jAlbum/Welcome

This is the view mode jAlbum starts in. It shows whenever you don't have any album project open. Let's go through each part of jAlbum's main user interface:

View modes

Explore

Here you can add, rearrange and delete the items (images, videos and folders) that makes up your album.

Edit

View and edit individual images, videos and their corresponding properties here.

Preview

Select this view mode to preview the final album in an embedded web browser.

Share

Let others know about your album

Slide show

This full screen mode allows you to present an album locally and to approve (rate and exclude) the images of the album

Sign in

Allows you to sign in to your jAlbum account. If you have purchased a license for jAlbum, the license will automatically be activated when you sign in. Once you are signed in, this button changes to a sign out button.

Notification center

Notifies you when there is a new jAlbum update, skin update, when the account is about to expire and a lot of other things.

Recent projects

A list of all your recent album projects, the default is 50 but you can control the number of album projects in this list in Preferences/General. The list can be sorted as recent, a-z or z-a. Click on a project to open it.

Empty project

Clicking here will close the current album project and return you to this view mode, which allows you to create new album projects by just adding files to jAlbum.

Add

Add images to a new album project by clicking add or drag and drop images or folders from the file system directly to jalbum. Click the arrow to access Facebook import and Camera import.

Skin and style

Skin

The Skin selector is a drop down menu that allows you to select any of the installed skins (templates/themes) or, at the end of the list, install more skins from jAlbum.net. Skins bundled with jAlbum appear in regular weight font and skins installed by the user appear in bold. A bundled skin however will appear in bold once it has been updated, as updates go in to the user's skins directory, not the program directory.

Skin settings

If you click the gearwheel the skin settings will open.

Skin info

If click on the info symbol the skin information window will open.

Style

The style selector is a drop down menu that lets you change and preview the style of your album, if supported by the selected skin. The current style is indicated by a tick, the highlighted style is the target. The popup image, if one is supplied by the skin, is an example of how the target style looks.

Settings button

Opens jAlbum settings. These settings are applied to the album project you are working with and are independent of the skin you use.

Make Album

Click Make Album if you want jAlbum to build your album. The first time you hit Make Album, jalbum will build the whole album, depending on the album size this can take some time. But when you hit Make Album after you have just made some changes to the album, jAlbum will only make changes and that can save a lot of time. By default jAlbum always tries to only make changes, and by just clicking on Make Album jAlbum will decide if the whole album needs to be built or just the changes. If you click on the small arrow to the right on the button you will see two options Make Changes and Make All. Use these options if you want to force jAlbum to Make Changes or Make All.

Upload

By clicking the upload button, jAlbum will automatically start uploading the album to the location where the album was last uploaded to. If it's the first time you upload an album with the desktop application you will be asked to enter your jAlbum account or other account profile. If this album never have been uploaded it will automatically upload to.... the account profile that was last used?????

By clicking on the small arrow to the right on the button you will get some more upload options. Upload/Manage will take you to the upload/manage page, read more about that here. You can also see all your account profiles here, by just clicking the button jalbum will upload the album to the account profile with the tick.

Preview

There are two preview buttons here. The one with the filled magnifying glass will take you to the local preview and the one below will show you the published album. You will see the album in jAlbum's embedded browser.