Make Photo Album Downloads for Windows

Quick Links

Purchase MPA.   MPA costs $5.00 USD for installation on one to two computers. Why the low price? MPA is a very simple tool, and we do not operate a customer call-in center.

Dowload a Demo. It's free, but has a restricted feature set.
Upgrade from a previous version.

MPA Description - What it does

Make Photo Album (MPA for short) is a very simple tool for previewing and organising collections of JPEGS, and for generating a web page.
With MPA you can turn you directory of JPGs into a web page ready for viewing in just 3 clicks - the underlying theme of MPA is to make working with collections of jpgs as simple as possible.
Full-screen image previews work with no borders - use 100% of your display to view your images.

Start MPA by reading in a directory containing image (jpg) files.
MPA will display a preview of the web page to be geneated - showing thumbnails of the jpgs arranged in rows. You have some simple tools for editing the page: for example, you can change the order of the thumbnails, re-arrange the layout (within certain constraints), rotate the images in increments of 90 degrees, add image captions or add text between rows of images.
If you like, you can set options to:

• Reduce all images to a given maximum size, or resize images individually,
• Set the size of thumbnails,
• Set background color,
• ... and others.
  Note that some of these options are only available with the purchase version - they have been left out of demo-version to encourage you to make a purchase.

Once you like the layout, MPA can produce:-

• an html file (named 'index.html', viewable with any browser supporting javascript),
• a directory (named 'm_thumb'), containing .jpg thumbnails - one .jpg thumbnail for each .jpg file found in the input directory.

MPA gives you some handy tools while editing :-

• A full-screen jpg viewer: any jpg with a high enough resolution can be viewed in full-screen on your display: no borders are shown.
• An easy-to-use image-crop function.
• Resize (downsize) an image to a given resolution. Handy for preparing an image for e-mailing, for example.
• Rename an image on disk, while in the editor. Takes care of renaming the thumbnail and changing the name of the file reference in the web page. (Btw. you can also have an image caption on the web page that is independent of the disk file name).
• Rename all images to start with a new base name (each image is renamed with the basename plus its number in sequence, e.g. NewName01.jpg, NewName02.jpg, ...).
  N.b. renaming is not availbale in the demo version.

The 'index.html' file that MPA makes can be viewed with any standard browser supporting javascript.
When opened, the web page will show the thumbnails as previewed in MPA. Clicking on a thumbnail will display the corresponding large image.
There is also an option to view images in full-screen mode (particularly effective if your browser is able to turn off all scrollbars, toolbars, etc. - for example using the F11 button on some browsers).
Or, you can run an automatic slide-show in your browser: each image in turn is displayed for 3 seconds.

For more info:
See 'Using MPA', below.
View an example of the web pages produced by MPA.
Review the list of recently added features.

Downloading

Free demo version:
You can download a free demo version.
You'll get an installer, which will install a demo Make Photo Album executable on your computer.
The Demonstration version is designed to give you an overall idea of how MPA works, but it does not have the full feature set, has a pre-set expiry date, and has some other limitations: see the Demo download page for complete details.

Purchase:
MPA for windows costs $5.00 USD for a license for one to two PCs at one site. This helps cover the cost of developing and maintaining the software.

Make Photo Album (MPA) is an application you download and install on your PC.
MPA is designed to prepare a collection of jpg files for viewing with a web-browser. To this end, MPA will allow you to arrange thumbnails on an index page, edit the page (within some contraints), and finally generate the corresponding web page and the required thumbnails.
MPA also includes basic features for managing the jpgs.

The feature-set is basic, yet effective: MPA is designed to be simple to use. As you'd expect from the purchase price, there are not many extra bells and whistles.

The simplest way to run MPA is to drag-drop a directory on the MPA icon on your desktop.
On startup, MPA will show a preview of the layout of the thumbnails on the web page to be generated. You can rotate each image in increments of 90 degrees, preview images in full-screen size, crop or resize individual images, and set various options. You can delete images, or cut an image and paste it elsewhere (but you can have only one copy of an image on the page). You can generally rearrange the order of the images. Once you like the layout, ask for the webpage to be written out: Mpa will then produce a file named 'index.html', and leave it in that same directory. It will automatically produce the required thumbnails, and if you've chosen a maximum image size, MPA will reduce each image to that size. Thumbnails are placed in a directory called m_thumb, wich is automatically created.
You can view the 'index.html' file with any browser enabled for javascript. You can also upload the index.html file, the resized images, and the thumbnails to a web server, or put them on a CD.
Notes re Microsoft IE: If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer with SP2, you may need to enable local javascript support, otherwise the pages may not display when you double-click them from within your local file system. (On the other hand, if you upload the pages to a server, and then view them using an internet connection, they will display fine without the need to enable local javascript.) This issue is specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer; most other browsers fully support javascript by default.

Automatic Image Reduction

You can set a maximum image size (measured in pixels). In this case MPA will examine each input image to see if it is larger in width or height than the given limit, and if so, MPA will copy the original image to a backup directory (named 'm_orig’), and reduce the image to the given size.

Other Features

In the full-purchase version, you can set the size of thumbnails, and the background color.

Use MPA as an image browser/viewer: Drag a directory of images to the MPA icon, and it will simply show thumbnails of the images. Double-click an image to see it in full-screen. Right-arrow shows the next image. If you'd like to arrange the images to be shown in a particular order, just re-order them on MPA's display, and save the arrangement as a web-page. Next time you start up MPA, it will load the preview images in the order you had saved them. You have the option to rotate the image display by 90 or 180 degrees while keeping the jpg on disk untouched for previewing, or you can rotate the image on disk as well.

Disclaimer

Mpa will generate, modify (and even delete) certain files (depending on options selected) - use at own risk. We urge you to read the documentation,and to always use appropriate backup procedures.

Example

Here is an example of the web pages produced.

System Requirements

MPA has been tested under Windows XP, Windows 98, and Win NT/2000.

The web pages generated have been tested under MSIE 6.0 (service pack 2) and Mozilla Firefox 1.0.
Javascript support is required, and must be turned on if you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2 (all other browers are usually configured for javascript by default).
N.B. With service pack 2, Microsoft has turned javascript off for local files on your computer.
You need to either re-enable javascript, or use an alternate browser.