Web Picture Creator

Web Picture Creator 

Content

The interface

Image and thumbnail settings

Web pages settings

Advanced settings

Output settings

Menus


It's very easy to use Web Picture Creator. You don't have to be that very skilled in neither computer technology or HTML. Basically what you do is you add the pictures you want to be in the album, set some parameters, specify where you want the web album to be created on your hard drive and then hit the button; finished.

However, if you know some about style sheets you can go a step further in configuring how the web photo album should look like. More about this later in this tutorial.

Another option for the more advanced users is to create own templates and have Web Picture Creator use them when it creates the albums. This will also be discussed later in the tutorial.

Web Picture Creator can make the image thumbnails, resize your images to an appropriate size or just copy them and of course create the web pages. Therefore Web Picture Creator is also great if you, for instance, just want a thumbnail creator.

The original images must be of JPEG format (*.jpg, *.jpeg, *.jif). Some day Web picture Creator maybe will be able to handle other formats as well.

One thing Web Picture Creator won't do for you though, is to take great looking pictures.


The interface

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The interface consists of a menu, four tabs and a number of controls like buttons, textboxes, listboxes etc. We'll start with the tabs.


Image and thumbnail settings

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The interface - Image and thumbnail settings Image and thumbnail settings

Images

Here you can change the order of how the images will will appear in the finished photo album, rotate images and if you want add titles and desciptions to them.

In the big listbox you'll see the images you've added. If you select an image from the list, a preview of it will be shown to the right.


Output images resizing settings

If you click the radiobutton where it says "resize images", you have to specify maximum width or height and the quality of the resized images. It's always the biggest side of the image that is resized to what you have specified as the maximum. Aspect ratio is always maintained. Quality controls the images compression. The higher quality the bigger file size of the image and vice versa.

If you choose "copy images" the images will be copied as they are.

Thumbnail settings

This is the same as the point output images resizing settings. I recommend you to make the thumbnails a lot smaller than the images though.


Web pages settings

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The interface - Web pages settings Web pages settings

Text and links

Here you just fill in (or leave blank)

  • Album name; what do you want to call your album. Will be placed on top on the album index pages.
  • Title on image pages. Will be placed on top on the image pages.
  • Copyright text; will be placed under the thumbnails or images.
  • E-mail address; your e-mail address of course.
  • E-mail link text; the text that will be the hyperlink to you. For instance "Contact" or "Please mail me, I love getting mail". Will be placed under the thumbnails or images.
  • Home site URL; the full address to your entry page. Remember to include "http://".
  • Home site URL text; the text that will be the hyperlink to your entry page. For instance "Home". Will be placed under the thumbnails or images.
  • Format; to right of each and one of the textboxes for Album name, title on image pages and copyright text are dropdown boxes from which you can choose format for the different text blocks. In the advanced settings tab you can add formats. More about this later.
    The format for copyright text will apply to the links aswell. Advanced users can override this, which also will be disussed later on.

Colors

Here you specify

  • Background color
  • Color on text that don't link to anything; album name, copyright text, title on image pages, image count, number of images that is.
  • Color on text that do link to something which are E-mail link text and Home site URL text and some other stuff like "previous image" and "next image".

Colors Colors

Select what you want to change the color on by clicking its radiobutton. Then select if you want to use the standard Windows color dialog to specify a color, or if you want to use the keyboard to specify the color in HTML format. After that press the "Colour" button.

Color dialog Windows color dialog

Color input Keyboard input

The color you choose for text will apply to all non-link texts, regardless of what formats they have (will be changed in coming versions). But again, if you're an advanced user you can edit the css style page that is created by the program or use your own templates. More about this later.

Index page settings

Here you specify the number of thumbnail rows and columns you want on the index pages. Web Picture Creator creates the necessary number of index pages so that all of your images are indexed. Distance between thumbnails is the distance in pixels. You also specify whether you want the total number of images shown for the album or not, by checking or unchecking the checkbox.

Image pages settings

On the image pages you can have thumbnails (three or five, depending on the size of the thumbnails) under the main image, which can make the navigation easier. You also specify if you want the images to be numbered (image x of y in album "name"), and if you want the image file names under the images.


Advanced settings

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The interface - Advanced settings Advanced settings

Template selection

If you're going to create a web photo album from a template you specify which templates you want to use here.

Make templates

You can create templates in two ways. Either you make them in your favorite web page editor or you can create them here.

The rules for templates are simple: Web Picture Creator looks for the string "<"!-- wpc_code --">" (the quotation marks around "<" and ">" should be removed) in the template and inserts all the code there. Please note that this string has to be on its own line and at the very beginning of it. Templates have to be in the folder \Web Picture Creator\Templates\. They have to have the extension .template.

If you create templates in the program you have to do the following:

Press "Add file" button and choose a file you want make a template of. Now you should see the file in the template code view window. Insert the string "<"!-- wpc_code --">" (the quotation marks around "<" and ">" should be removed) where you'd like the photo album code to be generated. You can insert the string by putting the cursor at the right place in the code view window and right click with the mouse or press the button "Insert code". The "<"!-- wpc_code --">" (the quotation marks around "<" and ">" should be removed) string will be highligthed with blue color.

Once you're satisfied with your template press "Make templ." button and give the template a name. The template will be saved in the correct folder. Now should see the template you've just created in the dropdown boxes in the template selection section.

Add format tags

If you want to use your own format tags, you can add them here. Format tags are stored in \Web Picture Creator 0.8b\Formats\Formats.txt. If you add format tags and create web albums without using templates, you have to add theese formats to the cascading style sheets file. This you can do by either editing the file \Web Picture Creator 0.8b\wpc_css.template, before the album is generated or by editing the name.css which is created by Web Picture Creator upon album generation. Name in name.css is the name you give the album project when you choose save from the File menu. If the project is unsaved when you create the album the file will be called untitled.css.


Output settings

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The interface - Output settings Output settings

File and folder names

Quite self explaining. A few comments though.

Index pages are named name.extension name2.extension name3.extension .. name[n].extension where name is what you specify in the textbox and n is the number of index pages created by Web Picture Creator.

The image pages folder and the thumbnail folder will be created created directly under the directory you specify as the output directory in the next section.

Output directory

This is where the web album will be created.


Menus

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Menus


File

The usual stuff: New, Open, Reopen, Save, Save As and Exit

Actions

Copy images: copies the images from images original directory to "output directory\image folder".

Create thumbnails: creates thumbnails from the images in images original directory and places them in "output directory\thumbnail folder".

Resize images: Resizes the images in images original directory and saves them to "output directory\image folder".

Create web pages: creates the web pages without copying image files or making thumbnails. The pages are placed in output directory\ and in "output directory\image folder".

Create web pages from template: creates the web pages from templates without copying image files or making thumbnails. The pages are placed in "output directory\" and in "output directory\image folder".

Create web album: copies or resizes images, creates thumbnails and creates the web pages.

Create web album from template: copies or resizes images, creates thumbnails and creates the web pages from templates.

Tools

Change the language of the program interface.

Help

Help menu

Web Picture Creator homepage: guess what happens if you click on this one.

Disclaimer: shows license information.

About: shows an about box with version and contact information.