PhotoTrove User Manual
Contents
1. regusersn FK challenge1 1 challenge2 response2 PhotoTrove User Manual 28 32 B Configurations There are three ways to run your own PhotoTrove 1 The very easiest is to download the Trovester Appendix C appliance a self contained virtual machine that will run on most recent computers All you need to give it is disk space for your photos and albums 2 The next easiest is to build your own PhotoTrove machine using EasyPhotoTrove a set of scripts and configuration files that automates the installation It makes good sense to dedicate a computer as a photo server so the members of your household can all use it I build each release of Trovester Appendix C by creating a virtual machine running Debian GNU Linux installing EasyPhotoTrove and then exporting the virtual machine as an appliance Tip Another advantage of EasyPhotoTrove which also applies to Trovester since it s built with EasyPhotoTrove is that you can upgrade automatically to the latest version of PhotoTrove 3 Finally you can install PhotoTrove on an existing machine that you also use for other purposes Depending what s on your machine and how you ve configured it you might be able to use EasyPhotoTrove to automate the installation If you d rather do the whole thing yourself and have the requisite system administration skills a Start by downloading the entire EasyPhotoTrove and PhotoTrove packages wget http2. www tux org tbr easyphototrove easyphototrove latest tgz wget http www tux org tbr phototrove phototrove latest tgz b Look over the scripts beginning with install sh and continuing with the ones in the respective scripts directories c Adjust as needed for your situation d Email me if you need assistance within reason PhotoTrove User Manual 29 32 C Trovester the PhotoTrove Toaster a Virtual Appliance An easy way to try PhotoTrove is as an appliance a self contained virtual machine complete with its own operating system supporting packages and the PhotoTrove software All interaction is via your web browser and shared folders Of course since the Trovester virtual machine has its own network presence other users on your local network can use it at the same time If you decide you like PhotoTrove you can either install it directly or simply continue using Trovester as your permanent photo server C 1 System Requirements If your computer is of relatively recent vintage you can probably run Trovester but check this list just to be sure A computer running any platform that can run VirtualBox GNU Linux Solaris Mac OSX Windows At least 1 GB memory Trovester uses 0 5 GB and you still need to run your host Disk space adequate to hold your entire photo collection twice since PhotoTrove lets you keep a separate archive of original photos unaffected by subsequent editing All data namely the
3. Tag selected photos Tag name Select tag v Mew tag name Apply Turm selected photos S0 Right 180 SSIES SE nol This is final and cant be undone Be sure Delete For convenience when assigning locations and descriptions you can hide from the gallery all the thumbnails that already have them assigned 4 2 Editing Individual Photos Clicking any individual thumbnail opens the webpic view in a separate tab Things you can do here Assign location and description rotate and delete just as in the thumbnail gallery Assign a timestamp Normally the import process extracts the timestamp from the photo s EXIF data but some photos won t have that If you need to adjust the time for many photos because the camera s clock or time zone was off use the Adjust Timestamps tool from the main menu If you need to assign a date to a lot of photos for example scanned slides use the Apply Dates tool Download the full size image for example to edit it Replace the image with a new version Note that in the webpic view clicking on the right or left margin of the image moves forward or backward through the photo set For videos small navigation arrows below the video server the same purpose Finally back on the Photo Set Worksheet page you can click the Edit Notes button to annotate the photo set as a whole You can enter a nickname which is any descriptive text that helps you identify the s
4. Roh gom Ros o t xo mmo Eoho3 od E heh hoy ox m e a 18 11 5 pple Dates oo ced eaae e BPO we Y ADR ee LEUR RUE eS 19 12 Housekeeping 20 12 1 Manating Locations xo Lock oho Rem b Se ee ES be n 20 12 2 M enasmg Ape 22 22 2222 olo a ea e RR Ex E eO RC eom AL ee en 20 AINS 22222222222 55 Y EOS BORGR S XR ber SOROR E box R SS 20 13 Playing with Matches 21 13 1 Taking Photo Trove oii th Road s poces ey r 2 RR RERO A UR UR RR UE ale pe a 21 122 c6 8 Phot ABO uon obse E eS SEU SU SUR d ee EOS CERE ee bbe ds wed E S 5 8 22 13 3 Copying a Page from One Album Another ee 9r 22 14 Glossary 23 A Architecture and Design 25 AL DSW 223 asma Pe ee OR RUE eR Eee 3 25 pU DIA AP DL C TTL Se Re BPS eee s 25 AS Data Model dad y eem bed eoo E EG Eo GE RU X e e ox deese eae d 25 B Configurations 28 C Trovester the PhotoTrove Toaster a Virtual Appliance 29 System Requirements 2 cee eae ERU dead baw Ree eR he ke ee EE WR POSUER 29 C 2 Installation and Coniguration vs son meo m ae De E Ro e Rm ee 29 92 Be ee de fe le eis eed Oe Gee ae 30 PhotoTrove User Manual 1 32 1 PhotoTrove Overview 1 1 About this document Copyright 2015 Theodore B Ruegsegger The source components of this do
5. any of all of or none of multiple tags just hold down the Control key to select more than one from the menu All the other search criteria are still available as well Like albums you create tags on the fly in the Tag name action option above any thumbnail gallery PhotoTrove User Manual 13 32 7 Sharing Photos 7 1 Sharing Individual Photos It s easy to download an individual photo from PhotoTrove to your client machine whence you can email it upload it to a website or post it to your favorite social media site You need not be logged in to do it In any thumbnail gallery click on the desired image to open the webpic view You now have a choice For many uses the webpic sized image you re seeing in front of you is perfectly adequate since it s usually much smaller than the full size image it saves on space and network bandwidth To download the webpic just click right in the middle of the image and follow your browser s instructions Sometimes only the full size image will do To fetch that click the Full Size link and follow your browser s instructions For videos there s a similar choice not of size but of the video audio encoding scheme or codec The webpic view is in the Ogg Theora format one of the few currently playable directly in browsers that support HTMLS To download that right click in the middle of the video window select something like Save video as and follow your b
6. flash memory or camera MacOS X client SSH and file transfer tools include Fugu and Cyberduck If you re accustomed to a particular tool use that to 1 Create a new folder under home public photos on the PhotoTrove server with an appropriate name 2 Transfer the images from the dcim folder to the new folder 3 Optionally erase your camera s dcim folder 4 Release and remove the flash memory or camera 3 3 Importing the Photos as a Photo Set 1 In your web browser open PhotoTrove and log in Tip Take advantage of your browser s tab capability Once you ve logged in open menu items in a separate tab Not only does this leave the main menu available at any time it allows you to recover from session time outs by reloading the first tab thereby repeating the login 2 From the main menu select Import a photo set 3 Select the desired folder from the menu 4 Review the settings In particular if your camera s clock is set to local time rather than UTC Coordinated Universal Time aka Greenwich Mean Time select the local time zone If your camera is using some different time zone don t worry you can adjust times and timezones later Unless you never travel I recommend setting your camera to use UTC GMT without adjusting for daylight saving 5 Click Create Photo Set It will cook for a while depending how many photos or videos are in the set how large they are and how fast your server is 6 When it fin
7. optional designation for each album page identifying one of the album photos on the page to be displayed at the top of the page in an intermediate size title page A special page zero album page with a table of contents linking to the other album pages original A digital image or video as recorded by the camera or other external source uploaded to the originalphotos area copied to the PhotoTrove image repository as the full size master image and thereafter maintained in the archive for backup purposes photo An aggregate entity comprising a full size image a web sized image a thumbnail image and associated metadata Identified by a foldername corresponding to the containing photo set and a filename full size image A full sized digital image initially copied directly from the uploaded original and thereafter maintained as the master image for editing web sized image webpic A reduced size image suitable for viewing in a web browser or transmitting over a network The exact dimensions of web sized images are configurable default and per photo set thumbnail image thumbnail A much reduced image suitable for quick browsing and selection generally multiple thumbnails will appear on a single screen as a thumbnail gallery photo metadata The PhotoTrove database retains information about the photo including timestamp location description and geom etry some extracted from the image s EXIF data some derived automaticall
8. our photo albums From the main menu select View albums and scroll through the menu When you select a photo album you see the finished product Editing photo albums is covered below 5 3 Searching The real power of PhotoTrove is the search screen Search for photos in the main menu You can specify just about any criteria and find all photos that match PhotoTrove User Manual 10 32 Search for Photos When taken between Where anywhere w Text In Y description caption in any album Match case Tagged with 5 any of all of none of Select one ar more any of all of none of greatest hits panorama Select ormoretags panorama Eta da greatest hits published panorama recipe 4 restaurant menu published wrong time zone recipe resktaurank menu wrong time zone and tagged with Is video yes Is In any album yes no File name partial ok Description Is o nonblank either Date Time Is unset set either Stem matches Display only first and last matches Sort photos py time by place and time Search After you press Search you ll see a thumbnail gallery of matching photos If you re logged in you ll see a list of actions above the gallery along with the familiar selection buttons PhotoTrove User Manual 11 32 6 Organizing Photos 6 1 Asse
9. photos and database dumps are in a shared folder on the physical host which can even be on an external hard disk In addition reserve ca 4GB separately for the appliance it probably uses about half that but could grow depending what you do with it A few tens of gigabytes should do it until your collection grows huge A web browser running on your physical host since PhotoTrove is a web application and Trovester is a server Whatever photo editing software you prefer I recommend GIMP for images and Avidemux for videos Warning Make sure the host machine and the disk s where you plan to store your data are reliable In particular check the settings for suspending hibernating sleeping to make sure the host doesn t go to sleep while Trovester is processing photos C 2 Installation and Configuration This boils down to installing VirtualBox importing Trovester as an appliance setting its network address and defining the shared folder 1 Install VirtualBox from virtualbox org The appliance was developed under the Free edition and uses none of the non Free features For some platforms it may be difficult to obtain installable binaries of the Free edition but the proprietary edition will work too 2 Download the Trovester OVA file 3 Using the VirtualBox Manager GUI import Trovester File Import Appliance Trovester will appear in the virtual machine list 4 Select Trovester and then open the Network settings v
10. run scripts the user id is xyzzy with password xyZZy 42 Feel free to change the password using the passwd command Note that you need not use the console since you can log in remotely with your favorite secure shell client To log out type 1ogout or exit 4 In your web browser open https address trove where address is the Trovester IP address PhotoTrove User Manual 32 32 10 11 12 Tip You ll need to allow Javascript and accept cookies from PhotoTrove and if prompted accept the self signed security certificate At the main screen log in as xyzzy with password xyZZy 42 and you re in Feel free to change the password If you wish to add different user accounts log in as useradmin password xyZZy 42 and do so Manage User Ac counts Users will need the edit and walbum privileges in order to make changes to the database Grant Privileges to Users To import photos into Trovester copy them into uniquely named folders inside mytrovester public origi nalphotos folder A good way to ensure unique names is to use date and time for example 20150105 232013 When you select Import a photo set from the main menu the folders will be there to select Use the various tools to import and edit photosets and assemble photos into albums When you complete an album to your satisfaction use Publish albums to write it out as a set of static webpages You ll find the album in the shared folder under public albums
11. website Each user gets an individual subfolder for published albums In the Trovester virtual appliance this is a symbolic link to a shared folder In a regular installation it may or may not be a link depending on convenience users need only read access A 3 Data Model I maintain the data model using DB Designer Fork currently version 1 45 which automatically generates the schema building SQL scripts and ERA diagrams 8 The DB Designer Fork project seems to have slowed to a crawl the latest release 1 5 April 2010 offers only a Windows binary but no source or GNU Linux binary The version I use is 1 4 released July 2007 Even then I have to fiddle with it to get it to work but there s nothing better available Once it s working it s pretty good PhotoTrove User Manual 26 32 archivedlocation photosetsn 9 foldername name 9 notes 9 hast used albumpagesn albumsn FK nickname Q notes albumphoto mS page albumphotosn heading 9 albumpagesn FK e 2 titlepicord photosn FK titlepiccaption ordinal Q pagetext Q caption filename kcationsn FK videosn description vidfilename Q width derived photo albumsn 9 stillsn FK height chikiphotosn FK 9 width Q thumbw T parentphotosn title height thumbh Q pubdate Q time bgcolor aperture Q textcolor shutterspeed 9 vidbgco
12. PhotoTrove User Manual PhotoTrove User Manual EAE PhotoTrove User Manual REVISION HISTORY NUMBER DATE DESCRIPTION NAME 31 January 2015 TBR PhotoTrove User Manual iii Contents 1 PhotoTrove Overview 1 LI dol derer RR ba c UK Ro ee ok ee RUSSE UR Fe NES 1 LX gt Ese AL RO Bs he ee Dio erede ds 1 1 5 Photo 222242525 Bae Ge ee ue eet EHE AERA che 1 Ta What IntI 2 4 ITTITITITTTITTTTT 1 INE TM 1 Le Ohne BUR score ee ee ES BH hee qe eda e Bale ees Ip Beda eS 2 L System Requirements occo ra nomo m m Reb o EEA Ro oS hom n ERA ee eA 2 am 2 2 Photo Management Overview 3 3 Getting Photos into PhotoTrove 4 21 Accessing the Images On the Camere a m RR RU cR A SAR oa Soe Bee 4 3 2 Transferring the Images to originalphotes 2 6 xo foh db web on EUROS oa yd 4 3 3 the Phbolos es a Photo el cu csse oA KR ek E Sy Y Re eee 5 4 Editing a Photo Set 6 41 Editing Many Photos gm ES woe p ae ee a 6 4 7 Editing Individual Photos o os oe qux ER De ook E GG Ur m AU Bed a ES RU UU ds 7 43 Checklist Tora New Photo Set osos o oo o RR sos Noo t RR RU Y U
13. R Y S om 8 5 Finding Photos 9 AI Be luus ek a aA A ADR RR IR Beep RU OR RR DURS god 9 22 BugwunsPhoto 22a he ee ewe BNE eS SX 9 DORMS 2 25 ha RR ba ee eae eee ede ee ae ee eee ae Ge 9 6 Organizing Photos 11 GL Assemble amp AIBUME oko o ER EA EIN RE RSECE GE Y E Ae e 0 11 6 2 Photos 1 226 4 den Ee uh DR A RON ERROR E ROLE Ee 11 7 Sharing Photos 13 74 Shanna PROS 5 x ue vee ep eG BS S WS VS E Matis ule Eee s 13 T2 Photo Album 222 2 2222 2 2 255256 ORE SR OE ox RS ESS 13 8 Safeguarding the Collection 15 Bl the Database Lung ae oce OA Re PR AG A a ele poe a 15 so Backup SHEER 6442252 225 4 eee EX ESSE Ed x ERE Sd il 15 PhotoTrove User Manual iv 9 Assembling Panoramic Photos 16 91 Taking Panoramie PROS o oko Boe ERR Ed RE Eo Re we Re RR ORE eae 16 PRIME eem ye ARLE Eee a ad Eee E s 16 10 Tips and Tricks 17 11 Other Photo Set Operations 18 11 1 Adding hidivid al Photos 22 2o 22252 225845254 ne Ae ee Roh Po oy E 3 18 11 7 Moving Photos Between Photo Sete 4 RE UA ECKE E E e 18 112 Delete an Empy Set 2225225 ee ede Epes BES ESS es 18 1L4 Adjusting Timestamps oon cetera
14. You can enter things like yesterday or last Wednesday If you specify a date without a year it will assume the current year Specifying a date but no time means the midnight that begins that day in the local time zone of the server Specifying a start date but no end date means on or after the start date Similary specifying an end date but no start date means before the end date When searching it s tempting to erase the criteria for a previous search and enter new ones yet sometimes the results come out wrong because you overlooked some field Solution when starting another search after completing one use the reset button to clear everything Clicking Search with no criteria set will find all photos in your collection Since you probably have more than the default limit of 400 it will display only the first and last but it s a quick way to get a count of all your photos also tell you how many are missing timestamps and locations PhotoTrove User Manual 18 32 11 Other Photo Set Operations 11 1 Adding Individual Photos The Add single photos videos does just that First select the target photo set then browse for the photo or video you want to add Click Upload File enter the appropriate metadata and add the new image 11 2 Moving Photos Between Photo Sets A photo set is the most basic grouping for photos and videos Analogous to rolls of film photo sets contain sequences of images ta
15. ake care of everything including file transfers logging in to the server even displaying X11 applications To transfer photos 1 Launch MobaXterm and start an SFTP session to the PhotoTrove server with initial directory home public pho tos 3 Appropriate folder name I recommend a timestamp either the time when uploaded or that of the most recent photo e g 20150108 180204 so the folders sort nicely in the menu Whatever format you choose be consistent Avoid spaces in folder and file names Client As noted previously the client and server could be the same machine PhotoTrove User Manual 5 32 2 In the remote window make a new folder with an appropriate name 3 Still in the remote window open the new folder 4 Using your Windows file manager navigate to the new photos and drag them into the remote window MobaXterm will transfer the images over the network 5 Optionally erase your camera s dcim folder 6 Release and remove the flash memory or camera Other tools on Windows client There are numerous ssh and file transfer tools for Windows for example PuTTY FileZilla WinSCP and Cyberduck to name a few If you re accustomed to a particular tool use that to 1 Create a new folder under home public photos on the PhotoTrove server with an appropriate name 2 Transfer the images from the dcim folder to the new folder 3 Optionally erase your camera s dcim folder 4 Release and remove the
16. atically but allow ad hoc backups by users at any time Verify that the automatic backup actually took place perhaps by having it leave a log in a user s home directory Test the backups from time to time to ensure you can restore from them otherwise what s the point PhotoTrove User Manual 16 32 9 Assembling Panoramic Photos A panorama is an assembly of multiple overlapping images to create a single image with an extra large field of view Typically you create a panorama with these steps 9 1 Taking Panoramic Photos The general idea is to take a series of shots either left to right or right to left with some overlap say a third between each photo and the next Keeping the whole series level is tricky and a tripod can help here Many cameras offer features to help align successive images with consistent focus and exposure Moreover they identify photos that are panorama components with distinctive filenames or even separate folders But if your camera lacks those features don t despair a little practice will do the job well enough that the increasingly smarter panorama stitching software can take care of the rest Whenever you import a photo set containing panorama segments be sure to tag them with panorama to do 9 2 Stitching the Panorama 1 Log in to PhotoTrove and open the Assemble a panorama tool 2 It will offer a menu of all photo sets containing panorama segments Select one 3 You ll see a thum
17. base tool in the main menu every so often and certainly before you log out at the end of a session This saves the entire database as a specially formatted text file from which the database management system can rebuild everything Database dumps will accumulate under home public dumps but don t worry older ones get purged so there will never be more than 8 dump files 8 2 Backup Strategies You need a place to save the photos and database dumps The simplest solution is to attach an external disk drive A nightly cron script should dump the database mount the drive mirror all the relevant files on it and then unmount the drive If you have another computer with adequate disk space you could use it as your backup server or you could dedicate a machine for this purpose Again a nightly cron script should dump the database and then mirror the files over the network using rsync or something similar You ll need some ssh key management system like keychain to allow unattended yet secure transfers As long as you re doing your backups over a network you may as well use a computer that s geographically separated like a friend s house rsync uses ssh to transfer the files over an encrypted tunnel Of course file transfers over the Internet are a lot slower than over a local network so you should probably have a local backup for speed and then replicate that one to the remote site Whatever method you use Ensure that it happens autom
18. bnail gallery for the photo set with panorama components highlighted Select the ones you wish to assemble typically using Select Range When the complete series is selected click Continue 4 Verify that these are the photos you want and click Download The images will be downloaded to your client wrapped up in a single t ar file 5 On your client computer unpack the tar file most archiving utilities can handle it as easily as say a ZIP file Voil Here are the files At this point you can delete the t ar file if you wish 6 Use your favorite panorama stitching tool to assemble the components into a final large image I strongly recommend Hugin http hugin sourceforge net The days of stitching panoramas by hand are fortunately behind us except for some unusual cases 7 You might wish to edit the panorama further in which case use your favorite photo editor 8 When done return to PhotoTrove s panorama page you may have timed out and need to reload the tab where you logged in and upload the finished panorama After a while you ll see the thumbnail gallery again with a button at the top that will display the finished panorama for your review 6 tar file tar is an archiving utility as old as Unix itself convenient for packaging multiple files Since JPEG files most photos are already compressed there s no need or point in applying more compression PhotoTrove User Manual 17 32 10 Tips and Tricks Some handy
19. cument are written in asciidoc markup and used to generate a finished manual in HTML PDF or other formats as needed 1 2 The Problem Now that we all have digital cameras that never run out of film more and more of us are finding it difficult to keep track of all our photos and videos It s easy to accumulate tens of thousands of photos in a short time and sticking them into labeled folders on our computers works about as well as when we kept our prints and negatives in shoeboxes Why not use all this computer power to do the housekeeping for us 1 3 What Is PhotoTrove PhotoTrove uses an industrial quality database management system to keep track of every photo and video in a large collection with detailed descriptions timestamps and locations so you can find them easily edit them group them compare them arrange them and conveniently publish them It includes a comprehensive search tool as well as easy handoff to your favorite photo editing tools PhotoTrove runs as a web application on your local network so multiple users can work independently and simultaneously Anyone whose browser can see the PhotoTrove server can view photo sets and albums carry out searches and download individual photos but only authorized users can change anything Since all the data is in one place it s easy to set up automatic backups so you can be confident your valued photos are safe 1 4 What Isn t It While PhotoTrove does let you assemble photos an
20. d videos from anywhere in your collection into albums for publishing the resulting albums are nothing fancy just a series of linked pages containing your photos videos and captions that can be burned to a CD or DVD copied to a thumbdrive or uploaded to a static website There are many applications as well as web services available that let you arrange a set of photos into a visually stunning album If that s what you want use PhotoTrove to find and collect the particular photos you want and then hand them off to an album finishing tool or service 1 5 Features With PhotoTrove and your favorite web browser you can Keep track of all your photos and videos with descriptions timestamps and locations Edit the images and videos using your favorite tools with special support for stitching panoramas Make up descriptive tags and attach them to any photos you wish to enable complex searches and group actions Locate photos in your collection searching by pretty much anything date range location text in descriptions and captions tags etc and then carry out group operations on all matching photos Assemble albums by selecting images from multiple photo sets and adding layout and captions Publish albums as collections of static HTML documents that you can copy to a CD DVD or thumbdrive or upload to a website Yes they ll still play videos in the browser either way 1 Server Don t be put off by the word server PhotoTrove can eas
21. e than one album in which case PhotoTrove automatically updates the index html file with links to each one In order to retrieve albums from the PhotoTrove server you must have a user login account on the server What you do with the written album files depends on your goal as well as the configuration of your server and your client You can log in to the server directly using your favorite ssh client navigate to home web webroot ssl trove alb ums xxx where xxx is your PhotoTrove user name not to be confused with your server login account name although they may be the same and PhotoTrove User Manual 14 32 Transfer the files to a website Burn the album s to a CD or DVD Copy the album s to a flash drive You can use your favorite file transfer client to download the album s from home web webroot ssl trove alb ums xxx and then use the client machine to make a CD DVD or flash copy or upload it all to a website Tip When you ve copied the album files where you want them there s no particular reason to keep the written album files since you can regenerate them whenever you wish The Publish albums page has a convenient feature that deletes selected written albums and adjusts the index html file accordingly If you d like to display the album on the web but don t have access to a website you have some options Various organizations offer free web hosting One I like is sdf org aka free
22. equires logging into a shell account on the PhotoTrove server Consider reading over any script you re planning to use so you understand how it works Warning Don t experiment with scripts other than those described here Most of those scripts are development scaffold ing installation components or temporary solutions to tricky issues Many of them were written for older versions of PhotoTrove and its predecessor and will yield unpredictable possibly destructive results You have been warned 13 1 Taking PhotoTrove on the Road If you carry a laptop with you when you travel you could install PhotoTrove on it either directly or inside a virtual machine like Trovester Appendix C and then while away your evenings uploading photos and editing photo sets But how do you get all that into your regular PhotoTrove server when you return home The answer is to configure your laptop PhotoTrove as a travel version set up exactly like the regular server except that the root is home web webroot ssl trove tvl instead of home web webroot ssl trove Once you have that in place 1 On your travel server log in as a user with sufficient sudo privilege to become the webserver user www data in order to write to the fullsize and webpics subfolders 2 Fetch from the regular PhotoTrove server a dump gzipped is ok of the latest version of the production t rove database 3 Run the script sh resettvl sh dumpfi
23. erify that it s using a bridged adapter 5 Edit Trovester s Shared folders settings to create a shared folder This can be anywhere on the physical host including an external or removable drive A shared folder is accessible to both the host system and the virtual machine without the need for networking 10 VirtualBox The appliance is distributed in the Open Virtualization Format which I understand can run under other virtualization packages like VMware but I haven t tried that and don t know if all the features will work 11 Memory Of course if you have enough memory you can allocate more to Trovester and it will run faster PhotoTrove User Manual 30 32 Important Be sure to name it myt rovester since that s the name Trovester will look for e Add Share 5 wu Folder Path media sdbl mytrovester Folder Name mytrovester Read only Cancel C 3 Operation 1 If your shared folder is on a removable device make sure it s attached and mounted Warning This bears repeating Make sure the shared folder is attached and mounted 2 Start Trovester A console window will open and you ll see the boot sequence while each process starts up and reports its status At some point it will complain about failing to mount the external drive don t worry about that it will mount it later in the sequence It will finish with a login prompt If you move your mouse over the network icon at the bottom
24. et You can also enter any notes you wish If you ve entered locations and descriptions for all the photos the Summarize Descriptions button will be a good start Be sure to save changes PhotoTrove User Manual 8 32 4 3 n RB Checklist for a New Photo Set Look the photos over and cull obvious rejects Select and rotate any images that need it Set the locations Enter the descriptions Compare similar pictures select the best delete the others Download edit and replace individual photos as needed When all are done annotate the photo set with nickname and notes Search for similar images in other photo sets compare and cull PhotoTrove User Manual 9 32 5 Finding Photos Anyone whose web browser can see PhotoTrove can look through the entire collection no login required 5 1 Browsing Photo Sets Much of the time we look for photos taken around the same time in photo sets If we ve named the sets with timestamps and given them helpful nicknames they re easy to find From the main menu select View photo sets and scroll through the menu When you select a set you ll see the notes followed by the thumbnail gallery Clicking on an individual thumbnail opens the webpic view If you re logged in you ll see an Edit Set button to the right of the notes Clicking that will open the familiar Photo Set Worksheet page 5 2 Browsing Photo Albums To show off our photos we look through
25. f you want to set up the whole thing yourself any recent version of GNU or Unix that supports the required packages should do Tip Another advantage of EasyPhotoTrove which also applies to Trovester since it s built with EasyPhotoTrove is that you can upgrade automatically to the latest version of PhotoTrove You ll need sufficient disk space for all the images in your collection this can vary widely depending how many photos and videos you take and at what resolution Say a few tens of gigabytes to get going Be sure to allow for backups 1 8 License This collection of program code and documentation is free software you can redistribute it and or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation either version 3 of the License or at your option any later version This collection is distributed in the hope that it will be useful but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE See the GNU General Public License for more details You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this collection if not write to the Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin Street Fifth Floor Boston MA 02110 1301 USA PhotoTrove User Manual 3 32 2 Photo Management Overview Tip The instructional sections of this manual use certain terms in very specific ways To avoid confusion refer
26. ges It serves as the front or title page for the album displaying no photos except an optional title picture You create album pages by moving photos to them Of particular interest is the Edit Page Text and Format button which opens a separate tab where you can set the color scheme for the entire album and heading text and title picture for each page You can at any time see how the album will appear to others by clicking View Album 6 2 Tagging Photos There are innumerable ways to group photos some temporary Candidates for an upcoming contest Timestamps to adjust Panorama segments to stitch together Some long term Legal records Recipes 5 Album name An album name must be a legal file name an alphanumeric followed by alphanumerics underscores or hyphens with no embedded spaces or weird characters PhotoTrove User Manual 12 32 Menus of favorite restaurants Favorites PhotoTrove lets you make up any number of descriptive tags attach them to any photos you wish and then treat the tagged photos as a group Some tools like Move photos between sets Adjust timestamps and Apply dates use tags to identify the photos in question The Assemble a panorama tool looks for the predefined tag panorama to do The Search for photos tool lets you combine tags and logical operators to make complex queries It has two drop down menus of tags and in each one you can select
27. ily run on the same machine as your browser perhaps as a virtual machine running on your laptop PhotoTrove User Manual 2 32 1 6 Sample Albums Here are some sample albums produced using PhotoTrove and its predecessor the Photo Album Manager Note that they make little use of style sheets but that can easily be added I welcome suggestions for a nice default style or perhaps a set of user selectable styles Naturally I also welcome URLs for sample albums to add to this section 1 7 System Requirements PhotoTrove is a web application written mainly in PHP using the Apache web server and the PostgreSQL database manage ment system It also makes use of the GraphicsMagick graphic tool collection the ffmpeg2theora video converter and the oggvideotools set the MPlayer video player analyzer and traditional Unix tools like Bourne shell cat grep sort tr and sed For more details see the Architecture and Design Appendix A appendix Requirements depend on how you wish to run PhotoTrove 1 To run the Trovester appliance you need only a computer with sufficient speed memory and disk space running any of the more common operating systems More specifics in the Trovester Appendix C chapter 2 To run your own PhotoTrove directly on a machine real or virtual That machine must run some version of Debian or Ubuntu GNU Linux if you re going to use EasyPhotoTrove to set it up because that s what EasyPhotoTrove knows how to use I
28. ipt can do this Run the script sh clonealbum sh database albumname newalbumname where database is the name of the database normally t rove albumname is the name of the original album to be cloned newalbumname is the name for the new album to be created 13 3 Copying a Page from One Album to Another Sometimes you don t need to clone a whole album but you might want to copy or move a page or two from one album to another Run the script sh copypagebetweenalbums sh database albumi page album2 where database is the name of the database normally t rove album is the name of the album that has the page page is the number of the page to be copied album2 is the name of the album to receive the copied page PhotoTrove appends the desired page as the last page of album2 Use Edit albums to move the page where you want it PhotoTrove User Manual 23 32 14 Glossary The instructional sections of this manual use certain terms in very specific ways To avoid confusion this section explains their meanings and how they are related album An ordered set of album pages with a title page album page An ordered set of any number of album photos with its own title title picture and text associated with a particular album album photo An association of a photo with an album page with a distinct caption and display order More than one album photo may be refer to a single photo even on the same album page title picture An
29. ishes you can edit the new photo set or import another one PhotoTrove User Manual 6 32 4 Editing a Photo Set Open the Photo Set Worksheet page either by clicking Edit this photo set after importing it or by selecting Edit photo sets from the main menu and selecting the desired set 4 1 Editing Many Photos Below the action widgets you ll see a thumbnail gallery of all the photos and videos in the set Things you can do here Select photos You can click the checkboxes or the filenames of individual thumbnails or you can select one or more sequential ranges of thumbnails by selecting the first and last of each range then clicking Select Range or you can click Select All Caution Before carrying out any actions scroll down and verify that you really did select the pictures you intended Clear all selections by clicking Clear Selections Tip This is the safest way to reload the page Carry out actions on all selected photos Assigning locations and descriptions turning and deleting photos are self explanatory Albums and tags are discussed in more detail later PhotoTrove User Manual 7 32 Select All Select Range Clear Selections Assign this location Where taken unknown 0 to selected photos If other specify Assign this description Description to selected photos Add selected photos Album Select album to this album New Album name
30. it applies b Use the calendar to specify a date or enter the date as text c Click Apply PhotoTrove will apply the date to all the selected photos and remove the tag so they disappear from the thumbnail gallery 6 Repeat for every date you wish to apply Tip For convenience the date in the calendar box remains set between operations since the next date is likely to be closer to that one than to today s date PhotoTrove User Manual 20 32 12 Housekeeping As the collection grows you ll accumulate lots of metadata including locations tags and albums Sometimes you ll need to make changes Sometimes you ll find that your menus are cluttered with items you aren t using much lately PhotoTrove has features to help manage menus and keep up with changes 12 1 Managing Locations The Manage locations tool lets you Change a location s name Tip This is particularly handy for the location Home since most of us reside in more than one place during our lives Use just plain for your current address and add a bit more detail like the town for previous addresses When you move edit the current Home to add a town and create a new Home for your new address The full address and any other information of interest goes into the Notes field Add notes about a location like full address or why it s significant Designate a location as archived or not All this means is that archived l
31. ked it contains a tree of the following folders Development artifacts User documentation Support tools GAPPKit provided support tools Custom support tools for this installation Application code GAPPKit provided application code Custom application code for this installation Redirection to SSL tree Text of GNU General Public License Initial remarks if any to installer user A 2 Application Code The PHP code under web in the distribution resides under Apache s SSL service https document root My recom mended location for PhotoTrove s code and where EasyPhotoTrove puts it is home web webroot ssl trove The regular service http tree contains at home web webroot trove index php aredirector page that switches to the SSL tree Four data subfolders are added within PhotoTrove s code folder home web webroot ssl trove at installation fullsize and webpics contain the full and reduced size images respectively originalphotos is where PhotoTrove looks for new photos to import typically this is a symbolic link to somewhere more convenient like home public photos or in the case of the Trovester virtual appliance a shared folder PhotoTrove reads originalphotos to copy photos to fullsize when importing but doesn t write to it it serves as an archive for unedited originals albums is where PhotoTrove places published albums trees of static webpages so they can be burned to a CD or uploaded to a
32. ken during a single time period or at a single location Photo sets can be fragmented vigorous culling of similar photos can leave a photo set all but empty a trip may start in the middle of one set and go on to span several later ones some cameras start a fresh folder after a set number of shots or for every panoramic sequence In such cases some housekeeping can help organize photo sets more logically and efficiently 1 Use the Tag selected photos feature in any thumbnail gallery to assign a particular tag to those photos and only those that you want to move to a particular target photo set 2 Select Move photos between sets from the main menu 3 Select the appropriate tag Specify the desired photo set Click the Move tagged photos button to move the photos ON A When the photos where you want them click Untag All 11 3 Deleting an Empty Photo Set When a photo set contains no more photos perhaps because you ve deleted the last one or moved it elsewhere you ll see a button offering to delete it Of course this won t affect the original folder under originalphotos but don t worry PhotoTrove remembers the folder names of deleted photo sets so they don t reappear in the menu of folders to import 11 4 Adjusting Timestamps Photo Trove saves photo timestamps in Coordinated Univeral Time UTC and displays them in the current local time Some times photo timestamps are incorrect by a fixed amount
33. le where dumpfile is the path to the t rove database dump This will erase any photos from the travel environment and reinitialize trove t v1 database preserving the produc tion environment s locations tags and user accounts with passwords and privileges 4 You re ready to use the travel version just browse to trove tv1 and log in as usual When you return from your travels 1 Run the script with the help option sh integrate sh h to display the detailed step by step instructions Note that you ll need to move the image files manually 2 Transfer the tar ed images and the trove t v1 dumpfile to the PhotoTrove server and untar the images into the file tree all as described in the instructions 3 On the PhotoTrove server run the script sh integrate sh trove dumpfile where dumpfile is the path to the trove t v1 database dump 4 Copy any uploaded camera folders in home public photos to the PhotoTrove server for archival purposes 5 Delete the leftover tarfiles on both hosts PhotoTrove User Manual 22 32 13 2 Cloning a Photo Album Occasionally you might wish to make several similar albums perhaps with a slightly different mix of photos or a different text or page arrangement but otherwise the same The simplest way to accomplish this is to build an album as a baseline or template make copies of it and then modify the copies as needed Since an album is entirely a database construct a scr
34. lor focallength tagsn FK author photosn FK url Q notes albumsn FK The central entity in the PhotoTrove model is not surprisingly the photo Every photo is contained in a photoset a sequential series analogous to a roll of film A video is a separate entity associated with a single photo that serves as its still image or thumbnail The location entity allows for a user defined list of locations where photos are taken Users may also define tags and apply them to photos to support complex groupings The primary product of PhotoTrove is photo albums that present collections of photos for display and distribution An album comprises one or more albumpages each of which can contain any number of albumphotos Each albumphoto is an instance of a photo in a particular position on a particular albumpage Albums locations and tags may be archived this means simply that they don t appear in menus but can be restored to regular status when needed again A separate ERA diagram depicts the common underlying architecture of GAPPKit applications documented elsewhere PhotoTrove User Manual 27132 person personsn Q firstname email regusersn FK ivilegesn privilege Q userid personsn FK passwd hash passwd changed name dispord Q description user priv regusersn FK privilegesn FK W privilegesn FK
35. mbling a Photo Album Having all your photos neatly annotated and accounted for is better than having a shoebox full of prints but it doesn t offer much flexibility when you want to display them For that you ll want to organize your best photos into albums Your audience can browse albums directly in PhotoTrove or you can upload them to a static website or you can burn them to a CD DVD or thumbdrive viewable on any computer All album operations except just viewing one assume you re logged in to PhotoTrove To create an album You could just select Edit albums from the main menu type an album name into the field at the top and click Create but most often you ll just create an album on the fly as you add photos to it 1 Open a thumbnail gallery either a photoset worksheet page or search results 2 Select one or more photos 3 In the Album action option above the gallery enter the album s name in the field labeled New Album name This is just convenient identifier for the album not to be confused with its title 4 Click Append Adding photos to an already existing album works exactly the same way except that you choose the album from the menu Editing an album From the main menu open the Edit albums tool and select the desired album The Album Worksheet page displays all the photos on Page 0 Page 0 serves two purposes t s a convenient holding area for photos appended to the album so you can move them to other pa
36. n connect your camera to your client computer via a USB cable some cameras will connect immediately some need to be turned on Some cameras or smart phones may connect via Bluetooth or even directly to a wireless network Whatever you do verify that your computer sees a dcim folder preferably as the top of the mounted flash drive 3 2 Transferring the Images to originalphotos This also depends on server configuration client platform and camera fotoxfer sh on GNU or Unix client If the dcim folder is the top folder and your client computer is running some version of GNU or Unix you can run the fotoxfer sh script If it s not already installed you can find it in the PhotoTrove distribution as scripts fotoxfer sh copy it to the execution path typically in usr local bin The script will mount the flash drive copy the images to the server under a folder with a unique timestamped name verify that the copy succeeded ask if you wish to erase the flash drive and finally unmount the flash drive so it s safe to remove it For details type fotoxfer sh h fotoupload sh on server If the dcim folder is the top folder and your server is conveniently accessible you can connect the camera s memory to the server s card socket or USB port log in to the server and then run the fotoupload sh script which does exactly the same as fotoxfer sh but locally For details type fotoupload sh h MobaXterm on Windows client This GPL tool will t
37. ocations don t appear in menus 12 2 Managing Tags The Manage tags tool lets you Change a tag s name Add notes about a tag explaining what it represents Designate a tag as archived or not All this means is that archived tags don t appear in menus 12 3 Managing Albums In addition to the regular album editing operations Editing an album the Edit albums tool offers some occasionally used housekeeping features You can Change an album s name Designate an album as archived or not All this means is that archived albums don t appear in menus handy for albums commemorating events from long ago Delete an album though you ll almost never want to do this since an album takes up very little in the way of resources but typically represents a fair amount of effort More likely archiving is a better solution Add notes about an album for your personal reference invisible to all but you This feature is at the head of the Edit Page Text and Format page PhotoTrove User Manual 21 32 13 Playing with Matches If you re comfortable running shell scripts you ll find some useful tools in the scripts subdirectory They handle tasks that most of us will rarely need indeed if you find you need any of them more than rarely let me know and make a web based version as a regular tool under PhotoTrove I ll describe them here Caution Be sure you know what you re doing Running these scripts r
38. of the window it will display the IP address PhotoTrove User Manual 31 32 T trovester Running Oracle VM VirtualBox Machine View Devices Help Debian GNU Linux 7 trovester ttyl trovester login Indicates Ehe activity of Ehe network interfaces Adapter 1 Bridged Adapter 1P192 168 1 123 cable connected Note As built Trovester gets its network address from the local DHCP server Unless you ve explicitly set up a separate DHCP server it s probably your router or wireless access point Typical home routers give out addresses with long lease times so Trovester s IP address is unlikely to change often unless you have lots of machines coming and going on your network If you want to ensure that Trovester s IP address never changes you ll need to log in to your router via your browser to reserve an IP address for Trovesters MAC address which you can see in the VirtualBox network settings Once you ve done that you can modify your client machine s hosts file so you can access Trovester by name 4 hosts file for GNU Unix etc hosts For Windows C Windows System32 drivers etc hosts 3 Since all regular PhotoTrove actions are accomplished through the web browser there s no need to log in at the Trovester console window Minimize this window to get it out of your way but don t close it or you ll shut Trovester down If you ever wish to log in say to update the PhotoTrove code or
39. perhaps because the camera s clock was set to a different time zone or because the clock was simply wrong The Adjust timestamps tool adjusts the timestamps for any number of photos in a single action 1 Use the Tag selected photos feature in any thumbnail gallery to assign a particular tag to those photos and only those whose timestamps you wish to adjust by the same amount 2 Select Adjust timestamps from the main menu 3 Select the appropriate tag 4 Enter the desired time adjustment and direction and click Set 5 When the timestamps are correct click Untag All 7 Local time this means the time zone of the PhotoTrove server just in case you re using PhotoTrove from far away PhotoTrove User Manual 19 32 11 5 Applying Dates Sometimes photos have no timestamps for example digital scans of slides negatives or prints In such cases the approximate date may be known though not the precise time The Apply dates tool applies a date with time 00 00 00 local to selected photos 1 Identify all photos for which you want to set the dates Tip The Search for photos tool can find photos whose date time is unset 2 Use the Tag selected photos feature to assign a particular tag to those photos 3 Select Apply dates from the main menu 4 Select the appropriate tag to display a thumbnail gallery 5 For each date you wish to set a Use the Select Range feature to select the individual photos to which
40. rom the PhotoTrove server and if prompted accept the self signed security certificate PhotoTrove User Manual 4 32 3 Getting Photos into PhotoTrove More and more devices can take pictures these days and they store those pictures in many different ways so we need to be flexible and resourceful in transferring those pictures to the PhotoTrove server All that matters is the result 1 The photos should be uploaded to the server in their own folder under the originalphotos folder home public photos 2 Each individual photo folder must have a name that is alegal file name that is without spaces or special characters is unique sorts usefully among the other folders In order to upload photos to the PhotoTrove server you must have a user login account on the server The home public photos folder is writeable by all users so no special access is required 3 1 Accessing the Images on the Camera Depending on the camera and client computer the one from which you re connecting to PhotoTrove not the server platform there are several ways to access the photos Most cameras have a folder named dcim or DCIM per the Digital Camera Mages specification containing one or more subfolders with images You can remove the flash memory from your camera typically an SD or micro SD card and connect it to your client computer via a USB adapter or directly into a memory card socket if your computer has one You ca
41. rowser s instructions Youcan also download the video in the original codec recorded by the camera To fetch that click the Original Format Video link and follow your browser s instructions 7 2 Publishing a Photo Album Once you have an album built you can view it at any time the separate pages will be generated on demand You can also use PhotoTrove to write all the data to its own folder as a set of static web pages which you can then upload to a static website or burn to a CD DVD or thumbdrive And yes everything will still work including the video player Note Since the album is just a set of relations in the database it takes up negligible disk space Even if you make a static album all the images are links rather than copies of the image files so there s still no significant burden on your resources On the other hand when you copy the static album elsewhere none of this applies and it will take up more space To publish an album 1 Log in to PhotoTrove open the Publish albums tool and select the desired album 2 Click the link to view the album in a separate tab 3 If space is short at the final destination you can opt to omit the full size images 4 Click Write 5 Click the link to view the written album and verify that it looks identical to the regular generated one The album files are written to home web webroot ssl trove albums in a subfolder under your PhotoTrove user name You can write mor
42. shell org aka paunix org which offers much more and is worth a look in any case Paid web hosting is getting less and less expensive but is still a bit much just to display photos occasionally f you know what you re doing you can run your own webserver and make it visible to the Internet by tweaking your firewall settings for port forwarding Be careful if possible set up a DMZ with no access to your internal network Thanks to a recently released program called ngrok you can run a webserver on your own local network behind your firewall and still make it visible to the internet without the tricky and risky business of tweaking your firewall for port forwarding Since web service doesn t call for much processor horsepower you can use any spare machine for this or a virtual machine or something like the credit card sized Raspberry Pi Like the PhotoTrove server the web server won t need a monitor keyboard or mouse at least not after you ve finished setting it up PhotoTrove User Manual 15 32 8 Safeguarding the Collection Be sure to have some reliable method of backup and recovery for your photo collection that doesn t depend on conscientious repeated actions by human beings it should be as fully automated as possible And don t forget to include database dumps the data exported to a structured text file in the backups 8 1 Dumping the Database When you re logged in it s a good idea to click the Export data
43. to the Glossary Glossary For a pictorial representation have a look at the Data Model Section A 3 AS YOU ACQUIRE NEW PHOTOS INCLUDING VIDEOS 1 Get them into PhotoTrove a By hook or by crook upload the photos from the camera to the originalphotos area b In your web browser open PhotoTrove and log in c Import the photos as a photo set 2 Edit the new photo set Look the photos over and cull obvious rejects Set locations enter descriptions rotate as needed Compare similar pictures cull some more Edit individual photos offline as needed ofan gsm Annotate the whole photo set FINDING PHOTOS Browse photo sets Browse albums Search ORGANIZING YOUR PHOTOS Assemble a photo album a Add photos to the album from thumbnail galleries of photo sets or search results b Edit the photo album Tag photos SHARING PHOTOS Share individual photos Publish an album Generate a publishable copy of the album Burn the copy to a CD or DVD or to a thumbdrive Upload the copy to a website ao Pf Make your own Internet website SAFEGUARDING YOUR PHOTO COLLECTION Set up backups a Choose a backup strategy b Set up automatic backups c Test your backups Browser login Unless otherwise noted assume the user account has the required privileges to edit photos and albums and or to publish albums as the case may be Your browser must allow Javascript and accept cookies f
44. userid where userid is your PhotoTrove user name You can burn this to a CD or DVD or upload it to a website it will be viewable in a browser without needing PhotoTrove When you ve done what you wish with the published album you might consider deleting the written copy to save disk space the Publish albums tool has an option for this purpose You can of course generate a fresh copy at any time When you finish your session with PhotoTrove and any time you ve made significant changes it s a good idea to export a copy of the database using the Export database tool in the main menu Database dumps will accumulate in the shared folder under public dumps but don t worry older ones get purged so there will never be more than 8 dump files To shut down Trovester restore the console window you minimized earlier From the Machine menu select ACPI Shut down This will initiate an orderly shutdown of all running services and finally the virtual machine itself When Trovester is fully shut down VirtualBox s list will indicate Powered Off you can safely remove the device with the shared folder if it happens to be a removable device
45. ways to use PhotoTrove more efficiently and enjoyably PhotoTrove uses certain terms in very specific ways To avoid confusion refer to the Glossary Glossary For a pictorial representation have a look at the Data Model Section A 3 Take advantage of your browser s tab capability Once you ve logged in open menu items in a separate tab Not only does this leave the main menu available at any time it allows you to recover from session time outs by reloading the first tab thereby repeating the login f you need to refresh a thumbnail gallery to see changes you made in other tabs don t reload the page Your last action on that page may have been say rotate images and reloading the page will repeat that action while you gnash your teeth in annoyance The best way to refresh any thumbnail gallery is to click Clear Selections For similar reasons don t use the browser s Back button The single exception to that rule applies when you need to perform more than one action on a range of images For example you have four panorama segments and you want to tag them and assign a location and assign a description Select the range Apply the tag panorama to do Hit the browser s Back button to re select the range Assign a location Hit the browser s Back button to re select the range Assign a description When searching by date time Note that PhotoTrove is pretty smart about interpreting dates
46. y and some entered by the user photo set A set of photos and or videos taken sequentially in one or more sessions but not necessarily otherwise related Concep tually equivalent to a roll of film or the contents of the camera s flash memory Identified by a foldername video An aggregate entity comprising an original format video an oggfile an associated still image and metadata original format video A single file that comprises many images and usually a sound track in the format recorded by the camera Videos are handled the same as photos to the extent that makes sense oggfile A version of the video converted to the Ogg Theora format for convenient playback in HTML5 capable web browsers still image A photo that represents a video in the various gallery views of photo sets and albums If the camera hasn t automatically generated one PhotoTrove will automatically extract a still from the oggfile for a newly imported video PhotoTrove User Manual 24 32 video metadata Since the still image is a photo most of the metadata is contained therein but the database also tracks the video s geometry PhotoTrove User Manual 25 32 A Architecture and Design PhotoTrove is built upon the GAPPKit a framework for constructing web applications using GNU Linux the Apache web server the PostgreSQL relational database management system and the PHP language A 1 Distribution PhotoTrove comes as a gzipped tarfile when unpac
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