Using EE for an existing directory structure?

[ktpupp]

Thanks to some awesome help from Pekka, I got EE up and running this evening. My next challenge is to use it to catalog/organize my directory of digital images.

This is the situation - I run my server on my own local computer, in my web directory (that the server serves) I have a folder called "Images" which contains subfolders with the following structure:

/images
/2000
/2001
/2002
/2003
/2004
/2004-01-09
/2004-01-13
/2004-01-14
/2004-01-25
/2004-01-27
/2004-01-31
/2004-02-01
/2004-02-04 and so on...


I current have EE installed in the main Images directory and have created the thumbs folders, etc in that directory.

What I would like to do is use EE to create an exhibition/gallery for each of the subfolders using the images already there. I'd like to have each of the subfolders hold their own thumb/microthumb/size folders.

Short of doing all the adding of folders manually and changing the path info in EE for each directory, is there a way to do this? Also, how do I handle the "uploading" portion since the images are already there? I need to keep the EXIF data in the images as well for display in the galleries...

Obviously, I'd be working away at this for a long, long time if I did it all manually, so I'm hoping someone has ideas on how I could do this...

I suppose I could keep all of the thumbs and microthumbs in one big folder in the Images directory (the way I have it set up now) and then just have the small/default/large folders in each subdirectory to hold the resized images... Would doing this be bad in anyway, slowing things down to have 10,000 or so thumbs in one folder, etc?

Any advice would be appreciated!

-=kt=-

[Pekka]

Thanks to some awesome help from Pekka, I got EE up and running this evening. My next challenge is to use it to catalog/organize my directory of digital images.

This is the situation - I run my server on my own local computer, in my web directory (that the server serves) I have a folder called "Images" which contains subfolders with the following structure:

/images
/2000
/2001
/2002
/2003
/2004
/2004-01-09
/2004-01-13
/2004-01-14
/2004-01-25
/2004-01-27
/2004-01-31
/2004-02-01
/2004-02-04 and so on...


I current have EE installed in the main Images directory and have created the thumbs folders, etc in that directory.

What I would like to do is use EE to create an exhibition/gallery for each of the subfolders using the images already there. I'd like to have each of the subfolders hold their own thumb/microthumb/size folders.

Short of doing all the adding of folders manually and changing the path info in EE for each directory, is there a way to do this? Also, how do I handle the "uploading" portion since the images are already there? I need to keep the EXIF data in the images as well for display in the galleries...

If you set up size paths accordingly you can do "manual upload" (tick on "SPECIAL: no ftp or resize automation (manual file upload)") which does not upload photos or resize them at all. And to get thumbnails use "rethumbnailer" editor after that.

The size paths point to image location. Each photo has any number of size paths and you can preset them using default photodata editor.

But you should have those original files to upload in UPLOAD directory because they are needed for EXIF, IPTC, XMP and filename. Of course you could hack UPLOAD folder location to somewhere else, but it must be accessible to PHP.

I suppose I could keep all of the thumbs and microthumbs in one big folder in the Images directory (the way I have it set up now) and then just have the small/default/large folders in each subdirectory to hold the resized images... Would doing this be bad in anyway, slowing things down to have 10,000 or so thumbs in one folder, etc?

There might be a filesystem limit for files in one folder...

[ArtM]

Pekka Said:

But you should have those original files to upload in UPLOAD directory because they are needed for EXIF, IPTC, XMP and filename. Of course you could hack UPLOAD folder location to somewhere else, but it must be accessible to PHP.


ArtM Suggests :

For those of us with our own pre-existing, pre-massaged set of sizes (including thumbnails), enable user to point to main photo 'Upload' location for retrieval of EXIF, IPTC info. In my case, one of the 'Paths' is my main original with this info. As I run my own server, having to copy an exhibition's main/original photos with the EXIF/IPTC info to another folder on the server seems like an extra unneccesssary step.

I would like to set up a folder on another PC containing all my cropped/sharpened/brightened sizes & thumbs/micros - in seperate sub-folders- and then FTP it up tp the server in a multi exhibition storage super-folder; and point EE to the new folder & have it update the Database.

I would rather not Hack EE as it induces suicidal thoughts when installing future upgrades!!


- ArtM

[ktpupp]

ArtM Suggests :

For those of us with our own pre-existing, pre-massaged set of sizes (including thumbnails), enable user to point to main photo 'Upload' location for retrieval of EXIF, IPTC info. In my case, one of the 'Paths' is my main original with this info. As I run my own server, having to copy an exhibition's main/original photos with the EXIF/IPTC info to another folder on the server seems like an extra unneccesssary step.

See, my problem is that I don't have them all resized, just one set of orginal images in each folder. I was trying to create some new exhibitions last night and when I changed the paths to reflect the next folder I was working on the previous exhibit didn't work anymore.

Do I need to create new paths for each folder that I want an exhibition in, rather than just changing the three paths for the default, small and large sizes? If so, this could take a while... I've got several years worth of images already in this directory structure, some of which are referred to on webpages so I can't move them to organize them in another manner without breaking those links.

I'm not so sure that EE is up for what I need to do. Ideally, I would like to point to the topmost folder and tell some software to create galleries of images for each subfolder, with the thumbs and HTML files stored per subfolder... I can't see how EE can do this, unless I am missing something important.

-=kt=-