There's a change in the behavior of the theme image processor.

In jAlbum 28.1.5, if you tell it to make the images all WebP, the theme image is still a JPG. However, if the skin specifies the name of the theme image as, e.g., mytheme.webp, you do, in fact, get a WebP image.

In jAlbum 29, it still cranks out a JPG theme image, even if you tell it to make the images all WebP. But now, the skin can no longer tell the core that the theme image name is mytheme.webp. That produces an error, and the album build aborts.

Edited by: JeffTucker on 25 Sep 2022, 08:31, to remove confusing tangent.

It's been so long since I messed with these routines, I'm hard-pressed to remember how they behave. I'll need to experiment, perhaps after a few stiff drinks.

How? Code please? I did the following in init.bsh for Minimal skin, and it does indeed try to generate a webp image, but then bails out when trying to embed XMP properties within it:

class MyProcessor extends ThemeImageProcessor {
    public String getThemePath(AlbumObject folder) {
        return "foo.webp";
    }	
}
 
engine.setThemeImageProcessor(new MyProcessor());

How do you try to change the name?

I will release a silent update to v29.0.1 where I also update several image related files. This update will ensure that jAlbum won't bail out but instead print a warning message to the system console if you try to use webp for theme images. It works, but they are re-generated every time as the Apache Commons Imaging library doesn't recognize webp. In jAlbum 28.1 that library silently ignored trying to embed properties in webp files. Now it at least throws an exception so we're told about the problem.

So in essence: With v29.0.1 WebP theme images should work, but will crank out a warning to the system console because XMP properties can't be embedded, and this leads to regeneration of theme images every time.

Ah, good to know.

Here's what RobM was doing in his Journal skin, with the now-non-working code commented out:

//Turn on theme image support, using the selected output format of jpg or webp
//Set the them image name
themeImageName = "folderimage.jpg";
/*
Does not work with Beta version of jAlbum 29
if(engine.getOutputFormat().toString().equals("WebP")) {
	themeImageName = "folderimage.webp";
}
*/
 
//Setup the custom theme image method
ThemeImageProcessor custom = new ThemeImageProcessor() {
  public String getThemePath(AlbumObject folder) {
    return themeImageName;
  }
};
 
//Invoke the theme image processor
engine.setThemeImageProcessor(custom);

It used to produce a WebP theme image, but in jAlbum 29, it crashed.

But to avoid the repeated regeneration of theme images, best to leave it alone for now.