Waaves Overview

Waaves provides the most advanced still image compression solution.

Waaves reaches a fundamental stage in the field of digital images by combining quality of images with compactness of files.

Thanks to a user friendly wizard, Waaves manages image compression and exportation to a large variety of formats. It also delivers a constant visual or printed image quality level. This result is obtained thanks to the use of a quality level index which ensures a constant quality by type of image.

Waaves optimization options allow to display all the images, even the largest one, without delay, even on equipment limited in power or memory.

The same algorithm treats color images (RGB-24 bits and CMYK-32 bits) as well as grayscale images (from 8 to 16 bits), in lossless (reversible compression), perceptual lossless and strongly compressed lossy mode.

Waaves images can be displayed on mobile phones. Full resolution images can be received on a mobile phone and displayed to best fit the screen size. The same file can then be transferred on a computer for a high-resolution display or converted into background image.

How to...

How to compress an image

Waaves quality index is the parameter that manages the image quality. To create a Waaves compressed image:

A dialog box will give you the image properties as soon as the operation is done.

Waaves enables you to define a quality level parameter. As described below, the value of the parameter must be a positive integer. The zero value compresses a file in a loss less mode (binary identity between the original image file and the decoded file).
The compression ratio increases with the quality index, this means that quality level 10 will give a better quality and less compressed file than quality level 20.

Image QualityColor (24/32 bits)Grayscale (8 bits)Medical grayscale (10 to 16 bits)
Lossless000
Visual lossless10 to 4010 to 2010 to 100
Good quality40 to 10020 to 40-
Compact>100>40-

(Warning: this table only represents examples of the most used values and may not be consistent for every images)

Since each image is unique those values represent just an estimation of he result. With the same Quality Level parameter you will have different compression rate depending on:

Note: The treatment speed depends on the hardware configuration, the size of the image and the quality level selected. If you want to automatically decode and display the created Waaves image, select the Auto view option in the Preferences panel. Otherwise press View to visualize the created Waaves file or Close to perform other operations.

How to convert an image format

You can easily export a Waaves image to another supported format by using the application wizard or the Save as... function.

Using the wizard

You can convert any images from one supported format to another supported format using the encoding wizard.

Using the save as function

To export an image, you can use the Save as... function from the File menu.

Exporting my image directly to another application

You can also quickly and easily export any images to most Windows application. This enables you to insert images in other documents like Word or Excel.

In that case, the image will be stored as a bitmap in the host document.

How to compress several images

(Professional Edition only)

Waaves Pro provides you with the opportunity to compress several images stored in a folder at the same time.

Note: the Quality parameter will be the same for every image.

During the compression process, a progress bar will indicate the estimated time left before the end. At any time, you can abort the compression process by pressing the "ESC" key.

Menu

File

File / Open Image...

On the File menu, click Open Image... and select an image file. If you select a Waaves image, you can stop the decompression at any time by simply pressing the "ESC" key. Waaves reads the following digital images:

Waaves supports the following image formats:

See the Preferences/Display section to set up all default display parameters.

Tip: To open a document you've used recently, you can directly use the Recently used file list.
Note: All the image files need to have an extension conform to the description in the above section.

File / Open Sequence...

On the File menu, click Open Sequence... and select a folder containing a sequence of images. You will be able to view those images by using the Animation menu or toolbar.

Note: This function only support WAAVES format images (".cod" extension).

File / Close

On the File menu, click Close to close the current image.

File / Close all

On the File menu, click Close all to close all opened documents.

File / Save As...

On the File menu, click Save As... to save an image to the required format. Use the Save as function to convert an image from a supported format to another supported format. Select the required format in the Save as type box. See How to export an image for more information.
However you should be aware that some conversion can deteriorate the quality of your image like conversions to JPEG format.

File / Print

On the File menu, click Print (or use keyboard shortcut "Ctrl P") to launch your document printing. To display each image as it will look when printed, click Print Preview.

File / Print Preview

On the File menu, click Print Preview to check the printing parameters and visualize the image before printing.

File / Print Setup

On the File menu, click Print Setup to set up the size and orientation of the printed image.

File / Preferences

On the File menu, click Preferences to open the Preferences dialog box and set Waaves default parameters, regarding display options, wizard options and so on...

File / Exit

On the File menu, click Exit to close the Waaves application as well as all opened documents.

Edit

Edit / Copy - (Ctrl+C)

Waaves enables you to copy an image in the Clipboard and paste it into most Windows applications like Word or Excel. Select the desired image and click Copy in the Edit menu. Your image is now in the Clipboard. Select the document in which you want to insert this image and click Paste in the Edit menu of the receiving application. The selected image will be copied as a bitmap image.

View

View / Slideshow

On the View menu, click Slideshow to set up slideshow parameters. Select a folder containing images using the Browse button and set the timer. Only WAAVES format images will be displayed. Default parameters can be modified using the Preferences panel, Slideshow tab.

Note: You can abort the slideshow anytime by pressing the "ESC" key.

View / Toolbar

On the View menu, check or uncheck Toolbar to display or hide Waaves main toolbar.

View / Status bar

On the View menu, check or uncheck Status bar to display or hide Waaves status bar. The status bar will give you information on the image resolution, zoom factor and working task.

View / Size

On the View menu, select one of the following Size options to set the current image window size:

View / Zoom+

On the View menu, click Zoom+ (keyboard shortcut F5) to zoom in on the selected image. For safety reasons, a warning icon will be displayed in the status bar when zooming level is over 100%.

View / Zoom-

On the View menu, click Zoom- (keyboard shortcut F4) to zoom out on the selected image.

Note: The Zoom functions only resize the image display and do not change the image original resolution.

View / Video Inversion

In the View menu, select Video Inversion to apply a color inversion filter (equivalent to negative image) to the active image (only for grayscale images).

View / Auto Windowing

In the View menu, select Auto Windowing to calculate and apply a medium window level on active image.

Note: You can modify window level parameters at anytime on the active window by drag'n dropping your mouth with the left button down (only for grayscale images). Double-click on the image to restore initial image values.

View / Info image

On the View menu, click Info image to retrieve useful information on the displayed image, such as:

Animation

Animation / Video mode

In the Animation menu, click Video mode to activate or deactivate animated sequences visualization functions. In the case of multi-frame images this option will by activated automatically.

This set of functions manages the animated sequence visualization. Use Open Image... or Open Sequence... menu to select a set of images and click Play to start the animation. When an animated sequence window is active, the Animation toolbar is active too and enables you to use directly the set of functions described below. Display rate can be modified directly using the integrated cursor or entering a new value.

Note: Display rate can be set in the Preferences panel, via the Sequence tab.

Animation / Play

On the Animation menu, click Play to start reading the image sequence.

Animation / Pause

On the Animation menu, click Pause to stop the display on the current image.

Animation / Play reverse

On the Animation menu, click Play reverse to start reading backward the image sequence.

Animation / Stop

On the Animation menu, click Stop to stop the animation and display the first image.

Animation / Next

On the Animation menu, click Next to display the next image.

Animation / Previous

On the Animation menu, click Previous to display the previous image.

Animation / First image

On the Animation menu, click First image to display the first image of the sequence.

Animation / Last image

On the Animation menu, click Last image to display the last image of the sequence.

Animation / Loop

On the Animation menu, click Loop to play the animation in a loop mode. Click Loop again to set it back to the default position.

Tools

Tools / Encoding wizard

On the Tools menu, click Encoding wizard to open a wizard that will give you instructions to import / export images from / to WAAVES format.

Window

Window / Cascade

On the Window menu, click Cascade to reorder the position of the displayed windows of the application on a cascade way.

Tile Horizontal

On the Window menu, click Tile Horizontal to create a horizontal tile with the opened windows.

Tile Vertical

On the Window menu, click Tile Vertical to create a vertical tile of the opened windows.

Panels

Preferences

Display

Image

Defines the default image window size when opened:

Waaves options

Folder

Default folder location for:

Wizard

Open

Waaves quality level - sets wizard default Waaves quality value for image compression.

Slideshow

Sequence - Animation

Animated sequences set up.

Wizard

Waaves wizard is an easy way to import/export images from/to Waaves format. It also manages batch treatment for Professional versions.

Source

Destination

Define the directory location of output files. The default directory is defined in the Preferences menu. The default output file name for Waaves images is the original input file name (without extension) followed by '_Xn' where n represents the Quality level.

Output format

Select the output image file format among the following:

By clicking on the Options button you can change the original image color space. Depending on the source color space, you can choose between:

Warning! A color space translation modifies the image representation. Most of those transformations are not reversible.

Quality level

This index defines the image quality that will be restored after compression. It is only active with Waaves and Jpeg output format. For Waaves format, 0 means a lossless compression (i.e. reversible). See How to compress an image for more information.

Image size

This function allows to resize the output image as a percentage of the input image size.



Waaves ® is a registered trademark of CIRA.
Infocament ® is a registered trademark of CIRA.
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