FixPix Documentation

FixPix Quick Help

Hi and welcome to FixPix Home.

This documentation was written in the hope that no one will need to read it, but until perfection is achieved, here it is...

Sections

After Launch
Navigating
Initial Orientation
Using your phone or mobile device
File Ordering
File Selection
Actions on Selected Files
Comparing Two Images
The Cool Stuff: Processing Images!
Even Cooler Stuff: Processing Images with AI!
Installing FixPix Plugins
Favorite Image Directories
Favorite features
Operations on One File
Credits

After Launch

When you launch FixPix, you'll be able to browse your disk for images to process. For example, if you run on Windows, your first screen could look something like this:

Navigating

Click the folder icons ( ) to navigate to a specific folder.
To move up to a higher level directory, click the folder with the up arrow ( )
For fast navigation to a higher level directory, click on the target directory in the breadcrumbs path that shows where you are currently at. So for the breadcrumbs path in the above example ( ), clicking on the 'data' part will navigate to the C:\data diredctory.
To move to a different disk drive, click the button corresponding to the disk drive you want to navigate to. In the above example, clicking the button will navigate to the D: drive.

👉 Note that FixPix will remember the directory you are in for each different drive on your disk.

Initial Orientation

On the top right you can see 4 icons:

	Clicking this is how you get to this help window. Click it whenever you want to open it again.
	Clicking this opens the license window. Once you purchase a license you will immediately receive a license code which you enter by clicking this button and pasting it in the registration button, as shown below: The Demo version of Fixpix Home is limited to processing 50 images and also adds a small QR code on the bottom right part of the generated image. If you've purchased a license for the full version of Fixpix Home the application will become fully functional and your name will appear in the license window.
	Clicking this opens up the settings menu from which you can change preferences and view additional options.
	Clicking this opens up the recent errors window. You should rarely see errors, but if there are issues of insufficient memory, corrupt images, network problems etc. They will be displayed here.

Using your phone or mobile device

Running FixPix starts a server that is accessible from your local wireless network, so you can also run all the functions from your mobile phone or other devices that have access to your network.

To quickly run FixPix home on your mobile device, first make sure FixPix home is up and running (and if you're reading this then it probably is).

Next, click the button on the top right portion of the window and in the menu that pops up, click the item. A window with a QR code similar to the one below should appear:

Use your favorite method on your mobile device to read the QR code and you'll have access to FixPix Home from your mobile device.

File Ordering

You can change the order in which files appear as follows:

Clicking the button will bring up the sort file menu:
From the above menu select the order in which you want the files to be sorted.

Selecting Files

To perform actions on files, they first need to be selected. Additional action buttons will be available in the toolbar after selecting one or more files to process.

A file is selected simply by clicking on its image

Accumulated Selection

It is possible to select more than one file. You can choose between two different selection modes to select multiple files to process:

Accumulated Selection Mode (Default)

A non-selected file is added to the selected files by clicking on its image
A selected file is removed from the selected list by clicking on its image

Single Selection Mode

More files can be selected by pressing the Ctrl button while clicking on their respective images.
To remove a file selection from a set of selected files, press the Ctrl button while clicking the mouse on it's image.
In this mode, clicking a file's image without having the Ctrl key pressed will select that file and remove all previous selections.

Note 👉

To switch to Single Selection Mode:

Open the preferences dialog (by clicking the button on the upper right portion of the window and then selecting the item ).
Uncheck the box next to "Use Accumulated Selection Mode".
Click the Submit button

Below is an example of 3 files that were selected by clicking on them (notice that additional buttons are now avilable to process the selected files):

Actions on Selected Files

To inspect all selected files click the button. This will open a dialog window from which you can zoom in and inspect every selected image.
To clear all selected files, click the button
To delete all selected files, click the button. This will open a dialog window to confirm deleting the files.

Note 👉

All dialog windows can also be dismissed by clicking the darker area around the dialog window or by pressing the Esc key on the keyboard

Comparing Two Images

When exactly two image files are selected, an additional image comparison button becomes available (

) as can be seen in the example below:

Clicking this comparison button opens the image comparison window where you can move the vertical before/after slider left and right to see the detailed differences between the images, as shown below:

You can also simulateously zoom in and out of both images using the mouse wheel as well as simultaneously pan both images by dragging them with the mouse pointer.

Note 👉

The image on the left of the comparison window will always be the image that was clicked first when selecting the files to compare

The Cool Stuff: Processing Images!

Select one or more images that you'd like to process (by clicking them)
Click the process button ( ) in the toolbar.The image processing window will appear with the list of function categories you can perform on the files you have selected:
👉 Notes:
- Since new features are frequently being added to the built-in FixPix feature set, you will actually see more features than the two listed above.
- To avoid a large download, FixPix comes installed with only two function categories (Basic Functions and Pligram Filters). You can easily download additional FixPix plugins which will add new function categories.
- The currently selected function is the one with a yellow background. You can select any of the available functions by scrolling and clicking the requested function or by using the up and down keys on your keyboard.
- You can type a search term in the 'Search' field to quickly filter the list of functions according to your search term. This becomes more handy once you install additional features.
Select the function or category of functions you wish to use. You can navigate between the available options by scrolling or using the up/down arrow keys. In this example, the 'Basic Functions' category was selected.
Click the button to view the available processing options for the 'Basic Functions' plugin.
In the window the opens, you can see the various effects you can perform on the images you have selected to process.

Click the effect you want to implement on the images you selected (you can tell it is selected by the blue frame) and then click the button

The image processing for the files you've selected will start and unless the processing is very short, you'll see the elapsed processing time for each image that is being processed.

Note 👉

Processing time for each image will depend on many factors, such as the type of process being selected and the size of the image, therefore the time it takes to process an image can vary between a few seconds to even a few minutes (especially when running heavy duty AI processing on a large image or slow processing hardware)

When the image processing is completed you'll be able to see the processed images.

Even Cooler Stuff: Processing Images with AI!

Admittedly, the initial set of image features that are bundled with FixPix are available in any simple image processing sofware. What makes FixPix different is it's ability to import additional plugins, each of which can contain one ore more sophisticated image processing features (such as those that utilize deep neural networks).

The additional FixPix plugins with the more sophisticated features are readily available for installation from within FixPix. The reason they are not pre-installed is that they make use of large deep neural network models and would make the FixPix application size to large for a typical installation. Making them separately downloadable also gives you freedom to choose which feature you wish to install.

Installing FixPix Plugins

To see the list of additionaly available FixPix plugins (i.e, those with the cooler features...) first open the features window (by selecting a file to process and clicking the icon in the toolbar.

Check the 'Show uninstalled features' box as shown below. A list of available FixPix plugins (2nd column) and their image processing features (3rd column) will appear in addition to the already installed features:

You can browse the list of uninstalled plugins in the same way that you'd navigate the installed plugins. When a feature of an uninstalled plugin is selected (in the example above, the "Fast Colorize" feature of the "Colorful Image Colorization" plugin), an

button will appear which will enable you to install the plugin with all the features it includes to your set of installed plugins (in this example "Colorful Image Colorization" has only one feature).

Notes 👉

You can only install a new plugin after installation for the current plugin has completed.
As you install additional plugins, the install process should become faster since new plugins will make use of previously installed components.

Select the Fixpix plugin you wish to install by clicking (or navigating with the up down arrows of the keyboard) on any function it includes. Once you've selected the FixPix plugin you wish to install (in this case the "Colorful Image Colorization" plugin), click the button to start installing it. You will then see an indication that your plugin is being downloaded for installation:

Most of the FixPix plugins are large so the time to download will vary depending on your network speed.
After the plugin is downloaded, it might need to install some additional dependencies. This might take a while, but it only needs to be performed once. The process of installing additional dependencies will be shown at the top right of the features window (example show below):
After the Fixpix plugin installation has completed, you can test any feature you've downloaded the plugin for by selecting it from the set of new plugin features and clicking the "Open" or "Process!" button.

We now have the colorization plugin installed. If we selected a black and white photo, clicking the process button will start the conversion:

and after just a few seconds, the process will complete:

There are many more features to try out in the other FixPix plugins, from artistic features to image enhancement, So now that you know how to install them try them out! More plugins and features will be added with time, so check the uninstalled features once in a while 😃.

Favorite Image Directories

To save navigation time, you can bookmark your favorite directories and then quickly jump to them to process your images.

Adding a directory to your favorites

Bookmarking a directory is done simply by clicking the bookmark button ( on the top right) when you are viewing the contents of that directory.

A window will appear for you to give a name to this bookmark (with a suggested default name):

Once you click the 'Yes' button, the directory will be added to your bookmarks

Jumping to a bookmarked directory

To quickly navigate to one of your bookmarked directories, first open the list of bookmarked directories by clicking the "Go to bookmark" button ( on the top right). A list of all your current directory bookmarks will appear:

Simply click on the name of the bookmark you wish to jump to and you'll instantly be transported to that directory.

If you wish to delete a bookmark for a directory, just click the icon to the right of the bookmark name.

Favorite Plug-Ins

Similar to how having a list favorite directories that you can quickly navigate to is helpful, when the list of installed plug-ins gets longer, it also helps having a list of favorite image processing plugins and functions.

Adding a feature from the favorites list
To add a feature to your list of favorite functions, click the heart to the right of the function name and it will turn into a red heart to indicate that it has been added to your favorite features:

Removing a feature from the favorites list
To remove a function from the list of favorites, just click the red heart and it will turn back to a heart outline and will not be included in the list of favorite functions.

Listing only the favorite features
Once added to the favorite functions you can view only your favorite functions and filter out all the other functions by clicking the "Only Favorites" checkbox as shown below.

Operations on One File

If you wish to perform an operation on just one file, Fixpix also supports using context menu operations by right clicking (Ctrl + Click on a Mac) the image you wish to perform the action on.

After right-clicking the image, a menu of possible operations on the image wil appear, as follows:

You can then select any of the operations from the menu to perform on the image:

Rename: Rename the file to a different name
Delete: Delete the file (you'll be asked to confirm)
View this file (with the option to zoom and pan it)
Process - select one of the features to perform on this image only

Credits

Open source has revolutionized the software development scene. This software makes use of open source code which was contributed by talented and generous developers and companies. Whether it is small functions or large projects, I'd like to convey my gratitude and credit them here:

This concludes the quick introduction to the FixPix image processing application. If you have any questions or suggestions please send them to info@fixpix.net. All emails are read and personally responded to.