/ 
album-0.04
/ Album::Tutorial

NAME

Album::Tutorial - How to use the Album program

SYNOPSIS

This tutorial describes the basic use of the Album program to create and maintain HTML based photo albums.

DESCRIPTION

To get started, create a new directory and cd to it. Create a subdirectory 'large' and put some pictures there. If you have installed the 'album' tool in your execution path, you can now execute it as follows:

$ album -v
No info.dat, adding images from large
info.dat: Cannot update (does not exist)
Number of entries = 7 (7 added)
mkdir thumbnails
mkdir icons
Creating icons first-gr.png first.png ... sound.png movie.jpg done
im023.jpg: thumbnail OK
im024.jpg: thumbnail OK
im025.jpg: thumbnail OK
im026.jpg: thumbnail OK
im027.jpg: thumbnail OK
im028.jpg: thumbnail OK
im029.jpg: thumbnail OK
Creating pages for 7 images
(Needed to write 7 image pages)
Creating pages for 1 index
(Needed to write 1 index page)

Your results will vary, but be similar to this example run. What you can see is that 'album' found 7 images in the 'large' directory, created thumbnails and icons directories, created thumbnails by resizing the images, and finally created the HTML pages. You can inspect your first photo album by opening file 'index.html' with your favorite browser. You can click on any image to see the larger version. Navigation buttons are provided to the left of the image.

It is interesting to run 'album' again:

$ album -v
No info.dat, adding images from large
info.dat: Cannot update (does not exist)
Number of entries = 7 (7 added)
.......[7]
Creating pages for 7 images
(No image pages needed updating)
Creating pages for 1 index
(No index pages needed updating)

'album' tries to avoid doing unnecessary work as much as possible. In this case, all thumbnails and image and index pages are up to date. The line of periods shows progress, one period for each image processed.

The purpose of medium sized images is easy browsing by having a consistent and convenient size. The default size shows normal 4:3 images completely on an 1024x768 screen in the browser's full screen mode.

To add medium sized images (and specify an album title):

$ album -v --medium --title "My First Album"
No info.dat, adding images from large
info.dat: Cannot update (does not exist)
Number of entries = 7 (7 added)
mkdir medium
im023.jpg: medium OK
im024.jpg: medium OK
im025.jpg: medium OK
im026.jpg: medium OK
im027.jpg: medium OK
im028.jpg: medium OK
im029.jpg: medium OK
Creating pages for 7 images
(Needed to write 14 image pages)
Creating pages for 1 index
(Needed to write 1 index page)

Again, 'album' only does the work needed, re-using the work already done.

As can be seen from the example runs, 'album' looks for a file 'info.dat'. This file can be used to:

- control what images must be shown
- the order in which they must be shown
- whether rotation is necessary
- set tag and description information
- control other settings

The format of 'info.dat' is simple. Empty lines and lines starting with a '#' are ignored. Data lines contain the name of an image file, followed by its description. Control lines start with an '!' mark.

'album' can fill 'info.dat' for you. To obtain this, create an empty 'info.dat' file, and run 'album':

$ touch info.dat
$ album -v --medium --title "My First Album"
No info.dat, adding images from large
Updating info.dat
Number of entries = 7 (7 added)
.......[7]
Creating pages for 7 images
(No image pages needed updating)
Creating pages for 1 index
(No index pages needed updating)

Upon completion, 'info.dat' will look similar to:

# album control file generated by album 1.19, Tue Jun  1 22:39:41 2004
!title My First Album
!medium
# New entries added by album 1.19, Tue Jun  1 22:39:41 2004
!tag 
im023.jpg  
im024.jpg  
im025.jpg  
im026.jpg  
im027.jpg  
im028.jpg  
im029.jpg

You can now add a description for each image following the file name, for example:

!tag 2004/06/01
im023.jpg  Sunrise
im024.jpg  Overview
im025.jpg  Across the lake
im026.jpg  Catch of the day
im027.jpg  Fishermen
im028.jpg  Swimming cows
im029.jpg  Moon over Clew Bay

Re-run the program (no need for --medium and --title anymore):

$ album -v
Number of entries = 7
.......[7]
Creating pages for 7 images
(Needed to write 14 image pages)
Creating pages for 1 index
(Needed to write 1 index page)

There are no complaints anymore about a missing 'info.dat', but there's also no message 'adding images from ./large'. In other words, the only images shown are the ones named in the control file. New images added to the 'large' directory will be ignored. We'll see later what to do about that.

Summary of control commands. Most settings can also obtained with command line options, as shown.

  !title XXX       set the title to XXX, override with --title
  !page NxM        set the layout to N rows (--rows) and 
		   M columns (--columns)
  !thumbsize NNN   desired width of thumbnails (--thumbsize)
  !medium          include medium sized images (--medium)
  !mediumsize NNN  desired width of medium sized images (--mediumsize)
  !tag             tagline for all following images
  !caption         caption code for index pages (--caption),
		   a sequence of f (file name), s (size, WxH),
		   c (caption), t (tag line); default "fct".

Importing new images.

An important feature of 'album' is importing new images from an external source. For example, you can import new images from a CD-ROM, or from a digital camera.

Assuming you mounted a CD-ROM with new images, execute 'album' as follows:

$ album -v --import /mnt/cdrom --update
Updating info.dat
Number of entries = 9 (2 added)
.......[7]
im030.jpg: copy medium thumbnail OK
im031.jpg: copy medium thumbnail OK
Creating pages for 9 images
(Needed to write 18 image pages)
Creating pages for 1 index
(Needed to write 1 index page)

Two new images were found on the CD-ROM, copied to the 'large' directory, and processed as usual. 'info.dat' has been updated with the new entries. Note that images found on the CD-ROM that already exist in 'large' (i.e., have the same name) are skipped.

When importing images from a digital camera, 'album' can use the EXIF information that is present in these files:

- it will use the time stamp rename it to YYYYMMDDhhmmssSSSS (where SSSS
  is a sequence number);
- it will set the modification time of the file to the time stamp;
- while copying the image, it will be rotated if necessary,
  according to the 'orientation' property in the EXIF information.

To enable EXIF processing, add the --exif command line option, or specify the import directory with --dcim instead of --import:

$ ls -l /mnt/camera/dcim/101msdcf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jv jv 2347808 Jun 25 12:08 /mnt/camera/dcim/101msdcf/dsc00052.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jv jv 1327475 Jun 25 12:05 /mnt/camera/dcim/101msdcf/dsc00053.jpg
$ album -v --dcim /mnt/camera/dcim/101msdcf --update
Updating info.dat
Number of entries = 11 (2 added)
.........[ 9]
200405171843310052.jpg: link medium thumbnail OK
200405171845030053.jpg: copy rotate medium thumbnail OK
Creating pages for 11 images
(Needed to write 22 image pages)
Creating pages for 1 index
(Needed to write 1 index page)

The file 'dsc00052.jpg' has now been imported as '200405171843310052.jpg'. 'album' tries to link to the image, if that is not possible, the image will be coped. File 'dsc00053.jpg' must be rotated, so it will always be a copy.

If you hover the mouse over the file name in the index page, or over the title on the image pages, a pop-up will show a selection of information from the EXIF data.

Additional notes.

The --clobber command line option will force regeneration of all medium and thumbnail images, and HTML pages. It will not force re-import of the 'large' images. To completely rebuild everything save info.dat, remove all the files in the album directory (including .cache), restore info.dat and re-run the 'album' program.

The digital camera import is designed for cameras that adhere to the ISO DCF standard. Handling of MPG movies and voice images is probably specific for my Sony DSC-V1.

When importing images from different camera's, there's an extremely small chance that the EXIF information would lead to identical file names. This can only happen if the pictures were taken at the exact same time (according to the camera's notion of time!), and have the same internal sequence number.

AUTHOR AND CREDITS

Johan Vromans (jvromans@squirrel.nl) wrote this module.

COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER

This program is Copyright 2004 by Squirrel Consultancy. All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version, or b) the "Artistic License" which comes with Perl.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.