Ted's Photo Album Manager

Coping with Large Photo Archives

Theodore Ruegsegger

Getting Digital

Features

Easily handles large photo collection (tens of thousands)

Relational database management system:

• Stores metadata like timestamps, descriptions, locations.
• Manages relationships:
  • Uploaded photos remain in photo sets, like rolls of film
  • Albums group photos by page and have their own metadata.
  • Tags group photos arbitrarily.
  • Derived photos have one or more parent photos.
• Supports fast searching by location, date, or associated text.

Plays nicely with image-editing tools

Features, cont.

Maintains images in three sizes:

• Full-size original
• "Webpic" suitable for computer display
• Thumbnail for "contact sheet" overview

Normally, renders albums on-the-fly, but can export a complete album for upload to a website or burning to a CD/DVD

Works with any browser

Multiple simultaneous users

Installation

Depends on other software like Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL

Expects particular configuration choices

Takes some geekiness to set up

Unless you need a custom configuration, take the easy way

Easy Installation

It makes sense to dedicate a computer (real or virtual) as a photo server.

In that case, use Easy Foto Box:

• A collection of pre-built configuration files and installation scripts
• Works with Debian, Ubuntu, gNewSense (pretty much all versions)
  Adaptable to other distros
• You install the minimal OS, then download a small shell script that:
  1. Installs and configures all necessary packages
  2. Downloads and installs latest Photo Album Manager

• You answer a few prompts and it's done.

Demo

Start with distro already installed. For this demo:

• Debian Etch on virtual host
• NAT for networking; forward ports for ssh and https

Browse to Easy Foto Box at
http://www.tux.org/~tbr/easyfotobox/
and do what it says, namely

1. Log in.
2. Download the installer:
   wget http://www.tux.org/~tbr/easyfotobox/install.sh
3. Run the installer:
   sh install.sh
4. Photo Album Manager is ready to use.

Demo

1. Import a folder of sample photos.
2. Manipulate the photos individually and as a set.
3. Assemble an album using selected photos from the set.

[Post-presentation note: if you wish to repeat the demo from my Jan 5 2008 presentation, here are the instructions.]

Demo Summary

Installed Photo Album Manager using Easy Foto Box.

Assembled a photo set.

Edited the set and the images therein.

Demonstrated searching and tagging.

Assembled an album.

Displayed the finished album.

BTW, everyone on the network can use it simultaneously. Browse to
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References

Both Photo Album Manager and Easy Foto Box are at:
http://www.tux.org/~tbr/

Easy Foto Box instructions have copy-and-pastable commands to do it all.

Photo Album Manager has extensive documentation and sample albums.