PictureBank 3.0 is a FileMaker 3.0 companion application that greatly extends FileMaker's image handling capabilities. It requires FileMaker Pro 3.0 or later, System 7.1 or later, AppleScript and QuickTime 2.5 or later. Supported graphics formats currently include PICT, JPEG, GIF, SGI, QTIF, PhotoShop, and MacPaint. PNG is supported if the appropriate QuickTime Graphics Importer is installed, and more formats can easily be added when other importers become available.
PictureBank allows FileMaker Pro users to create and customize their own image databases, using all the power and flexibility of FileMaker Pro while providing more useful tools such as:
- Preview (thumbnail) of the image whose record is being browsed in FM;
- Display and full-screen display of any image, with pan, scroll and zoom;
- Catalog windows with the previews of a given set of records;
- Slide shows with manual or automatic timing;
- Automatic record creation through Finder drag&drop operations;
- Internet images archival with simple Netscape drag&drop operations;
- Internet URL launching via the popular Internet Config mechanism;
- On-the-fly image format conversion (to PICT) for FileMaker print operations;
- Handy single-image commands to open an image with a given editor, reveal its icon in the Finder, print it with the application that created it, etc...
- Handy multiple-images commands to copy several images to a given folder, create aliases to all of them, use them as the current FileMaker found set, etc...
- And much more!
• Lite version
The Lite version is limited to 500 images (records) at a time. It is distributed as shareware, and keeps displaying a shareware reminder until you register it by sending your payment to Kagi. You can display the shareware information at any time by holding down the Command or Option keys when you choose "About PictureBank" from the Apple menu.
• Instructions
Most PictureBank features are available through its menus or through the FileMaker Pro scripts, and they should be easy enough to understand. The basic keyboard shortcuts are listed in the Shortcuts window, so we won't talk about them either. The most important command that's not immediately visible is the one that adds new images and archives to the FileMaker Pro database, so here's a brief discussion of how it works.
To add an image file or a whole folder full of images to your FileMaker Pro database, you should first make sure that the database has been prepared for PictureBank and includes the required fields, and that its window is currently frontmost in FileMaker. If these conditions are met, all you have to do is drag the image file or the folder from the Finder onto the PictureBank main palette. The window hilites the "drop zone" at the bottom to show that it's ready to accept your drag, and starts to add the dropped items to the FileMaker Pro database as soon as the mouse is released.
Three options are available when adding items through drag&drop:
- Holding down the Option key bypasses the window that asks you to assign an archive name to newly added folders; the folder name is then used as the archive name. You can use this when you know that there won't be any duplicate archive names.
- Always Check Duplicates (in the File menu) fetches all the records from the FileMaker Pro database before adding the new ones, and skips any new images whose name and source match those of an existing record.
- Always Create Previews (in the File menu) immediately creates a thumbnail for each new image. If this option is not checked, adding new images is much faster and the thumbnails are created later on when PictureBank needs to display them.
Note that the PictureBank icon in the Finder is also a valid target for drag&drop operations, and dragging to it is pretty much the same as dragging to the main PictureBank palette. You can also use the Open command in PictureBank's File menu to add an image file or a whole folder to your FileMaker Pro database.
• Setup
Any FileMaker Pro database can be set up for use with PictureBank by adding a few fields with the following names:
- PB Image Name (text): name of the image file; this is the name that the Finder displays for a given image file.
- PB Image Source (text): name of the archive containing the image; this is not necessarily the name of the folder containing the image file, since we must be able to handle PhotoCD's and other cases where different folders on different disks have the same non-editable names. The archive is linked to a given folder through a Finder alias file whose name is stored in this field.
- PB Image URL (text): Internet URL of the image file, automatically filled by PictureBank in case the image was directly dragged from a Netscape window.
- PB Image Data (global container): this field is used by PictureBank as a pointer to converted PICT files for print operations.
Users can also copy a few FileMaker Pro scripts from the provided sample database to let their own databases talk directly to PictureBank. These scripts use the following additional fields:
- PB Preview Flag (global number): this field is used by the FileMaker Pro scripts to switch between printing previews and printing full images.
- PB Message (global text): this field is used by the FileMaker Pro scripts to store the result of text-oriented calculations that must be sent to PictureBank.
There are 15 PictureBank-specific FileMaker Pro scripts that are used to show the preview for the record being browsed, go to the previous or to the next record, open a catalog window or a slide show in PictureBank, print one or more records, and launch an URL using Internet Config. These scripts are used in the sample database that comes with PictureBank, and can be copied to custom databases to provide the same features.
PictureBank needs four folders (or aliases to folders) in the same folder where the application itself is stored. These folders are created empty if they don't already exist:
- Archives: contains aliases to the folders that contain the images. The alias names are used in the "PB Image Source" field to determine the source folder for a given image.
- Previews: contains all the previews (thumbnails) for the images in the database. The previews are stored in separate folders as 16-bit PICT files, and they are created on the fly if they don't exists. The folders containing the previews are named after the archives, i.e. they have the same names as the aliases inside the "Archives" folder.
- Documents: receives the image files for all images being dragged from Netscape or from other drag-capable applications. Dragging from the Finder doesn't copy the images to this folder because the image files already exist on one of the available disks. On the other hand, dragging from Netscape or from the Scrapbook tells PictureBank that a new image file will be created, and this is where the image is saved.
- Printing: receives the converted PICT files for image files that must be printed and whose file format is not already PICT. The files are created by PictureBank upon request, and they are not deleted until the user (or a FileMaker Pro script) explicitly asks for it.
Note that the contents of the "Previews" and "Printing" folders are automatically rebuilt by PictureBank if you trash them. Trashing the contents of the "Documents" folder deletes the original image files that were dragged from Netscape or other drag-enabled applications, so you should make sure that you no longer need the images before you do so. The contents of the "Archives" folder are much more important, as they tell PictureBank where the source folders are stored; deleting these aliases is not a good idea, although you may want to update the aliases manually if needed (for example, when an archive has moved from one disk to another).
• Troubleshooting
Several PictureBank operations need to fetch all records from the FileMaker Pro database. This is done through Apple Events, and it can take quite a while for large databases- so much that you may wonder if the machine hasn't crashed or hung. The watch cursor is visible, but the cursor animation is disabled while FileMaker Pro takes over the CPU and fills the list of records. Also note that extremely large databases (several thousand records) may require that you increase the preferred memory size in the Finder's Get Info window for both the PictureBank and the FileMaker Pro applications, so that there's enough memory to pass large Apple Events back and forth between the two.
