Thumbnail creation software request

Hello everyone,
I'm looking for software suggestions for thumbnail creation. I have about 500 pictures I'd like to post on my family website. Most of the pictures(jpg's) are from a 6mp camera and are over 1mb in size.
What I'd really like is a program that automatically creates a thumbnail picture in a subdirectory and also creates a sample html page with a table with all the thumbnails and links to the full size image. Just point it a directory full of pictures, maybe have an option to how many thumbnails to a page and have it spit out 20 pages of thumbnails with everything all linked up. It doesn't have to be great looking, I'm going to heavily modify it later anyway.

I'm not looking for google searches for software, there is a ton, what I'd like is comments from people who have actually used this type of software and recommend one that works well.

Thanks

I have a PHP file that uses the GD libraries that will automatically create thumbnails of the pictures in a subdirectory...

Unfortunatly I have no knowledge of php It's on my list of things to learn but it's going to be a while before I get to it.

Dreamweaver.

Choose "Commands", and then choose "Create Web Photo Album"


It does everything you are describing and is easy to use. It creates a basic page with the thumbnails that are linked to the full image, and can be modified later with a style sheet or html editing.

Hi, we have already got a thread for this which has lots of info in it. You can find it here:
http://www.ozzu.com/digital-art-forum/thumbnail-generating-program-t20275.html

Thanks,
Rose

sounds good, I'll download it and give it a try, thanks!

Thanks Rose! I did do a search on Ozzu but didn't see anything that jumped out at me when I scanned the list of matches. I'll take a look at it.

Arcath, yep thats cool. If you have Photoshop you can use the "Action" feature. I have posted a quick tutorial in the same topic posted above which tells you how to do it

That actions feature would come in real handy for you because since you are importing from a digital cam, chances are your pics are huge on the screen when you view them in any image editor at full resolution.

You need to size up the images first to web resolution and you could use the actions feature to make this a quick and painless process. I've used the actions/batch process feature before for pretty much this exact thing, or even to convert an entire directory of images into another format.

It has a lot of good uses. Check it out!

yep for sure. with the actions menu you can save them all for web as well as resize them - it is very handy

My problem is that the pictures are 3008x2000 pixels. I'd like web pages to show thumbnails at around 100 pixels width and when the click on the thumbnail they see a ~ 640x480 version of the picture with a link to download the fullsize 3008x2000 if they want.

This website is just for family, I want them to quickly be able to browse the thumbnails, get the option to view a more detailed version and download a high quality version if they want to have a photo-print made up.

Even if I find a batch way of creating the thumbnail and the smaller version of the picture, I have about 1200 pictures of which I'm most likely going to post at least 500 of them. Creating the webpages and all those links 500 times over isn't something I'm looking forward to. I'm really looking for a 'whole package' type of solution that creates the webpages, the thumbnails, and does all the initial links.

I'm assuming that I'm going to have to batch resize the pictures from 3008x2000 to 640x480 then use the directory of 640x480 pic to create all the pages then later on add the links for the full size pics.

But in reality I've never really worked with any software like this and don't know whats out there. I'm a networking geek and web design is just something I've played with.

of course I could just click the 'thumbnail creator' link in the ads at the bottom of every Ozzu page. . .


Sometimes the obvious just gets overlooked

I personally have not found a program, or method of doing everything within one piece of software.

What I was suggesting was use photoshop to reduce the overall size of the photos from the 3008x2000 pixels that you are starting at, to the web size of 640x480. When you use the automate batch process with the action command in photoshop, you pick the directory where you want the resized photos to be saved into.

From there you would open dreamweaver and do the Web Photo Album that I described earlier in this thread. Choose the folder with the resized images as the source image folder for your web album, then make a destination folder, choose thumbnail sizes (100px is an option), hit OK.

After this is done you will end up with an album *similar to this gallery. If you click a thumbnail it takes you to the enlargement page with more navigation options, if you click the photo it opens one more page with just the photo. You could swap the link placed on the photo and make it open the original 3008x2000 sized image.

* this html has been edited, and also draws on css

Basically the biggest thing that I'm getting at is that you might not find a program that has every function that you want, but this is one system that would help you save LOADS of time with the processing of 100's of photos

Have a go at installing this software:
http://gallery.menalto.com/

It has a lot of options on it and is a top quality freeware photo album.

As for what you have mentioned above - Photoshop will do all those things for you. Do you have access to that program?

what I meant was, I am still fairly new to designing things on the web, and although I know a few things I am far from being an expert in any program..

I'm sure that photoshop can do quite a bit of things including albums and html output, at least I have heard rumors. I've never tried it personally.. I have ended up using multiple programs to achieve my desires in page graphics/elements.