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Tips & Tricks

4. The Dedicated Master Album Folder Method

If one wants a bit more artistic control, maybe to create a common theme to link the albums, something more is necessary. This method isolates the Master Album from the Input and Output data, and makes it more visible as its own entity. It allows almost complete control at the expense of some manual labour.

Also, one potential issue arises when dealing with "virtual albums structures". Without going into details here, it can sometimes prove difficult to make use of an existing folder icon in a Master Album (see Excluded Folder Thumbnails). This method also gets around such issues.

• Create a new folder in the Input data, say MasterAlbum.
• 
  MasterAlbum01.jpg
  Create sub-folders that are named exactly the same as the Output albums, ie mimic the album folder structure in the MasterAlbum folder. Note that only the 1 st -level sub-folder names are required, all the others are not required at all. See MasterAlbum01.jpg.
• 
  MasterAlbum02.jpg
  Copy an image to be used as the sub-folder's Thumbnail into each sub-folder. Name it FolderThumbnail.jpg, for example. See MasterAlbum02.jpg.
• Create a Master Album project file (MasterAlbum.jap) in the MasterAlbum folder.
• Make all configurations; for example, within the GUI, assign each sub-folder's thumbnail accordingly (right-pane, right-click image, select "Use as folder thumbnail"). Set the key parameters :
  
  Image directory = Master Album folder
  Output directory = Output folder
  Process subdirectories = unselected
• Make Album
  

MasterAlbumDedicatedFolder.jpg

See MasterAlbumDedicatedFolder.jpg. The Master Album project file is effectively fooled into creating the necessary links to combine the existing albums, without actually having anything to do with them, directly. All the albums work together under the master index. However, to give the desired appearance, for example, "Large thumbs for Folders", dedicated folder thumbnail images are required.

The process of creating a "dummy" sub-folder and the associated thumbnail image is generally a one-time effort for each album. When a new album is to be added to the Master Album, the new "dummy" sub-folder can be easily copied/renamed/edited.

As noted above, the JAlbum Project files are stored in the dedicated Master Album folder. For instance, a folder's Title may be changed; this is stored in the meta.properties file in the relevant Master Album sub-folder, so it is truly independent of the source data. The Master Album is not fixed to the source, and changes made to the Master Album's appearance will not effect existing JAlbum Project files.

An example of a Master Album created in this way can be seen at http://mworthington.co.uk/jalbum/