jAlbum / Explore

This view mode lets you explore your project's files, add, rearrange and delete items, select items for editing and enter titles, captions/comments and keywords.

Hovering over a thumbnail will reveal an 'i' icon, for information and a 'more' icon for access to a context sensitive menu. Hovering over the 'info' icon will result in a pop up window as shown to the right.

Projects pane

A list of all your recent projects, the default is 50 but you can control the number of projects in this list in jAlbum>Preferences>General>Recent Projects. The list can be sorted as recent, a-z or z-a by clicking on the 'watch face or sort arrows'. Click on a project to open it. You can remove all recent projects from the list by selecting the first item in the list, <<Clear list>>. Note, after clearing the list the recent projects will remain visible until jAlbum has been restarted.

Clicking on the '+' icon will open the new project dialogue window - the same as CMD/Cntrl + N or Menu/File/New project.

Project Groups

You can arrange your projects, if the project settings file is stored within the project folder, in groups. By default there are two groups, the 'Recent projects' and 'My Albums'. Changing the selected group will update the top of the project pane to show the name of the current group.

Right clicking on 'My Albums' group will open a contextual menu allowing you to create a new sub-project group, show the group in the file system or reload the projects view. To create a new group at the root (My Albums) level simply click on the small '+' icon to the right of 'Project groups'.

When creating a new project group you will see the window below open, note the checkbox for 'Virtual group'. A virtual group lets you group projects whilst leaving the projects themselves where they are. This lets you add projects to multiple groups. Projects listed under 'Recent projects' can be added to virtual groups. To remove a project from a virtual group select the project in that group and the control click the project and select 'Remove from list'.

The default location for a group is under 'My albums', change the default 'New Group' name and, if you want to change the location using the folder icon to select the location.

You can move projects into a group by dragging the project's icon onto the desired group icon. If the current group is collapsed, as shown in the image to the right, and you want to move a project to another group you can drag the project onto the name of the group and hold the mouse pointer there for a few seconds. This will expand the list of project groups allowing you to drop the project onto the desired group. You can also select an alternative project group by clicking on the current group name, waiting for the list to appear and move the cursor so it is over the group you want to select. The new group will be selected and the group list will remain rolled-up.

A group will show only projects at the root level of the group, that is to see projects in a sub-group you must select that sub-group. Below is an example of how the projects group would look for a new user and how it might look after arranging multiple projects in to groups.

Right clicking on a sub-group will open a contextual menu with the following choices: New Project Group, Show in file system, Reload, Rename and Delete.

Projects

The projects are named after the folder in which they reside (the 'Album name' when the project is first created). If the project has been saved with a name other than 'jalbum-settings' the project will appear in the recent projects list under the name of the settings file.

You can sort your recent projects, by clicking on the 'recent projects' button, alphabetically ascending or descending. The number of recent projects can be set in Preferences>General>Recent Projects, each project has a thumbnail, set by using the 'use as folder thumbnail' as shown below.

The selected project will show any folder structure below its name, sub-folders can be shown/hidden by clicking on the right-facing small triangle to the left of the folder's name or by double clicking on the name itself. Single clicking on one of the sub-folders name will update the explore view to show the contents of that folder. You can drag images from one folder to another by dragging its thumbnail over the project's folder icons.

Empty project

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

Add

Add Objects to a new project by clicking add or drag and drop images, videos, folders etc. from the file system directly to jalbum. Click the arrow to access more ways of adding files, like from a phone, Facebook import and Camera import..

If using the add from phone choice any files added will be installed in the currently displayed folder, or if none a new project. You will get a popup window with a QR code, scan the QR code with your phone.

Now on your phone click on the link or select open in browser. You will see 'Choose photos', click it and select the files you want to use. When returned to the browser click on the, now active, 'Upload' button. When finished close the browser and return to jAlbum on your computer. The files will now be shown in the explore view, ready for organising and tagging etc.

When adding folders jAlbum will ignore any album folders associated with other projects. Read more on ways of adding files

Contextual Menu

To the right of the project's name is a small downward facing triangle, clicking on it opens up a contextual menu.

Settings

Opens the last used settings window.

Skin settings

Opens the select skin's settings window.

Collaborative album

Either start or stop collaboration by attaching/detaching your jAlbum 'inbox' to the project. If the project is already setup for collaborating you can invite collaborators and check for any new objects from your collaborators.

See Collaborative albums for more information.

Monitor changes

Mark the current project to be monitored (monitored projects have an 'eye' icon) whilst jAlbum is running. Projects can be monitored for changes and the album made or made and uploaded automatically. If monitoring is no longer required select the do nothing choice to stop monitoring.

Make album

Make or update the album.

Make in background

Start making the album leaving the GUI free to do other things whilst the album is being made.

Make and upload in background

Start making the album and when complete upload it, leaving the GUI free to do other things whilst the album is being made.

Preview

Preview the local album, within jAlbum if integrated browser is enabled (you can then hold Alt/Opt while clicking to force preview in an external browser) or an external browser if not.

Publish

Publish your album to the internet.

Upload in background

Start the upload process as a background task.

Upload/Manage

Mange your internet accounts, lets you select an upload location for each album.

Embed album

Generates the HTML code to embed your album using iFrames or JavaScript

Close project

Close the current project and select the 'empty' project ready to make a new project.

Delete

You can delete the local album, the published album or the entire project. If the project is not under ‘My Albums’ you will have to manually delete the project.

Known bug: If you tell jAlbum to delete the local album and do a make, or change project, the Structure Setting will be set to ‘Mirror’.

Remove from list

Remove the current project from the recent projects list.

Duplicate Project...

Will take the active project and make a duplicate of it, with the option of renaming it or using the existing project name with '(copy)' appended. If the original project has an 'album' subfolder then that is not duplicated, and after selecting the duplicate project and making whatever changes you require you will need to perform a 'Make album'.

Rename

Rename the current project. This actually changes the project's folder name on your disk drive.

Album information

Provides information on your project including the date of any recent changes: The location and name of the project settings file, the default name is album-settings.jap. How many images and their total file size; the location of the project folder on your computer. Local album, location and number of files and folders along with the total storage space. The local album can be deleted by clicking on a small trash can icon.

If the album has been uploaded to the internet then you get the same information and options as above but for the remote content.

The toolbar

Add

Clicking the ‘add’ button will open a file chooser allowing you to navigate to your files and folders where you can select items to be added to your project. You can also drag and drop photos, videos or folders onto the thumbnail window pane. Read more on ways of adding files here.
Click on the right half of the arrow to access Database, Facebook and Camera import options - see JAlbum/Menus/File for more information on these

New folder

This button adds an empty folder to your currently selected folder.

New page

For site aware skins this will open a drop down menu were you can choose a template page to add or a web location. For pages the default template is an empty page, which shows for all skins, other pages will vary by skin, for example Tiger has About, Contact, NewPhotos and Sitemap. See Adding template pages for examples. Pages, other than 'Empty Page', are, since jAlbum 20.2, added as links instead of copies. If you convert them to copies of templates, and then decide to change to another skin, that also supports them, you might need to update the project's template files before rebuilding the album. There is a tool that will automate the process for you. If your project includes template pages and you switch to a skin that does not support them then you should either exclude or delete (if you are sure you no longer want to use) them.

After adding a new page double click its thumbnail image to open it and reveal its settings, if any.

Web locations lets you link to pages published to the web, so you can link to other albums, YouTube pages or anywhere on the web, see image right for the resulting settings window. You can also add a web location by selecting the 'favicon', or other representing icon, in your browser and dragging it to jAlbum's explore window.

The resulting object has a thumbnail item with a superimposed globe - to indicate it is a web location and not a standard image.

The object created will take its name from the webpage it is linking to, if objects have the same name then subsequent additions will include a number to differentiate them. See Edit>Web locations if you want to make any changes to a web location object.

Web locations support relative paths, these must be entered manually or via copy and paste - you cannot drag and drop relative URLs. A relative path is one without a ‘protocol’, like http, www. or file:. See W3 relative URLs.

One use of web locations is in Making an album of albums

Exclude/Include object

Excluding an item keeps it within the project but excludes it from the generated album. This button toggles the state. An excluded item has a red circle with a white bar in it.

Rotate left/right

Rotates the image 90° to the left or to the right. This will rotate thumbnails, slide and folder images, but not originals in the generated album. Note: jAlbum won't psysically rotate the original images in order to not cause any data loss with JPEG files. Instead jAlbum simply modifies an "orientation flag" of the image that tells how the image should be viewed.

Mirror

Sets a metadata flag so that the image appears to have left and right swapped, the result is as though it is being viewed through a mirror.

Filter bar

(at the right hand end of the address bar) This toggles the status of the filter bar (Cmd/Ctrl + F). You can filter by star rating, flag, keyword or by any combination of them. To filter, click on the stars and/or flag icons of your choice and/or enter a keyword in the search field. Only items matching all of the criteria will be shown.

Undo

This will undo multiple levels of recent file operations such as move, rename etc.

Redo

This will redo multiple levels of recent file operations such as move, rename etc.

File attributes

Details view

Displays multiple fields of data as set in Preferences>Explorer>Details view fields. The data fields available for display are:

Filename

read/write

Title

read/write

Comment

read/write

Keyword

read/write

Camera date

read only

Added

(date) read only

Modified

(date) read only

Creator

read/write

Copyright

read/write

Copyright URL

read/write

Size

read only

Dimensions

read only

Copying and pasting ofcertain metadata aspects like Title, Comment, Author and Copyright between items, for instance to apply the same title on multiple images, click the "Copy" button, that appears next to the title field when the cursor is over the field, then select Multiple target items and paste.

Thumbnail views

File name

Displays the actual file names of the items in the explore pane. Clicking on the text just below a selected item will put the text for that item in to edit mode, with the filename and extension selected ready for renaming. Note this mode renames the actual items in your project directories.

Titles

Changes the text displayed below items to titles. A title can be used to change the displayed name of an item in your completed album. For example a file name can not contain certain illegal characters, but they can be used within a title. If no title has been added then the base filename (no extension) is used by default. Note the text color changes to blue for items that have titles applied.

Comments

Changes the text displayed below items to comments, if no comments has been applied then the file name is displayed as a navigation aid. Unlike titles, comments will not show in an album if there is no entry, that is there is no default value for comments. A comments can include HTML tags to format the text in the rendered album.

Comments show how they look as rendered HTML until you click in a comment field to edit it when it changes to plain text/html code..
If you are not familiar with HTML or CSS you can use the HTML Editor to apply basic formatting to text.

Keywords

Changes the text displayed below items to keywords. If no keyword has been applied then the file name is displayed as a navigation aid. Note the text color changes to green for items that have keywords applied. Multiple keywords are entered by separating them with a comma. If, and how, keywords are displayed is skin dependent, not all skins support them.

Once a keyword has been applied it will show up, as a tag with a green background, at the bottom left of the explore pane. Drag and drop one or many keyword "tags" onto album objects to add. Drag and drop one or more keyword "tags" onto the filter bar (CTRL+F1) to filter on those keywords. If you edit or delete keywords they will be changed/deleted for the objects the changes are applied to but the list of keywords displayed will not be updated until the project is reloaded.

You can ctrl click on the list of keywords and then select rename or delete. You can only select rename if a single keyword is selected. Selecting delete will let you delete one or more selected keywords from the list.

Spell check

Spell checker is enabled or disabled in Preferences>Generl>Highlight misspelled word.

The dictionary used for spell checking is based on the language selected under Preferences>General>Language but can be changed by entering an editable field and control/right clicking and then selecting 'Languages' and choosing an alternative to the selected language. jAlbum should automatically download missing dictionaries for the following languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian and Swedish.

When entering text in the above fields, or elsewhere in a skin's setting, if supported by the skin, spelling errors are highlighted by an underscored red wavy line. To look for a suggested alternative spelling select the word and control/right clicking to bring up a contextual menu, select 'Spelling' and select a word from the list. If the word is highlighted but correctly spelt then you can add the word to your own custom word dictionary, control/right click and select 'Add to dictionary'.

If you have multiple spelling errors or multiple occurrences of a misspelt word you can enter batch correction by pressing F7 (again, whilst in text entry mode).

The incorrect word is shown in red and if there are any suggested replacements they will be listed in the 'Suggestions' field, the first word in the list is shown just below the misspelt/unknown word, if you click on another word in the suggestions list it will replace the suggested word. If the word is not in the list you can enter it just below the incorrectly spelt word and then click 'Add to dictionary'.

You have the options of ignore this word or all occurrences of the word or change this word or all occurrences of the word. There is also the option to edit the dictionary to correct any error within it.

Folder properties pane

This pane shows folder details, and if supported by the selected skin, lets you select a 'theme' image for each folder.

The 'Thumbnail' is the currently selected one for the folder's thumbnail, it can be changed by dragging another thumbnail onto it, that includes dropping a sub-folder itself onto the selectors to the right to use that subfolders thumbnail image. Alternatively, you can right click the theme image and choose 'select...' to pick an image. Note that this thumbnail image does not reflect any filters applied, such as a crop

Clicking on the small green icon just above the pane will toggle the visibility of the pane, either collapsed or set to the default width. The two, small triangle icons, just below the green expand/collapse icon, set the width of the pane to one of three sizes. You can drag the pane to increase or decrease its width. Clicking the 'right' pointing triangle will collapse the pane, clicking the left pointing triangle will expand it to whatever width the pane has been set by previously dragging the pane or to the default width if it has not previously been manually resized. Clicking the left triangle again will maximise the pane and increase the size of the folder images - allowing you to focus on the cropping of the thumbnail/theme image(s), hiding the project thumbnails. Clicking the right facing triangle again will reset the pane to the previous state.

The name of the folder is shown to the right of the two resizing triangles, this is not an editable field.

You can enter/edit the folder title and description. Separate folder comments, entered in edit mode and descriptions entered in the folder properties pane, can be effected if supported by the selected skin. If you are not familiar with HTML or CSS you can use the HTML Editor to apply basic formatting to text.

If theme images are not supported the 'Theme image' is disabled, for skins supporting theme image it will default to that used for the folder thumbnail. Some skins will also support separate folder thumbnail and theme images, to change the theme image just drag and drop another image from the current folder. If you want a different thumbnail/theme image than currently available then you can drag it from your OS file system to the thumbnail/theme image placeholder and it will be added as a link, if that is the selected preference action, or copied to the project and excluded. If the theme image is larger than needed you can adjust the 'crop focus' by clicking on the place holder area and dragging up/down. You can remove the theme image or revert back to the default theme image by right clicking on the theme image and using ‘remove' or 'reset’ from the contextual menu. If supported by the skin there will also be the choice of setting the theme image's cropping shape, you can select from custom, square, banner and no cropping. If you need to see a larger image, to make finer positional adjustments right click the theme image and select 'edit', the image will open in a popup, resizable, window.

You can see a preview of the cropped region using a couple of sample shapes but it doesn't let you set the crop shape, that is usually controlled by the skin. Cropping of theme images is an albumwide setting, not per folder.

Explore Contextual menus

There are two contextual menus within the explore area, the first is Control/Right clicking in the space between thumbnails and the other Control/Right clicking on a thumbnail or hovering over a thumbnail and clicking on 'More'.

Between thumbnails

This gives keyboard access to open and close the filter and address bars, change the size of thumbnail images from small to large. You can change the label type, toggling between showing file names, titles, comments or keywords. Excluded items can be hidden or shown, item ordering can be changed - see 'Ordering files in each folder' below, folders and web pages added and the window refreshed (F5). The slide show can be started and the currently selected item can be edited. There is also the Organise setting.

Backward and forward

jAlbum keeps track of visited folders and allows you to navigate back and forward in a browser-like fashion (folder navigation history). You can also use ALT-Left and ALT-Right and I f your mouse supports a "back" button you can use that

Paste

Pastes any supported object that is on the clipboard, for example an image from your OS or another jAlbum project or files and folders 'cut' from within the project - to make moving items easy. When copying folders, the full folder contents, not just supported jAlbum files will be copied. When an object, within a folder, is pasted that has the same name as an existing object it will be pasted with the name modified, adding ' - copy' and if further objects are pasted then a ‘(n)’ where n is a number will be added. When objects are copied from elsewhere, that have the same filename as an existing object in the current folder,

you will be prompted to decide whether you should 'keep both, don't replace, stop or replace'. If 'keep both' is selected then the new item will be pasted with ' -n' appended to the filename.

Select all

Select all items in the currently displayed folder.

Review

Enters review mode allowing you to examine larger versions of your images and change the star rating (keys SHIFT + 0 to 5) and labels (keys SHIFT + 6 to 9 and F); mark an item as the folder image (key T) or remove the image from your project. The H key toggles the visibility of the star rating and flags. Use the ESC key to exit review mode. See Review Mode for more details.

Address bar

Toggles the visibility of the address bar.

Filter bar

Toggles the visibility of the filter bar.

Label type

Selects the type of information to be displayed for each item. You can show information for filename, title, comments or keywords.

Hide excluded

Toggles the visibility of items marked as excluded.

Organise

Lets you arrange items in the current folder. You can choose from:

Wrap in folder - to gather all items and place them in a folder.

Flatten - takes the contents of subfolders and places them at the current level.

Group alphabetically - places items in subfolders, each subfolder being named A to Z.

Group by date - places items in subfolders, each subfolder being named by the selected date format.

Group by place - places items in subfolders, each subfolder being named by the selected location criteria.

Group by keyword - places items in subfolders, each subfolder being named after the first keyword found for each item.

Ordering

Lets you arrange items in the current folder. You can choose from:

Name

Last modified date

Camera date

Added date

Rating

Title (2)

Comment (2)

Category

Type

Custom

According to jAlbum settings

The settings are set in jAlbum>Settings>Pages>Image ordering

Reverse

Shuffle

Apply to sub folders

Set all subfolder's ordering to the current folder's ordering.

Folder ordering

Lets you arrange items in the current folder when the “Order by” is not set to "Custom" and the "Directories first" checkbox is checked. Otherwise use the structure function or drag and drop to re-arrange folders!

New page (2)

Lets you add further content to your projects. Web location is always available, other items are skin dependant, such as about and contact web pages.

New folder (2)

Lets you arrange add an empty folder.

Update

Updates the contents of the currently displayed folder.

Edit

Enter edit mode, the item selected as the folder thumbnail will be selected.

On thumbnails

Open

Opens the selected item or if more than one is selected then the last to be selected. Hold down Alt/Opt to open the item in your selected external application.

Edit (2)

Opens the item for editing, if the item is a page template (.htt file) then it opens the code in jAlbum's TextPad.

Cut

Marks the selected item(s) for moving to a new location via 'cut and paste'. Navigate to where you want to move the item(s) to and then right-click and select 'Paste'. If you do not perform a paste operation the file(s) will remain where in place.

Copy

Copies the selected item(s).

Show in file system

Highlights the selected item in a window on your computer.

Extensions

Set area tags

Display and edit face regions. Press the button labeled ‘Detect faces’, to try to automatically detect faces. If any faces are missed you can click and drag around each face to create a tag area. Tag areas can be named and given a description. The ‘Type’ is set to ‘Face’, changing it will result in a warning, as it might cause problems with other recognition software, you can however tag other areas or objects. To delete a tag use CMD/CNTRL+ backspace or control-click on it and select 'Delete tag’. Requires ‘Include photographic data in generated pages’ to be enabled, see Settings > Advanced > Metadata

Adjust camera date…

Only works with jpg images.

Opens a new window with controls to set the camera date, or 'date taken'. The original date is shown, so you can double check before clicking OK. When multiple images are selected it allows you to adjust their date/times by the same amount or set them to the same date and time. For example, if you have changed time zones but forgot to reset the camera date then you can add/subtract the number of hours it is out by.

Set crop focus

For some skins that use cropped thumbnails and/or theme images, such as Tiger, this allows you to adjust the area of an image that will be used for the thumbnail and/or theme image.

You can move the crop area by click and dragging the focus or manually entering the coordinates for the vertical and horizontal weights. The crop shape can be set to theme image, square, thumbnail bounds or folder thumbnail bounds.

There is a Folder properties panel which works in conjunction with this crop focus setting. Position adjustments in one will be reflected in the other.

Comment/Title/Keywords

Select from Remove, Clear, Copy or Paste for the text for the selected item(s). Using comments as an example, Remove deletes the xmp data and lets exif or IPTC data be seen. Clear writes an empty string to the xmp field, stopping exif or IPTC data from being displayed.

Note, see Settings/Advanced/Metadata for priority comment sources, xmp is selected by default.

List metadata

Opens a window for each image selected that displays all of the metadata for each image. As well as the standard camera data, such as ISO and F-number there is also embedded jpeg, xmp and iptc data.

You can use CMD/CNTRL + F to search the metadata fo specific information.

Open with application

Attempts to open the selected file in your chosen external editor, where 'application' will be the name of the application you've chosen.

If you have not chosen an external editor, click 'More', then 'Extensions', then click 'Set external editor,' and navigate to the application you want to use.

If you have chosen an external editor, but wish to choose a different application, on a Mac, click 'More', then 'Extensions', then hold down either SHIFT or ALT/Opt and click 'Open with application'. In Windows, click 'More', then 'Extensions', then SHIFT-click 'Open with application.' A new file chooser will appear that will let you choose a different application. For both OSs you can also use SHIFT + ENTER to open with the external application.

Holding down ALT and pressing Enter or double clicking an image will open it in the chosen external editor.

You must select an executable file. On a Mac for example, that means navigating through Applications to the executable e.g. Applications/Preview/Contents/MacOS/Preview. In Windows, you will have to navigate to C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86), and locate the executable file you wish to use.

You can have several "OpenWith" installed. The default one is located under the "ext" folder of jAlbum's program folder. To have several, copy the "OpenWith.jaext" file to the "ext" folder of jAlbum's config folder and rename it to "SecondOpenWith.jaext" for instance.

Invert selection

Deselects all selected items and selects all those that were unselected.

Review (2)

Opens the items within the currently viewed folder in the slide show viewer, items in subfolders are not shown. If a set of images are selected then only those images will be shown.

Use as folder thumbnail

Use the selected image as the thumbnail for the current folder.

Organise (2)

The Organise setting, it can assist you in organizing your files into folders in various powerful ways.

Order selected by

Lets you order the selected objects, files or folders, by the selected choice. Hold down the 'Shift' key to reverse the ordering. The 'Type' choice will order objects by their file extension.

If you add new objects to the folder then this choice isn't retained. To get them ordered the same way, select the relevant objects (or all) and then issue the "Order selected by" again. Note the selected ordering is not subsequently shown by a 'tick' and the ordering of all of the folder's contents will be shown as 'Custom'.

Audio clip

Attach audio clips to album objects (not folders, audio, video or web location). The contextual menu lets you attach an audio file, record an audio message, play the audio and delete an attached file/recording. You can attach .wav, .mp3 and .m4a files, recordings are saved as mp3s. How audio clips appear within an album depends on how the skin in use handles them.

Note: You can attach an audio file to multiple images. If doing so the audio file in the album will only be deleted when all such attached audio files have been detached (deleted) from every object within a given folder.

When record or play is selected from the contextual menu, or if you click on the small musical notes icon (top right of an object with an attached clip) the explorer view will be dimmed and a small record/play control window will pop up. If you selected play the file will start playback immediately, if you selected record you will need to press the record button to actually start recording. The buttons change from 'play' to 'playing' and 'record' to recording', press them again to stop playing/recording. Pressing the spacebar will activate the last used button. To exit from the play/record pop up control either press the 'escape' key or click outside of its window.

Warning: If the record button is pressed it will immediately replace any previous recording or attached file.

Attached audio files are copied to your project by jAlbum, the original does not need to remain in the same place, or even on the machine, for it to continue working.

Image tools

This menu allows you to easily apply images tools added in Edit view mode to multiple images. You can select copy, paste or remove from the submenu. Copy will copy all of the image tool settings applied to the selected image, such as crop, rotation, grayscale effect etc.

Effects

Displays the currently applied global image effects (See Settings/Effects) and allows exclusion of those global effects for the selected image(s).

To clear effects applied to individual images in edit mode you need to select the individual image, re-enter edit mode and clear the effect there.

Exclude

Excludes the selected items from the generated album.

Hide

This can be applied to folders and, if supported by a skin to 'pages', it includes the folder or page in the album but does not create any links to it. Visitors must therefore know of its existence to manually navigate to it, or the skin must provide an alternative way of accessing it.

Include original

This lets you include selected originals within your album even if you do not have 'link to originals', directly or via scaled images, selected in Settings/Pages. Note that the originals are added but that they are not linked to directly from thumbnails, they are linked via the slide page. Don't forget to ensure copy originals is checked on Settings/Pages or that the original image is accessible from the album's location.

Use original

Lets you use an original file as "closeup image" instead of a scaled/processed image. This setting has no effect on a video or any other non-image file (audio file, PDF, etc.). Any gif images will automatically be set to ‘Use original’.

Rating (2)

Rate the selected objects from zero, unrated, to five stars.

Flag

Set the flag status of the selected image(s). Flag has colours/values of None, Red/Select, Yellow/Second, Blue/Review and Green/Approved.

Print...

Prints a’contact print sheet’ of the selected images. The images are printed on a grid, the size of the grid is selected in a drop down menu. There are also options to include file names, image dimensions and comments for each image.

Save copy as

Save a copy of the selected item outside of the current project. There is no duplicate file option but you can use this to save the selected item under another name, within the current folder or add it to a different folder.

Convert link to copy

This will change a link to a file into a copy of that file, the original file must be accessible at the time of conversion. It will also recursively process files in any selected folders.

Delete

If added as a link only the link is deleted, otherwise the actual file will be deleted. A warning dialog will appear before deleting actual files as they are completely removed, not sent to the trash!

Rename/Rename items

Changes the file name of the selected item. If more than one item is selected then you can select from one of four ways of renaming items, see Batch Rename for details.

Do not re-encode

Do not re-encode copies the original video to the slides directory of the output, if there isn't one there already. If the video is already in the slides directory of the output (the result of an earlier album build), that file is left alone - it is not replaced.

Ordering files in each folder

jAlbum sets the file ordering for individual folders to "custom" if you do any of these things:

Add images using the add button;

Create new folders and new pages;

Reorder images with drag and drop (like before).

If you add images using drag and drop you can choose to keep the order as set, or have images ordered as 'Custom'. To keep the current ordering drag the image near to the edge of the explore window and then drop it.Notice the border around the edge of the explore pane that indicates the sort order will be kept.

To add images with custom ordering drop the image between or before/after the first/last object. Notice the insertion bar that indicates the drop location.

Add images using drag and drop

Selecting files

To make navigating through your project files easier you can adjust the size of the thumbnails. Clicking on the left icon will set the thumbnails to small (60%) and the right icon to normal (100%) of the thumbnail size as set under jAlbum>Preferences>Explorer>Thumbnails When the thumbnails are reduced below the small size any displayed text will be hidden. See the two explore views above for how the thumbnails change.

CMD/CTRL+, CMD/CTRL-, and CMD/CTRL0 on a keyboard number pad will Increase, reduce or set the standard size thumbnail. For keyboards without a number pad CMD/Ctrl+ dos not work.

You can select one or more images or folders. This can be helpful if you want an action to apply to more than one image or folder, for example exclude more than one image or folder. You can select and deselect several images in different ways. You can also use 'Select-as-you-type' when the view mode is set to 'File name' or 'Details'. In details mode you need to have either a thumbnail selected or nothing selected for it to work - otherwise you are in edit mode on one of the objects properties. Just type the first, or a few of the letters in the filename to have the target object selected.

If you want to select many images in a row you can hold shift while clicking on the images. Start by marking the first image without holding shift and then select the last image while holding shift. All images in between will be selected. Green squares illustrates that the images is selected.

If you want to deselect several images in a row that is also possible when using the keyboard keys. This works the same as selecting images in a row but reversed. You can only deselect the image starting from the end. Hold shift and click on the last image you want selected, all images after that image will be deselected. Dashed green rectangles illustrates that the images has been deselected.

To select multiple images that are not in a row you can instead use cmd (on mac) or ctrl (on Windows). Just hold the key while clicking on the images you want to select or deselect.

You can deselect random images in the same way. Hold cmd (on mac) or ctrl (on Windows) and click on the images you want to deselect.

You can also select images by holding the mouse and drag a square over the images you want to select. See screenshot to the right.

You can actually deselect images in the same way. Hold the mouse and hold Shift or cmd/ctrl (both works the same) and drag a square over the images you want to deselect.

Album objects may be copied between, and within, projects using the copy/paste menu. Project files and folders can also be dragged from jAlbum to any other application.

Album objects can be cut and pasted using CMD/Cntrl + X and CMD/Cntrl + V. The object(s) will be pasted close to the mouse pointer location. This makes it easier to move objects from deeply nested subfolders to any other folder, when cut the object will be greyed out - see 'Clock.jpg' right. When the image is pasted the original will be removed. You can use CMD/Cntrl + Z to undo a cut and paste operation. If you cut an object but do not paste it before closing the project the object will remain in its original location.

You can also hold down ALT/CNTRL while dragging items to make a copy, instead of moving them.

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