By Larry Anders, Librarian, Tampa PC Users Group
Larry@AndersNet.com
| Express Thumbnail Creator
By Larry Anders, Librarian, Tampa PC Users Group |
|
First, let me begin by apologizing to ExpressSoft (and William LaMartin - our newsletter editor) for taking five months to get around to reviewing this software. Believe me, it’s no reflection on the software, just my busy schedule.
Now… on with the review. Just a few days after I read about the latest version of Express Thumbnail Creator (ETC) in one of my computer magazines, William posted the software for review and I was excited to give it a test drive. After reading the article I was definitely interested. I, like many other people these days, have my own website, which has turned out to be a collection of photographs to share with my family and friends.
When I first started posting the pictures to my website, I would painstakingly take the time to code the pages to show the photos somewhat how I wanted them to appear. I could never seem to get it just right nor the same every time. As time passed, different programs were developed to assist in preparing image collections to be published to the web. I tried a bunch, but none were as simple and fast as ETC.
Without reading a thing, I installed ETC, started the program, chose to Create a new project and clicked Next. I then clicked the “+” to add images to the collection. (If you’re not sure what the images are, there is a preview window when you click on the file to remind you.) I then chose the folder I wanted to save the project to (better to create a new one for each project) and then selected the default settings for the next 8 clicks. Then I chose to Generate all (as in thumbnails, images and the web pages), and my first collection was ready to be published to the web. Really! Less than five minutes and it was done, and I was hooked! And, I got this program for free because I agreed to review it. What a deal! (I’m throwing this comment in because good software is available for our members to review most all of the time.)
Once I finished my first project, I was ready to go back and see what I could customize so my web postings wouldn’t all look the same. (Back to the 8 clicks I breezed through.)
1. <Select a Style for your gallery> There are six styles to choose from for a background-primarily color schemes.
2. <Modify the look of your Thumbnails> Choose the size of thumbnail, crop the image, add a colored border, rename the image file, add a drop shadow and image quality settings.
3. <Full-size Images> Resize the original image that will be displayed when the thumbnail is clicked, add a colored border, convert filenames to lower case, auto rename and image quality settings.
4. <Index Tables> Customize table size (rows & columns), layout (cell padding & cell spacing), add borders and include a background of your choice.
5. <Index Pages> Title your primary page for the gallery, choose the location and graphic for your navigation bar on each index page, and select a background graphic and color.
6. <Image Pages> Customize your links, filenames, navigation bars, background pictures and color on each full-size image page.
7. <Titles> Customize titles of index and image pages
8. <Generate> Generate all the pages automatically and then preview them.
9. <Upload> Sometime in the near future ExpressSoft plans to add an upload feature - but it’s not ready for primetime as of this writing. I use FrontPage and had no problem publishing
10. <Finish> Save the project and you’re done, honest! That’s all there is to it.
There are other tweaks I did not mention, but those were the primary adjustments that can be made. This software is excellent (and easy) for creating photo galleries, and not only for publishing to the web. You can easily copy these files to a CDR/RW and share your gallery with your friends and family. Just plop in the newly created CD and type the name of the main page and it’s as if you were viewing the gallery on the Internet. The software sells for $39.95 and you can order it online at http://www.express-soft.com. You should add this package to your software collection.
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