Kodi_Cow.txt contains:
"Kodi takes down a cow!"
People who use digital cameras often
have a collection of images whose
names are non-informative numbers.
You can either rename the image files,
or you can create a file called
captions.txt in each image directory.
Each line should be an image or
directory filename, followed by
a tab, followed by the new name.
You can also specify (separated by tabs),
an optional caption and then an
optional image ALT tag.
(To skip a field, use 'tab' 'space' 'tab')
001.gif My first photo
002.gif Mom and Dad My parents in the grand canyon
003.gif Angelina Jolie My fiancee Ouch!
The images and directories will also be sorted in the order they are found
in the caption file. You can override this with -date_sort and -name_sort
If your editor doesn't handle tabs very well, then you can separate the
fields by double-colons, but only if the caption line doesn't contain any
tabs at all:
003.gif :: Angelina Jolie :: My fiancee :: Ouch!
Finally, you can create a header of text for an album page in 'header.txt'
and a footer in 'footer.txt'
Another option is to use caption_edit.cgi which allows you (or others) to edit
captions/names/headers/footers through the web. (But note that unless you
secure the script, anyone can access/change your captions!)
7: Cleaning out unused thumbnails/html
If you move images around but don't move the thumbnails or the image
pages, you'll end up with a bunch of unused thumbnails in your
thumbnail directory. Use the -clean option, but only if you don't
have any non-images in your photo album!
8: Hiding Files/Directories
You can ignore non-images with the -known_images option.
You can mark an image as a non-image by creating an empty file with
the same name with ".not_img" added to the end.
You can ignore a file completely by creating an empty file with
the same name with ".no_album" on the end.
You can avoid running album on a directory (but still include it in your
list of directories) by creating a file <dir>/.no_album
You can ignore directories completely by creating a file <dir>/.hide_album
The Windows version of album doesn't use dots for "no_album" and
"hide_album" because it's difficult to create ".files" in Windows.
9: Cropping
You can specify the size of the thumbnails with the -geometry option.
If you change it, you might want to increase/decrease the number of
thumbnails that are put in each column with -columns, most themes
will respect this setting.
If you don't like the centered-cropping method that the album uses to
generate thumbnails, you can give directives to album to specify
where to crop specific images. Just change the filename of the image
so it has a cropping directive before the filetype. You can direct
album to crop the image at the top, bottom, left or right. As an
example, let's say you have a portrait "Dave_And_Angelina.gif" that you
want cropped on top for the thumbnail. Rename the file to
"Dave_And_Angelina.CROPtop.gif" and this will be done for you (you might
want to -clean out the old thumbnail). The "CROP" string will be
removed from the name that is printed in the HTML.
10: Digital Camera users
If you have a digital camera, chances are you have a collection of
photos that are the same aspect ratio (excluding photos taken sideways
that you've rotated). In this case, set the -geometry of the thumbnails
to have the same aspect ratio as the camera, and you won't have any cropping
in your thumbnails. If you have trouble with the math, just take a full-size
photo width and height and calculate Y:
Y = (height * 100) / width
Then use the album option: -geometry Yx100 (substitute Y with the number
calculated)
(Currently the album default is 133x100, which is the aspect ratio for
most digital cameras)
11: mpeg/mpg Support
You can add mpeg/mpg movies to your photo collection and album can generate
thumbnails for you, but only if you install ffmpeg
If you are running linux on an x86, then you can just grab the binary,
otherwise get the whole package from ffmpeg.org (it's an easy install).
12: Burning CDs (using file://)
If you are using album to burn CDs or you want to access your albums with
file://, then you don't want album to assume "index.html" as the default
index page since the browser probably won't. Simple add the option:
% album -index index ...
You can also look at winopen for windows users, you can have it
automatically launch the album in a browser.
13: Indexing your entire album
To navigate an entire album on one page use the
caption_index tool.
It uses the same options as album (though it ignores many
of them) so you can just replace your call to "album" with "caption_index"
The output is the HTML for a full album index.
See an example index
for one of my example photo albums
14: I want CGI, I want other people to be able to add photos
First they need to be able to upload the photo to the album directory.
I suggest using ftp for this. You could also write a javascript that
can upload files, if someone could show me how to do this I'd love to know.
Then they need to be able to remotely run album. To avoid abuse, I
suggest setting up a CGI script that touches a file (or they can just
ftp this file in), and then have a cron job that checks for that
file every few minutes, and if it finds it it removes it and runs album.
[unix only] (You will probably need to set $PATH or use absolute paths
in the script for convert)
If you want immediate gratification, you can run album from a CGI script
such as this one.
If your photos are not owned by the webserver (like on mine), then you
need to run through a setud script which you run from a CGI [unix only].
Put the setuid script in a secure place, change it's ownership to be the
same as the photos, and then run "chmod ug+s" on it. Here are example
setuid and CGI scripts. Be sure to edit them.
Also look at caption_edit.cgi which allows you (or others) to edit
captions/names/headers/footers through the web.
15: How can I add EXIF information to my captions?
First you need 'jhead' installed. You should be able to run jhead
on a JPG file and see the comments and information.
Then you need to create a format string for the EXIF information.
This string will be appended onto your image captions.
Any %keys% found in the format string where the key is an EXIF
key will be replaced in that string. For example, if we
run jhead on an image, we might notice:
Aperture : f/4.0
We can then have an exif option such as:
% album -exif "F-Stop: %Aperture%" This will add an EXIF comment on a new line in the caption showing the F-Stop. The EXIF string is free form and can have unlimited EXIF keys. Run jhead on a jpeg for more info.