Installing and using Photopage

Installation steps

To install Photopage, you must first install the supporting program and libraries. Photopage is written in Python and makes use of the Python Imaging Library (PIL) and a special set of bitmapped fonts.

Double-click on Python-2.3.4.exe to install Python. Accept all of the default settings during the installation. You should now have a C:\Python23 directory.
Double-click on PIL-1.1.4.win32-py2.3.exe to install the Python Imaging Library (PIL). Accept all of the default settings during the installation. You should now have a C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\PIL directory.
Copy the base_pil directory into the C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\PIL directory.
Copy photopage.pyw to some convenient place on your hard disk. You may want to make a shortcut to it on the desktop or in the Start menu.
Now's a good time to see how the installation went. Double-click on the photopage icon. If the window below pops up, you're in good shape. If not, we'll have to do a little tweaking.
(Optional) By default, Photopage's initial directory is the root directory of the C: drive. If you prefer that it start somewhere else, open photopage.pyw in Notepad (or whatever editor you like) and change line 29 from
```
currentdir = 'C:'
```
to
```
currentdir = 'C:/other/directory'
```
Use Unix-and-Internet-style forward slashes (/) instead of DOS-style backslashes (\) to separate the directory names. If your directory names include single quotes or apostrophes, you'll have to change the enclosing quotes from single to double:
```
currentdir = "C:/mark's stuff/photos"
```

Using Photopage

Photopage is, I think, simple in concept and easy to use. It takes all the "photo" files (JPG or TIF) in a folder and creates a series of new JPG files with (typically) several photos per file, labeled with the file name. These new JPGs can then be printed out and put in an album. It's a lot like the Windows XP Photo Printing wizard (which Photopage predates), except that it allows the pages to be titled and the photos to be individually labeled.

At the top of the window are three text entry fields:

The Title field is what gets printed in bold at the top center of the page. The program will complain if you leave it empty, but if you really don't want a title you can fool it by entering a space in the text box.
The Date taken field is what gets printed at the top right of the page. As with the Title field, the program will complain if you leave it empty, but you can fool it by using the same trick.
The Project field is what gets printed at the top left of the page. It can be left blank with no complaints from the program.

The naming scheme for these fields is obviously derived from how I use the program at work, but any text can be entered in any field.

Next comes a set of radio buttons that determine the size and layout of the photos on the page. Fifteen per page results in a "portrait" layout with five rows and three columns of photos. The other choices make "landscape" layouts with as many rows as columns.

The state of the "Label photos" checkbox determines whether the filenames are printed below the photos, aligned with the right edge.It's on by default.

If the folder of photo files also contains a text file named "captions.txt," that file will be used to put additional descriptive text under the photos, aligned with the right edge. Each line of the "captions.txt" file should have the description of one of the photos. The order of the descriptive lines is the alphabetical order of the photo file names--this is the same order you get if Windows Explorer is set to display the contents of the folder in List View. A blank line in the file means no extra information will be printed for that photo. The "captions.txt" file is ignored on fifteen-per-page sheets because there isn't enough room to fit more text under those photos.

The scrollbox of folder names and the set of buttons to its right allow you to select the folder of photos. Clicking on the name of a folder and then clicking on the Open button (or simply double-clicking on the name) moves you inward through nested folders; clicking on the Close button moves you outward. When you've found the folder you want, click on it and then click on the Select button--the program will then create the new JPGs in that same folder and exit when it's done. Clicking the Cancel button (any time before Select) will exit the program. Clicking the Disk button pops up a menu that lets you move to another disk drive.

A few notes.

The names of the files created by Photopage are determined by the number of photos per page:

15 --> Indexnn.jpg

9 --> Ninenn.jpg

4 --> Quadnn.jpg

2 --> Pairnn.jpg

1 --> Singlenn.jpg

The nn part of the name is a two-digit page number.
Photopage is smart enough to skip over its own files when collecting the photo files from a folder. You can make both 4-per-page and 15-per-page sheets without fear that you'll end up with tiny thumbnails of your 4-per-page files embedded in the 15-per-page files.
Because Photopage puts its files into the same folder as the "source" files, you must be able to write to that folder. A folder on CD will not work; you'll have to move the folder to your hard disk.
Photopage is not "recursive." It will not look for photo files in nested folders.

Debugging

Installation on Windows isn't always a cakewalk. To help figure out what went wrong, take the following steps:

Make sure the Python executable is in your PATH.
1. Open the System Control Panel, select the Advanced tab along the top, and click on the Environment Variables button near the bottom.
2. Find Path in the System variables scroll box and double-click on it.
3. If C:\Python23 is somewhere in the string of semicolon-separated directories, you don't need to do anything. If it isn't, append a semicolon and C:\Python23 to the end of the string.
4. Click all the OK buttons needed to close the System Control Panel.
Open a Command Prompt (DOS) shell and type python. If you get something like the following:
```
Python 2.3.4 (#53, May 25 2004, 21:17:02) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
```
then Python is working (the >>> is Python's prompt) and you can go on to the next test. If not, then you either haven't installed Python, or your PATH enviroment variable doesn't include the Python directory. Make sure there's a C:\Python23 folder in your root directory and that the PATH includes an entry for it.
Type import Image after the Python prompt. If you get another prompt, then PIL is installed correctly. If you get a response that starts with Traceback and ends with No module named Image, then PIL hasn't been installed correctly. Make sure there is a C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\PIL directory.
Type
```
open("C:/Python23/Lib/site-packages/PIL/base_pil/300/Arial_10_300.pil")
```
If you get a <open file 'C:/Python23/... > message, then the fonts are installed correctly. If you get a No such file or directory message, then the fonts are not installed correctly. Make sure there is a C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\PIL\base_pil\300 directory and that there are several .pil files in it that start with "Arial."
If you still can't get Photopage working, open a Command Prompt shell in the directory where your copy of photopage.pyw is. Type python photopage.pyw to start the program and email me the error messages that show up in the Command Prompt window along with a description of what you were doing when the errors showed up.

15	-->	Indexnn.jpg
9	-->	Ninenn.jpg
4	-->	Quadnn.jpg
2	-->	Pairnn.jpg
1	-->	Singlenn.jpg