I just started using JAlbum and one of the key things I like are the wide variety of skins that are available.  I especially enjoy the skins that makes the albums more interactive, yet simplistic.  SimpleViewer, HighSlide, and BananAlbum are my current favorites.  

SimpleViewer uses an open-source album engine developed at Airtight Interactive, a company that also wrote a clean and effective album engine called PostcardViewer.  So I reworked the SimpleViewer skin to use PostcardViewer and added a few finishing touches.  The net result is the JAlbum PostcardViewer skin.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Thanks,
Albert

Adobe Photoshop Album Edition Starter Edition 3 is an excellent software to classify your photos and personal videos, but this version doesn’t have the possiblity to  publish your photos on Internet.

Jalbum is a great tool to create and publish photos on a web site.

I have created a tool called AdoPhotoAlbumExportJAlbum to make the bridge between Adobe Photoshop Album Edition Starter Edition 3 and JAlbum.

I spend time to classify, comment, crop photos with Adobe Photoshop Album SE 3 and i want to publish my photo with tags, captions and edited photo version on my personnal web site without rewriting the information in JAlbum. 

I started to create a software which reads all the information in the Adobe Photoshop Album SE 3 database (catalogue) and i put files used by Jalbum to create a project. Then i build a user interface simple but powerful to make the relation between Adobe Photoshop Album SE 3 and Jalbum.

A tutorial video describing the steps to generate a Web site of photos is available here (4mn length in flash format). 

 
Process steps

1. In Adobe Photoshop Album SE 3, create a new collection or a new tag and mark photos to publish on your Web photo site. Make "drag and drop" tag or collection to photos (example collection : web)
2. Start JAlbum and create a new empty project (example projet : web_export)
3. Start AdoPhotoAlbumExportJAlbum, choose the newest collection or the tag created in the choice list or write a regular expression when you want more than one collection or tag. Select the new JAlbum project directory. Click on the "Create files to JAlbum" button.
4. In JAlbum, click on 2 blue arrows button to refresh project files, photos with captions will show. Select a theme and start to build your web album.

I hope this tool will be very useful for you to share your best photographic memories.

Vincent DABURON

(vdaburon[--remove---]at[--remove---]gmail[--remove--]dot[--remove--]com)

 
Links :

http://adophotoalbum.sourceforge.net/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/adophotoalbum

For those of you that read my other blogs, yep yet another one dealing with the Jalbum Webserver.

If you want to get an overview of the Webserver, you can see my other blogs with links to manuals and tutorials, this one starts to get a bit more technical.  There is a potential problem with the current implementation of the Auto-update feature of the built-in Webserver in Jalbum, that as soon as a change is detected, it begins an auto-update and regeneration of an Album.

Why is this bad you ask? Well for starters, there's no guarantee that all your picture changes will be complete before the album is done regenerating.  So if you are still adding or removing files, and the auto-update triggered, your new album could be missing a lot of pictures or changes.

So, armed with Google and a few cans of Mountain Dew, I went about messing around with the Java Code in Jalbum's Webserver.  On my last can of Mountain Dew, things started to drop in place as well as a muscle twitch in my left eye surfaced, probably from all the caffeine......

The goal was to find a way to detect file changes, but put the Auto-Update feature on hold until NO further changes were detected.  So, you can be adding files or deleting folders, and as long a change is happening once every minute, the auto-update feature will be placed on hold.

After a minute has passed, and no further changes are detected, then the auto-update album command kicks off.  This is really handy if you are using Hamachi (again read my other blogs !!!) and family and friends continue to add files and folders regularly.

Below is the snippet of what code needs to be modified in which file, a simple change but it really helps out when using the auto-update feature of Jalbum.

I hacked the "Server Mode.bsh" file to first detect a change occurred. In then enters a loop and checks for changes every minute. If it still detects changes occurring, it waits for another minute and loops. After a minute of no file changes, it then goes off and updates the album.

The original source code at the bottom of the .bsh file:

long lastModified = IO.deepLastModified(rootImageDirectory);

log.println("Monitoring directory " + rootImageDirectory.getName() + "...");
while (running) {
Thread.currentThread().sleep(SLEEP_TIME);
long newLastModified = IO.deepLastModified(rootImageDirectory);
if (newLastModified > lastModified) {
log.println("Detected file system change. Making album at " + new Date() + "...");
lastModified = newLastModified;
if (window != null) window.doMakeAlbum();
else engine.makeAlbum();
log.println("Done");
log.println("Monitoring directory " + rootImageDirectory.getName() + "...");
}
}
System.out.println("Exiting server mode");

My hacked code:

long lastModified = IO.deepLastModified(rootImageDirectory);

log.println("Monitoring directory " + rootImageDirectory.getName() + "...");
while (running) {
Thread.currentThread().sleep(SLEEP_TIME);
long newLastModified = IO.deepLastModified(rootImageDirectory);
if (newLastModified > lastModified) {
while (newLastModified != lastModified) {
lastModified = IO.deepLastModified(rootImageDirectory);
Thread.currentThread().sleep(60000);
log.println("Waiting for Changes to stop before regenerating Album " + "...");
newLastModified = IO.deepLastModified(rootImageDirectory);
}

log.println("Detected file system change. Making album at " + new Date() + "...");
lastModified = newLastModified;
if (window != null) window.doMakeAlbum();
else exec ("jalbum_update.bat");
log.println("Done");
log.println("Monitoring directory " + rootImageDirectory.getName() + "...");
}
}
System.out.println("Exiting server mode");

Hold on buckaroo, we aren't done yet.

In the original code the following code started the album generation:

if (window != null) window.doMakeAlbum();
else engine.makeAlbum();

This would generate all, and would be very, very time consuming, each time a change is detected. So, yet another hack.

In my code, I call an external batch file using the command instead:

if (window != null) window.doMakeAlbum();
else exec ("jalbum_update.bat");


Inside that batch file, the following command exists:

JAlbumwin.exe -appendImages -projectFile "E:\Data Drive\Pictures\jalbum-settings.jap"

Now, instead of using the engine.makeAlbum command, you can then call a batch file with almost unlimited options for building. With mine, I set it to "Make Changes" only by using the -appendImages flag.  Also, once you go outside to a batch file, you now have many options dealing with manipulate of files through batch commands.

So, in the end, my hacked code now tells the server to detect changes to the directory structure, if a change is detected wait until no changes have been detected for at least 1 minute. If one minute passes and no changes detected, then kick off an Album Regen.

 Happy Jalbuming,

Cinoaz (aka Chris Bomicino) 

This is one of those tips that most people say "No Duh", but it's quick and useful, something Windows really isn't known for... :-)  (Now that's funny right there).

Okay, you decided to copy all your pictures off of your camera, and trying to organize them in Jalbum.  You have pictures from Vacations, Birthday Parties, Family events, and that weekend trip to Las Vegas....well....we'll just leave those Vegas pics alone for now.

There are a plethora of tools to do batch rename operations, but why clutter up your PC with just another piece of software what I call "SecondWare", side programs that just take up space that can be done already with Windows.

Here is a list of photos on my computer:

Now I want to rename them, so I select the bottom picture first(left click), hold down the control key on the keyboard (Ctrl) and select the very first picture in the list.  NOTE: Select from the Bottom Up !!! 

 Right Click on the first picture, select "Rename"

Here's another hint, take the time to organize your pictures into folders.  Once you decide on a structure, everything else is just so much easier.  For example, I created a Folder called "1st Birthday", renamed all files in that directory to "1st Birthday".  So, when searching for pictures, I don't rely on the picture name, I trust my folder structure.

If you try to rename each picture manually and try to add more info than needed, (i.e. "Picture of Uncle Bob and Aunt Judie at the Lake in Phoenix Arizona June 2007.jpg", you will loose interest by the 10th picture and nothing will ever get done.

Those with large albums know this to be true, picture names aren't important.  Those with small albums eventually learn this lesson too.  So, don't waste time renaming pictures, let Windows do it for you, spend more time outside taking pictures, or more time in Las Vegas, since those Vegas pictures are always the best :-)

This scene in South Korea was too good to pass up, but conditions were less than ideal. It was noontime with direct and very harsh sunlight, and 40 degrees celcius! I knew that the only way to get a good shot out of this was to put a blue filter on the lens and underexpose to mimic the look of moonlight. This trick has saved many of my travel photographs, as there are times during traveling where you can’t wait around for beautiful golden hour sunlight.

If you are a digital photographer and you don’t have a blue filter, you can do the same thing by using the indoor light (incandescent) white balance setting. Often this setting will be indicated by a lightbulb icon on your camera dial. Luckily after your shot you will be able to preview the image, and decide if the photo needs more or less blue color cast. If you can adjust contrast within your camera settings, higher contrast will mimic the look of moonlight better than normal contrast settings.

Thanks to professional photographer Mark Hemmings (www.markhemmings.com) for writing this photo tip.

JAlbum helps you make stunning photo albums in only a few clicks. What makes JAlbum unique is that everything is customizable, letting you resize thumbnails, write descriptions to every picture the way you want, and set the look and feel of the album to fit your photos and the rest of your web site. All these different features and settings that let you control the album look comes from our wonderful community of skin developers. The skins are uploaded to our skin section for users to download and install in just a matter of a click. Lately, we have seen a lot of new skins and updates to existing skins. I'd like to tell you about two new skins using an effect called HighSlide JS, making the pictures open up in a snazzy way as you click the thumbnails. The first one by drmikey is named after the effect: HighSlide JS. The second one by Alan927 is called Boxer and is a combination of the PowerBase skin and HighSlide JS. I think these skins are great, try them out and see what you think :)

Make sure to check the skin section regularly, there's always some news and updates from the JAlbum community.

About a year ago I was contacted by UK publisher Dorling Kindersely in London. They are producing a range of photographic and illustrated educational books for children aged 8-13 called "Eyewitness series", each with a different theme like "Crystal & Gems", "World war I" or Dinosaurs".

Each book is bundled with a clip-art cd, containing 100 images. They wanted the images presented in a way readable on both Windows and Mac and organized in hiearchies. They were also on a tight timeline. JAlbum turned out to be the perfect fit for them. As JAlbum albums can be used freely for both non-commercial and commercial purposes I naturally told them to go ahead with JAlbum.

I didn't think much more about this afterwards, but a couple of months back, a bunch of these books arrived at my doorstep to my surprise (Thank you DK). I've got to tell you that these books contains fascinating reading and well illustrated material. They are also a very good example of using JAlbum to share images on CD-ROM.

JAlbum is available for many different platforms. We have noticed that our previous download page, displaying all download options at once, has been a bit confusing. That's why we have created a new download page. It is now OS sensetive, meaning that if you are on Windows you will be exposed to a download button for Windows. If you are on a Mac... well, you get the picture. Isn't that nice? If you are new to JAlbum, don't forget to register first :)

Panoramics are often up to 10:1 aspect ratio, and given that most people view these on landscape orientated computer monitors, the first restriction is image height. Generally, a user doesn't mind scrolling in one direction, so panoramics that are as high as the monitor but extremely wide can be viewed relatively easily. This therefore dictates a 1-column layout for both the Thumbnail and Images, and a careful choice of image bounds .

So, for dedicated panoramic images go to the settings window in JAlbum:

1. Set Columns = 1
   
2. Determine the Thumbnail Width required, which depends on the final screen resolution. 960 is a reasonable value for Web albums.
   
3. Set Thumbnail Height = Thumbnail Width = 960
   
4. Determine the Image Height required, which again depends on the final screen resolution. 540 is a reasonable value for Web albums.
   
5. Set Image Width = 20000 (this will then cover all cases up to very wide panoramics).

The original version of this tutorial can be found on Laza's site, author of the Chameleon skin. A big thank you to MarkE for writing this tutorial.