Probably not, since TalaPhoto was designed to be extremely simple to use. But this FAQ does contain some important tips and background information. You should at least read the first two topics about the importance of PageSetup and understanding TalaPhoto's five main functions. If you have additional questions please let us know. support@talasoft.com Or visit the TalaPhoto User Forum.
TalaPhoto supports borderless printing and many other special features that your printer may have such as custom paper sizes and margins.It is very important to use Page Setup in the File menu to select the page size that matches the paper you've loaded into your printer. TalaPhoto uses the page size and its margins to accurately display your photos on screen. So whenever you change the paper size in your printer, you should let TalaPhoto know by using Page Setup.
To get full use of your printer's special features such as Borderless printing, it is very important to install the latest driver from your printer manufacturer's web site. Do not use the default printer drivers that come with OSX or Windows XP, nor generic printing solutions like CUPS. The printer manufacturer's driver will almost always be a better choice.
To see more detail about the print driver's idea of the current paper size and margins, hold Option (Alt on Windows) while selecting the Page Setup command.
TalaPhoto organizes a set of digital photos into a project and makes it very easy to do five things:
TalaPhoto's goal is to make it exceptionally easy to share your digital photos with your friends and family. TalaPhoto is not a general purpose image editor, and so it avoids their excessive complexity. TalaPhoto makes the most common operations as simple as possible and so it's the easiest way to get your images onto paper, into a web page or into a slide show.
TalaPhoto never, ever, alters nor moves your original image files. TalaPhoto just saves the instructions for displaying and printing your images in the project files. It's important that you also keep the original image files so that the TalaPhoto project can locate them in the future.
For each group of images we recommend creating a folder that's labeled with the event name and date. Then use TalaPhoto's OpenFolder command to load them all into the thumbnail list. You can also drag folders or images from multiple folders into TalaPhoto.Reorder the images by dragging them up and down in the thumbnail list. Duplicate or delete thumbnails as needed. Note that the original images are never changed nor deleted even if you change or delete the thumbnails. Having duplicate thumbnails allows you to crop or zoom the same image in a variety of ways.
When you get just the right collection of images, save the project for future use. Project files are relatively small because they contain just references to the image files but not the big image files themselves. So be sure to keep the original image files too.
Switch to the WebDesigner view and use the tool palette to select the image size, background and enable text annotations as desired. Zoom each image, drag it onscreen to crop and enter the text annotation. Click the MakeWeb button to create a photo web page using all of the photos in the current project. They are automatically scaled to thumbnail and web ready images and placed into a folder with the necessary HTML pages. Move this web folder to your web server and view the index.html file to see your photo web page.Tip: If you don't want to display the scrolling thumbnail list, then you should link directly to the TalaPhoto0000.htm file, instead of linking to the index.html file which creates the full frameset.
Each photo page now includes an Up Arrow button. By default, this button takes the user Back to the page which linked into the photo gallery. Optionally you can provide a Home URL which always takes the user to a specific page. To select your preferred behavior, click on the Up Arrow button in the WebDesigner view.
TalaPhoto selects images to be used as the background for your web pages from the Web Backgrounds folder. Place your own GIF files or JPEG images there to be included in TalaPhoto's list of web backgrounds. Your images can be any size since they will be tiled by the web browser to fill your page.
Switch to the PhotoShow view and use the tool palette to select the image size and background color, and background music track if desired. Zoom each image and drag it onscreen to crop. Select a transition effect and its duration.Click the MakeShow button to create a QuickTime slideshow using all of the photos in the current project. The entire slideshow is contained in a single file so it's easy to send as an email attachment or include on a CD. Playback requires QuickTime which is included with all Macs and many Windows machines. It's also available from Apple as a free download.
The slideshow can be played in continuous mode like a movie. Or you can manually advance photos using the left and right arrow keys.
TalaPhoto accepts music in many formats including MP3, and all the QuickTime and iTunes formats. You can easily add multiple music tracks to your slideshow using the Music Library dialog available from the PhotoShow Tools palette. You can Add music files directly, or by Dragging or Copying music tracks from your iTunes library.If you have purchased music from the iTunes Music Store, it might be restricted for use on a few of your registered systems. TalaPhoto shows these restricted tracks in Red in the Music List to warn you that those tracks might not be playable on other systems.
Opuzz is a great source of royalty free music and they have generously allowed me to include a few of their sample tracks with TalaPhoto. They offer a wide variety of royalty free music that you can download immediately from their site. At the bottom of the Music Library dialog, there is a link to Opuzz and other royalty free music sites.
While in the MultiPrint view, you can change the layout of the page using the tool palette, but you cannot manipulate the individual photos. If you need to crop or scale a photo, do that first in any other view, and then switch into the MultiPrint view. Also note that for maximum display speed, MultiPrint uses low resolution images onscreen. However your printouts are always done using the original high resolution image files yielding maximum quality.
TalaPhoto's Image Levels dialog let's you easily adjust improperly exposed photos to bring out surprising detail. Since the onscreen image is updated immediately you can just drag the sliders around until you get the best image.Or you can use the level distribution histogram to guide you. Drag the Black Level slider so the meaningful histogram data starts near the left edge of the chart. Similarly drag the White Level slider so the data approaches the right edge of the chart. Check the image as you do this to make sure you don't blowout the highlight areas. Finally adjust the Midtone slider to bring out image details in areas of general interest.
Click on the center marker for each slider to reset it to the neutral position.
Click on the histogram chart to view the transfer curve instead.
TalaPhoto randomly selects a startup image from the Startup Images folder. Place your own JPEG images there to be included, or remove the files to have no startup image.
Hold Shift while using the arrow keys to move the view faster ie by 8 pixelsHold Shift during launch to delete the old Preferences file
Hold Shift while rotating a QuickPrint image to also rotate the page
Drag a Thumbnail out of TalaPhoto will export a picture
Click on a size display to change it from English to Metric units
Right click or Control Click on an object or an area to see its contextual menu
The Center and Fill button now toggles between cropping the image to fill the cell and alternately showing the full image even if that leaves blank areas.
For best printing results, be sure to install the vendor specific print driver
Digital images can be quite large, especially from the newer cameras. MacOS X and Windows allow TalaPhoto to use as much memory as necessary to handle large images. However MacOS 9 and below only give TalaPhoto a fixed amount of memory. If you see TalaPhoto's Insufficient Memory warning you should give TalaPhoto more memory to work with. 60 MB or more may be needed. In MacOS 9, you can change TalaPhoto's memory allocation using these steps.
Please send your questions and suggestions to support@talasoft.comThe latest version of TalaPhoto is always available on our web site. http://www.talasoft.com
Please visit the TalaPhoto Users Forum where users share their experience.