When WhisperReporter makes a copy of the original, it can optionally scale the image down to a size that is more inline with the expected use within the report. Keep in mind that today's digital cameras can take high resolution images capable of producing high quality 8"x10" or larger prints, whereas your typical sized photo in a report averages at about 2"x3". By taking advantage of WhisperReporter's automatic image scaling, you can avoid the time consuming pre-processing of images and quickly produce high quality images for your report at a fraction of the size, saving disk space as well as keeping a PDF version of the report relatively small for faster emailing. For example, a four mega-pixel image might use about 800KB or more of disk space, but after scaling for use in WhisperReporter, the image might use only 50KB of disk space. When you factor in the number of images used in a report, you can quickly see how the report size would grow to be too large to email if the images were not scaled.
By default, all images are copied and scaled down to a high quality 640x480 pixel jpeg compressed (80% compression quality) image, suitable for a 4"x6" printed image, which yields excellent results especially if the printed image will be smaller (which typically will be). The pixel resolution, as well as the compression quality and scaling method, can be adjusted in the Preferences dialog:
Frequently Used Image Widths
To save even more time, WhisperReporter can automatically size the image to a default print size so that you don't have to resize the image each time you insert a new one into your comment. You can pre-set up to four common sizes that you use, for example you might like a larger image for the cover page than you do for showing problems areas. The "Initial Image Width" should be set to the most common size you will use throughout your report. The other sizes would then be set to alternate sizes, like a size for the cover page, etc. A setting of 0.000" indicates that the image print size should be set to the actual image size. When an image is inserted, it will initially be set to the "Initial Image Width" setting. To change the size, you have the ability to select the image and drag one of the handles that appears to any size you'd like (margins permitting), or you can first select the image and then right click on it and choose "Set Image Width" from the popup menu to pick one of the alternate sizes.
Auto Image Conversion/Scale-down
Whisper highly recommends leaving these settings at their defaults. We have tested a wide variety of images with varying amounts of detail, and feel the default settings yield the best image quality and still provide very conservative disc space usage. You also have the option to have WhisperReporter automatically add borders to the images as they are imported into the database. Checkmark Add Border to enable this feature and additionally click on Settings to customize the border (the pre-programmed default is a drop shadow effect)
Image Editor
By default, double clicking an image or using the Edit ® Edit Image menu sequence, will invoke the image editor that Windows has associated with the jpg file format. In many cases, this will only invoke an image viewer or Microsoft Paint; however, if you have installed an editor that came with your digital camera, it is likely that it will invoke that application instead. In some cases, this might not be an acceptable image editor to use to annotate the image, such as for drawing arrows etc. WhisperReporter allows you to select an alternate image editor to use without having to change the Windows association. Whisper provides a free image editor called ImageEditLite, available as a separate download from our website, that can add arrows, text and other things to highlight areas of interest in an image. If WhisperReporter sees that it has been installed, that option will be available to you in this dialog, if not, choose either to use the default editor that Windows has associated with jpg images, or select the option to use the specified image editor. For the latter option, simply browse over to the image editor installation directory and chose the exe file related to that editor. Unfortunately we don't know what file that might be since there are literally hundreds of image editors available on the market, but you can usually find the correct exe file by looking at the properties of the application icon it might have installed on the desktop or in the Windows Start menu. The Edit JPG images as BMP images option provides an easy way to use an older image editor that doesn't support JPG images. If selected, WhisperReporter will temporarily convert a JPG image to a BMP image prior to invoking the image editor selected. Upon completion of the edit, WhisperReporter will convert the BMP image back to JPG.