Tag: Properties

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Fact Sheet Fusion v2

Media Properties

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Media Manager

Media Properties

Media Properties panel
Media Properties panel

The Media Properties panel is located to the top right of the media list panel. It displays all of the properties that are associated with the currently selected media item. Different properties may be available depending on the media type. For example only images have watermarking properties available. Some media properties are informative (read) only, that is they can’t be modified. For example the media file size is informative only. Informative or read-only properties are identified by ghosted (light grey) labels, while editable properties are shown with regular text labels.

Properties are grouped within related categories. Each property group has a Group name (bold) which can be expanded and collapsed.

Editing a property depends on the property type. Some properties such as Custom Thumbnail size require two values to be entered for width and height, while others may be free form text. Each property has explanatory text associated with it that is displayed at the bottom of the property panel. This explanatory text is displayed when the property is selected.

Properties

General (Section)

Category – Shows the name of the Category the selected media is located in.

Filename – Shows the filename associated with the media item. You can, if needed, change the file associated with the media item by clicking on the file browse option on the right ([…]). This will replace the media file with the selected file while maintaining the media properties such as caption and copyright etc. This is useful ,for example, where your filename is extremely long and causes a problem when the exported path exceeds the maximum length. Or if you’ve modified the media store filename outside the scope of Fact Sheet Fusion, an action which is not recommended unless you are an advanced user.

Alternate Thumbnail – Allows you to select an image to represent the media item. Media types that don’t have a natural image association such sound files will automatically be assigned a default alternative thumbnail for that media group. These default thumbnails are located in the ‘Icon’ folder of the Fusion Database media store folder. Selecting this property will show a browse option that will let you select a custom thumbnail image file anywhere on your file system. The selected alternative image will automatically be copied across to your Fusion media store. Video media items will automatically have a frame captured and associated as the Alternate Thumbnail. These defaults can be changed by selecting a different image as describe above.

Note

You must have installed FFMPEG utility to enable video frame capture. You link the FFMPEG utility location to Fact Sheet Fusion via the Preferences dialog.

Media Type – Displays file type of the media item. E.g. Image, Video, PDF etc.

Caption Alternative Text – This text is automatically captured from the HTML Media caption associated with the media. It is a plain text version of this caption. This alternative text, without HTML formatting, can be useful when used in export templates that use JavaScript or require no HTML tags.

Custom Thumbnail Size – You can set a preferred thumbnail size for an individual media item. This can be used rather than the default export thumbnail size. The export dialog will allow you to override the Custom Thumbnail size. Normally consistent thumbnail sizes within fact sheets are desired, but this option allows you to fully customize each thumbnail, if needed.

Photographer – When selected this property will display a small text box to enter the media photographer’s details.

Copyright Statement – Similar to the Photographer property a small text box will be displayed allowing you to enter a copyright statement for the media item.

Comments – Author comments regarding the media item. These comments are private and not exported with the fact sheet. However, they are included as a part of the Media List file, if exported.

Review – You may mark a media item for review. By doing so, you can control via the export option whether this media is included in the fact sheet.

Image Watermark (Section)

Watermark Image – A drop down list of all watermark images that have been added to the project via the Watermark Image Manager. See the Watermark Image Manager for more information on this topic. 

Inherit Settings – The Watermark Image Manager can set global default settings for an individual watermark image. This can save applying the same watermark settings to every image the watermark is associated with. If you wish to override the global watermark settings for any selected watermark image then change the Inherit Settings to false. You can change back to the global settings for the selected watermark image anytime. Any custom watermark settings will be saved in case you wish to revert back to the individual custom settings.

Present Image Position – This setting is only available if a Watermark image has been selected and the Watermark Image Inherit settings are set to False.

Watermark position options dropdown
Watermark position options dropdown

There are nine preset positions where the image watermark can be placed on the image as shown in the screen capture above. If a present position is selected this will take precedence over a manually set position (see Position Property below). 

Position – The position property allows you to set an X & Y pixel coordinate in relation to the  watermark image and the main image. The image watermark image will be positioned from its top left at the defined XY coordinates of the main image. Setting this property is often easier via the Image viewer as it will dynamically preview the watermark as the properties are changed. See the Image Viewer help topic for more information on this. The Position value will be overridden by the Preset Image Position, if selected.

Transparency Level – The transparency level of the watermark image determines how much of the underlying image shows through the watermark. The transparency level can be between 1 and 100. The lower the value the more transparent the watermark image will be. If the value is set too low the watermark image may be very difficult to see in the main image. Setting a value of 100 means no transparency will be added to the watermark image. 

Longest side – You can set the size of the watermark based on the longest side in pixels. This effectively is like defining the size of a square box that the watermark image must fit within while maintaining its aspect ratio. A watermark image will not be resized beyond its actual size if the longest size exceeds the watermark dimensions. Also if the longest side value exceeds the exported image size the watermark will be resized to fit within the image boundary.

Size to parent – You can define a percentage value for the watermark to the parent image. The Size to parent value must be between 1 and 100.

Text Watermark (Section)

Custom Watermark Text – Enter the text you wish to use as the watermark.

Font – Define the font type and size you prefer for the text watermark.

Preset Text Position – There are nine preset positions where the text watermark can be placed on the image. If a present position is selected this will take precedence over a manually set position (see Position Property below).

Position – The position property allows you to set an X & Y pixel coordinate in relation to the watermark text and the image. The text watermark will be positioned from its top left at the defined XY coordinates of the main image. Setting this property is often easier via the Image viewer as it will dynamically preview the watermark as the properties are changed. See the Image Viewer help topic for more information on this. The Position value will be overridden by the Preset Text Position if selected.

Text Watermark Color – Define the color of the text watermark.

Drop Shadow – Applies a drop shadow to the text watermark. The drop shadow can add more definition to the text making it clearer on the image it’s applied to.

Text watermark Transparency – The transparency level of the text watermark determines how much of the underlying image shows through the text watermark. The transparency level can be between 1 and 100. The lower the value the more transparent the text will be. If the value is set too low the text may be very difficult to see in the main image. Setting a value of 100 means no transparency will be added to the text watermark.

Auto Size – The auto size option automatically sizes the font based on the size of the image it’s being applied to and the position that has been selected.

Exclusions (Section)

Exclude – If set to true the media item will be excluded from Exports.

Media Caption

Add text associated with the image. The caption text is HTML based and has the mini HTML editor associated with it.

Global Caption Clean

See Global cleaning options.

Categories
Fact Sheet Fusion v2

Getting Started

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Use this tutorial to jump start your understanding of Fact Sheet Fusion and all the new features of version 2. This outline is not intended to replace the Help documentation and will deal more in broad concepts, rather than the step by step how to.

First – before getting to Version 2, let’s look at the differences between version 1 and Version 2. For those of you who have experience with Fact Sheet Fusion v1, you will remember that you first have to name and open a file and then you enter a list of topics and a list of entities and then type in or paste in text for each topic/entity combination and add images and captions for each entity, using the same dialogue frame.

With Fact Sheet Fusion version 2, entering topics/entities and text is much the same as with version 1. The main difference is how you deal with images. In Fact Sheet Fusion v2 there is a separate Media Manager that enables you to import and edit images, add watermarks, etc. You can then add images from this media database to a specific project database.

So now let’s look at the way in which this new version of Fact Sheet Fusion is structured (see Fig. 1)

Figure 1. Fact Sheet Fusion v2 showing databases and projects and the common media library associated with each database
Figure 1. Fact Sheet Fusion v2 showing databases and projects and the common media library associated with each database

A Fusion database holds one or more projects. Projects hold the fundamental data associated with creating your fact sheets (i.e. Topic headings, Entities and their text content.) Each database has its own media library: projects within that database can then utilize images and other multimedia items from than common database. Projects within a database don’t need to be related in anyway, but they normally will be.

Therefore, if you are just starting or if your intended (new) project is completely unrelated to any existing database projects (that is, they are unlikely to share topics or media) then it is probably best to create a new database.

Fact Sheet Fusion database selection dialog
Fact Sheet Fusion database selection dialog

Creating projects

Once a Fusion database has been created you can create one or more projects.

Projects dialog

The most common reason for creating multiple projects within a database are likely to be where the entities in the different projects are related, don’t share topic headings but may share common media.

Note

It is possible to create all your projects within the one database to share a media library, even if they are completely unrelated. There is no functional disadvantage in doing so.

If you have common entities that share (many) topics headings, but you need to manage groups of discrete entities you can achieve this in a single project via the Subset feature. For example, if you had a large project containing plants species, you may want to have the ability to separate these species into groups such as weeds, natives, rainforest species, aquatics etc. Subsets will allow you to make these assertions and export them as separate sets of fact sheets, if desired.

Once a project has been created you can proceed to open it, rename it, delete it or import an older version 1.x databases into it.

Fact Sheet Fusion database projects selection dialog
Fact Sheet Fusion database projects selection dialog

You can import a v1.x database into a project anytime, though normally this would be done at the beginning of a project. The import dialog will allow you to select which Topics and Entities you wish to import, along with the media and glossary. It also offers a feature to clean any content in the older database that may be contaminated with undesirable formatting (e.g. MS Word HTML) that will override the export templates.

Importing MS Word documents, HTML pages or Lucid key data is done via the Content Import option accessible in the main interface.

To import a v1.x Glossary you need to assign a name (label) to the glossary. This is called a glossary set. The glossary features in version 2 has been greatly expanded and will be covered in more detail further below.

Tip

Importing will not create duplicates in your project. If for example you were to mistakenly select to import a topic that had been imported previously the import process will not overwrite the existing records for matching entities.

Managing Project data

If you’ve not used version 1.x before and are new to Fact Sheet Fusion then it is important to understand how data is managed. The three main points of data are:

  • Topics – These are the headings of the fact sheets.
  • Entities – These are the individual species, symptoms or other specific entities that the fact sheets are about.
  • Entity Topic Text – Each combination of a Topic and Entity can hold information (e.g. text and media related text).
Fact Sheet Fusions main interface
Fact Sheet Fusions main interface

To start entering fact sheet content you first need to create one or more Topics and at least one entity. Once these have been created you can begin entering text. The fact sheet text is saved against the currently selected Topic and Entity. Think of this as a database record (which it is!).

Tips

There is no need to remember to save after making changes. Fact Sheet Fusion automatically saves changes when you move around the topics and entities. In fact there is no save button – there’s no need!

  • Topics and Entities can be renamed at any time.
  • If you already have a list of Topics or Entities to add to your project don’t retype them. Use the import option (right click in the Topic or Entity lists to see the context pop-menu options). The Import dialog is a simple text box where you can paste a list of Topics or Entities. Just ensure each are on a separate line.
  • Use keyboard shortcuts for faster data entry. For example, when editing text for a given Topic/Entity combination you can use Ctrl + Up/Down arrows to change Topics. Or Ctrl + Left/Right arrows to change Entities while remaining on the selected Topic.

Whenever you click on or select a Topic or Entity (or media items) you will see on the top right of the main interface a properties window. These properties give you various options and control over how they are dealt with during the export process. For example you can hide the Topic Label as a heading but still retain its content in the fact sheet.

Managing Media

Fact Sheet Fusion supports a diverse range of media attachments such as images, video, sound, PDFs, and Office documents. The way Fact Sheet Fusion now handles media is a large change from the first edition. Media within Fact Sheet Fusion is held at the database level and can be accessed by all the separate projects held within that database. This means that you only need to write captions and apply watermarks, among other properties, once and these details will be used whenever you attach the media item in a project.

While managing media at a global level reduces workload and removes duplication issues when managing multiple related projects, Fact Sheet Fusion still allows you to customize the media each time it is attached within a project, if needed.

The Media Manager, as the name implies, allows you to “manage” your media items. You can think about the Media Manager as a “library”.

Fact Sheet Fusion Media Manager Interface

Adding Media Categories

To add a new media category either select the ‘Add’ option from the Categories menu, or right click in the Media Categories list and select ‘Add’ from the pop-up context menu. The add category dialog will appear.

Fact Sheet Fusion Add Media Category Dialog
Fact Sheet Fusion Add Media Category Dialog

Enter the category name and click the add button. The new category will be added below the currently selected category.

Tip

Media categories will be automatically created for you when add a new Entity. The automatic media category name will be the same as the Entity.

Adding Media to the Library

To add media, select the ‘Add’ (Add button) button from the Media panel toolbar, or right click in an empty area of the media panel and select ‘Add’ from the pop-up context menu.

Adding Media to an Entity, Entity Topic or Glossary term

To associate media against an Entity, Entity Topic or Glossary term click the attach media button (Add button) in the main interface window for Entities or Entity Topics. Or via the Glossary dialog. This will load the Media Manager to allow you to select one or more media items. If you have selected to add media to an Entity the Media Manager will automatically load the matching category for you. Once you have selected the media you wish to attach, click the large Add button located at the bottom of the Media Manager.

Add media button at the bottom of the Media Manager dialog
Add media button at the bottom of the Media Manager dialog

Media Properties – Inherited vs Derived

By default when a media item is attached to an Entity Topic or to an Entity the “library” edition is used. All of the media properties, such as caption, photographer, copyright text, thumbnail image and watermark are inherited from the library copy. In most cases there is no need to re-enter the caption or adjust its settings as it’s already been done.

However, there may be circumstances where you do need to customize the details of a media item. For example, change the preferred watermark or customize the caption just for the current instance in the loaded project. In this scenario you can set the attached media item to be “derived” from the library. That is the media item still references the same file, but uses a different set of media properties. This leaves the global library edition unchanged, but allows a customized instance for use in the current project.

The main data entry interface allows easy editing of media properties that are global or derived. It’s just a matter to changing the view between the two states. This can be done above the properties panel (when a media has been selected). You can select to view the Library (global) properties of a media item or the derived (custom) properties.

If you have switched to the derived view you still need to tell Fact Sheet Fusion that the media item is to use a derived copy of the properties, otherwise every media item viewed would use a derived copy. You set a media item to be derived by setting the ‘Media Object Derived’ property to ‘True’.

Note

Any edits to media properties within the Media Manager are global in nature.

Tip

If you set a media item derived status back to false (e.g. return to using the library properties) the derived properties will still be kept in case you want to use the derived properties again.