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Easily Create A Professional Web Photo Album With Jalbum

via MakeUseOf.com by Damien Oh on 12/29/08

jalbum-logo Have you ever wished that you can create a beautiful Web photo album and share it with your friends? Jalbum allows you to do just that.

Jalbum is a free Web photo album generator that is incredibly versatile and flexible. Not only is it extremely easy to use, it also comes with plenty of features that can turn you into a professional, without you even knowing it.

Installing Jalbum on your computer is easy. Jalbum was developed in Java and is cross-platform compatible. Regardless whether you are using Windows, Mac, Linux, or even Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, OS2, as long as you have Java runtime installed, you can run Jalbum.

I am not sure about any other album generator software, but using Jalbum is really idiot-proof. You simply drag and drop your photos from the File Manager in your OS to Jalbum and that's it. You can also use drag-drop to arrange the photos in the order of your liking. Once you are satisfied with the result, simply click on the Make Album button to create your album.

jalbum-drag-drop

For further personalisation, you can choose from a selection of skins to theme up your album. If none of the default choices catch your eye, you can even download from the list of skins created by others in the Jalbum database. If you have knowledge of CSS and Javascript, you can also create your own skin and customize your album to the way you want it to be.

Simple image editing and filters

Jalbum comes with a set of editing tools and filters for you to improve your images. You can find filters like Crop, Red Eye, Gamma, Levels, Straighten, Gray, Sharpen and many others. There is not much skill involved here. Simply click on the button to add instant effects to your photo(s). If you like it, click Apply, if not, Cancel. As simple as that. In addition, you can also add captions/comments to your photo(s).

jalbum-image-filters

Widgets provide more Web2.0 juice

One of the useful features is the availability of widgets that you can add to extend its functionality. There are several widgets available, most of them are geared to make your album more Web2.0-ish. Here are some of the widgets:

About - Show information about your album, like when it was created and what skin was used. It connects to your community profile page by adding your user picture. It also lists thumbnails to your other Jalbums for easy browsing.

Comment - Allows other people to add comments to your albums and photos.

Share - Social bookmarking module for people to share your album with others.

Visitor Counter - Display how many visitors you have.

Name Tagger - This widget does automatic face detection and allows you to tag your friend's name in the photo.

Easy uploading

When you are done with your album, you can easily upload to the Web server. Jalbum gives you 30MB of free space on their server, under the URL http://your-username.jalbum.net. If you have your own Web server that you want to upload to, Jalbum also comes with integrated FTP that you can use. Just enter server FTP credentials and off you go.

In addition, you can even use the in-built Web server modules to start your own server and share your album right from your computer.

Conclusion

The above mentioned features are only a small portion of what Jalbum is capable of doing. Overall, Jalbum is a great photo album generator that I would strongly recommend. It is versatile, flexible, cross-platform compatible and localized with over 30 languages. If you have not tried it, don't wait, give it a try now.

You may also want to read Mark's Create Online Photo Albums With Web Album Generator for comparison purposes.

What web album software do you use to show off your photos?