Why files compression is useful?

Some time ago plain picture scanners were the only devices used to import pictures to the PC, but today digital cameras are a great reality and everybody is going to replace his old film camera with a digital one. That's why ZipGenius' Scan and Zip feature has been enhanced. In this version Scan and Zip is presented as a wizard, so you will be guided through the whole process that will import one or more pictures to ZG.

REQUIREMENTS
This function needs TWAIN drivers to be installed. If your imaging devices have custom drivers, ZipGenius can't import pictures.

Choose which picture format ZipGenius should use: if you choose JPG you can also select a quality level between 0 and 99, where 99 is the best quality. Remember this: a JPEG file will have a very large size if you choose the best quality, but you will obtain a small JPEG file if you will choose the worst quality (colors will be dramatically reduced). In any case, you can choose .BMP format, which can be highly compressed.

First of all you must choose a name for the picture(s) you are going to import. This is important because ZipGenius will save pictures using this name plus a number in the filename. Example, if "Summer" is the group name:

When you have typed the group name, you can click on "Import pictures" to run TWAIN interface. Make sure to have a TWAIN device connected!
Choose any image you want to send to ZG. When ZG finishes to save pictures in its temporary folder, you will see the first image in the small preview; now you can browse pictures using the arrows and the "home" buttons. When an image is displayed, you can click on "Preview and edit" to see it in its default size through ZG's pictures viewer. When you do this you can also rotate pictures so you can store them in the right position. When a picture is shown, you can also delete it by clicking on "Delete selected".

From ZipGenius 5.1 you can even capture your desktop to create screenshots: click on "Capture Desktop" and ZipGenius will minimize to leave your screen free and ready to be captured. You can take how mant shots you want: just press F1 on your keyboard to capture screen. Press F11 to go back to ZipGenius: you will see all your shots in the preview frame.

3) FINAL STEP: COMPRESSION.
ZipGenius 5 allows to compress pictures also in .CAB and .7z format: you have only to choose which fits your needs:

Format	PROs	CONs
ZIP	Widely used. Choose this format if you need to send your pictures around.	Has a good compression ratio only with BMP pictures because they aren't already compressed
CAB	Good storage format: useful if you want to store pictures without compression.	Very low compression ratio. Not very used around.
7z	High compression ratio. It uses many new compression techniques and it is suggested to store pictures and multimedia files.	Not known as ZIP format, few programs can handle it.

If you have ZG Album installed, you will see also an option labeled "EXE (Make slideshow)". If you choose this option, ZipGenius will start the process to build a picture slideshow (see: Making a slideshow). Pictures will be stored in a zip file which will be converted to EXE and it will include a small applet capabl of showing pictures.