Using Linux to create Photo Galleries

[crouse]

Here is a gallery I made
http://www.usalug.org/jpegs/crouse/LinuxDesktopGallery/index.html

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I was looking for a way to convert over a thousand photos from my digital camera
into several photo galleries suitable for the internet. I looked at several
ways, and finally decided on what I thought to be the quickest. This entails the
use of a several linux programs in order to achieve the desired result. Although
it might sound complicated, it isn't. In fact after you do this a couple of
times you will be amazed at the speed and usefulness of the programs.

The first thing I do is to create a COPY of the images I want to use on my
desktop. We will call it Gallery1. In Gallery1 I place all the images I want to
use for my finished photo gallery. Next I create a directory on my desktop
called GalleryTemp. This is where I will store modified images of Gallery1.


STEP 1


Now it's time for the fun stuff! When using my digital camera pictures they need
to be resized to display on the web. To do this I use a program listed under
grphics:ChBg ----not sure what it stands for, but I believe it is CHANGE
BACKGROUND. Whether or not this was what it was intended for, it works really
well! Open up ChBg and go to TOOLS:BATCH RESCALING

It allows you to specify your Source Directory(Gallery1 in our example) and then
your Target Directory (GalleryTemp in our example) ... the Target Directory will
be where the modified pics will be stored. You also get to specify Dimensions
and anti-alias options and more. I ran this with the 320x240 size option with
the ADDITIONAL OPTION of -75 quality. This takes a picture that starts out at
over 1 mb....and converts it to about 40kb. This size also seemed to work best
at 800x600 and larger screen resolution. This process doesn't take too long, but
it does depend on how many photos you have and the speed of your processor.


STEP 2

Now that we have resized our photos, it's time to edit them for orientation if
needed. Sometimes with my digital camera, I take pictures and they need rotated.
This is a manual process, but we can make it easier. I created a short cut to
IMAGE MAGICK on my desktop. I then open up Konqueror and view the GalleyTemp
directory. Any photo's that need to be rotated can be dragged over to the Image
Majik shortcut. This opens the image and you can quickly rotate it to the
desired direction. Save it. Repeat this on any photo that needs rotated.

STEP 3

Now for some more fun stuff! Since all the pictures we need are now correctly
formatted in the GalleryTemp directory, we can delete everything out of the
Gallery1 directory now. (This is of course assuming it was a COPY and not the
original directory!) Next we open Gphoto. Go to FILE:OPEN DIRECTORY and open the
GalleryTemp directory containing all of our modified pictures. This will take a
minute or so depending on the number of photos you have. After they are loaded
into Gphoto go to SELECT:ALL IMAGES .This will highlight the backgrounds of all
the images to red. Now that all the images are selected, we can proceed to the
next step. Now go to FILE:EXPORT:HTML GALLERY. You will be presented with a box
giving you some options. GALLERY NAME: (give your gallery a name)
THEME: (chooose a theme..I choose Red/Gray) OUTPUT DIRECTORY/CHANGE : (change
this to Gallery1...or whatever directory you wish this to be in)

Now hit create and your html files thumbnail files gifs and photos will be
created for your Gallery in the Gallery1 directory! See that wasn't that hard!

You can edit the html and change backgrounds etc very easily to suit your needs.
For those of you that can edit html......I have a suggestion. Open up the
index.html page in any text editor(i use bluefish)

Change the 3rd line
table width=100% border=0
to read
table width=80% border=0 align=center

You end up with a much nicer looking page. Try it.... let me know what you
think!"

by Crouse
Http://www.usalug.org
Most current version of this article is here:
http://www.usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=371