picture-report auto scale/stretch

[Mark90]

Hi,

I've been using the following script with BC3 to automate finding similar images.

picture-report layout:summary options:ignore-unimportant output-to:report.txt img1.jpg img2.jpg

Using another programming language to invoke BC and parse the report, this worked pretty nicely.

Having finally decided to purchase BC4, I tried feeding it the same script. It runs, however, it appears that BC4 no longer defaults to stretching/scaling images to the same height/width. The images are of varying resolutions, so the scaling option is what made it work in the first place.

Is there any way to enable auto scaling from the script, or less preferably, to persist this option in BC's settings?

Cheers,

Mark

[Aaron]

Hello,

Thanks for the feedback. In BC3, the Auto-size option was sticky and remembered, so if you set it in the interface once, it is then used for future sessions and scripting. In BC4, this was changed to function as an override, which means it resets the value to off every use, and we don't currently have a method to re-enable it in scripting. We'll look into functions to allow this behavior in script.

In the meantime, I would suggest rolling back to BC3, which you can install side-by-side with BC4 on Windows (without removing or altering either version), and use BC3 for the scripting solution:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/download.php?zz=dl3_en

[Mark90]

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for looking into it. I can understand why the decision was made for scaling to reset on shutdown, just like one would expect -for example- zoom level to reset to 100%. But as it also impacts the comparison outcome, being able to set it from the script would be awesome.

And yes, I'm using BC3/BC4 side by side, this works just fine.

Off-topic: did a quick benchmark between them and found BC4 to be a factor 2 or 3 quicker in the image comparison :-) Perhaps this stems from faster application startup/shutdown, but a nice improvement nonetheless.

More off-topic: thanks for building a great tool, well worth the investment. Been using it for years and can't live without it.

[Aaron]

BC4 had a large reworking of the Picture Compare, hence the speed bump/performance increase. I'd definitely recommend it over BC3's except for this issue with automation. I've opened a tracker entry to investigate our options.