ALBUM(1)

📦
version 4.18 · 3 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

🎀 ALBUM(1) 🎀

album: the web photo album manual ✨

✨ NAME ✨

album is a web photo album maker 📸. You give it a folder of pics and it makes the thumbnails and HTML for you. Literally iconic.

💅 SYNOPSIS 💅

album [album options]

📖 DESCRIPTION

Okay so album is an HTML photo album generator with theme support 🎨. You hand it a directory of images and it builds all the thumbnails and HTML you need. It's fast, it's easy, and it's giving very powerful 💪.

Put your photos in a brand new directory somewhere inside your web pages 📂. Then open a command-line prompt and run album with the directory path as an argument. That's literally it, bestie 🫶.

To use themes, make sure the "Themes" directory is inside your web path ✨, then use the -theme option 🌈.

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

Okay, so there are three types of options 👑: boolean options, string/num options, and array options. Boolean options can be turned off by prepending -no_ 🙈:

% album -no_image_pages

String and number values get specified right after a string option 💖:

% album -type gif % album -columns 5

Array options can be specified two ways 🧚. The first is one argument at a time:

% album -exif hi -exif there

The second is multiple arguments using the -- form:

% album --exif hi there --

You can remove specific array options with -no_<option> 🗑️:

% album -no_exif hi

Or wipe out all the array options with -clear_<option> 🧹:

% album -clear_exif

Boolean options

% album -q, -d, -D, -dtheme, -Dtheme, -virgin_check, -save_conf,
-configure, -crf, -list_options, -image_pages, -thumbs, -dir_thumbs,
-just_medium, -slideshow, -embed, -clean, -image_headers,
-album_captions, -folder_count, -caption_edit, -file_sizes, -fix_urls,
-known_images, -all, -hashes, -reverse_sort, -case_sort, -image_loop,
-burn, -crop, -force, -force_html, -sample, -animated_gifs, -use_tcap

String/number options

% album -thumb_post, -medium, -captions, -top, -sort, -body, -charset,
-force_charset, -index, -default_index, -html, -type, -medium_type,
-CROP, -dir, -sharpen, -plugin_post, -theme, -theme_url, -convert,
-identify, -jhead, -ffmpeg, -conf_file, -dev_null, -windows, -cygwin,
-tcap, -tcap_out, -cmdproxy, -header, -footer, -credit, -no_album,
-hide_album, -not_img

Array options

% album --lang_path, --exif, --exif_album, --exif_image, --add,
--scale_opts, --medium_scale_opts, --thumb_scale_opts, --data_path,
--plugin_path, --theme_path

🦋 OPTION DESCRIPTIONS 🦋

  • -h — show the usage 💅
  • -more — shows more options 👀
  • -usage=level — show usage as deep as your heart desires 🌊
  • -lang=lang — pick the language(s) 🗣️
  • -list_langs — list out the full language info 📜
  • -make_lang=lang — print out a brand new language file 🌷
  • -list_html_trans — lists the HTML translations for each language 🌍. It's super useful for making multilingual images for themes. The output is HTML and utf-8, so change the charset as needed 🔤.
  • --lang_path=strings — adds a path to search for language files [Default @DATA_PATH/lang]
  • -q — be quiet 🤫 [Default OFF]
  • -d — set debug mode 🐛 [Default OFF]
  • -D — heavy debug mode 🔥 [Default OFF]
  • -dtheme — theme debug mode 🎨 [Default OFF]
  • -Dtheme — theme heavy debug mode 🌋 [Default OFF]
  • -conf=file — reads a .conf file 📄
  • -virgin_check — does the virgin check to see if you've ever run album before 🌱 [Default ON]
  • -save_conf — saves album.conf files in the photo album 💾 [Default ON]
  • -configure — sets up the initial album site configuration ⚙️ [Default OFF]
  • -version — displays the program version info ℹ️
  • -mv — moves imgs across albums. Check out album -plugin_info utils/mv for the tea 🚚
  • -create_plugin — creates a plugin. See album -plugin_info utils/create_plugin 🧩

🍓 Album Options

  • -crf — album hash output in a computer readable format 🤖 [Default OFF]
  • -list_options — shows the default options and values for a given album 📋 [Default OFF]
  • -image_pages — creates a page for each image 🖼️ [Default ON]
  • -thumbs — images get thumbnails 🌼 [Default ON]
  • -dir_thumbs — directories get a thumbnail, if the theme supports it 📁 [Default ON]
  • -thumb_post=string — an extra postfix for thumbnails 🏷️
  • -medium=geom — generates medium size images 📐
  • -just_medium — don't link to the full-size images 🙅 [Default OFF]
  • -slideshow — slideshow capabilities, but only with some themes 🎞️ [Default OFF]
  • -embed — uses image pages for non-picture image pages 🧷 [Default ON]
  • -columns — the number of image columns 🏛️ [Default 4]
  • -clean — removes unused thumbnails 🧽 [Default OFF]
  • -captions=string — specify the captions filename 📝 [Default captions.txt]
  • -image_headers — shows header.txt on image pages (default theme only) 🎀 [Default OFF]
  • -album_captions — also shows captions on the album page 💬 [Default ON]
  • -folder_count — shows folder/image counts for each album 🔢 [Default ON]
  • -caption_edit — adds comment tags so caption_edit.cgi will work ✏️ [Default OFF]
  • --exif=fmt — appends exif info to captions 📸. Use a %key 0n fmt string, like this example: -exif "<br>Camera: %Camera model%". If any %keys% aren't found by jhead, nothing gets appended 🫠.
  • --exif_album=fmt — -exif, but just for album pages 📚
  • --exif_image=fmt — -exif, but just for image pages 🖼️
  • -file_sizes — shows image file sizes 📏 [Default OFF]
  • -fix_urls — encodes unsafe chars as 0x in URLs 🔗 [Default ON]
  • -known_images — only includes known image types 🪪 [Default ON]
  • -top=string — the URL for the 'Back' link on the top page ⬅️ [Default ../]
  • -all — stops hiding files/directories that start with '.' 👻 [Default OFF]
  • --add=dir — adds a new directory to the album it's been placed in ➕
  • -depth — how deep to descend into directories (infinite by default, which is [-1]) 🌊 [Default -1]
  • -follow_symlinks — dereferences symbolic links 🔗 [Default ON]
  • -hashes — shows hash marks while generating thumbnails #️⃣ [Default ON]
  • -name_length — limits the length of image/dir names ✂️ [Default 40]
  • -sort=string — the sort type: captions, name, date, or EXIF date ('exif') 🗂️ [Default captions]
  • -reverse_sort — sorts in reverse 🔄 [Default OFF]
  • -case_sort — uses case sensitive sorting when sorting names 🔠 [Default OFF]
  • -body=string — specifies <body> tags for non-theme output 🧾 [Default <body>]
  • -charset=str — the charset for non-theme and some theme output. Language files (with -lang) also set this 🌐
  • -force_charset=str — forces the charset. Languages can't override it 🔒
  • -image_loop — do the first and last image pages loop around? 🔁 [Default ON]
  • -burn — sets up an album to burn to CD 💿. It implies '-index index.html' and '-no_theme_url' [Default OFF]
  • -index=file — selects the default 'index.html' to use. For file://, try '-index index.html' to add 'index.html' to the index links 🔗
  • -default_index=file — the file the webserver grabs when no file is specified 🏠 [Default index.html]
  • -html=post — the default postfix for HTML files 🧡 [Default .html]

More to come, bestie 💖🦋

✨ ENVIRONMENT ✨

okay so album checks a few environment variables, bestie 🫶

  • HOME — your home directory 🏠. This is where album goes looking for your user-specific config files, like .albumrc 💖
  • DOT — okay this one is so cute 🧚. Instead of only looking for .albumrc, album also checks $DOT/album.conf. The author isn't a big fan of dotfiles cluttering up the home directory, and honestly, same 💀
  • tcap — gets set (or overwritten) by the Win98 version of album for tcap arguments 🕹️

📁 FILES 📁

here's everywhere album looks for its configs and album info, sorted by vibe 💅

🌍 Site-specific configuration

  • /etc/album/album.conf and /etc/album.conf — site-specific configuration 🌸

👤 User-specific configuration

  • $HOME/.albumrc, $HOME/.album.conf, and $DOT/album.conf — user-specific configuration 💜

🎀 Album-specific configuration

  • <album>/album.conf — album-specific configuration 🎀
⚠️ Heads up, bestie: this file will be modified with any new command-line options! 😭

🦋 Album information

These all specify album information 🌈

  • <album>/header.txt
  • <album>/footer.txt
  • <album>/captions.txt
  • <album>/.no_album
  • <album>/<image>.no_album
  • <album>/.hide_album
  • <album>/<image>.hide_album
  • <album>/<image>.not_img

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

go check these out, they're iconic 🎬

👑 AUTHOR 👑

the queen behind all of this is David Ljung Madison, and his site is <http://MarginalHacks.com/> 💖

And that's the tea, bestie! 🍓 album v4.18 from 2025-10-12 is giving full main character energy ✨🌈 Stay iconic and keep those configs organized 🫶💅

📦 where this page comes from