The current topic describes the first type of Job that you can create using BatchPhoto Monitor: the Folder Watch. This type of Job enables you to monitor a specific folder on your computer/network for changes. If changes are made to that folder (you add new photos to the folder), BatchPhoto Monitor will acknowledge the change and automatically start processing the new photos according to the settings that have previously been defined for that Job. The Folder Watch Settings dialog will pop up every time you decide to create or edit a Job.
The options from the General settings section let you define the name and the description of the Job, the time interval at which the Job scans the monitored folder for changes and whether to create a detailed process log for the Job or not. Bear in mind that you can define two Jobs with the same name and that the description field is not mandatory. Folder Watch Jobs have a minimum scan interval of 1 second. If you want to see a log of all the processing sessions of the current Job, click on the Show log link. If such a log was not created, the link will not be visible.
In this section, we also find the Overwrite images in output folder option. If this option is enabled, BatchPhoto will overwrite those images in the output folder that have the same name as the output images of the current processing session.
It must be noted that if the above option is disabled, BatchPhoto will make sure that no pictures will be overwritten in the output folder. To avoid overwrite, a default counter will be added to the names of the images in the output directory. BatchPhoto Monitor also uses an internal counter which keeps track of the total number of photos processed by a certain Job. If you decide to rename your output photos using a format that includes a counter, BatchPhoto will make use of the Monitor's counter in order to avoid the addition of default counters. So the number in an output photo's name will represent the position of that photo in the Job's processing queue. Note that when you select a destination different from your local drive or network, there is the possibility that your pictures might get overwritten.
The Disable interface notifications when processing check-box gives you the option to disable any kind of visual on-screen notifications from the Monitor during processing.
The Monitored Folder section lets you select the monitored folder's path, whether or not to search sub-folders of the monitored folder for changes and the extension of the files that you want to scan for.
If you want to preserve the internal folder structure of the monitored folder in an output folder located on your local disk drive, you must select the Recreate original folder structure option in BatchPhoto when creating/editing the job's profile. This option can be found in Step 3, in the Output section, in the combo-box beneath the Destination.
It must be noted that BatchPhoto Monitor will ignore the Use original photos' folder as output destination and Create a subfolder in the original photos' folder options which can be found in Step 3, in the Output section, in the combo-box beneath the Destination when creating/editing the job's profile in BatchPhoto. The Monitor will simply overwrite these options and save your photos by default in the output folder which can be selected by choosing the Use selected folder as output destination option from the same combo-box.
The settings from the Custom Profile section let you select and edit the profile that defines the processing settings for the current Job.
When adding a new job, BatchPhoto Monitor will create a custom profile for you, which has default settings and can be edited according to your needs. If you already have a profile that you want to use, just press the Browse button and select the desired profile.
By selecting the Edit Profile option, BatchPhoto will launch configured with your custom profile. Make your changes in BatchPhoto then select Project > Save Profile (or Ctrl + S) to overwrite this profile.
The Reprocess existing images option enables you to force the reprocessing of all the photos from the current monitored folder using the new settings.