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    Album files in Thumbnails Tree

    I'd like to use IrfanView to create album files from pictures, clips, pdf's, etc. Typically I create two versions, a basic one for friends and a more extensive one for ourselves. This involves selecting files from a directory - possibly including subdirectories - and rearranging their order.

    IrfanView's thumbnails view offers most of that, including rearranging order, saving selected items to file and reloading them. However, when reloading items from a file, the left hand directory tree view gets "out of sync" with what is shown in the right hand thumbnail view. Moreover, I do not see an easy way to move additional files from a directory into an already existing album file.

    I therefore suggest to introduce a specific irfan album file extension (like .irfan) and handle such files as nodes within the directory tree view (like windows does with .zip files within the explorer or ACDSee does with its album files). This would then allow to add files from other directories using drag/drop (as is already possible in thumbnail view between directories). You could also directly select such an album within the tree view rather than "load images from file..." and would have a proper context within the directory tree view. In case of changes to an album (adding/removing/reordering items) it would be perfect if a "do you want to save changes...?" option would be provided when navigating to another directory/album or closing the thumbnail view. It would be preferable to have album files store file references in a readable form which is relative to the album file directory, so copying directories with their album files to other drives would leave the album files valid.

    What do you think? Maybe there are other ways to achive this behavior, which I'm not aware of; any proposals are more than welcome!

    Cheers,
    Juergen
    Last edited by Bhikkhu Pesala; 23.02.2017, 01:35 PM.

    #2
    Irfanview does not work with an "album" concept. What you are doing in the thumbnails viewer, I think, is creating a list of files which you then save as a text (.txt) file.
    If you have saved the list you cannot add more files to it in the thumbnails viewer but you can make use of the Slideshow dialog to hold a list that you can add to.

    You do that by pressing F4 to transfer the list of files currently selected in Thumbnails to the list in the Slideshow dialog. You can do that as often as you like adding more files from either the same or different folders. The slideshow dialog must be closed to make the transfer but you can open it at any time to check that the list is growing and either close and save it again to add more files, or press "Save filenames as text file" if you have finished.

    When you want to show the files you have listed, you can of course do it as a slideshow from that dialog. To show them in the Browser window though you either have to create a special shortcut to launch it, or use a script file. To create the special shortcut right click a standard one, select "Properties" and, in the Target box, add
    /filelist=
    on the end (note that there is a space character before /filelist=). You can drag and drop either a filelist or a directory on to the special shortcut but individual file names are ignored.
    Last edited by Mij; 24.02.2017, 12:38 AM.

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      #3
      Oh, sorry, posted this to the wrong forum (Misread "An important feature is missing in the forum" as "An important feature is missing in IrfanView"). Will move this to the Feature Requests forum.
      I know about slideshows but thought that the thumbnail view could - with few extensions - provide an excellent way to produce and edit slideshows (which I had called albums, but will stick to "slideshow" as the IrfanView term).
      Regards,
      Juergen

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        #4
        A saved slideshow can be opened in Thumbnails, but not from the folder tree.
        Instead you have to use "Load file list from TXT file" on the Options menu. After creating or making changes to the list of files in the Slideshow dialog you can save it either by Playing the slideshow or by closing the dialog and answering "Yes" when asked if you want to Save. The list of files will be named Slideshow.lst and saved in the same folder as the Irfanview i_view32.ini (or 64) initialisation file. If you used the defaults settings to install Irfanview that folder will be C:\users\[your user name]\appdata\roaming\Irfanview.

        If you cannot find the Appdata folder when you try to "Load file list from TXT file" back in Thumbnails, click on the icon at the left hand end of the folder path box, type %Appdata% to replace the folder path and Enter. Scroll down to the Irfanview folder, open it, click on Slideshow.lst and press Open. You should then see all the slideshow images as thumbnails.

        You can add more thumbnails from the folder tree. Do not worry that you have lost sight of the original slideshow images. Just select the new thumbnails and press key F4. Do that as many times as you like from different folders. When F4 is used to append files Slideshow.lst is automatically updated, so you can just open it again, still in thumbnails, to see the original images with the new ones added.

        You can now drag and drop the thumbnails into a new order if needed. Should you want to remove a thumbnail from the show, highlight it and press Ctrl+Delete.

        When you have everything as you want it, press Ctrl+A to select all the images and resave the modified Slideshow.lst by clicking "Save selected files as current slideshow" from the File menu.
        Last edited by Mij; 26.02.2017, 12:18 AM. Reason: Clarification and simpler method of saving in last paragraph.

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          #5
          Ok, I see what you mean. I still find this a bit more tedious than having slideshow files in the way described, but it may not be worth the effort.
          Thanks in any case for the introduction to slideshow.lst, which I was not aware of.
          Cheers,
          Juergen
          P.S. Thanks for moving this thread to the correct forum; as you may have seen I had already started a new thread in parallel; maybe they could be merged or the other one removed, but I don't see how I could do this.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by juergenuhl View Post
            P.S. Thanks for moving this thread to the correct forum; as you may have seen I had already started a new thread in parallel; maybe they could be merged or the other one removed, but I don't see how I could do this.
            I already moved your thread from the Feedback forum to this one. I just deleted the duplicate thread posted in Feature Requests.
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              #7
              Originally posted by juergenuhl View Post
              Ok, I see what you mean. I still find this a bit more tedious than having slideshow files in the way described, but it may not be worth the effort.
              It is not that tedious. I used to do it a lot and found it much quicker than saving everything in TXT files. After you have found the Slideshow.lst file and opened it, Irfanview remembers where it was. You do not have to find it again every time.


              You may have noticed that I have edited the previous post to simplify the way of saving the changes after the thumbnail order has been modified. I had forgotten that you could do it that way.

              I tried to tackle the problem of broken paths in file lists in my thread on using Irfanview from a USB stick here in the Technical section of the forum,using a script file to repair the paths. Is that approach any help to you?

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                #8
                Thanks to all for the good advice! Also thanks for the hint on path repair, which I can in fact easily do with a search and replace using a text editor. To be honest, I was looking for a replacement for ACDSee for the described purpose, which my wife is using in a very old version (this also has the absolute path problem, by the way). The interface there is pretty much "what you see is what you get" with drag and drop and easily usable for a non-IT-professional. F4, the implicit notion of a "current slideshow", the single "slideshow.lst" file, or the absolute path search replace, for example, is straightforward for me but won't be for her. I'll give it a try to explain to her anyway ;-)
                Cheers,
                Juergen

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