The Saver action serves three purposes.  First it is used to save images that have been modified within digital photo utilities.  For example, if you resize an image, digital photo utilities does not automatically save the result because you may want to perform other tasks before you save or you may wish to do something other than save your image such as send it in an email.  Two common destinations for processed images are email and saving back to the hard disk.  Saver is used to save an image to disk.

Secondly, Saver can be used to generate a name for a file.  For example, when you are resizing images, you often will want to keep the original files intact.  Therefore, you will need to be able to save the resized image under a new name.  For example, this utility can be used to generate names based on the date an image was created.  This is usually much more useful than the default names the digital cameras provide.  As you change the parameters in this dialog box, the top portion of the window is continuously updated to show what image file name will be generated given the existing settings.

Thirdly, and perhaps most powerful, is the ability of the Saver to help organize your images.  It allows you to organize them in folders by date and has a unique feature called "Session."  Using these tools you can easily, and in many instances automatically, place your image files into folders for easy retrieval later.

The Saver editor window is divided into several sections each described below:

File

Use this section to specify the basic action you would like to perform.  If you would like to create a copy of the image (i.e. you are resizing or other destructive action where you would like to keep the original intact) click on "Create a new copy."  If you would like to modify the image you drag and drop by overwriting or changing the name of the original file, choose "Overwrite/Rename original file."  You should be very careful about using the overwrite option because it can permanently damage your files. 

You may also make the resultant image file write protected (to prevent accidental overwriting of the image later) by checking "Make file read only."  Otherwise the resultant file will not be write protected. 

If you would like the resultant file's date and time attributes to be unchanged, check the "Keep original date and time" box.  Otherwise the resultant file's creation and modification date attributes (as you see them in the operating system) will reflect the time you run the action.

Destination

Choose "Original Directory" to save your processed image into the directory it originated from.  Once again, in this case you should be very careful not to unintentionally  overwrite the original file. 

Choose "Specified Directory" to place the processed image into the the directory you enter.  You can choose the destination directory by clicking the Browse button.  If you check the "Open Explorer when complete" box, a Windows Explorer window will open when the action is complete to show you where the files were placed.

Quality

After the image has been processed, you can control the file size of the image by controlling the image quality (note: this affects the quality of the image NOT the size of the image in pixels!).  The quality value should be between 1 and 10 to specify the trade-off between size and quality.  A value of 1 would mean maximum compression and thus the smallest file size and poorest quality image as a result.  A value of 10 would generate the largest file size, but the highest quality images. 

"Only recompress if necessary", when selected, will only recompress the image if it is required.  If you are doing any lossless processing (such as lossless rotation), the "Only recompress if necessary" option must be checked in order to keep from decompressing and recompressing the image and thus losing some image quality.   In general, this option should only be checked if you want to resave an image (without resizing or other processing) at a higher compression (lower quality) to create a smaller file size.  For more information about compression and image quality, click here.

Organization

"Place in Year subfolder", when checked, will place the image in a subdirectory of the specified directory named for the year of the image.  If the image contains embedded EXIF information, the date is extracted from this information.  If no EXIF information is available, the date and time of the file containing the image are used.

"Place in Month subfolder", when checked, will place the image in a subdirectory of the specified directory named for the month of the image.  If the image contains embedded EXIF information, the date is extracted from this information.  If no EXIF information is available, the date and time of the file containing the image are used.

"Place in Session subfolder", when checked, will organize images to the event or session they were taken for.  This feature is unique to digital photo utilities.  It capitalizes on the fact that images that were created together in time tend to record the same session or event and thus should be organized together.  Images are organized according to the time they were taken and then placed one by one into a session folder.  If an image's creation time is more than the defined threshold different from the previous images time, a new session is created and images are placed in this folder until a new session is created and so on.  For example, if there are three images taken on the same day at 1pm, 1:30pm and 5pm respectively, and the Session Threshold is set to 2 hrs 00 mins, then image one and two will be placed in the first session folder and image three will be placed in its own session.  If the image contains embedded EXIF information, the date is extracted from this information.  If no EXIF information is available, the date and time of the file containing the image are used.

If a combination of these options are checked, then a hierarchy of directories is created first for the year of the image, then for the month and finally for the session.  In addition, if you have "Original Directory" selected in the Destination area, separate directory structures will be created for each directory of images that is dragged onto the action.  This is a very powerful feature that lets you organize all your images by date with a single operation.   If "Specified Directory" is selected, then all the images from all the folders you drag and drop on the action will be combined together.

Example:  Suppose you have three folders, Monika, Erik and Elise, each containing pictures taken by a correspondingly named photographer.  If you choose to organize by year, month and session subfolders with the "Original Directory" option selected, the result will be that each of the three folders will be organized internally (i.e. the directory "Monika" will contain a subdirectory for the year "2002" and inside that will be a directory for each month and within that will be directories for each session.  Only photos that began in the "Monika" folder will be included.  Similarly the folders "Elise" and "Erik" would contain organized photos.  If, instead, you choose the same options except you check the "Specified Directory" option and specify a directory called "All Photos," The directory "All Photos" would contain a subdirectory for the year "2002" and inside that would be a directory for each month and inside that would be a directory for each session.  The photos from Monika, Erik and Elise would all be combined in this directory structure and if two photographers were shooting pictures at the same time, their images would be combined together into the same session.

If "Query Session Name" is selected, then the after the images are grouped into sessions, you will have the option to create a name for the session folder.  digital photo utilities displays the window pictured above which shows several pictures from the session as well as the date and time that the session occurred.  You may either type in a name that will become the name of a new directory in which the images will be stored, or you can click on the drop down triangle on the right side of the text box to see a list of existing sessions.  If you choose an existing session, these images will be placed in the folder with the existing images in the selected session.  This is an extremely powerful feature that is unique to digital photo utilities.

Name Generation

In this section you define the file name for the image.  If you chose "Overwrite original file," the original file name will be renamed to the generated name.  Otherwise, the processed image will be saved to a new file based on the generated name.

If you check the "Prompt to override filename" button, as each image is saved, you will be asked to confirm the name of the file.  You will have the opportunity to type in a new name if you like.

The text box near the bottom of this section gives instructions to digital photo utilities about what name to generate for a given image.  Text inside the curly bases "{" and "}" will be replaced with the associated data about the file.  For example "{year}" will be replaced with the year the image was taken.  You may insert these instructions anywhere you like in the image by clicking where you want the text to appear and clicking the appropriate button above.  As you do this, an example file name is generated in real time below to show you what your output will look like.  For more information see the section on text substitution.  Each element is described below:

Year - The numeric value for the year the image was taken (e.g. 2002) if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the year of the image file's creation date.

Full Month - The text value for the full month name the image was taken (e.g. January) if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the month of the image file's creation date.

Month - The text value for the 3 day abbreviation of the month the image was taken (e.g. Jan) if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the month of the image file's creation date.

Month Num - The numeric value for the number associated with the month the image was taken (e.g. Jan = 1, Feb = 2 etc.) if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the month of the image file's creation date. 

Day - The numeric value for the day the image was taken if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the day of the image file's creation date.

Hour - The numeric value for the hour the image was taken if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the hour of the image file's creation date.

Minute - The numeric value for the minute the image was taken if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the minute of the image file's creation date.

Second - The numeric value for the second the image was taken if the EXIF data is intact, otherwise the second of the image file's creation date.

Original File Name - Where ever this directive appears, the name of the source file (the one dragged and dropped) will be substituted.  Use this option if you wish to add to an existing name.  For example you may want to add "-tn" to a file name to show that it is a thumbnail of the associated image.

Serial Number - The serial number is just a number that is incremented each time an action is run and thus can be used to give each image a unique name.  The text box beside this button contains the current value of the serial number counter.  Choosing the "Reset serial number each time" box will cause the serial number to be set back to the original value after each set of images is processed.

In addition to these you may use any of the metadata substitutions listed here.

Please note that you may only use valid filename characters.  Do not use the following characters in directory names or file names, because they are reserved in Windows: < > : " / \ |