diff --git a/samples/cpp/starter_imagelist.cpp b/samples/cpp/starter_imagelist.cpp
index 9b5abd385e..a6f38bd281 100644
--- a/samples/cpp/starter_imagelist.cpp
+++ b/samples/cpp/starter_imagelist.cpp
@@ -20,12 +20,13 @@ namespace
 {
 void help(char** av)
 {
-  cout << "usage:" << av[0] << " image_list.yaml\n"
+  cout << "\nThis program gets you started being able to read images from a list in a file\n"
+		  "Usage:\n./" << av[0] << " image_list.yaml\n"
        << "\tThis is a starter sample, to get you up and going in a copy pasta fashion.\n"
        << "\tThe program reads in an list of images from a yaml or xml file and displays\n"
        << "one at a time\n"
-       << "\tTry running imagelist_creator to generate a list of images." << endl;
-
+       << "\tTry running imagelist_creator to generate a list of images.\n"
+		"Using OpenCV version %s\n" << CV_VERSION << "\n" << endl;
 }
 
 bool readStringList(const string& filename, vector<string>& l)