mkGallery.pl - Create a gallery from images in the
current directory. This was a bundled utility that was moved to a
separate repository that can be found at https://github.com/Boris-de/mig-contrib.
mkGallery.pl can do three things:
1. Take a directory full of images and create thumbnails for them.
2. Read EXIF header information from image files and cache it in text files for Mig to use.
3. Create blank comment templates in mig.cf files.
It can do all of them at the same time, too. It can accept a list of images to work with, or simply process all images in the current directory. It can also recurse directories and do an entire album.
mkGallery.pl ignores audio and video content. It only
cares about images.
(Note that mkGallery.pl requires Perl. Perl is not
required for Mig itself. It is required only to use the
mkGallery.pl utility. To generate thumbnails, the
convert utility from the ImageMagick suite is also
required.)
mkGallery.pl uses the following Perl modules. When I
first wrote mkGallery.pl I was using Perl 5.005_03, and
these were all included (no extra installations were needed).
strict
Cwd
File::Basename
File::Find
Getopt::StdmkGallery.pl has not been tested under Microsoft Windows
by the author.
Usage:
mkGallery.pl [ -h ] [ -a ] [ -w ] [ -t ] [ -e ] [ -c ] [ -i ]
[ -s <size> ] [ -q <quality> ] [ -M <type> ] [ -m <label> ]
[ -n ] [ -r ] [ -d ] [ -D <dir> ] [ -E <ext> ] [ -f <file> ]
[ <file1> <file2> <...> ]
-h : Prints this help message.
-f : Use alternate configuration file (config.php)
-a : Process all image files in current directory.
-w : Turn over-write on. By default, files written such
as the EXIF file will be appended to rather than
over-written. Using "-w" indicates the file should
be over-written instead.
-t : Generate thumbnail images.
-e : Build "exif.inf" file. You must compile the jhead
utility (included) before you can use the -e option.
-c : Generate blank comments for uncommented images.
-i : "Interactive" mode for comments.
-s : Set pixel size for thumbnails.
-q : Set quality level for thumbnails.
-M : Define type of "prefix" or "suffix".
-m : thumbnail marker label (default "th").
-n : Only process thumbnails that don't exist (new-only).
Will also process thumbnails which are older than the
full-size images they are associated with.
If using with -e, only files not already cached
in exif.inf will be processed for EXIF data.
-r : Recursive mode - process this folder as well as any
folders and subfolders beneath it.
-d : Use thumbnail subdirectories (instead of using _th, etc)
-D : Name of thumbnail subdirectory to use (default is "thumbs" or
whatever is in your config.php file).
-E : File extension to use for thumbnails.
-K : Keep profiles in thumbnails. Normally this should
be off because profiles in thumbnails are not useful
but add a lot to the file size.
* If creating thumbnails, "convert" must be in your $PATH.
* This program supports JPEG, PNG and GIF formats.
* The "-e" feature only supports JPEG files.
* See the "utilities" document for more information.
Mig - https://mig.wcht.de/
For people who don’t like to type in the same options to
mkGallery.pl every time they use it, you may store
memorized options in the file mkGallery.opt (this goes in
the same directory as mkGallery.pl). Put the options in as
you would type them at the command line. For example if you usually do
this:
../../util/mkGallery -rantKThen you would just put the ‘-rantK’ in mkGallery.opt,
and mkGallery.pl will know to read it from that file.
You can generate EXIF cache files (exif.inf) in each album directory.
Just use the -e flag.
NOTE: If you use -e without
-w, your EXIF files will be appended to, instead of
overwritten. In some circumstances this ends up making your EXIF files
grow and grow by appending the same data over and over again. For this
reason, -e should always be used with either
-w or -n. The author recommends
-n as it reads the existing EXIF file to see what was
already cached, then only parses new images for data - this is more
efficient than erasing the file each time and starting over with all
images.
ImageMagick will be given a geometry of SIZExSIZE where
SIZE is the value passed to mkGallery.pl with
the -s flag. For instance, specifying -s 250
will give ImageMagick a geometry of 250x250. This means it
will create a thumbnail image where the maximum value of height (or the
maximum value of width) is 250 pixels. It will not exceed that value for
either width or height. However, it will maintain the aspect ratio of
the image.
Here are some examples I got from testing using the default setting which is 100.
Original size Thumbnail size
1280 x 960 100 x 75
505 x 250 100 x 49
347 x 202 100 x 58
160 x 205 78 x 100Some image formats such as JPEG can have varying quality levels. The default level is 50 but any value from 1 to 100 is valid. The higher the number, the better the quality of the thumbnail. I have found that 50 is a good number and produces a fairly clear thumbnail from even large detailed photographs yet still keeping a very good file size (usually below 2.5K).
A quality level can be specified with -q number.
Thumbnails are stored in a subdirectory called thumbs by
default. (This can be changed - see the $thumbSubdir option
in config.php.)
A thumbnail has the same filename as the full-size image it
represents. An image called img_4190.jpg would have a
thumbnail file called thumbs/img_4190.jpg.
It is not necessary to create the directories ahead of time -
mkGallery.pl will create any directories it needs if they
don’t already exist.
When using the -c option to generate comment fields in
mig.cf, you can also optionally specify -i or
Interactive mode. Basically all this will do is prompt for each image
which does not already have a comment, and you can (optionally) type in
a comment for that image. If you don’t want to do so, just hit
Enter and that image will be skipped -
mkGallery.pl will move along to the next one in the
list.
The new-only mode (-n) basically follows this set of
rules.
1. If an image file exists without a thumbnail associated with it, generate a thumbnail for it.
2. If an image file exists, has a thumbnail, but is newer than its thumbnail file, re-generate the thumbnail.
If -n is not specified, a new thumbnail will be
generated for every image.
If using -n along with -e (EXIF mode), only
images not already cached in the exif.inf file will be processed for
EXIF data. If -w is also being used this is not the case,
since the exif.inf file is removed before processing takes place (so no
cache is present).
Recursive mode makes it simple to do large chunks of an album. For
example, if a new folder has been added called Travel and
there are a total of 17 folders that are located underneath it (as
subdirectories, or sub-subdirectories), handling each one would be
tedious. It’s easier to just go to the top of the tree you want to work
on (in this case Travel) and invoke
mkGallery.pl with the recursive flag (-r).
New users can simply go to their root (albums) and
invoke mkGallery.pl \-art, and mkGallery.pl
will generate thumbnails for everything in the entire gallery.
Personally I find -rant to be the most useful
combination of modes. It’s also easy to remember. Add -e for EXIF
parsing (-trane).
Recursive mode works with all the action modes (-c,
-e, -t).
jhead was written by Matthias Wandel and can be found
at:
https://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/index.htmlIt should be available in virtually every distribution these days and a Windows version can be downloaded from the author’s website.
(jhead is not something you need to run directly - it is
used by mkGallery.pl if you invoke
mkGallery.pl with the -e flag.)