Placed Images

[Peter Rodbourn]

Still frustrated that the place images panel disappears when another tool is selected, and unplaced pics have to be reloaded.

Is anyone else finding that this slows down their workflow?

[thomaso]

What is the "place images panel"? Are you talking about

a.) your computers file selection window once you clicked the "Place Image Tool" which you canceled to select another tool?  Or do you mean
b.) AFPub's place cursor (not panel) which follows after you had made your selection in that window and which you interrupt by selecting another tool?

My workflow with the place tool for more than 1 image would be to place & scale them – and do other work later. Or to decide while place action that sth else is more important now. Then I'd be glad that the – now unimportant – images do not hang around in RAM without knowing if they ever will become wanted and used.

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, thomaso said:

What is the "place images panel"

Click on the Place Image tool and then, when the file selection dialog opens, select several files.

A new panel will open in the left studio showing thumbnails of all your selected images. You can then choose from them and move them onto you page or pages, but only while you have the Place Image tool selected. If you choose another tool that panel will close.

[Peter Rodbourn]

Walt, thanks for explaining the place images panel for Thomaso.

I would prefer that the panel remain open until all the images have been placed or unused ones manually deleted.

What do you think about it?

 

[walt.farrell]

12 hours ago, Peter Rodbourn said:

I would prefer that the panel remain open until all the images have been placed or unused ones manually deleted.

I'm not bothered by the way it works now, as I tend to either

• find images one at a time, or
• have them organized into a common folder where it's easy to simply use the Place Image tool again to get the next one, or
• place all of the ones I've selected before doing other work.

However, I wouldn't mind if it stayed available, or if it were possible to recall it by View > Studio > Place Images.

[fde101]

You could have one of those fancy pin buttons somewhere on the panel that would lock it in place until the pin was "pulled out"...

Just a thought.

[thomaso]

On 12/3/2018 at 2:08 AM, Peter Rodbourn said:

Walt, thanks for explaining the place images panel for Thomaso.

Yes, @walt.farrell, thank you! Excuse me, I did not notice this palette because it appeared modest on the area of the similar-looking pages palette on the secondary monitor.

I agree, on the one hand it can be nice not to lose this window as long as it contains files. On the other hand, I would like to keep all unplaced images only if APublisher treats images differently: Currently, the Placement tool loads the full file content before it is placed - instead of just preview and file path. This means, depending on the number and size of the files to be placed, it is quite demanding CPU + RAM.

Test: Place a bunch of large images and compare your system activity window. In AFpub first it takes a while before the preview window appears, then, the CPU and RAM even stay occupied for some minutes when I interrupt (=quit) the place process.

Related to the Place Tool and previews I would wish another feature: an adjustable grid while/before placing several files. Momentary I need to position and drag-scale for every single file I want to place. So it's hard to make all same size. With such a grid I would for instance just place the upper left corner and drag to the lower right to make them all auto-fill this area.