Picture galleries in SeeYou

In version 4.2 a very nice feature was added in SeeYou – the ability to link photographs to your flight and  create a stunning slideshow. 

Adding pictures is a lot of fun even if you are not planning to show them to friends. Do you have lots of  pictures from your flights and you have lots of IGC files? Try dropping the pictures on your flight opened in SeeYou. If the camera time and UTC offset in SeeYou are in sync your pictures will automatically be located where you took them (if they are not you can easily offset the pictures so that they will fit the flight).

How to attach photos from your flight to your IGC files 

First the prerequisites for the automatics to work well:

1. Make sure that in SeeYou > Tools > Options > UTC offset matches the UTC offset of your flight.
2. Hopefully your camera date and time and/or time zone was set correctly when you took the pictures (make sure this is true for all your future pictures). 

If these conditions are met then you can add photos by:

• Opening your IGC file in SeeYou 
• Drag & Drop the pictures from Windows Explorer to the SeeYou flight window

or

• Right click on the flight then Photos > Attach from File or Attach from Folder

or  

• Edit > Flight properties > Photos >  to add all pictures from a folder

That’s all really if the UTC offset and camera time were correct.  

Manipulating the Photo panel

By clicking on a picture in the photo panel that picture becomes the active one and the glider position moves to the position where the picture has been taken. 

Double clicking on the picture will open it in your default picture viewer in full size.

Rolling the mouse scroll wheel when hovered over the Photo panel will change the active photo (and consecutively will move the glider position). 

During the animation of a flight (Animate > Play) only the location of the active picture is presented with  a photo icon on the map. As animation passes the next photo the Photo panel moves and active photo icon changes. 

You may resize and dock the Photo panel just as any other panel. You may even move it to your second monitor if you wish. 

Advanced options

As it happens the camera time or UTC offset in SeeYou will often be out of sync. This is not a problem but you do have to tell SeeYou when exactly the photos were taken in order for them to be displayed at the correct location. Go to Edit > Flight Properties > Photos > tick “Advanced settings”. You can now set camera time offset in seconds (an hour has 3600 seconds, two hours 7200 etc). Caption below the offset time edit box will help you determine exactly how many hours minutes and seconds you have setup. You can even correct for days if the date on your camera was incorrect. 

Please note: pictures taken before the takeoff will be attached to the first few fixes in the file. Pictures  taken after landing will be attached to the last fixes of the IGC file. It makes a great impression to have a picture of the glider, airport or the people who have helped you get started as the first picture in your IGC file. 

Conveniently share with friends or on your blog in IGCX format

Once you have added all the pictures that you wanted to attach to the IGC file you may save the IGC file  with File > Save. Links to full resolution pictures on your hard drive will be added to the IGC file without loosing the IGC file integrity. This is great for viewing the files on your one and only computer. But if you want to send your flight with pictures to a friend or even only open it on your other computer you whold have to send the pictures and preserve folder structure. Since that would be a pain and mostly wouldn’t work you can now save your flight in a proprietary IGCX format. You can save a file in IGCX format by going to File > Save As > Save as type > IGCX Format File. After you choose the location and file name you get to choose the size of the pictures. The size you choose depends on how you are going to share the IGCX file. If you are going to email it try to keep the complete file size less than 5 MB. 

Have fun adding pictures to your old flights!