* JAlbum assembles galleries on your PC as uploadable HTML presentations
We’ve covered a few image gallery systems in the past in this newsletter, but today’s product is perhaps the best album creation tool I’ve ever seen (and quite possibly the best utility software I’ve seen this year). The product is JAlbum, which assembles galleries on your PC as HTML presentations that can be uploaded to a server.
JAlbum is designed to run on any computer that runs any flavor of Java greater than Version 1.4. The JAlbum download page even includes install packages specifically for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, any Unix Platform, plus “Others (OS/2 etc)”.
Once installed JAlbum is straightforward to use without having to read the user manual. On the program’s Main tab, you specify the basics: input and output directories, what sizes to use for thumbnails and images, thumbnail layout and image ordering rule (see this example).
You select which “skin” the album is to use. JAlbum comes with a selection of layouts and not only can you create your own (see “Sample albums” and “Extending JAlbum with new skins”), users also have contributed libraries of skins (see “Extras” and the outstanding “JAlbum skin repository”).
You then press the Make Album button and voila! One photo album. Note that if you want to see what the album will look like before it is complete there’s a Peek button that loads as much of the album as is finished into your browser.
Once JAlbum has built your gallery, you can go to the Publish tab and upload to your Web site using the built-in FTP or SFTP (Secure FTP).
Although you could probably use JAlbum very effectively without learning what else it can do, if you’re willing to invest a little time to learn the program in depth you’ll discover just how sophisticated it is and what else you can get it to do.
For example, you can apply image filters to create thumbnails that are monochrome or images that are watermarked or overlaid with text. You can specify image quality for rescaled images, specify generated file names, and define user variables for inclusion in the templates that generate the albums.
You can add scripting to albums and examples that provide the addition of voice annotations to slides, convert focal length data to 35mm equivalent, add Google-like links to images, and include captions and comments from separate text files.
As if that isn’t enough you can also have JAlbum monitor a subdirectory and automatically update albums as images are added and removed, and even have JAlbum run its own built-in Web server so you can provide access to albums from your PC! Oh, and you can run JAlbum as a command line application which means that automation is really easy!
The documentation for JAlbum is outstanding and there’s even a set of tutorials to walk you through using the system.
Created by David Ekholm, who is obviously an outstandingly talented software designer and programmer (see this interview with him – definitely an “old school” attitude towards computers and software), JAlbum is … you won’t believe this … freeware! In fact JAlbum’s license only specifies you can’t sell the software for profit – there are no other restrictions!
I look at a lot of software and among the literally hundreds of excellent products JAlbum stands out for it elegance, range of features, usability, excellent design and robustness. If you use JAlbum do consider donating to encourage Ekholm to keep improving and maintaining JAlbum and hopefully other products; we need this quality of software out in the marketplace.
