When you first open PhotoMesa, you will see an "explorer" bar on the left that shows you a hierarchical view of your file system. You can check the checkbox of any folder to see the photos within it. As with other Windows applications, you can hold down the "Control" key to select multiple folders or the "Shift" key to select a range of folders. Then, clicking on the checkbox while multiple folders are selected will check (or uncheck) all the selected folders. If the "Select/Deselect Sub-folders" option just below the folder list is selected, then checking a folder will select (or unselect) all the subfolders of that folder.
Note: The first time PhotoMesa sees a particular image, it creates some special small "thumbnails" that it uses to display high quality small versions of that photo more quickly. This means that the first time you use PhotoMesa to look at a folder, it will be slow to show the photos - but not to worry. This process only happens once, and PhotoMesa will load the photos much more quickly the next time you look at these photos. You can tell when this is happening because PhotoMesa displays the text "Low-Q" over the photo while it is in "low-quality" mode and has not yet created the thumbnails. You will see the "Low-Q" text disappear from photos one at a time as PhotoMesa creates the thumbnails.
On the right side of the PhotoMesa window, you will find the main photo browsing window. The particular layout of photos will depend on how many folders you have selected, and how many photos have been loaded - but an example with 5 folders showing 108 photos looks like this:
By default, PhotoMesa shows all photos in a single view. No matter how many photos are found, they will be scaled and laid out to fit in the window. Now, it starts to get interesting. You can get a bigger preview of any photo by just moving the mouse over one of the small thumbs - like this:
You probably also noticed that when you move the mouse, a red rectangle with thick corners follows the mouse around (as in the picture just above). This is the "navigation indicator" that tells you where you will go when you zoom in. PhotoMesa uses a zoomable user interface (or ZUI) by default, and supports browsing of photos by zooming in or out. There are many ways to navigate within PhotoMesa - but the simplest way is just to use your mouse. The left mouse button zooms in and the right mouse button zooms out. You can control the size of the red rectangle before you zoom by either turning the mouse wheel if you have one, or by holding down the Control key and pressing the up or down arrows.
Holding down the "Control" key while pressing the left mouse button will select an image which can then be drag and dropped to another application (such as to an email or your files). If you press the right mouse button while the "Control" key is down, then a context menu will give you some options for manipulating the selected images.
Double-clicking an image enters a full-screen mode where only that image is shown and nothing else. You can see other images by pressing the arrow keys, and you can use the mouse wheel to magnify the image. Press the Escape key to exit full-screen mode, or press the right mouse button to show a context menu that will also let you exit it.
Sometimes, you may find that you prefer a more traditional scrolling style of
interaction. PhotoMesa also offers this with "Scroll" mode:
.
In Scroll mode, the photos are laid out in a single long column with a
scrollbar on the right to control which photos are visible. The size of photos
can be controlled with the magnification slider (
).
Previews are still shown on mouse-over, and double-clicking on a photo still
shows it in full-screen. Note that in this mode, there is no zooming. In
this mode, the mouse now selects images directly, so you no longer have
to hold the Control key to select images.
When you are in Scroll mode, it may be useful to see a larger preview of a particular photo. You can get one by selecting the View->Photo Panel menu. (This preview is also available in Zoom mode, but it is more useful in Scroll mode).
In any mode, the order that photos are displayed in can be controlled by selecting the "Sort by" button and selecting the sorting criteria. This button controls the order of groups and the order of photos within groups. If you select the last item - "Enhanced Sorting" - then a new button appears that lets you separately control the order of the groups from the order of the photos.
You also have control over how photos are grouped. By default, photos are grouped by the folder they belong to - but you can also group them by when the photos were taken (month or year). Also, once you have annotated your photos, it may become useful to start grouping the photos by other criteria - such as who is in the photos.
You may take a lot of photos, and without deleting any of them, you may decide that most of the time, you don't want to see all of them - only the best ones. PhotoMesa supports you in marking up photos as being either "favorite" or "hidden". Favorite photos are shown with a bright star, and by default, hidden photos are not shown at all.
You can control whether hidden photos are shown or hidden, or for that matter whether regular photos are shown or only favorites. Do this by selecting one of the four options under the View menu:
Whenever you look at the images within a folder by selecting a folder in the Folder browser within PhotoMesa, that folder gets indexed. This means that PhotoMesa creates a list of all the photos it found within that folder. This list of photos (and the indexed folders) are then special in that whenever you search - only these indexed folders are searched.
If the contents of a folder changes (i.e., you add or remove photos to/from a folder), those changes will appear in PhotoMesa the next time you check that folder. That is, PhotoMesa automatically re-indexes a folder when you look at its contents.
Once you have indexed all the folders you commonly store photos in, it may be more convenient to hide all the other folders. You can do this by checking the box labeled "Show Indexed Folders Only" just under the folder list. In this mode, you can right-click to see a context-menu which will allow you to re-index the photos from a folder's sub-folders, or to remove a folder from the index completely. (It can always be re-added later by un-checking the "Show Indexed Folders Only" checkbox.)