Skins extend the way jAlbum presents albums. They are as easy to install as double clicking a file. Now with jAlbum 9.4 we're introducing jAlbum Extensions that makes it as easy to extend jAlbum itself.
Extensions have actually been around for quite some time (many parts of jAlbum are pre-bundled extensions), but it is not until jAlbum 9.4 that you can install them just by double clicking an icon. jAlbum 9.4 also saves extensions to a location next to installed skins so they survive updates to jAlbum. I hope the steps we've taken shall inspire our talented developer community to contribute with practical extensions to jAlbum. To get the ball rolling we've prepared a couple of extensions here for you to install and use as boilerplate for your own extensions.
"JCaptionCopier"
This small extension automates adding the same caption (image comment) to several images. Within jAlbum, right click the thumbnail for an image having a caption you wish to apply to several other images and select "Copy caption". Now select the target images (CTRL+A selects all) and right click and select "Paste caption". That's it.
Download JCaptionCopier (3 KB)
"JTitleCopier"
This extension works just like JCaptionCopier, but does the job for image titles instead.
"CameraImporter"
CameraImporter monitors camera memory cards added to the computer. Once found, it shows a small notification about it and offers you to show the contents in your file system. At any time, you can show the contents of an inserted memory card by going to File->Import->From camera. To add files to jAlbum, just use drag and drop. Future jAlbum versions will be smart enough to detect files already copied from the memory card and avoid copying those again. That feature along with this extension is likely to simplify your work flow as a photographer.
Download CameraImporter (15 KB)
"OpenWith"
This extension allows you to integrate an external image program with jAlbum. It installs itself into the thumbnail context menu of jAlbum. To use it, right click a thumbnail and select "Open with …". The first time you get to point out the executable to integrate with jAlbum. OpenWith then remembers your choice until you alt-click "Open with" again. Once a program has been chosen, jAlbum will launch it and pass the selected image along for editing. When you're done editing press F5 within jAlbum to refresh jAlbum's display.
Note: The program to integrate must allow the image file as a command line parameter
A note to developers
All extensions here are under the liberal Apache 2.0 open source license. You can read more in our developer section and download the source code for these extensions here (Netbeans Java projects).
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