Profile Photos

A “profile photo” is the photo or logo associated with a name (such as a person or a company). These photos are used for a lot of things, ranging from photos on the web, small photos shown in lists in Olympus, and even author photos printed in the magazine in high resolution.

Uploading a Photo

Profile photos can be uploaded from the name edit form (see also Editing Names) either through the Photos menu and Upload Profile Photo in the toolbar, or by double-clicking the circle with the initials. (Note: If a photo already has been defined, it can be edited by double-clicking the photo preview).

Note: It is possible to upload additional photos for a name. These photos are not used as profile photos, but they can be seen internally in the Attachments tab. These types of photos are for internal uses only.

After picking the photo file from the file picker dialog (a high-res photo with a high-quality, professional photo of the person should be picked) the photo editor UI pops us, showing three different versions of the selected photo:

When a photo is opened, our AI immediately tries to find faces in the photo. If faces can be found, the app will automatically try to create smart crops within the three different versions. If no face is found in the photo, the photo can still be used, but automatic cropping will not be available.

Note: Crop regions can always be reset by clicking the Reset Crop button for each version. (This resets the crop to the full photo for the large version, and to maximum size crop at the right proportions for the other versions). Auto-cropping can also always be triggered (for all photos with faces) by pressing the Auto-Crop button, or by double-clicking the preview image.

For the large version, a maximum sized 6:5 ratio sub-section of the photo is selected and positioned relative to the location of the face. For instance, consider the following large profile photo preview:

Note: The preview will always utilize the current window size to display the photo. If the photo doesn't fit, it will be shrunk to fit the display. Internally however, the true resolution of the photo is preserved, and when the final version of the photo is saved, it will be saved at the highest available resolution, regardless of the size of the preview image. (Note that the actual size of the crop region is displayed in the bottom-left corner of that region). If the photo is low-res, a warning will be displayed inside the crop region.

In many cases, the crop region chosen by the AI is going to be sufficcient. However, it can be manually adjusted. For instance, in this example, sliding the crop area to the left may achieve a more visually pleasing result. The crop area can be moved simply by clicking somewhere inside of it and draging it around. Similarly, edges of the crop indicator can be resized freely in the large version. (Note however, that it is recommended to stick with as large an area as possible and preserve a 6:5 aspect ratio).

It is also possible to preview the final version of the photo. This can be done by clicking the Preview Final Photo toggle button in the toolbar, or by right-clicking on the preview.

The small version of the photo behaves slightly different. It is fixed at a 6:5 ratio. The AI tries to frame the face in the photo to create a small 6:5 version of the photo that highlights the person's head:

Again, the crop region can be moved and resized. Note that changing the dimensions of the crop region will always change all dimensions to preserve a 6:5 ratio. For instance, if the right edge of the crop region is dragged to make it larger, the bottom will also move to preserve the ratio.

Also, regardless of the size the crop region covers in the original photo, it will be saved at 180x150 pixels.

The square versions of the photo behave slightly different yet again. The proportions of the crop region are fixed at a 1:1 square:

The system actually creates multiple versions of the square photo, allowing the system to have different small square versions available as needed.

Saving the Profile Photo

Once satisfied with the chosen photos and crop-regions, all versions can be saved by clicking the Save All Photo Variants button. This saves a number of photo files into our file attachments system. (Thus the resulting files can be seen in the Attachments tab). All files that are attached under the Staff Photos category can be used as profile photos.

The following files are created:

Note: If new profile photos are saved while old ones already existed, the old photos are preserved but assigned the Old Staff Photos category. This way, the remain available but are not used by the system anymore.

Note: It is theoretically possible to manually upload photos in the Attachments tab under the Staff Photos category and with the appropriate sub-category (see above) to manually create specific versions of the photos. However, the user is completely responsible for creating useful image files at the correct sizes and proportions.

Once the final photos have been saved, they are displayed on the name/contact edit form (the small 6:5 version is used for preview) and all the individual variants of the photo can be seen in the Attachments tab:

Editing an Existing Profile Photo

An existing profile photo (or, more accurately, the whole set of photo variants) can be edited either by double-clicking the preview photo in the name form, or by picking the Edit ProfilePhoto menu item in the Photos button/menu on the toolbar.

Note that editing profile photo variants doesn't so much edit the previously created variants, as it just creates new ones. It opens the photo editor based on the attached photo of category Staff Photos and sub-category Original (or, if that is not available, it will use sub-cartegory Large, then sub-category 275x275, and so on, until it finds one of the staff photos that is as high resolution as possible) and then re-starts the process of detecting faces and setting intelligent crop areas for each variant. This means that your previously hand-adjusted crop areas will not be used and replaced with new ones (a downside of this approach), but on the other hand, it will always use our latest AI capabilities and photo standards to re-create profile photos as best as possible.

When the new photo variants get saved, old photos are preserved but categorized as Old Staff Photos. This way, older photos are not lost and can be manually reset to category Staff Photos in case we wanted to use them again as profile photos. (Note: It is possibe to manually delete them, if we are sure they are not needed anymore).

Other Photos

It is also possible to upload photos for a name/contact/company that is not meant to be used as a profile photo. This is done through the Photos button/menu and the Upload Other Photo menu item.

Photos that are uploaded as such end up as file attachments under the Photos category. They are not special to the system in any way, but these photos can be used for internal purposes. Also, like all other file attachments, they have externally visible perma-URLs that can be used to embed these photos in emails, web sites, notes, and more.

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