Tips

Tips and hints to help you become a happier jAlbum user.

Album of albums

An album can be made up of files at the root level, subfolders each containing files and/or further subfolders or a master album that contains other albums. Read more about this subject in the tips forum Master Album / Subordinate Albums

Default Settings: restoring

To restore jAlbum to the factory default settings you just need to delete the file called defaults.jap from the configuration directory. To do so select Menu/Tools/Open directories/Config directory (SHIFT + Cmd/Ctrl + C), locate the file and either move or delete it then restart jAlbum.

Forum: pointing to a particular post

When posting in a forum thread you may want to point to another post within another forum's thread. To link to a specific post find the next subsequent post that has the name of the poster in the field 'in response to'. Now click on the user's name and copy the link, then paste the link into your forum post e.g.

see [this post|http://jalbum.net/forum/message.jspa?messageID=302499#302499]

As an example the link shown above goes to the indicated post on the first page of this thread.

Histogram

There are hidden settings to the histogram which are revealed by double clicking anywhere above the base of the histogram display area.

Default ViewMode, set the data to be displayed that you use the most.

Default undocked, if selected the histogram will open in its own window each time you start. If you want to undock it as required, just click and drag the histogram outside of the jAlbum window.

Remember location of undocked window, check this setting if you want the histogram to reopen in the same place on your screen as when you close jAlbum.

Visual style, the default is photoshop style, the other option is iPhoto style. Note this option only affects how the RGB Overlay looks.

Foreground color, sets the luminance and RGB displays to either black or white. It does not affect the RGB overlay mode, that is controlled by the visual style option.

Keyboard shortcuts

You can find all the keyboard shortcuts listed here

Making Album & Previewing

During a 'Make' operation you cannot close the progress window without cancelling the make process. If you want to preview the album, as the build continues, but have selected 'use jAlbum's integrated browser' in Preferences/General then hold the Alt/Opt key down while clicking on the preview button. The album will be opened in your default browser which you can refresh as the build progresses.

Reinstalling jAlbum on Windows OS

You can find detailed instruction in the tips forum, Reinstalling jAlbum under Windows

Skins

Some skins have their own help pages for settings specific to them, see Skin Manuals for a list of skins with user manuals.

Slide Show

In 'Slide show" mode you can use the number keys 1 to 5 to give star ratings to your images, the 0 key removes the star rating. Numbers 6 to 9 sets the flags select, second, review and approve. The H key toggles the visibility of the star rating and flags. The escape key exits the slide show.

Uploading to multiple locations

Should you ever want to upload an album to more than one location then this forum tip is for you!

Using The website to gain insight

Unsure about something not covered here, want to know a bit more about how skins work or looking to see if that idea you have is possible? If so then try looking through the Developer_center, there is information there that will at least help you understand how skins are organised.

Videos: Include original to offer for downloading

If you want to include an original video file as well as a converted MP4 file, maybe to let visitors download the original file, then follow these steps:

Make sure you have set linking to include original files and video support is turned on.

Make the album as normal.

In explore mode select a video that you want to include the original file and right/Control click its icon.

From the contextual menu select 'Do not re-encode'.

Make the album again.

When you view the video in your browser you will see the MP4 video but clicking on download/show original will now offer the original video instead of the MP4 version.

Watermrks on more than one line

You can add a watermark to your images using the text effects settings, but that only works for a single block of text. To add two or more lines use two or more User Variables, each calling the standard watermark filter, and varying only in the offset and voffset settings. Read more about image filters here