Actually there is no difference in the way the images are transferred to iMira. The only difference is a matter of user convenience. All the accounts and transfer settings are common to both methods. You may find one method easier than the other, given the way you work. For example the Drop Spot will accept images that are dragged from other applications or the Windows Explorer, even when the main window of Photo Explorer is minimized.

The Edit in PhotoImpact command was set up by Ulead Photo Explorer automatically when it was installed if you have the program installed in your computer. To set other editors use the File->Preferences function and select Image Editors. You can set up to three alternate applications that can be called to edit pictures. Actually they do not all have to be image editors. Any program that accepts an image file will work. Setting these editors will not affect the Windows file associations.

Ulead SmartSaver and SmartSaver Pro are separate products sold by Ulead. If you already have these products, or they were included with other Ulead products that you bought such as PhotoImpact or Web Razor Pro, then they will automatically appear in the Photo menu item. If you want to use SmartSaver or SmartSaver Pro you must buy them. They are available for purchase and electronic download on the Web at www.ulead.com.

After downloading images from your digital camera, it is nice to rotate the images that are in portrait layout so that the top is at the top of the screen. Be careful to select software that offers 'JPEG loss-less rotation' such as Ulead Photo Explorer. If you rotate using most image editors and many other products there will be a loss of image quality after the JPEG is re-saved after the rotation. It is also possible that Exif camera information may be lost. Ulead Photo Explorer contains special functions that avoid loss of image quality by rotating the picture within the file and thus avoiding any loss of data.

If you open a JPEG file in a conventional image editor, rotate it, and then save it again there will some loss of image quality. This occurs when the image is re-saved to the JPEG file. No matter what setting you use to re-save the image, there will be some loss. The loss may be difficult to see, and may not be visible until you open the file again. Each time you save the image will degrade a little. The loss-less JPEG rotation used in Photo Explorer can avoid this problem as long as the rotation is 90, 180 or 270 degrees.

The program rearranges the compressed JPEG file so that the image is rotated. It does this without re-compressing the data. Note that although this works fine for digital camera pictures you may notice slight changes to the image for other JPEG files if the width and height are not a multiple of 8. A few pixels may be lost from the edge of the image. Very advanced users may also notice some rearrangement of the internal tag information in the JPEG file. In almost all applications this does not matter.