Need photo archiving app

[M.L.]

Hi. I need assistance in creating a family tree photo archiving
project with the following specifications:

1.) Would like the solution to be able to run from a CD

2.) Windows solution is necessary but the more OS-versatile the better

3.) Either an HTML solution or dedicated app are OK

4.) Each family member will have his or her own directory

5.) When a user clicks on a directory, a thumbnail of each image is
displayed (an HTML solution should allow me to set the number of pics
per row, and the number of pics per page over multiple pages if
needed).

6.) Clicking on one of the thumbnails displays a full-size image

7.) I should be able to add a paragraph or more of descriptive text
somewhere near the full-size image (Irfanview can't do this, right?)

8.) Some pictures will be used in more than one directory. Want to
save memory by using shortcuts or somesuch to reference those pictures
instead of duplicating them in each directory

Any ideas appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Terry Orchard]

Hi. I need assistance in creating a family tree photo archiving
project with the following specifications:

FWIW I wouldn't call this photo archiving, it's more of an
album-making application.

There are many applications that do this sort of thing. If you want
many things to try on your own, search
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search for alt.comp.freeware and
a few appropriate search terms, and you should turn up a good list.

Personally, I would use JAlbum (http://www.datadosen.se/jalbum/) -- I
don't know if it is the best, but it does most of what you want and
it's the one that I am familiar with. JAlbum does most, but not
all, of your specs.

1.) Would like the solution to be able to run from a CD

It produces web site (a set of web pages), so it can run from CD.

2.) Windows solution is necessary but the more OS-versatile the better

Any browser can view it, so the clients are OS independent. And the
application is written in Java, so it runs on Windows, Mac, linux,
unix, etc. Not clear which OS-versatile you mean.

3.) Either an HTML solution or dedicated app are OK

4.) Each family member will have his or her own directory

Supports multiple levels of images, so this is easy.

5.) When a user clicks on a directory, a thumbnail of each image is
displayed (an HTML solution should allow me to set the number of pics
per row, and the number of pics per page over multiple pages if
needed).

Yes. The wizard has settings for the number of rows and columns per
page.

The "site" can be displayed in different "skins". Some skins (eg,
"flowing") do not use rows and columns, but wrap at the width of the
browser window. Personally I like this better than the row/column
ones, because it never shows a horizontal scroll bar, just a vertical
one, which is easier to work with across multiple browsers, screen
resolutions, etc. Disadvantage is that you can't show a caption or
file name on the thumbnail page, except as the alt text (which shows
up when you hover over the image).

6.) Clicking on one of the thumbnails displays a full-size image

Yes. Also, some skins have three levels, thumbnail, intermediate, and
full-resolution. Other skins have only two levels. You can choose the
size of the thumbnails and the intermediate images.

7.) I should be able to add a paragraph or more of descriptive text
somewhere near the full-size image (Irfanview can't do this, right?)

You can put as much text as you want in the caption. Multiple
paragraphs is not supported "out of the box", though this could be
customized easily.

If you're at all comfortable with HTML, it's easy to customize the
albums. You could add multiple paragraphs for each image by, for
example, looking for a "something.inc" file to go with each
"something.jpg" file, and including the contents of something.inc just
below (or above or wherever) the image. Something.inc could then
include any html you wanted, so multiple paragraphs or font changes or
color changes or whatever could be done.

I have done a similar thing to produce an description paragraph or
paragraphs on the thumbnail page (to describe that entire directory).

8.) Some pictures will be used in more than one directory. Want to
save memory by using shortcuts or somesuch to reference those pictures
instead of duplicating them in each directory

Doesn't do this, as far as I know. I think you could customize it to
do this using the built-in scripting language, but it wouldn't be
trivial.

HTH,

Terry

 

[Spoon2001]

If you're at all comfortable with HTML, it's easy to customize the
albums. You could add multiple paragraphs for each image by, for
example, looking for a "something.inc" file to go with each
"something.jpg" file, and including the contents of something.inc just
below (or above or wherever) the image. Something.inc could then
include any html you wanted, so multiple paragraphs or font changes or
color changes or whatever could be done.

Just out of curiosity, what HTML code would you use in a web page the page
to display the text contained in another file, i.e. "something.inc"?

 

[Terry Orchard]

Just out of curiosity, what HTML code would you use in a web page the page
to display the text contained in another file, i.e. "something.inc"?

Short answer:
Nothing in pure HTML. But JAlbum includes a pre-processor.

Longer answer:
JAlbum works from two "template" html files. One is the thumbnail
page, and one is the slide page. During album generation, the slide
page is duplicated once for each image file, and the thumbnail page is
duplicated for each directory. During that process, certain html-like
tags are expanded into html.

For example, if you put:

<ja:include page="something.inc"></ja:include>

in your thumnail template file (index.htt), then the JAlbum
preprocessor will insert the contents of something.inc at that point
in the html file.

To insert a .inc file with the same name as the .jpg file, you would
write something like:

<ja:include page="$label.inc"></ja:include>

$label is a variable that is expanded to the filename without the
extension (by the JAlbum processor). There are a bunch of variables
that expand to various useful strings.

The generated HTML files are straight HTML, and are what you would
upload to your web site, or copy to the CD. They don't include <ja:>
tags, or $variables.

You can get more details at the page
http://www.datadosen.se/jalbum/skincreation.jsp, which describes how
to customize "skins" (the appearance of the generated album). There is
a full java-like scripting language (called BeanShell) you can use, so
you can do almost anything if you have the time & energy. But simple
things like including something.inc are very easy to do.

JAlbum is a nice package, I've been quite impressed. You do need the
Sun java vm installed, but the JAlbum download page includes a version
that includes the vm and will install it automatically and painlessly,
so you're not even aware it.

Terry

 

[M.L.]

FWIW I wouldn't call this photo archiving, it's more of an
album-making application.

There are many applications that do this sort of thing. If you want
many things to try on your own, search
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search for alt.comp.freeware and
a few appropriate search terms, and you should turn up a good list.

I wanted to avoid looking through a lot of apps that didn't meet my
specifications. However, I might have to take you up on your
suggestion.

Personally, I would use JAlbum (http://www.datadosen.se/jalbum/) -- I
don't know if it is the best, but it does most of what you want and
it's the one that I am familiar with. JAlbum does most, but not
all, of your specs.

The "site" can be displayed in different "skins". Some skins (eg,
"flowing") do not use rows and columns, but wrap at the width of the
browser window. Personally I like this better than the row/column
ones, because it never shows a horizontal scroll bar, just a vertical
one, which is easier to work with across multiple browsers, screen
resolutions, etc. Disadvantage is that you can't show a caption or
file name on the thumbnail page, except as the alt text (which shows
up when you hover over the image).

ALT text display is not acceptable.

If you're at all comfortable with HTML, it's easy to customize the
albums. You could add multiple paragraphs for each image by, for
example, looking for a "something.inc" file to go with each
"something.jpg" file, and including the contents of something.inc just
below (or above or wherever) the image. Something.inc could then
include any html you wanted, so multiple paragraphs or font changes or
color changes or whatever could be done.

I am adept with HTML and JavaScript but wanted to avoid doing the
drudgery myself because there are a lot of images involved.

I have done a similar thing to produce an description paragraph or
paragraphs on the thumbnail page (to describe that entire directory).


Doesn't do this, as far as I know. I think you could customize it to
do this using the built-in scripting language, but it wouldn't be
trivial.

With HTML I could easily reuse hyperlink addresses. But I'll do HTML
and scripting manually only as a last resort.

Thanks for your reply and suggestions.

 

[M.L.]

Just out of curiosity, what HTML code would you use in a web page the page
to display the text contained in another file, i.e. "something.inc"?

You could create an IFrame to display a text file, for example.

 

[Terry Orchard]

ALT text display is not acceptable.

Just so I'm clear -- this is just one "skin" that works this way. Most
skins with JAlbum use html tables, so they have a number of rows and
columns (you set how many in the UI), and can have a filename or
caption displayed below the image.

I am adept with HTML and JavaScript but wanted to avoid doing the
drudgery myself because there are a lot of images involved.

You don't do it for each image! You change the HTML *once* in a
"template" file, and then JAlbum generates the real HTML file for each
image.

With HTML I could easily reuse hyperlink addresses. But I'll do HTML
and scripting manually only as a last resort.

Again, you wouldn't do this manually. You would make changes to the
template files so they would recognize shortcuts or some other form of
"link", and deal with the appropriately.

Terry

 

[M.L.]

You don't do it for each image! You change the HTML *once* in a
"template" file, and then JAlbum generates the real HTML file for each
image.

Terry

Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure if I understand all your responses
but the one I'm most interested in solving is: How does the program
allow me to change the text for each image? I don't want to do a
"view/source" each time to change the underlying paragraph text. Your
solution appears to use server-side includes, which I don't want to
resort to. I guess I was looking for an app that would elegantly match
each image to its paragraph text.

 

[Terry Orchard]

Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure if I understand all your responses
but the one I'm most interested in solving is: How does the program
allow me to change the text for each image? I don't want to do a
"view/source" each time to change the underlying paragraph text.

You do not have to "view/source" for each image.

JAlbum can get the caption in various ways.

1) From the image file itself - eg, the JPeg comment, the IPTC
Caption, or one of the EXIF fields. Personally, I use Exifer to add
the caption as the JPEG comment to my images (and I also add a
copyright line in the IPTC copyright field). That way if someone saves
the image file from my web site to their local disk, the jpg has the
caption (and copyright). The default skins that come with JAlbum will
use the JPEG comment as the caption if it is present.

2) You can create a text file (one for each directory if you have
multiple directories), with one line for each image file. The line
looks like this:
something.jpg=This is the caption for something

3) You can create an individual caption file for each image file - as
I described in my previous post. You might have "something.inc" to
contain the caption for "something.jpg".

There are examples of how to do 2) and 3) in the scripting page on the
JAlbum web site.

your
solution appears to use server-side includes, which I don't want to
resort to.

No, it's not server side includes, although it works similarly. You
start with your "template" files. You run Jalbum with the template
files and your directories of images. Jalbum processes this into a
bunch of html files (and jpg files), where there is one html file for
each image file. This html file has a link to the jpg file, as well as
the caption text (which got taken from one of the various places I
mentioned above).

You then upload all these html and jpg files to your web server. Your
web host does not have to support server side includes, because the
include processing has already been done, by JAlbum.

In your case, you would burn all those HTML file to CD. The person
viewing the album does not need to run an application that performs
server-side includes, because that processing has already been done,
by JAlbum. All they need is a browser.

I guess I was looking for an app that would elegantly match
each image to its paragraph text.

I don't know what you mean by "elegantly match". How do you expect the
app to know what text goes with which image, unless you use some sort
of convention based on file names, or the caption is in the file
already?

Perhaps you are looking for an application that you place on the CD,
that the "client" (the person viewing the images) runs on their
computer, that will display the image and the caption. There are
probably applications like that, but JALbum is not one of them. JAlbum
is not run by the client. Instead, it is run by you (or whoever is
creating the CD of images), to create a "web site" of html and jpg
files. Then all the client needs to do is use a browser to view them.

It sounds like you haven't visited the JAlbum web site. I suggest you
do so, and look at some of their sample albums, peruse the FAQ, etc.
This may give you a better feel for the application.

Terry

 

[M.L.]

Personally, I would use JAlbum (http://www.datadosen.se/jalbum/) -- I

It sounds like you haven't visited the JAlbum web site. I suggest you
do so, and look at some of their sample albums, peruse the FAQ, etc.
This may give you a better feel for the application.

Terry

You're correct, I had not visited the site before I answered. However,
now that I've seen it I still don't think it best fits my needs. If
you want to see an example of an app that almost fits my needs see
CatalogViewer

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~FX6M-FJMY/cv01e.html

The web page has changed a bit since I last saw it and does not
provide as much info on the app but you can see that, unlike JAlbum,
the directory tree is always present to allow the viewer to have
Explorer-like access to any image at will. When the designer clicks on
a thumbnail a larger image displays with a caption area at the bottom
that allows one to enter as much text as desired. The program
transparently saves the text with the image. That's the kind of
ease-of-use I was looking for. The only shortcoming is that I can't
use shortcuts for images, thereby requiring me to duplicate an image
used in more than one location.

I might resort to duplicating images in compressed format (I want the
images to be printable at 300 dpi each). I'm going to do a test with
high quality jpgs vs pcx and png to see if one of those non-lossy
formats is feasible. Thanks for your assistance on this issue.

 

[M.L.]

Personally, I would use JAlbum (http://www.datadosen.se/jalbum/) -- I
After sending my last message regarding CatalogViewer I realized that
it only supported jpg, gif and bmp images. Looks like I might have to
resort to using high-quality jpg images only.

 

[Terry Orchard]

If
you want to see an example of an app that almost fits my needs see
CatalogViewer

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~FX6M-FJMY/cv01e.html

FWIW, it would have helped if you had started off your request with
this information. If you've already found an app that is close to what
you want, let us know!

The web page has changed a bit since I last saw it and does not
provide as much info on the app but you can see that, unlike JAlbum,
the directory tree is always present to allow the viewer to have
Explorer-like access to any image at will. When the designer clicks on
a thumbnail a larger image displays with a caption area at the bottom
that allows one to enter as much text as desired. The program
transparently saves the text with the image. That's the kind of
ease-of-use I was looking for.

The only shortcoming is that I can't
use shortcuts for images, thereby requiring me to duplicate an image
used in more than one location.

Seems to me there is another shortcoming -- it requires Java on the
client computer. This will not always be available -- for example,
currently shipping versions of Windows XP do not include *any* Java
VDM. So your users may have to install Java.

Also, it's not clear whether Catalog viewer can be run from a CD. It
wants to create a CatalogViewer.ini file in the directory where the
executable is, not clear what it does if that directory on CD. (I
didn't try it).

Other than that, it looks nice.

I might resort to duplicating images in compressed format (I want the
images to be printable at 300 dpi each). I'm going to do a test with
high quality jpgs vs pcx and png to see if one of those non-lossy
formats is feasible.

FWIW, Doesn't look like CatlogViewer supports pcx or png. Though I
don't think it matters, a png file will typically be much larger than
the corresponding jpg.

Terry