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April 16, 2009
[SHOWING OFF FOR FREE]
OK. So, you've read the little rave above about the Fujifilm F200EXR. What do the Fuji's pictures really look like? Point your web browser at Fujifilm F200EXR samples and see for yourself. Make sure that you right click on the blank space and select “Enter full screen” to get the full effect.
Now that you've done that we can talk about the service used to create the web gallery and to publish it, making it available to any browser.
The web gallery itself was created with Jalbum. (jalbum.net) This is a donationware download, which means it is free unless you are overcome with gratitude to the Swedish geniuses who have laboured over its code, in which case you can make a donation.
In installing the program you are invited to join the Jalbum web hosting service, which is also free for space up to 30MB. 30MB is exactly three times as much free space as BigPond gives its internet customers who pay hundreds of dollars a year. Jalbum reckons that 30MB is enough space to show about 200 pictures at standard screen resolution. According to the Jalbum web site the free service should display advertisements but so far we haven't seen any.
The available space can be increased and advertising removed by paying for an upgrade. $36 will get you a gigabyte of space and $180 buys 10 gig. Absolute bargains. And you get your own simple, short URL, to email to pals inviting them to come and look at your masterpieces.
Creating a web gallery in Jalbum is a doddle. When the program opens you see a message telling you to drag a folder of photos or individual pictures into the assembly space. Then comes the interesting bit.
There is a community of Jalbum users working away to create “skins” (graphical interfaces) for the galleries. New skins are being posted all the time, so the first thing to do after loading the photos is to browse through the different looks and make a selection. The one we have used for the Fuji F200EXR gallery is BananAlbum which appealed to us for its simplicity.
BananAlbum, like most of the skins, is itself customisable. There are different layouts and different formats for including information text and different sizes for image displays. And BanaAlbum has the neat trick of being able to enter full screen mode, getting rid of all the menu bars and so on, at a single click.
Once the gallery has been created and previewed click on the Publish button and it is uploaded to your assigned web space and your gallery URL is displayed.
There are alternatives to Jalbum, also free, such as Picasa and the gallery makers built into software like Photoshop and PaintShop Pro. Or you can surrender control to Flickr. However, for sheer ease of use and elegance of output we prefer Jalbum. It is well worth a donation.
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Posted by terry at April 16, 2009 09:56 AM
