R-PhotoOrganizer 1.0 beta 2

To my wife Olga

Introduction

Digital imaging enthusiasts, you have one more tool to organize your huge amount of digital shots. Although, we already have a bunch of similar great programs, like Pie, Thumbnails Plus, and more, this one can find some place on computers of some people. If you can do more, than following to instructions of wizard, and you like OS different than Windows, then 100% Java application R-PhotoOrganizer could be your tool. As a real Java application, R-PhotoOrganizer is distributed with complete source code, so you don’t need to wait, when a vendor fixed some bugs. Of course, this version is free.

Supported digital cameras

R-PhotoOrganizer supports the following application markers added digital cameras to JPEG file:
Exif, CIFF, JFXX.

These markers produced such widely known digital cameras, like Nikon, Kodak, Canon, Sony, and Olympus.

Hardware requirements

Software requirements

Features of beta 2

  1. Show specific information about shot added by Digital Cameras.
  2. Show original thumbnails prepared by camera and full images.
  3. Loss-less image transformation, like rotation, mirroring, and other.
  4. Manipulation with digital camera specific information.
  5. Image renaming, including customizable rename mask + topic.
  6. Creation image collections.
  7. Creation HTML page for image presentation.
  8. Storing collections to CD and database. /new
  9. Complete web publishing. /new

The next version will also include:

  1. Creation and printing photo albums.
  2. Using GPS info to search pictures.
  3. Export photo album to XML format to printing using another printing programs.
  4. Prepare slide show to upload to a digital camera.
  5. Add copyright, comment, and author tags to JPEG produced by digital camera.
  6. Slide show preparation in portable format.
  7. Photo "stitching" capabilities.

Installation

This version is distributed as a ZIP file. Unzip this file somewhere on your hard disk. If you don't have preinstalled Java VM on you computer. You have to do that. In depending on your OS, you can download Sun's JRE1.1.6 or better from http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/jre/index.html.

If you use Windows, then a better choice will be Microsoft's VM already preinstalled on your computer. However, check http://www.microsoft.com/java/ for the best results.

You also need have installed JFC (Swing 1.1). You need version 1.1 beta 3 or newer. Check http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/download.html for the latest one. If you use Java2, you don't need to download and install JFC.

Now, you're ready to launch the R-PhotoOrganizer. Since, the current version doesn't include installation software, you have to modify batch file (provided only, for Windows platforms), specifying a correct path to system class libraries and JFC.

Technique of using

R-PhotoOrganizer GUI includes three major tabs - Browse,  Selection, and Album. Tab Browse allows you navigate over your disk space, including flash memory cards (if you have a flash card reader installed). You can specify flash card location for fast transferring its content to selection. When you select a directory, which contains images taken by a digital camera, you have to see thumbnails in the bottom panel (thumbnails viewer). Note, the program show thumbnails prepared by a digital camera software. If an image format doesn't include thumbnails, you won't see them. All widely used digital cameras prepare thumbnail images. You can see image properties prepared by a digital camera. Use for this bar menu, or menu activated by right mouse button. If you Macintosh user, press ALT key, to simulate right button mouse click. If an image or a complete folder of images should be renamed, or transformed, you should add such images to a selection. Select tab selection, when you found interesting images. Now, you can do renaming, transformation, extracting thumbnails, extract/incorporate Exif markers, or generating a web page. To incorporate Exif markers back to an image file, use transformation None. Before, you start using the program, you have to play with options a bit, to be familiar where you can find results of work. The beta 2 supports photo albums. To activate this feature, you have to have JDBC compliant database installed somewhere and accessible from your computer. For example, you can use MS Access database, if you run PhotoOrganizer on Windows machines. Check option Album to set JDBC URL and JDBC driver name. PhotoOrganizer select MS or SUN JDBC-ODBC bridge automatically.

Notice about web page generation

This program provides very flexible web page generation ability. You have to prepare a template for your web page, which will show thumbnails of your collection. See file ThumbnailsTempl.html as an example.

What new in beta 2

  1. Implemented some album functionality.
  2. Web publishing can work over FTP, so you can directly upload thumbnails sheets to web server.
  3. Revised options, some GUI enhancements done
  4. Added direct upload images to collection from compact flash reader.
  5. Added export/import Exif markers to JPEG file.
  6. Some bug fixes

Known problems

R-PhotoOrganizer is beta software, so some problems are still there.

  1. RTS and DRI markers aren’t supported, so you couldn't transform some PhotoShop produced images.
  2. Modification some GUI option will be reflected only in next start of the program.
  3. Transformed images can't be uploaded to a camera for slide show.
  4. Enabling/disabling GUI notification isn't implemented, so if you select some menu item, you can notice that nothing happens.
  5. JPEG standard is supported not completely, so check log file if you have any doubts related to unexpected behavior of the program.

Contacting information

To contact to the author, use e-mail dima@flash.net. Any feed back is highly appreciated.