Many of our users regularly update their galleries. This is for you!
Being a desktop app, supporting folder hierarchies, jAlbum lends itself well to managing huge image volumes regularly. We see many users, especially organizations, update their galleries weekly. In v25 we’ve taken several steps aiming at making your life easier:
- Image processing time cut down to half *
- Albums can be made and uploaded in the background while you continue using jAlbum. (jAlbum can even make and upload simultaneously).
- Albums can be automatically updated (made and uploaded) once changes are detected
* Measured on a full rebuild of an 80-image gallery consisting of 16MPixel images, Tiger skin
Faster image processing and lower RAM usage
The first thing you’ll probably notice is that jAlbum feels snappier when processing images. It also consumes less RAM, meaning you can serve 50 MPixel images without hiccups. We’ve achieved these improvements by only reading every 2:nd pixel from the original images before scaling them. We’ve employed this technique before if you’ve been using the “Medium” image scaling quality, but in jAlbum 25 we combine this technique with smooth scaling and we’re being careful only to use it when the source image is significantly larger than the final image. Given this, we haven’t noticed any quality degradation in the generated images, but you will notice a faster jAlbum :-).
Background processing
If you’re as picky as I am, you’re probably doing several edit-make-upload cycles until you’re satisfied with your gallery or gallery update. It’s ironic how often we don’t notice errors until we view the final result, isn’t it? When doing repeated make- and upload cycles, you should not have to wait for a progress dialogue. jAlbum 25 has two background engines that make and upload your changes while you continue editing any project:
There are three types of “tasks” that can be submitted for background processing:
- Make – jAlbum makes an album out of a project:
CTRL+M - Make + upload – The album is first made, then, on success, uploaded:
CTRL+SHIFT+M - Upload – The album is uploaded to a previously uploaded location:
CTRL+SHIFT+U
These actions are available in the following locations:
- On the Album menu
- On the context menus of the “Make album” and “Upload” buttons
- On the context menu of the current project
- Within the new MultiMaker window (see below)
Once you’ve submitted a task for background processing, it can be monitored, paused, or aborted through jAlbum’s new Progress Manager component and its task list, which is revealed when you click it:
The Progress Manager is located in the lower-right corner of jAlbum’s window, to the right of the status bar. It’s normally hidden but appears whenever background tasks are being processed. The first (“oldest”) started task’s progress can be monitored directly. Click the Progress Manager to reveal more details and to view any other queued or running tasks. (click outside to close it). There are buttons to pause/resume a task or to abort it. While processing a task, the tasks panel also prints the estimated time left in the lower right corner of each task.
Queuing tasks
Tasks are processed in a “first-come-first-served” fashion, moving from the top of the task list down, but upload tasks can be executed in parallel with make tasks as they don’t compete for the same computer resources (CPU vs IO). Make+upload tasks are however executed in sequence.
You can queue another upload task while an existing upload task is in progress. This allows you to initiate a possibly lengthy gallery upload early in an editing session and have that upload followed up by a final Make+Upload task that includes your last edits.
Aborting tasks
To abort a task, click the “X” button. To abort all background tasks, right-click the component and use the “Abort all” context menu item. If you abort a “Make+Upload” task, the upload part will be aborted too.
While processing background tasks, jAlbum shows a progress spinner on the corresponding project’s item within the Recent projects list. When aborting a task, you will notice a slight delay before these progress spinners go away. This is because jAlbum tries to do a “clean” abort, i.e. let any ongoing image processing or uploading complete first.
Reporting
To avoid interrupting your workflow, jAlbum’s background processor will notify you of completed or failed tasks using the status bar, and could also display a Notification, which gets hidden after a few seconds.
If you find the Notifications too intrusive, then you can make them discrete or switch them off altogether under Preferences. Discrete notifications only show when you click the Megaphone button at the top of jAlbum’s window. On top of this, jAlbum also prints information on initiated, completed, failed, and aborted tasks to jAlbum’s system console (F7).
Project monitoring
jAlbum 25 can ensure that selected projects are automatically made and uploaded (in the background) as soon as project changes are detected. To activate project monitoring, use the Monitor changes context menu of the current project:
Monitored projects are indicated with an eye icon in the recent projects panel. jAlbum checks monitored projects for changes every 10 seconds. Once changes are detected, jAlbum will inform you using a Notification and initiate a make or make+upload task. Likewise, completed or failed tasks are also indicated using Notifications.
The new Multi Maker
The new background processing engine of jAlbum 25 makes it faster and easier to update multiple projects as you can queue multiple Make and Upload tasks, but jAlbum’s Multi Maker window makes this even more convenient. It now works along with the new background processing engine and acts as a “task submitter” for it. Simply select the projects you wish to process from its project list and use the relevant action buttons.
Once you’ve submitted tasks, you can close the Multi Maker window and continue working with jAlbum. Monitor and control the progress of any submitted task – as described earlier – using the Progress Manager component.
The new MultiMaker is more informative than the old one, listing sortable table columns for the project name, skin, style, last made, and last uploaded dates. To reorder the table based on the last uploaded date, click the “Last uploaded” column. To quickly remake all projects made using a certain skin (say after a skin update), click the Skin column, then select the projects using that skin and hit the relevant action button. Completed tasks will be reported using Notifications, but for clarity, they also turn green within the Multi Maker.
In addition, the updated Multi Maker also features a context menu where you can open, preview, or view the project the mouse rests on, as well as submit that specific project for background processing.
It’s also worth remembering that the Multi Maker allows you to drop a file listing paths to each project you wish to reprocess.
Conclusion
jAlbum 25 aims at making life easier for you who regularly maintain one or several galleries. Image processing is significantly faster and you can have jAlbum make and upload galleries while you continue your edits. As background tasks don’t have to wait for your interaction, you also save time. Uploading a small change, like an adjusted title or rearranged images is now down to a split second! You’ll soon fall in love with the CTRL+M keyboard shortcut (CMD+M for Mac).
jAlbum 25 is a free update for anyone who is on a current support & update plan (check under About jAlbum). In any case, you can evaluate all functionality during 30 days.
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