a program for viewing and sorting the pictures

[Babahara]

I've been long sick of sorting out the pictures, which usually prevents me from writing any real stories in the written form for sims. Writing them is always a torture, so I usually have a few generations' gaps in each household, because I'm so sick of the process of sorting out pictures for them. So I thought I'd finally ask how people cope with it, after all, people do write legacies...

I use the default Windows program that opens pictures (I do not know how it's called, it doesn't seem to have a real title), and it cannot show them in correct order for the life of it. No matter what I press, left or right, up or down, it randomly skips a lot of pictures while showing them. That forces me to open hundreds of pictures one by one in order to sort them correctly by household. And afterwards it makes it extremely difficult to find correct pictures in the folder, because instead of going one by one they're skipped forward, so I basically have to match the complex numbered names that TS2 gives to the pictures in order to find the picture in the folder. As for other programs I know, like Ms Paint, they don't give you a possibility of scrolling through pictures at all.

Surely there are other sane ways to deal with this, otherwise nobody would write stories? :rolleyes: All I need is a program that lets me view pictures in correct order, one by one, from top to bottom, in the Storytelling folder for my hood. And if there's anything else that can make life easier, I'd really appreciate it :) Too bad you cannot name pictures in the game to be saved by their names.



Another question related to pictures that I would really like to know the answer to:

Can you export an in-game story album somehow? Not to Internet, which is the only option I guess, I mean export it to html or other format to read on your own PC isntead, in order to incorporate it into your story files! That would certainly enable me to write legacies uninterruptedly, because the story editor in the game is really neat and nice to use, however, the inability to export anything makes it useless.

[Babahara]

You can really edit those files in MS Word? Wow, that's fantastic. I tried opening them to no avail in a readable format, but it didn't occur to me that they could be opened with Ms Word.

And that program in the link is really great, thanks a lot! I'm happy that I asked these questions here.

[Peni Griffin]

It has to be the right version of Word, ones that handle .xml files; but the most recent couple of versions will do that. My husband's Word will not; right now I can only view the file complete with pictures from inside the game. If I want to read it without the game open I have to open it in html, not see the pictures, and not be able to edit. Which is fine, because it means I have to write the stories in-game and the field size acts as a check on my natural verbosity.

I don't have a problem locating things when I want to upload or copy a picture somewhere, because I have the storytelling folder displaying thumbnails and arranged in chronological order; so all I have to do is look at the most recent pictures - letting time lapse between the game and the bookkeeping is fatal to any record of the game, regardless of your method - and click the thumbnails to open them in PhotoShop. I can then leave them open to deal with as I see fit. I could do Save As to get them into another folder with names that were easily sorted, but mostly I just leave open the ones I want to upload, and then all I have to do to find them is mouse over the tab for PhotoShop while I'm doing the upload so I can see the gobbledygook filename of the one on top. It does require a certain amount of scrolling, but since in the upload view they're grouped by filename and the naming protocol is file type-household number-photo number (snapshot-1abcdefg-fb45367 or whatever), all the files for one household are grouped together and it's not that big a deal.

The trick to doing it is to get to it promptly and in small increments so it doesn't get to be a huge overwhelming chore; nor do you have a chance to forget why you took this particular picture or what happened around it.

[Babahara]

Thanx, Peni, that explains why I still fail to view xml files with Ms Word. It's an older version. Probably I should search for some xml viewing program online, they should exist.

And big thanx for mentioning the thumbnails, I've done everything through Total Commander for years and forgot such simple things as the existence of the thumbnail mode in the folders (they've always been set to show "lists"). Seeing all pictures at once in the folder makes things much easier, indeed!

My problem is not even sorting the pictures lately, it's more in taking pictures in the game. Sometimes this process of sorting gets so annoying that I give up on taking pictures, so as a result I have nothing to back up a couple of last generations, for example. But to be fair I've always loved to play more than write about it, as mostly nothing outstanding enough is happening.

[cheshirekat]

I also used to think taking pictures in-game was more hassle than it was worth.

Now I use an external program to take my picture, then I immediately save the pictures to an organized group of folders. Each 'hood and subhood has their own folder, then each family has their own folder. I also have folders just for pictures of houses and community lots.

Finding photos is fairly easy, because I just go to the family folder. In cases where more than one family is in the picture, I just make a copy of the picture for each family.

I give each picture names like this:
"Goth - Cassandra - First makeover"
"Estraneo - Ithorian - Got new clothes"
"Boulder - Goldie - is a thief"
"Flynn - Flossi gets gossip from Graziella Boulder"
"Flynn - Freighdah caught a fish and a boot!"
"Marzia - Ardesia throwing water balloon at Terrea"

When I want to sort the pictures by the time they occurred, I just sort the folder by date. If I am taking multiple pictures of an event or sim, I usually number them 1, 2, 3, etc., so I already know the correct order. New sims always get portraits taken. I try to find a non-busy background then the picture names are simple, "Marzia - Carina1", Marzia - Carina2", Marzia - Carina3", etc. This makes it easy for me to find a simple picture to copy to my spreadsheet where I keep portrait-type pictures of my sims with their in-game info. I've gotten in the habit of giving makeovers frequently, but I don't always update the spreadsheet with a new picture right away. When I switch to a new lot, or see sims at the community lots, I always look to see if they look like their picture in the spreadsheet. If not, I just go to their folders and look at the most recent pictures to find one to use in the spreadsheet.

Sometimes, when clothing or hair doesn't look so great as it does in the online preview pictures, I will delete clothes from my Downloads folders. Then I end up having to do a makeover next time I load the game. I always look at the previous pictures so I know what colors of outfits or hair to choose when I do a makeover so they don't live the rest of their lives in ugly maxis clothes/hair but have something similar to what they wore before.

Then, when I am writing, I can just look at the recent pictures I want without even having to load the game.

[Peni Griffin]

The last thing I do in any play session is open the storytelling folder for the household, arrange the photos, and do the write-up. That way I delete any redundant pictures immediately; the story is there and up-to-date next time I open the household and need to refresh my memory; everything is fresh in my mind; and I never have to do too much writing at one time. If something significant happened for someone in this household during somebody else's session, I try to remember that at the beginning of the rotation and go straight to the second tab to bring up the "all neighborhood" snap, as it quickly gets tedious sorting through those at thumbnail size and the sooner I do it, the better.

[Babahara]

Now I use an external program to take my picture, then I immediately save the pictures to an organized group of folders. Each 'hood and subhood has their own folder, then each family has their own folder. I also have folders just for pictures of houses and community lots.
Do you have to alt-tab from the game to save your pictures with that external program? I think it's too much of a hassle, to be honest. I tried that and it was awful to the point when I didn't want to take pictures any longer at all, just to avoid alt-tabbing and then waiting for the game to start up. Maybe if your PC is very fast and the switch back to the game is instant then it's no problem. But I'd rather not. On another hand, if you could take screenshots and name them right in the game, it's a different matter :)

[Babahara]

In order to deal with having too many pictures for a particular family, you may try organizing them in terms of chapters.
I'm already doing something alike, but it doesn't help, because it takes too much to sort out the pictures into separate folder and into their subfolders :) But with all the helpful hints in the thread I think the situation is going to change. So far the best idea seems to be writing the story with the in-game editor on the fly while playing, and then opening it with the unnamed program in the link above and export it to html. Pictures can be easily accessed from there, and everything can be quickly copied over somewhere else, it's so nice :)

Gadwin PrintScreen allows you to take many printscreens and save them in a desirable location, all set by you. It's free, and you have many options in the program.
Judging by its description, it will alt-tab your game on its own anyway. Even if preview is disabled and the naming is set to automatic, it still shows a window telling you that the screen has been captured. I guess it will switch your game to the desktop in order to show you that window. I'll check it tomorrow. :)

[Babahara]

After checking the program, yes it does switch you to desktop :) It would be nice if it could take screenshots while completely suppressing any notice that it has taken them, haha.

[maxon]

I use Fraps for screen caps. It just takes the picture and shoves it in a folder for you to look at later. You can use it to make movies too.

Personally, I take mostly in game pictures for use in game - so I can add them to the family story-telling feature. I use Fraps to capture pictures because I like them particularly, to record a building project, CC project and so on. Most often to capture pictures for when I'm uploading CC here or elsewhere. Fraps seems to produce reasonable quality pics.