Quick Pick

Quick Pick is a way to select transformations quickly using the keyboard -- it starts when you are at the main screen with no dialog boxes open, and you press a letter key or the space bar.

If you type a letter, a list of all transformations and tools whose names start with that letter (either upper or lower case) is displayed as one or more columns of buttons. Buttons for currently invalid operations are grayed out.

The transformations you have used the most often are highlighted at the top of the list with the most frequently used ones first -- the longer you use Picture Window, the more command usage statistics it accumulates. Up to nine of these are assigned numbers from 1 to 9.

Transformations you have never used are displayed in alphabetical order below, separated by a space from the others.

For example, if you press c, here is what is displayed, assuming the only transformations whose names begin with the letter c you have used so far are the ones with the white backgrounds. If the transformation name is more than one word, the letter will match the first letter of any of the words:

If you type space instead of a letter, a list of all transformations and tools appears.

The top line shows what you have typed so far. Below that is a list of the transformations whose names start with the letter you typed, listed in two groups. The top group lists the transformations you have used before with the most frequently used first. The first nine of these are numbered. The bottom group lists all the matching transformations you have never used, in alphabetical order.

At this point, you have three choices:

1) you can click one of the buttons to close Quick Pick and start up the corresponding transformation

2) you can type a number corresponding to one of the buttons at the head of the list to close Quick Pick and start up the corresponding transformation

3) you can type more letters

Note: The names of the transformations are the names that are displayed as captions in the image browser -- in a few cases, these are shortened versions of the names displayed in the Transformation menu.

As you type more letters, the name match is refined by showing only those buttons whose names contain the characters after the first character somewhere as a substring, i.e. in order with no gaps. Matching is case-insensitive, so for example a matches either a or A. If you get to the point where the entered name is an complete match for a button name or there is only one un-grayed button, Quick Pick is closed and the corresponding tool or transformation is started up. If no names match the letters you entered, the last letter you entered is ignored. For example if you type cb the display changes to:

This is the subset of buttons that start with c and also contain a b anywhere in the name. If you then type a, only Color Balance will match since it is the only button starting with c that also has ba in its name (all the others have some other letter following the b), so Quick Pick closes and launches the Color Balance transformation. On the other hand, if you had typed cbo instead of cba only the Checkerboard button matches and Quick Pick closes and launches the Checkerboard transformation.

Typing Esc or Enter closes Quick Pick.

Advanced Tip:

If you want exercise more control over the command order, you can set the use counts for each transformation manually by editing the text file Session.state in the folder: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Picture Window Pro\Session State (where <user> is your user name. Be careful editing this file -- save a backup copy before making any changes so you can recover if you accidentally mess it up. In case of disaster you can always just delete the file although you will lose some settings that are normally preserved between editing sessions.

Use counts are located near the end of the file and look like this:

use_count ″brightness_curve″ 3

The quoted text is the name of the transformation and the number at the end is its use count. The use count is simply a counter of how many times the transformation has been selected from the main menu or via quick pick -- the higher the number, the closer to the top of quick pick lists it will appear. If there is no entry for a transformation, its use count is zero, so simply deleting a use count line will move the transformation to the bottom part of the list.