Your Ideal Photo Gallery

[WebErika]

A lot of people have their own online photo galleries.

So I thought, in an effort to improve ours, I'd ask a few questions .. :D
Thank you in advance for satisfying my curiosity :D


What do you like best about your online gallery?

What do you like the least?

What would you like to have? A list of exactly how you'd want an online photo gallery to have (within reason)

Would you want specific fields for all the photo info? Or is one text area enough?

Do you want the photo gallery upload to compress your pictures for you?

Would you like to have a pre-set choice on how big the final uploaded image is? (visual size)

If you were comfortable with style sheets, would you like the ability to set a frame style, a description style and a title style?

Do you like the images to open in a new window? In the same window?


And anything else you might want to mention would be great!!! :D

[Scottes]

Since I've been toying with the idea of writing my own, I've got some ideas...

3 sizes of images, selectable. I personally like 900, 750, and 600 pixels wide/tall. Many sites have "small" as 400 wide, which I feel is useless since it's too small.

EXIF/camera/lens info displayed in table format, off/basic/extended.

Resizing selectable - either the gallery does it OR I can upload my own images for each size. Some things get mangled in resizing, like shadow frames and such. So I'd rather resize for each image size, THEN add the frames and submit to the gallery. But for frameless images I might not mind, and most people won't go through the work anyway - but *I* trust my resizing in PS more than some simple gallery's resize method.

For images without built-in frames, I was toying with using table attributes to give simple bordered frames. Image in a table within a table within a table - each of the tables with different border colors and widths. This might (probably!) be too much for a generic user, but I'd want at least the ability to specify a simple single-color border using a table, with the color and width preferably being user-selectable. Also, of course, pre-selects: "narrow black border" and then have this be 5 pixels wide for the large image, 4 pixels for the medium....

I do not want the gallery to do anything to my images other than display them. (Unless I choose to allow the gallery to resize.)

Oh, if the gallery resizes then it should use an algorithm which gives image size and Kb based on the "master" image. So if I upload a 900x600 image at 150Kb then I'd expect a resized image of 450x300 (1/4 size) to be approximately 38Kb (1/4 size). The final ratio would have to be played with - a 450x300 38Kb image might show more anomalies than desired. It may be that 1/2 size by dimensions = 2/3 size in Kb. But the gallery resize software should try resizing & compressing until it gets to within an allowable limit. I do not want a gallery to take an image and just "resize to 1/4 size at JPG quality 50"

Though I'm comfortable with CSS and HTML, I'd rather have a number of pre-builts that I could select, and also have the ability to upload more. A gallery that could accept "skins" could be awesome over time. Simple selectable things, like BG color, font size, would be acceptable, but skins would be way cool.

Images should open in the same window, thumbnails below to allow maximum photo display area. Nothing should be on either side of the image - From the top: site menu bar, image, thumbnail, gallery menu bar.

I like the idea of categorizing images, and having and allowing multiple categories, and searching on these categories. So a macro of a flower could have 3 categories: Nature, Macro, Floral. And a bee close-up could be Nature, Macro, Insect. So if I do a search for "nature and macro" then I see both images.


Hmm. I think that it. Unless I remember something else. :)

[WebErika]

Wow. Lots of good stuff there.

On the image resize thoughts ...

We currently use a java-based tag that resizes and gives me 6 size choices, but I don't know if we could duplicate that algorythm you mentioned. I need to check that out.

There is also image manipulation software available that is pretty powerful for integrating into an online environment that we want to look into ...

http://www.imagemagick.org <-- if you've not heard of it, you should check it out. Pretty cool stuff.

I want to use it instead of our current Java one. Maybe this fall ...


Now the rest of the ideas ... I like them. Perfect!

Skins are no problem. They are really just pre-made-stylesheets ... applied when you want them. Yeah, skins ...

Framing can be styles ... yeah ... more frames ...


<rubs hands together>


Yes ... I likes. Anything else?

If and when I have time to work on these changes I'll share my photo gallery with ya :D See what you think ...

[WebErika]

Oh! Categories ...

We're currently set up like such:

Gallery
--- Category
------- Sub-Category

Every Gallery can have as many Categories as you want.

Every Category can have as many Sub-Categories as you want or none at all.

Every picture can belong to as many of those Categories and sub-Categories as you want it to.


Should a search only search those headings (Gallery/Cat/Sub-Cat)?
Or should a search also search the picture name and/or description?

Likely both. yeah. answered my own question there ...

[Scottes]

Glad you like the ideas...


For categories, I was planning on using one level, even if a category seemed multi-level. For me, I might have: (each line is a category)

Animal - Wildlife
Animal - Pet
Animal - Captive
Avian - Raptor
Avian - Passerine
Avian - Feeder Birds

However, I then planned on the ability to search for just "Animal"

I never really finalized this - there's so many ways to do it.


Imagemagick is great and seems to be what most people use. The algo I mentioned would be clunky:


do until $acceptable {
[list:7e131d274c] $newimage = resize($image, $width, $quality)
if( sizeof($newimage) > (.25 * sizeof($image) ) {
[list:7e131d274c] $quality = $quality * .9
$acceptable = 0
} else {
$acceptable = 1
}[/list:u:7e131d274c]
}
[/list:u:7e131d274c]

So the resize function would just keep resizing the image until it hit the acceptable limit. Yeah, ugly, but worth it IMHO.


I saw one site that was interesting for framing an image... Imagine a 3x3 table, with the image in the center. Border, cellspacing, etc = 0. Upper left cell got an image of the corner of a picture of a wood frame. Upper center got an image of a wood frame stretched (using width/height tags) to the width of the image. Upper right cell got the upper right corner of the wood frame...

So by the time the table was displayed you could take any image of any size and put a wood frame around it.

Did I explain that OK?

It did look kinda kludgey when loading, but looked great when done. Lotta work... So I settled on colored table borders. :)



Another things - I'd want a user to pick an image size and stay with that size. So I'm initially shown medium, but I switch to Large. Clicking on another thumbnail gives me Large again.

Now this is easy enough to do with cookies, but I don't like cookies so I usually deny them. So I'd want each page to keep track of the size, too. So If I selected the Large image size, all the links on the thumbnails would change to "blahblah.jpg?Large" or something like that. Then the Large choice would last throughout the session - any new sessions would revert to showing the Medium image.

[Scottes]

Oh, and you want a beta tester I can run it here on one of my servers - in fact if you do this stuff then I'd love to run it. :-)

[tommykjensen]

Why not suggest all of this to Pekka? He's done a great job on his Exhibition Engine.

[tommykjensen]

Ohh and to answer some of Your questions:

I use Pekka's Exihibition Engine.

What do you like best about your online gallery?
Its fast, it has several different options to list the photos.

What do you like the least?
If I have to pick one thing I don't like too much about EE it would be the fact that a FTP server is required for the upload process. I don't really need an FTP server running but have to in order to have EE working.

What would you like to have? A list of exactly how you'd want an online photo gallery to have (within reason)
Pretty much what EE already offers.

Would you want specific fields for all the photo info? Or is one text area enough?
Exif info should be retrieved from the photos and stored in the database.

Do you like the images to open in a new window? In the same window?
Same window.

[Scottes]

Several of the things I listed aren't done by EE, particularly the resize stuff. I really don't want someone else's software to touch my image in any way.

I also didn't like the FTP thing, and felt that it was just too bloated for what I wanted to do with it.

Dealing with the CSS to make my own style also looked like far too much work - I always go for simplicity, and there was just too much to edit for what I wanted to do.

Finally - I'm a very finicky person, especially considering that I *can* write what I wanted myself. If I couldn't program then I would have been all over EE, but learning MySQL and PHP is easily within my grasp. (Time to do it, on the other hand, is not so easy.)

[tommykjensen]

Several of the things I listed aren't done by EE, particularly the resize stuff. I really don't want someone else's software to touch my image in any way.


Hard to avoid :wink: Software in the camera, Photoshop etc.....


But I understand You desire to write Your own code. I do know enough about php, mysql etc to be able to modify existing code in some extent. But I would not be able to code anything like EE.

[Scottes]

Several of the things I listed aren't done by EE, particularly the resize stuff. I really don't want someone else's software to touch my image in any way.


Hard to avoid :wink: Software in the camera, Photoshop etc.....

OK, "software that's not under my direct control" - I hate automatic software. If I use PS CS to resize an image I'm in complete control - as least as much as I can possibly get without writing it myself. Letting a gallery package resize my images means that I have very little control, or not at all.


But I understand You desire to write Your own code. I do know enough about php, mysql etc to be able to modify existing code in some extent. But I would not be able to code anything like EE.

Nor I. And I wouldn't. I would be writing something for my own personal use. My gallery program could do 90% of what EE would do for me but with 2-3% of the code requirements. Since I wouldn't have to write any user-safe code then I save months of dev time. No logins, mutliple users, upload processes, changeable style sheets, image manipulation.... The list of things that I don't need goes on and on.

[tommykjensen]

Perhaps You should look at this topic on dpreview. A danish user have written his own gallery. He too wanted something very simple.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=8840070

I have not looked at the code so I don't know how simple it is but it does not require mysql.

[cmM]

A lot of people have their own online photo galleries.

So I thought, in an effort to improve ours, I'd ask a few questions .. :D
Thank you in advance for satisfying my curiosity :D
I have an online gallery created by myself(a combination of FLASH, HTML, and JAVASCRIP), and it's okay so far. Well, actually, the script was downloaded from one of the javascrip code sites, but it's been modified quite a bit since its original version.

my gallery:
www.cmuntean.net/gallery.html


What do you like best about your online gallery?
The ease of use.

What do you like the least?
Not displaying a title and a description as I view the images

What would you like to have? A list of exactly how you'd want an online photo gallery to have (within reason)
pretty much what I mentioned above.... a title and a short caption.

Do you want the photo gallery upload to compress your pictures for you?
No, a few extra clicks don't bother me.

Would you like to have a pre-set choice on how big the final uploaded image is? (visual size)
Again, the size of the final image is preset in my head. *** x 600 or 600 x ***

If you were comfortable with style sheets, would you like the ability to set a frame style, a description style and a title style?
I prefer keeping things as simple as possible. You want to keep the viewers attention on the image, not its title

Do you like the images to open in a new window? In the same window?
Oh, God, NO ! That's the most annoying thing ever. Unless you write a script to close the window after x seconds... but that can be annoying too. Just keep it in the same window.


And anything else you might want to mention would be great!!! :D
Just wait 'til I finish mine :P

[Jesper]

I use fotopic.net. What I like about it: A huge amount of space for free (250 MB - that's enough for thousands of photos), no annoying ads, easy to maintain and customize.

Fotopic looks at the EXIF info of the files you upload and you can choose if you want the user to be able to see that info or not. It can also sort photos on some of the fields in the EXIF info (such as the date and time the photos were recorded).

I'd like to be able to add a one-line title or short description to a photo, but it would be nice to have an additional longer text area.

I'd like to be in control of the exact files and JPEG compression, so I wouldn't like the gallery to compress my pictures for me (Fotopic does this, unfortunately). I would like to have the thumbnails automatically generated.

I do know HTML, style sheets etc. so I would be comfortable with the ability to customize those, but I can imagine that most users don't want to learn those things, so a more user-friendly way of customizing the look-and-feel would be good. Fotopic allows you to choose from a number of different pre-set styles, but doesn't have the ability to modify those pre-set styles.

I would not want the images to open in a new window - that would make browsing through the gallery much more cumbersome.

[WebErika]

Oh, and you want a beta tester I can run it here on one of my servers - in fact if you do this stuff then I'd love to run it. :-)

I'll be hunting you down then for a test drive in a month or so ;) :D Thanks!!!

[WebErika]

Why not suggest all of this to Pekka? He's done a great job on his Exhibition Engine.

I'm asking for for ideas because we run a content management service and one of our modules is a photo gallery. It works and is ok for simplicity - but I've been poking around a lot of everyone's here, and it's lacking in features for someone who is serious about their pictures.

Even I find it lacking a bit when I put my own pictures in place.

I meant no disrespect to Pekka's and perhaps some of these ideas would be great for a lot of other people as well! :D

[WebErika]

Cool features from everyone ... I appreciate the responses.

Lots here to chew through and try ... :D

[PhotosGuy]

I deliver samples on CD.
Black background.
Two vert rows of thumbs on the left side. Pic opens in the large right frame.
Names on thumbs. No pic names or info in the right frame.
No resizing or compression.

Gallery
--- Category
------- Pics
Ability to use my custom icons for each category.

Since I've been toying with the idea of writing my own, I've got some ideas...
Scottes, take a look at free JAlbum:
http://jalbum.net/