# Configuring &kphotoalbum;

Selecting Settings Configure KPhotoAlbum... from the menu bar will bring up the options dialog. This chapter will tell you about the configuration option available there.

## General Settings

Below you can see the configuration page for general options. Some of these options are briefly described here and you can also access an informational menu while doing configurations by right clicking any option and selecting the What's This? menu item.

### General Options

Use EXIF orientation information will automatically rotate images as shot. Most digital cameras embed a thumbnail on RAW format files and quite often this thumbnail is actually of sufficient size, might be even full sized. Selecting to use this embedded thumbnail will fasten up all image operations as decoding raw files is very time consuming but the thumbnail is many times faster. You can also specify the minimum size for the thumbnail so that the RAW image is decoded if the thumbnail is of useless size.

## New Image Finder Settings

The left pane gives you access to other settings like File Searching & Versions. These settings define &kphotoalbum;'s behavior when new images are found. These can be searched for automatically on start-up or manually from the Maintenance menu. Again the options are well described in the online help menu but a few should probably be given a brief introduction here.

### File Searching & Versions

- You probably want to skip searching for some directories that are generated by different image viewers or file browsers. This is a comma separated list and new directories can easily be added when needed.

- New versions of same files can be automatically detected to some extent. If you want to ⪚ automatically stack new versions of same image to a stack you can configure regular expression to be used to look whether the new file is a new version of an original file. Following settings where first is the search regexp and second original file test should get you started, but might need some tuning to suit your naming convention:

  1. (_(v){0,1}([0-9]){1,2}){0,1}\.(jpg|JPG|tif|TIF|png|PNG)

  2. .CR2;.NEF;.JPG;.jpg

Note that the Original file replacement text can have multiple suffixes separated by semicolon and reference to regexp match can be used in the format of \1. Original file is being searched from the same directory as the new file. Oh, and the example regexp will match ⪚ the following files: example_v1.jpg, example_12.tif, example.PNG.

## Thumbnail Viewer Settings

There isn't much you should configure for Thumbnail Viewer. Mainly Thumbnail Size and Tooltip Size (if you plan on using the tooltip feature that can be enabled from Settings Show Tooltips in Thumbnail Window or &Ctrl;T). You can also select to view additional information like labels and categories with the thumbnails.

### Options for Thumbnail View

## Viewer Settings

Another rather simple configuration. Mainly you can select the preferred size of Viewer or SlideShow window or to display them in full screen mode. Basic SlideShow interval can be set here. The scaling algorithm can be Best or Fastest. If your computer is fast enough for Best scaling use that otherwise go for the speed.

### Options for the Viewer

## Categories

In chp-typingIn it was described how you could specify different properties for each image, these included `People`, `Places` and `Keywords`. It is possible to specify your own categories, so if you prefer you could get an `Items`, a `Animals`, or a `Albums` category your self.

In fig-options-group below you can see the dialog used to configure which categories exists. For each category you specify a label and an icon.

### Configuring Categories

## Sub-categories

In sec-member-groups-in-property-editor we discussed sub categories. From the settings dialog, it is possible to configure entire member groups, &ie; configure all members of a group in one go rather than configure all groups for a member as was the situation in sec-member-groups-in-property-editor.

In fig-options-member you can see the configuration page for specifying member groups. At the top there is a combo box, where you can specify which category you are currently configuring. On the left side you see a list box with the current category, and on the right side you see a list box with the sub categories.

### Configuring Member Groups