Album -- A basic photo renaming application. Copyright (c) 2004, Silverback Software, LLC Send email regarding this application to brian@bstpierre.org. LICENSE Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. THE AUTHOR SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE AUTHOR HAS NO OBLIGATIONS TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS. VERSION HISTORY Version 0.1 -- December 2004 -- Initial release. ABOUT ALBUM Album was created to facilitate the renaming of large batches of files taken by a digital camera, with special support for naming a series of photos. Album also allows rotation of photos and the creation of half- and quarter-sized copies of photos for emailing or uploading to the web. INSTALLATION To install Album, simply copy album.exe to a convenient location. There is no special installation procedure. To uninstall, simply remove album.exe. There are no registry entries, DLLs, or secret files to remove. Album requires .NET. If you do not have .NET, download the latest version from microsoft.com. USAGE / USER'S MANUAL (or "This is All the Documentation You're Going to Get") WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING Album has not been heavily tested! Use only on photos for which you have backups! You've been warned! Special warning: do not open photo files in other programs (e.g. to edit a photo) while it is loaded in Album. Doing so may cause problems. WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING Album is intended for use in a directory with a bunch of JPG photo files in it. 1. In Windows Explorer, navigate to such a directory. 2. Right click on one of your photo files (it does not matter which one, just pick a file). 3. Choose Open With... 4. Choose Choose Program... 5. Click Browse... 6. Find album.exe (in whatever location you chose to install it). Album will open with all of the JPG files in that directory listed down the left side of the window. For best results, I recommend maximizing the window. To view a photo, click on the filename in the list. The picture will load in the right half of the window. To rotate the current photo clockwise, press Ctrl-R ("right"). To rotate counter-clockwise, press Ctrl-L ("left"). To rename the current photo, press F2 (this is the same shortcut Windows uses). You do not need to enter the .jpg extension at the end -- Album will add this automatically. When you rename a photo, Album remembers the name and sets this as the "current name". For example, if I rename a photo to be "flowers" then that becomes the current name. To quickly rename a photo using the current name, press Ctrl-N ("name"). For example, if the current name is flowers and I press Ctrl-N then the current photo will be renamed "flowers-N.jpg", where N is a small number. Starting with 1, Album checks for files that already exist and keeps incrementing N until it finds that no such file exists. If I had a bunch of flower pictures and I went through the whole batch using Ctrl-N, I would end up with files called flower-1.jpg, flower-2.jpg, etc. This saves a lot of typing and is the primary reason for Album's existence. To set the current name to that of the current photo, press Ctrl-U ("use current photo for current name"). Continuing with the previous example, maybe I decided to be a bit more specific. I have pictures of tulips and daffodils, but they're all intermingled. So I name four or five pictures tulips-N.jpg using the Ctrl-N command, then I name a few daffodils-N.jpg. The next photo is of tulips, but my current name is daffodils. I can click on a tulip file from above, press Ctrl-U, switch back to the to-be-named file, and press Ctrl-N. It sounds complicated, but it's fairly simple. This is a time saver when you have long, detailed filenames like "Greta-Swimming-Lonesome-Lake-July-2004". Another thing that you gain by using the Ctrl-N / Ctrl-U features is consistency. You're guaranteed not to get typos, or to forget how you named something. If you use long filenames, you may end up with a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the file list. You can expand the file list by sliding the left edge of the photo viewer window to the right. Your mouse icon will change when you move it over the slider -- when this happens, click and drag to move the divider. If you have added files to the directory but can't see them in Album, press F5 to refresh the list of files (this is the same shortcut key used by Windows). This will also cause the list to re-sort, which can sometimes come in handy. Album can create smaller copies of photos that you have, for sending in email or uploading to the web. To create a half-size copy of the current photo, press Ctrl-2 ("1/2 size"). A new file is created that has the same name as the current photo but with "-small" appended. For example, tulips-5.jpg would have a half-size copy called tulips-5-small.jpg. To create a quarter-size copy, press Ctrl-4 ("1/4 size"). This works the same way as Ctrl-2. Be aware that these sizes are based on the number of pixels across and down in the original photo. The actual file sizes will probably be much less than one-half and one-quarter, respectively, of the original file. Also remember that the original file is not modified -- the smaller photos are just copies. NOTE: if you create a half-size copy of a given file, and then try to create a quarter-size copy, the second operation will tell you that the file already exists. This is because Album tries to use the same name when creating quarter- and half-size copies. To get around this, rename the first "-small" file and then try again. To exit Album, press Ctrl-Q ("quit"). TO BUILD Album comes with C# source code and a NAnt build file. To build Album, just run NAnt in the source directory. The executable will be placed under build/... If you don't have NAnt, just build all of the source files into a Windows Forms executable. KNOWN BUGS 1. If you have a picture open in Album and edit it in some other application it may crash Album. If this happens restart Album.