"lastFolderImagePath" is a Turtle- (Tiger, Photoblogger) specific variable that stores the previous folder image path in order to avoid unnecessary regeneration. This is why it's not documented.

Problem solved by taking a different tack, using the regular "use as folder thumbnail" indicator.

• First, check for iconPath - if it's not null, don't do anything. That means that no image has been chosen to represent the folder, and I don't want to show folder.png as a page background.
• Otherwise, pick up the representingFile.
• If the user has chosen Link to originals, copy the representingFile to the output (with a standard name, like folderimage.jpg), and use it as the page background.
• For any other linking choice, scale the representingFile to the image bounds, and write it to the output (again, folderimage.jpg), and use it as the page background.

Only one mystery still to be solved. If the user crops the image using the jAlbum image editing tools, that cropping is applied to the generated slide image. But I don't know how to grab that information and apply it when the skin is doing its own scaling.

Any help on that one?

I guess I'm missing something, but I don't see how that code is picking up the image editing parameters from the .info file associated with the image.

Interesting. Using applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_PRESCALE_STAGE), since I want the filtering for both thumbnails and slides, it seems to be applying some, but not all, of the image editing. It seems to be picking up cropping and straightening, but not flipping, gamma, or brightness/contrast. Better than nothing, to be sure, but oddly selective.

But in Mirage, it does pick up all the image editing (though I need to force a Make All to trigger it). So, what's needed is in there somewhere - I just need to do some tinkering to hunt it down.

Edit: Ah, I think I see. If the scaled image already exists, Mirage is using that as the starting point. But if image editing tools have been used on that image, the scaled image already contains all of the results - cropping, gamma, contrast, etc., etc. In short, the Mirage code isn't actually producing this.

Edited by: jGromit on 26-Mar-2018 11:16

I just can't follow the code - there are too many variables whose meaning is unclear to me. All I know is that if I do this in predir.bsh, only the cropping and straightening image edits are applied:

if(useFolderimage) {
	File repFile = new File(currentFolder.getVars().get("representingFile").toString());
	File folderImage = new File(outputDirectory, "folderimage.jpg");
	if(engine.getImageLinking().equals(AlbumBean.LINK_ORIGINALS) || currentFolder.getRepresentingAlbumObject().isUseOriginal()) IO.copyFile(repFile, folderImage);
	else {
		AlbumImage ai = new AlbumImage(repFile, engine);
		ai = ai.applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_PRESCALE_STAGE);
		ai = ai.scaleToFit(new Dimension(maxImageWidth, maxImageHeight));
		ai.saveImage(folderImage, engine.getQualityPercent());
	}
}

Don't expend a lot of effort on this - I've adopted a different approach (again).

But if I return to this, I would need a slide image that uses whatever image editing the user has applied to this image - cropping, flipping, gamma, whatever. In short, I want to get the same image that the jAlbum engine would create in the slides directory on its own.

Talk about the long way 'round Robin Hood's barn!

Turns out that it just took one little tweak:

if(useFolderimage) {
	File repFile = new File(currentFolder.getVars().get("representingFile").toString());
	File folderImage = new File(outputDirectory, "folderimage.jpg");
	if(engine.getImageLinking().equals(AlbumBean.LINK_ORIGINALS) || currentFolder.getRepresentingAlbumObject().isUseOriginal()) IO.copyFile(repFile, folderImage);
	else {
		AlbumImage ai = new AlbumImage(repFile, engine);
		ai = ai.applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_PRESCALE_STAGE).applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_POSTSCALE_STAGE);
		ai = ai.scaleToFit(new Dimension(maxImageWidth, maxImageHeight));
		ai.saveImage(folderImage, engine.getQualityPercent());
	}
}

The trick is to apply both prescale and postscale filters. No need for 140 lines of code.

Well, now I have two very different methods of getting where I want to go, both of which seem to be able to handle every case I've tested. One technique (this one) involves having the skin generate its own slide image at the folder level, to match the image in the sub-sub-sub folder where it might actually reside.

The other involves grabbing the imagePath to the folder image and manipulating the string it returns to fix some things - strip off the leading folder name, and remove slides/ if the linking is to originals. And one more twist that I had to deal with - if you choose Force JPEG writing, but also Link to originals, mydog.png lands in the output with its original name, but imagePath thinks it should be mydog.jpg.

I just have to figure out which one is more efficient, and which is easier to maintain.

You need to replace

	ai = ai.applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_PRESCALE_STAGE).applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_POSTSCALE_STAGE);
	ai = ai.scaleToFit(new Dimension(maxImageWidth, maxImageHeight));

with

	ai = ai.applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_PRESCALE_STAGE);
	ai = ai.scaleToFit(new Dimension(maxImageWidth, maxImageHeight));
	ai = ai.applyFilters(JAFilter.CLOSEUPS_POSTSCALE_STAGE);
	ai = ai.applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_POSTSCALE_STAGE);

or more simply

	ai = ai.applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_PRESCALE_STAGE).scaleToFit(new Dimension(maxImageWidth, maxImageHeight)).applyFilters(JAFilter.CLOSEUPS_POSTSCALE_STAGE).applyFilters(JAFilter.ALL_POSTSCALE_STAGE);

Your requirements are different from mine, so I still need to use the complex method; I won't bore you with the details here.

Edited by: ctwist on 26-Mar-2018 20:48