I have had a digital camera for a several years now. I take a lot of photos with it, but most of them seem to end up stored on CDs that sit on the shelf. This happens because it seems to take too long to build photo galleries with my desktop.

Many photo gallery programs are available, but they always seem to be inconvenient. First, they aren't included with most Linux distributions. Second, they have complicated setups and/or they require a lot of command-line work to build the galleries. Recently, I was looking in the menus of Konqueror, KDE's file manager and Web browser, and saw an entry in the Tools menu called "Create Image Gallery". One of the reasons I probably missed this entry earlier is it appears in the Tools menu only if you start Konqueror from the little house icon. If you open Konqueror from the K menu or from the globe icon on the bottom toolbar, once it opens, click the house icon on the Konqueror toolbar. When the new screen opens, you can find the "Create Image Gallery" on the Tools menu (see Figure 1). Alternatively, if you open Konqueror from the command line, the "Create Image Gallery" immediately is available on the Tools menu.

Figure 1. The Create Image Gallery Menu Item

In order to see what this magic tool might do, I created a new directory and copied some pictures to it. You can do this however you want. Working totally within Konqueror, for example, you can select the New Directory item on the Edit menu, name and create the directory folder and then drag the desired files to this directory. This usually is accomplished easier if you open two Konqueror windows. If you are a command-line user, mkdir and cp can be used to create the directory and copy the images.

Once you have all the pictures you want in the directory, click on Create Image Gallery in the Tools menu. There, you should see a box of options that let you set the style of your gallery. Included are options for images per line, font, colors and what descriptive information is to be included. You can specify a page title, for example, "Trip to New York". By clicking the Directories icon, you can specify the output file name--the default is images.html--whether to recurse any subdirectories, if the files are to be copied and if a comment file is to be used (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. More Options for Your New Gallery

I like the idea of the comment file but had some trouble finding documentation for it. The KDE.org site, though, explains how to use it. Create a text file with the name you're going to use in the "Comments File" field. Each thumbnail should have the comment underneath the file name:

FILE1:
comment1

FILE2:
comment2

FILE3:
comment3

The order of the filenames is not important, but make sure you spell them correctly. The comment can be any length, the page will stretch or shrink the line to fit it. Each time you change the file, you have to re-run the Create Image Gallery command, remembering to check the Use Comment File box that appears when you click on the Directories icon.

Once you have selected the options you want, simply click the OK button, and your gallery will be created and displayed. It is as easy as that. If you aren't happy with the results, modify the options and click OK again.

Copyright (c) 2004, Hal Stanton. Originally published in Linux Gazette issue 98. Copyright (c) 2004, Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.