"First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure." — Douglas Adams (1952—2001)
Introduction to Thumbnailer.exe
This is a small utility that will create thumbnails out of a set of PNG or JPEG files. It will also create a basic webpage showing the thumbnails.
History:
v1.0 — 2001/08/15 — First release.
v1.1 — 2001/08/22 — Now also reads ReadOnly files and Archive files. Corrected bug in the installer (missing header/footer files).
v1.3 — 2001/09/13 — Better error recovery in case of damaged file.
v1.4 — 2002/05/02 — Two display options. Minor internal stuff.
v1.6 — 2002/09/24 — Also prints out image dimensions and file size. Corrected greyscale image bug. Warning: introduced an unwanted 'feature' for debugging purpose that I forgot to remove... DO NOT USE THIS VERSION.
v1.7 — 2002/09/27 — Corrected previous bug, corrected handling of palleted PNG images, corrected non-working minimum size for images.
v1.8 — 2003/01/09 — Pics now open in separate window. Added table presentation.
Choose a base directory where the PNG/JPEG files to convert are located (all the subdirectories will be searched as well). Double click to browse your hard drive.
Choose a destination html file to create. The thumbnails will be saved in the same directory. This directory can be under the source directory. Double click to browse your hard drive.
Are you creating a webpage ? Do you want a link on each thumbnail to point to the original image ? If so you also need to specify the relative or absolute path of the link. For instance, if the images you want to thumbnail are in C:\Perso\WebFolder\Images\ which is being served as http://www.mysite.com/johndoe/Images/, and you are saving the thumbnail file in C:\Perso\WebFolder\Thumbnails\Thumb.html, then you might write either http://www.mysite.com/johndoe/Images/ or ../Images/ as path to the large images. Note the difference between '\' (Windows) and '/' (Web). In most cases the program will guess properly the relative path.
Do you want a link on each group of thumbnails to point to the original directory ? If so you also need to specify the relative or absolute path of the link (see above).
Select a minimum size of the images to convert. Anything smaller than that will be ignored.
Select a maximum size for the thumbnail images (for instance if you choose 150x150, a 640x480 image will be resized to 150x100). Note that images smaller than 150x150 will retain their original size.
Select a minimum size for images to convert. Anything smaller than that will be ignored.
Select a compression level for the JPEG thumbnails (75 is the default).
Select a graphic filter to apply to the thumbnail (Sharpen is the default).
And finally choose a presentation: either thumbnails alternating on the left and right of the page (with room for text in between); all stacked next to each others without text to save room; or in a table with some text. You can customize the printed text with the [Edit] menu (file name, size, image size, modification date...).
Run it !
And at the end, what do you get ? A page like this one or this one or the two shown below.
Note 1: Options are saved in the registry.
Note 2: OK, so you like this program but you want more options ? More batch processing ability ? They try the excellent freeware IrfanView.
Note 3: You can customize the html file created after its creation, of course, but you can also modify the header and the footer beforehand (add stylesheet, text above or below the thumbnails...). Just edit the files head.html and foot.html which are in the program directory.
Rave: Listen to what my only satisfied customer has to say: "Yo, dude, this is so totally... err... cool. I managed to put my 5 pictures on my website, and even my family came to see them !" — Jason W.
Douglas Adams (1952—2001)
![[Thumbnailer.png]
User interface of Thumbnailer.exe](Pics/Thumbnailer.png)
