Use an image serving program to share iPhoto libraries
Nov 26, '03 10:02:00AM
Contributed by: snarshad
IDS (Image Display System) is a Sourceforge project that serves up image libraries through Apache. It does clever things like automatically resizing images on demand, can serve different image sizes based on the viewer's preferences, auto-generates thumbnails, allows user-submitted comments, and allows people to order prints via Shutterfly automatically. This is a handy tool for anyone who wants to share their iPhoto library via the apache webserver that your Mac is already running.
It does all of this, and all you have to do is drop folders into its Albums directory; it will automatically generate the thumbnails and resize images the next time the page is hit. So, just for kicks, I symlinked my iPhoto Library to my IDS Albums folder, and went to the page ... and it all worked beautifully. All of my iPhoto albums were laid out and served on the web. The symlink command was something like this:
ln -s /Users//Pictures/iPhoto Library/Albums
/Library/WebServer/Documents//albums
I don't have the bandwidth to make the server public right now, but I put up some screenshots of the web interface (IDS Photo Library, IDS Photo View, IDS Album View). Unfortunately the IDS project seems to have been laying low for over a year (I was quite impressed that it worked out of the box so easily on the Mac). And there are a few things that keep it from being perfect for iPhoto integration:
- It doesn't have user accounts/permissions
- It doesn't have a slideshow feature
- It doesn't allow the admin to easily turn albums on or off quickly - you have to manage the folders yourself (so if you use my symlink method, all of your iPhoto albums will show up individually)
- I'm not sure how easy it would be to allow multiple users to have separate ids directories (it might be easy)
- It requires ImageMagick, and several perl modules to function. Marc Liyanage has created an easy-to-use binary package installer for ImageMagick which should (I haven't tested it) greatly ease the installation process.
However, there are several things that make it really great for sharing iPhoto Libraries:
- When symlinking to your iPhoto Library, automatically pulls them in and creates the libraries - no manual configuration is necessary
- It serves multiple sizes of images, without you having to do anything to resize. This is great if your audience is coming from different bandwidths/screensizes, and each person wants to view a different size. The original will still be available for anyone who wants to print it
- Automatic Shutterfly integration is pretty cool - anyone can order a print.
- Installation was relatively easy, once the system requirements were met (which was hard because of ImageMagick).
As far as the installation, all you do is unzip the IDS package and throw it in /Library/Webserver/Documents/ and it will work... assuming you have installed the required perl modules and ImageMagick.
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031118035251488