Then I can send BreezeBrowser on its way in a different computer merrily converting images overnight without getting up every time it has finisched a portion) and at least get one conversion done on as many images images or directories that can be done in that time. Breeze browser has the ability to use and read the links and create the result in a subdirectory of the links and later I can get the results copied back by VFP into systematic subdirectories underneath my original structure.

And since the BreezeBrowser behavior allows me to work this way, I can do something else that is much more important for me. I can use my VFP program do do preselection of images, export the resulting groups of images to a link folder, run the conversions on maybe 100 pictures out of a 1200, automatically throw 400 variants of those 100 pictures onto a CD for the client to look at and select from. And then I can work on the 30 or 50 selected images for finals (in a single directory of only selected raw images which then are used for close inspection and preparing final tif or jpg files for the client in black/white or color).

The point of all this and the whole application I am writing:

1. Management of all image files: (currently on four different hard drives in the system) including backup of all original files on a different drive/different machine (including some older ones on DVD - (2 different DVDs of different brands since we don't really know how long they will be readable)).

2. The fast sorting and categorising of images: All sorting is done on 700 pixel variants (mostly in black/white). This was the original purpose for building the application when it started back six weeks ago. All commercially available applications for management of images require that you rank images (often with very inefficient keystroke combinations like Ctrl-1 or shift-alt-1 then right-arrow or page-down to move to the next image) and reading the original files between 2 and 12MB (which take for ever to load or extract embedded thumbnails from which in turn are too small for this process). Under VFP I can view these imges extremely fast and pressing the keys 1, 3 or 3 marks a picture for ranking 1, 2, 3 and moves on to the next picture. With a click on the ogr "work backwards" the whole process can be done in reverse. Additionally I can mark things like "T" for Top20 or Top30 (per session) or "B" for Best-of (globally all pictures).

3. Automatically using medium resolution for looking at images (not working on them)

4. Doing the time-consuming manual work on selections that are pre-selected and sorted in work-directories without constantly dealing with lots of files and preferably working with short-cut files there.

5. The preparation of selection batches in form of link-file-directories (where in the past I had to copy all groups of images to be included on a cd for the client to a different directory - thus doubling my space used - and then letting my HTML-generator run over that selection to create 5 galleries and a hand-prepared HTML menu page... etc. etc. to be burned on CD or put on a web-server for client inspection, selection, purchase etc.)

4. When I "sort" images in VFP all ranking, marking for deletion etw. is stored in the root-image file, effectively allowing me to look through black-white, doing ranking and selecting and marking for deletion in black and white. Then when I look through all the good ones I only see those - even though the others are still there. And the ones marked for deletion I never see again until I do the actual final deletion which lets me glance over that selection to see that I didn't make a drastic mistake before doing so.

This allows me to do the error-prone actions later - when the job is done. Deleting test images and simply bad pictures with a client looking over my shoulders is error prone and stressful. Having a marked for deletion picture not show up any more and later automatically deleting it and all seven variations of it on 3 different drives helps me clean out my system systematically and automatically.

5. Being able to step through my pictures vertically as well as horizontally (so-to-speak), in other words: using up-arrow and down-arrow for stepping through the pictures, and left-arrow and right-arrow for stepping through the variations of one picture (different resolution, color, b&w, original/unmodified) and being able to mark for ranking, deletion, category, special groupings etc. no matter which variation type I happen to look at. This is what allows the creative side of dealing with lots of pictures to be handled much more intuitively and naturally.

6. Seeing the exif-data even though they may not be contained in the "Variation" image I'm looking at as well as all other ranking and categorizing.

7. Automatically creating subselections with various degrees of detail-info for submission to picture agencies in prepared formats...

8. Reducing the doubling and tripling of image. In the past I bought a new hard drive each year with double the capacity to handle my active files. It doesn't work that way any more...


What comes next? Automation of Photoshop (unfortunately BreezeBrowse doesn't seem to be "automation-controllable") will allow me to use VFP to drive the conversion and thus reduce the need for short-cut files and other programs to run batch processes.

I'm just trying to get the application model info (Photoshop SDK) form Adobe. My intial testing works fine - but photoshop automation seems to be slow).