NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, December 2003
"Jalbum" -- A Photo Album Generator
by John R. Clark, WebMaster
rcmahq@nwark.com
(click to email author)


Do you have a set of photos that you would like to share with relatives who have a computer but may or not be on the internet? or you do not have the authority to create your own web page, or do not want to waste your storage limit on this set of photos?

There is now a very nice system that will let you do the above, and also lets you move your album to a web site if you have one.

Jalbum - a freeware product created by David Ekholm which can be downloaded from http://www.datadosen.se/jalbum is a very sophisticated, yet simple to use photo album generator. Its ultimate design is to allow you to place your pictures on the web, but I find it to be a good way to generate albums for the holiday season.

The ease of use is the strong point of Jalbum. You only need to do the following to build a simple album:

    1. Place your photos in a directory - I suggest you name them. Digital cameras tend to number their photos. The name of the photo file will show in the album.

    2. Bring up Jalbum

    3. Enter the directory where you put your photos.

    4. Ender the directory where you want the album to be placed.

    5. Click "Make Album"

That is all there is to it. Your album will be in your output directory, and a click on the Index.html file will let you work your album. Your browser will pop it up, and you will have a set of thumbnail photos. A click on any thumbnail will bring an enlarged photo. On the upper right corner of the enlarged photo you will have three icons that will let you move back to the thumbnail photos or advance to the next or previous enlarged photos.

Now you have a system that can be uploaded to a web page and Jalbum has software for you to do this. In my case I simply stick the files on a CD and ship them to the people I want to share them with. I just tell them to have their browser work on the Index.html file.

Jalbum has many many features:

    1. You can control the size of the thumbnail photos

    2. You can control the size of the images and the JPG quality

    3. You can control the number of columns and rows of the thumbnails that will be displayed.

    4. You can control the display by file name or by date

    5. If you are working from a web page you can control the links back to the originals. {if you are going to send the files on a CD, you will want to link only to the scaled-down images.)

You may arrange your photos in subdirectories/folders, and Jalbum will create an album with icons that will let you bounce to the photos in the subdirectory. It will take as input the master directory and will automagically handle the subdirectories.

I find Jalbum to be a quality product. I think you will too. As with all powerful software there is a learning curve involved to master all the aspects, but a good help file is included. For generating an album to share with others you don't have to be a super nurd. It is just easy.



==================================================================