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This software was written to help the non computer specialists to easily generate "photo galleries" intended to be published on the WEB.

Historically, it was intended to save time with archers of Saint Quentin en Yvelines who wanted "to put on the WEB" the photographs of sporting events relating to their sport.

And this without having to use paying software (neither commercial nor shareware).

It is designed for two levels of users: "beginner" (only use the "Project" tab) or "advanced". The default settings provide a good result. Read the online documentation to know further (or trust your intuition ;-)

It generates "universal" galleries, suitable for viewing with any image capable browser, and does not require any specific extension, neither server-side (e.g. PHP) nor client-side (e.g. java).

More precisely, it is a "photo gallery" generator for the WEB, which processes a directory containing images (by default, the BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PSD and TIFF formats are processed but many more are supported).

It first generates thumbnails and images (in JPEG) from the images located in the source directory. It then generates the needed HTML pages (the main page being "index.htm").

The left part contains all the images in a scrollable zone. Clicking a thumbnail causes the corresponding image to be displayed in the right part.		The right part contains the current image and the navigation buttons. The image title may be displayed.
	The "index.htm" file

The target directory is "imgcol". The generated "micro-site" is autonomous and can be renamed.

The generated HTML pages contain navigation buttons :

	: go up to the corresponding contact sheet
	: go to first page
	: go to previous page
	: go to next page
	: go to last page

Also generates contact sheets grouping photos and named "contact_*.htm" :

The upper part contains the title of the site and the numbers of the other contact sheets. When clicking a number, the corresponding contact sheet is displayed in the lower part.

The lower part contains the thumbnails of the contact sheet. When clicking a thumbnail, the image is displayed.

The contact sheets also contain navigation buttons :

	: go to previous contact sheet
	: go to next contact sheet

To see an image, just click its thumbnail in the contact sheet.

Notes :

• It is possible to point to "contact_1.htm" instead of "index.htm". It is best suited for slow sites, or if there are numerous images.
• By default, the target directory is located under the source directory. If the latter is in a non writable zone (e.g. a CD-ROM), an other target directory must be provided.
• A file named "imgcol.htm" is created at the same level as the "imgcol" directory and points to (relative path) the starting page. It can be renamed.
• The navigation buttons and the background images of the pages can be - manually - customized.
• This program has been tested (with Mozilla and Internet Explorer) on Windows 2000/XP but should work on any Windows system.
  It exists on Linux from version 4.0.0 to 5.3.1.

The interface is divided into three main parts :

• the menu bar,
• the tabs,
• the button bar.

The menu bar

It lists all the available functions and is made of four parts :

"File" menu

Project management.

On Windows platforms, the "Create a ZIP archive" option generate a zip archive from an existing gallery. It is usefull to send a gallery by e-mail, for example.

This archive ("imgcol.zip") is created in the directory where the gallery is. A self-extracting archive is also created in the same place.

Note : Theses two files are not parts of the archived gallery.

"Options" menu

Option management.

"Preferences" menu

Opens user preferences (e.g. language)

"Help" menu

Information about ImageCollection and documentation.

Note about look and feel : This menu bar was introduced in version 8.0.0 of ImageCollection in order to lighten the interface ; the buttons are used only for main functions. Most of the time, the use of ImageCollection will be the same as with the previous versions, with no need for the menu. The users used to the look and feel of the previous versions should not thus be too disturbed.

The tabs

The center part contains three tabs :

Project

Information about current gallery (e. g., directory containing the images to process, target directory, ...).

Options

Generation parameters for the gallery (e. g., color of text and pages, ...).

Signature

Contains all the data about the author of the gallery or the images (e. g., copyright, ...).

The button bar

The bottom part of the interface contains the buttons which directly control the main functions of the tool. The less used functions are available in the menu bar.

	starts gallery generation.
	previews (with test images) the expected result.
	displays the gallery generated in target directory. This button is enabled only if a gallery exists.
	loads the options already used for current project.
	load the options from a file.
	save the options into a file.
	display the online documentation (this document).

Note about options

The word "options" means here all the settings available in the interface (not only those in the "Options" tab), except :

• the preferences (they have their own save mechanism),
• the titles of the pages and the captions of the images for they are connected to the source directories and images
• the path of the directory to process and of the target directory (the "project").

When the program runs, it automatically saves the used options into a file (if it has write permission). The next run, if this file exists, the Previous button allows to reuse the previously saved options.

Difference between Previous (in the "Options" menu) and Reuse (in the same menu or the button) : the former reuses the options of the last run of ImageCollection, whereas the latter reuses the options of the last run on the target directory (if they exist).

This allows to run again the tool with already used options.

Note : if the Reuse button does not work, that means that tnenecessary information has not been saved (by an older version of ImageCollection) into the given target directory.

The current options can be saved into a file with Save function or loaded from a file with Load function. These functions are available through buttons or from the "Options" menu.

The Default function restores the default options. This function is not available if the user has no write permission in the installation directory of the program.

Source directory of images

Directory to process

The directory containing the images from which the pages will be generated.

Tree management

The "Subdirectories with images" option gives three choices :

• "forgotten" : only process the images in the source directory.
• "global" : globally process all the images in the source directory and the subdirectories, in a recursive way.
• "separated" : create a gallery with the same structure as the source directory (one gallery for each sub directory) and create a direct access page.

Ignores the "imgcol" directories and those beginning with "_".

Ignore doubles

When multiple instances of the same image exist (files with the same contents, but with another name or located elsewhere), only the first one will be taken into account for the generated site.

This option is disabled by default since the generation is a bit slower when it is activated.

The "global" sub option makes sense only in "split" mode. When checked, all the directories are searched for doubles. Otherwise, the search is done on a directory basis.

Image formats

By default, ImageCollection proposes some image formats. The user can add or remove formats before running the generation.

Since version 4.7.0, ImageCollection manages a very large number of image formats, many more than the default ones.

Comment button

Runs a little tool allowing to view and caption the images in their source directory.

Target directory

Target directory

The directory in which the "imgcol" directory will be created, ith the generated pages.

The path of a non existing directory can be specified. For instance, if the "c:\foo\bar\gee" path is given, Image collection will create those three nested directories before starting the generation in "c:\foo\bar\gee\imgcol".

With automatic pages load

If this option is checked, the generated pages will act as a slideshow : they will be loaded automatically. The delay between two pages is given in the field "Delay" on the same line (five seconds by default).

In the generated pages, the checkbox allows to suspend the transition to the next page. The slideshow will start again if the box is checked again or if the page is manually loaded.

This option will work only if the browser supports javascript.

The delay may be changed a posteriori by editing the scripts.js file in the generated site.

Contact sheets

Title

Specifies the title of the pages and of the contact sheet that are generated. By default, the name of the directory of original images is used.

Note :the title is a line of text, but any HTML code may be entered (e.g. a logo : <img src="...">).

Thumbnail maximum size

Specifies thje maximum size (in pixel) of thumbnails.

Number of lines and columns of a contact sheet. The Auto button recomputes these values from the maximum size specified the line above.

Aspect in contact sheets

The caption and spacing of thumbnails may be specified. The "framed" checkbox causes the creation of a "slide frame" around the thumbnails.

The "with trim" option generates trimmed thumbnails in order to eliminate possible uniform parts near the borders of the image.

Borderwidth

The thumbnails are displayed with a border (sunken), whose size can be entered here.

Sharpness

The sharpness of thumbnails is increased.

Only generate the contact sheets ('catalogue' mode)

Allow to generate only contact sheets in order to make a catalogue for example. In this case, increasing the size of thumbnails is appropriate.

Images

Caption

This option is interesting if the name of the images makes sense : the images of the gallery may be commented.

Three options are available :

• "never" the images are not captioned.
• "always" all the images are captioned (with at least their name and directory),
• "auto (.txt)"only the images documented by the user are captioned, i.e. :
  • when the program encounters a text file with the same basename as the image file (e.g. "foo.txt" for "foo.gif"), it adds its contents at the bottom of the page, just under the photo. This file may contain HTML code.

This last option allows to caption only some images.

When the "With EXIF information" checkbox is checked, a supplementary caption is added to all the pages. This caption mentions all the information that was collected in the image (e.g. focal length, shutter speed, aperture...).

Example :

Focal length : 17 mm - Shutter speed : 1/250 s. (~1/206 s.) - Aperture : f/4 (~f/4.7)
Equivalent sensitivity : 800 ISO
Vendor : Canon. - Model : Canon EOS 10D.
Multi-zone metering
No flash
Date and time of shooting : 2004:05:26 12:04:28.
Image size : 1772 x 1181, File size : 303kb
		    

See also the section about the manual captioning of images.

Use the original images without conversion (GIF, PNG or JPG)

Allows to generate the pages from images (only GIF, PNG and JPEG are supported) already ready to be inserted into the generated pages or that do not need modification (e.g. images already optimized for the web).
It is the typical choice of photographs who prefer to manage their images themselves.

Only the thumbnails are generated. Of course, the image size given in the first tab is ignored, as are all the parameters which would cause to process the source image (e.g. the color frame or the text insert).

Size of images

The images which width or height exceeds the given limits are resampled (the proportions are kept). The others keep their dimensions.

The Reset button restores the default values.

Borderwidth in pixel

The images are displayed with some kind of border (sunken here) whose size can be given here.

Sharpness

The sharpness of images is improved. The first parameter is the radius, the second is the sigma.

If sharpness is increased too much, the defects and the noise may become more visible.

The images from reflex digital cameras need more sharpness than the images from compact digital cameras.

The values recommended by Arnaud Klinger for a Canon EOS 10D are the following :

• Images : 0.9 x 1.5
• Thumbnails : 0.9 x 1.0

Frame

Allows to specify a color frame surrounding the image. The width is given in pixel. The frame is outside the border effect.

Include the original images

Copies the original image (with another name to avoid doubles) into the generated gallery.

The copy of the original image can be displayed by clicking the "diskette" icon located beside the image. This icon only exists if the option is enabled.

This can lead to a huge gallery, since all images exist in three sizes : the thumbnail, the reduced image and the copy of the original image.

JPEG quality

The quality of generated JPEG images can be specified. It ranges from 0 (less quality) to 100 (best quality), the default being 75.

With 100, the generated images are much bigger.

Text characteristics

Text color

Allows to choose a color for the text which will be displayed in pages (e.g. numbers or captions). An hexadecimal value (e. g., #FFAA22) may be entered in the textfield ; the "Choose" button opens a color selector.

Link color

Allows tochoose a color for hypertext links. The little button on the left allows to use the color of normal text for links.

Font

The font will be chose by the browser of the final user among those available on his computer. Anyway, it is possible to orient this choice, by specifying three characteristics of the font to display :

• its relative size: xx-small, x-small, small, medium, large, x-large ou xx-large (with respect to the default size of the browser),
• its style ("normal" ou "italic").
• its family :
  • serif (e.g., Times)
    "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus eu arcu vel nulla pellentesque blandit. Mauris nibh turpis, placerat in, placerat eleifend, commodo et, elit. Cras tempus magna sed nulla iaculis aliquam."
  • sans-serif (e.g., Arial or Helvetica)
    "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus eu arcu vel nulla pellentesque blandit. Mauris nibh turpis, placerat in, placerat eleifend, commodo et, elit. Cras tempus magna sed nulla iaculis aliquam."
  • cursive (e.g., MS Comics)
    "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus eu arcu vel nulla pellentesque blandit. Mauris nibh turpis, placerat in, placerat eleifend, commodo et, elit. Cras tempus magna sed nulla iaculis aliquam."
  • monospace (e.g., Courier)
    "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus eu arcu vel nulla pellentesque blandit. Mauris nibh turpis, placerat in, placerat eleifend, commodo et, elit. Cras tempus magna sed nulla iaculis aliquam."

Page background

Fill color

Allows to specify the background color if no background image has been given in the next option.

The color of text and links must fit with the background color.

Background image

A background image may be given. In this case, the fill color is not taken into account. For display reasons, choose a fill color close to the color of the background image.

The backgrounds available in the distribution (in the "fonds" directory) can be displayed in an interface which also allows to select an external GIF or JPEG image ("..." button) :

The selected image is copied into the generated gallery. The "Image" button allows to display the selected image.

Navigation buttons sets

The button set to use for the gallery can be specified. Several sets are available.

The user can add new button sets in the "lib/gif" directory, beside the existing sets. Just respect naming rules.

The sets with round buttons are best suited for clear backgrounds. The sets with square buttons are made for dark beckgrounds.

Miscellaneous options

JPEG auto-rotation (with 'Orientation' EXIF field)

The JPEG images with an 'Orientation' EXIF field are rotated automatically.

Display small thumbnails for previous and next images

Display, at each side of the current image, the two thumbnails of the previous and the next image in the gallery.

Text to insert

Allows to enter a text (considered as an option) which will be added to the contact sheets and to the pages that the tool will generate.

The text may contain HTML code, for example, a link to another page.

Example :

To add "© 2005" at the end of all the generated pages, just insert the following text in the page of each image :

Another example :

The statement :
  <a href="http://arc-magny.ifrance.com"><img src="../_home.gif">Back</a>
in "separated" mode or :
  <a href="http://arc-magny.ifrance.com"><img src="_home.gif">Back</a>
in "global" mode will add a link "Back" to the page "http://arc-magny.ifrance.com" at the bottom of each page :

Back

Other options

Index position

Specifies where the index will be in the generated "index.htm" files.

Maximal title frame width

In separated mode, the width of the frame containing the title of the sub galleries may be specified.
A numerical value means a number of pixels, but it is possible to enter a percentage of the total width, "25%" (without the quotes) for example.

Frames with border

if Checked, the frames are delimited by a separator.

Author

Author name

A "author" META markup is added to te header of the generated HTML pages if the "Author" field is filled in.
This information is also added to the comment of the JPEG file that is generated for the image.

The purpose of the right button is to insert the copyright "©" character, which does not exist on french keyboards.

Embedded signature

Active

Modifies the generated images to add the line entered in the "Author" textfield in the given corner.

The "Test" button allows to evaluate the effect on a gray background with the real size.

Font

Allows to select the font, the size and the color.

Note : the encrusted text is raised by a "shade" of color complementary to that selected

Origin

The corner near which the text will be encrusted.

Offset from selected corner

Offset in x and in y from the selected corner.

Mini explorer allowing to visualize and add a caption to the images in their source directory (a ".txt" file with the same name as the captioned image is created). This text is the caption of the image in the generated pages.

Available through the "Comment original images" of the "File" menu or through the Comment button.

The right part allows to caption the images. The left tree allows to give a title to the directories. Just right click on the directory and type some text. The given title will be the title of the gallery corresponding to this directory. The directory itself is not renamed.

The "EXIF data" button inserts into the text the information (EXIF or other) about the current image. They can of course be modified later. In particular :

• Vendor and model of the camera,
• Aperture (normalized and exact),
• Shutter speed (normalized and exact),
• Exposure ("center-weighted metering ", "spot", "multi-zone", ...),
• Mode ("manual", "'normal' program", "aperture priority", "shutter priority", ...),
• Width and height of the image,
• Date and time of shooting,
• Focal length,
• Flash,
• Equivalent silver sensitivity.

Note 1 : do not forget to save with "Save" if necessary.

Note 2 : this information is redundant with the one inserted into the generated pages when the "With EXIF information" checkbox is checked in the "Projects" tab.

Window available through the "Edit preferences" function of "Preferences menu.

Note : the modifications in this window are applied instantaneously, except the language : the change will take effect the next time ImageCollection is run.

Current language

Allows to select the language of the interface for the next run of ImageCollection.

Browser

Allows, for UNIX, to manually select a browser. Useless on Windows where the browser is always the default one.

Guess the author name

Asks the operating system for the user login name...

Display thumbnails while running

If not checked, allows not to display thumbnails as they are generated (a little faster).

Without splash screen

Allows not to display the splash screen at startup.

Load last options at start-up

Automatically reuses the options used for the last run.

Check for a new version at startup.

If checked, ImageCollection downloads the version.txt file from the "www.imagecollection.org" site and compares its contents with its own version number. No information is sent outside.

If a firewall protects your machine, it should (normally) detect this attempt to access the Internet. It is safe, you may give ImageCollection the permission to access the net.

If the network is unreachable, nothing happens.

Close the progress window after process

Automatically closes the progress window at the end of the generation, except if an error occured.

Include a date-stamp in the created files

The generated HTML files contain (in a non visible way) their creation date.

Ask for an images directory at startup

At startup, opens the window allowing to select the working directory.

Manual image selection

If checked, a window is displayed before the generation, to allow the user to choose images among the images found in the source directory. In "separated" mode, a selection is made for the directories first.

This allows to ignore one or several directories or images, without having to delete them.

Remember : the directories whose name begins with "_" will always be ignored.

Display the result with a browser

Automatically runs a browser on the selected page : the index or the first contact sheet.

	ou
"index.htm"		"contact_1.htm"

the created "imgcol.htm" file points to the chosen page.

With image cache in the explorer

If checked (the default), the images generated during the preview in the comment explorer are kept for further use. The "Clean the mini-explorer cache" button empties the cache (located in the "database" directory of ImageCollection).

On Windows, installation and uninstallation conform to the standards :

• The installation places shortcuts into the "Start" menu.
• To uninstall, use the shortcut in the "Start" menu, or the "Add/remove programs" icon of the Settings panel.

On UNIX systems, the tool is packaged as a tarball and the installation is straightforward :

gzip -dc ImageCollection-VERSION-PLATFORM.tar.gz | tar xf -

ImageCollection is run by the "ic" script.

The installation can be checked with the given "test" directory :

• in the first window, double click on "test" directory, then press OK,
• then press "Start" on the main window to start the generation.

When the generation is complete, the browser opens on the selected page ("index.htm" or "contact_1.htm").

The interface freezes during conversions, that can disturb the user when the aplication processes large images which take a long time to get resized.

The maximum number of images allowed for a gallery is 99999.

The tool has some problem with 16 bit images (TIFF).

The EXIF data are available for JPEG files only (".jpg").

When EXIF data are asked, the program which extracts this information ("ImageMagick Studio library and utility programs") may crash on some images. In this case, just ignore the error : ImageCollection will handle this simply by ignoring the data EXIF on the images which cause the crash.

The support is given by the author (during his spare time).

If you experience a problem or wish an improvement, send a mail (to support@imagecollection.org), with a detailed description of the problem or the wished functionality.

This program was written by David Perbost.

Thierry Fernandez wrote the english version of the documentation.

The language is Tcl/Tk. Good distributions for UNIX and Windows are available at ActiveState.

The text editor is Xemacs.

The initial conversion of images is done by the NConvert tool from Pierre-Emmanuel Gougelet, which can handle a tremendous number of image formats (more than 400). The resizing of images is done by a subset of the ImageMagick library. The translation of RAW files is done by the dcraw utility from Dave Coffin.

All these tools are free for non-commercial use and, for most of them, of UNIX origin.

The install procedure is made with Ghost Installer 2.0 Free Edition.

The buttons and the splash screen were made with Photoshop 4 LE.

I wish to thank here the users who gave me some feedback about their use of ImageCollection and in particular Arnaud Klinger for his ideas, and Jérémy Levy who hosts the Linux part of the ImageCollection site on his nice server.

This software is a freeware. This means :

1. Its use is totally free. It can be freely copied, provided the program and the note that you are reading are distributed together.
2. The purchasing of this software is forbidden : it can be distributed only on a purely free basis (what is strongly encouraged besides).
3. The author is not responsible for the damage which could be caused by the use of this software. He has no obligation to solve possible deficiencies of this program but has, however, the possibility to make the improvements which he would consider necessary.

The use of this software causes in fact the acceptance of the preceding clauses.

The main page of the tool is : www.imagecollection.org.