Emerald Forge Downloads for Unix/Linux

The Emerald Forge offers a package for generating a Photo Album Web page(s) based on a directory(folder) full of jpeg images.

Note: The linux project is at present (Mid 2004) not actively maintained. The functionality differs from the windows version; some of the features available in the windows version are not available here, and vice versa. The example page(s) shown for the windows version will not correspond to the pages produced by the linux versions.

The linux version is a python script, it is not recommended for casual users of windows operating systems. See below for software required to be installed on your machine before you can use linux-MPA. There is no graphical user interface; you need to be comfortable with using a command-line interface.

mpa-0.94.tar.gz , the whole package: contains the main script 'mpa.py' (the software to generate photoalbum webpages), 'mpa-doc.txt' (a plain-text man page for mpa.py), and a few utilities for jpeg files, as described below. The included README contains installation instructions for unix/linux.
In addition to mpa.py, the utilies included in the package are:

  jinfo.py is a jpeg file lister: lists X and Y dimensions
  of jpeg images along with their file size.  

  jcollage.py takes two or more images and collates them end-to-end into 
  one continuous strip, the height is taken from the first image's height.  

  jred.py resizes an image to be smaller, such that its max dimension (height or width)
   is no bigger than that given as an input option.   Up-sizing is not supported.

jinfo (Included in mpa-*.tar.gz, above): list jpeg info - dumps a list of jpg files, for each listing the resolution in pixels and file size in kB.
Beta version 0.82. Command line interface only.
Requires python and PIL (same as 'mpa', see below).

mpa : make photo album. Beta version 0.94. (Included in mpa-*.tar.gz, above)

Description

Generates a photo album: given a directory containing image (jpg) files, mpa will generate a photo album web page, in the form of (a) .html file(s). Several options are provided to generate different forms of output. Some options allow limited processing of the images as well. If the input dir contains subdirectories, then 'mpa' will optionally recursively make a page for each of those input dirs, and add a link to that sub-page in the parent index.html. See the documentation for a description of other options, and for licensing terms.

Example

Here is an example of the web pages produced.

System Requirements

The current (beta) release is only available as python source, this implies that mpa will most likely run on any system that can run python and the python image library.
In its current form, it does not operate particularly well under microsoft operating systems. (a native microsoft-os version is underway).
You'll need both python and for some operations the python image library (PIL) installed on your system. Both of these are free downloads from their respective sites. PIL is optional, but running without it severely curtails functionality.

Limitations and caveats

Optional rotation of specified images is done using PIL; and is assumed to be lossy.

Mpa will generate, modify (and even delete) certain files (given certain command line options) - use at own risk. We urge you to read the documentation,and to always use appropriate backup procedures. In particular, we suggest you use mpa on copies (not sole originals) of any images that you consider precious.