photos

"so you can find your photos later."
http://www.alexking.org/software/photos/

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What it is: 

A web based application for managing digital photos built on a free platform independent open source scripting engine and database.


Who it is for:

Anyone who is comfortable installing and configuring PHP & MySQL and wants to manage their digital photos.


Why I built it:

When I started taking digital photos, I knew I wanted some sort of platform independant, web based or web enabled searchable management system for keeping track of them. One of the benefits of digital photography is the ability to take as many photos as you want since there are no film costs. The downside of that is you can quickly asmass an unmanageable amount of photos unless you have some organization system to use. I wanted to be able to locate the photo I wanted without having to open a gazillion files.

When I looked for software to do this, I found a number of web based service sites, Windows only applications that were not web enabled, and a handful of Mac applications that did the same thing. 

I eliminated all of the on-line services out of fear that they would dissapear and take my photos with them. This was also a bit of a fear with an application as well. If the company goes under, discontinued the product or I wanted to change to another platform I could be somewhat stuck.

Many of these applications involved importing all your photos into their database, not just referencing the files on the filesystem. Backing up such a large database is a real hassle.

Platform independance was important as a Mac user because I wanted to be able to run it locally on my computer and also on a hosted web server in the future. Having the option to run on Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux is just really convenient and keeps lots of options open for the future.

I imagine in the future, I'll want to have access to this database over the internet. So going with something web based now just made sense.

So failing to find anything that met my criteria, I decided to try to build my own. After getting a number of features in and cleaning up the code, I decided to release it so other people can use it if they are looking for something similar.

You are free to modify, customize, upgrade the application as you see fit for your personal use. This and the fact that the information is stored in a real database ensures that even if I stop supporting the app, you're not left out in the cold.

Enjoy.


Features:

- "Quick Entry" lets you use the data from the previous photo entered on a new photo
- Can load (recursively) a folder of photos at a time and set (the same) properties on all of the photos
- Can export/save a copy of a photo at specified size/quality
- Platform Independent, runs on Windows, Unix and Mac OS X
- Uses free open source database (MySQL) and scripting engine (PHP)


Requirements:

A Windows, Unix, Linux or Mac OS X system with Apache (or IIS for Windows), PHP and MySQL installed. PHP must have exif and jpeg support extensions enabled.

PHP is available from:		http://www.php.net/
MySQL is available from:	http://www.mysql.com/

Installation:

See the on-line documentation: http://www.alexking.org/software/photos/documentation/

Tested Camera Compatibility:

Canon S30
Canon S45
Canon D30
Canon D60
Canon 10D
Minolta DiMage Xt
Nikon Coolpix 880
Nikon D1x
Olympus 2040Z
Sony PC-110

All Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Olympus and Sony models (and other models using standard EXIF data) should be supported. If photos from your camera do or do not work, let me know: software@alexking.org


Keyboard Shortcuts:

On Windows, the modifier is the "Alt" key, on Mac, the modifier is the "Ctrl" key.

	S - Save Button
	E - Edit Button
	V - View Exif Data Button
	C - Save a Copy Button
	H - Search Screen
	Q - Search Button
	A - Add Photos Screen
	D - Add Details
	P - Portfolio
	T - Set focus to Title field if it exists
	1 - Apply for loading photos
	2 - Apply for using Quick Entry
	

Version History:

http://www.alexking.org/?content=software/photos/content.php&page=history

Folder and small star icon components are courtesy of eldub.com.

Exifer is copyright Jake Olefsky and used with permission, http://www.offsky.com.

copyright (c) 2001-2002 alexking.org. all rights reserved.
