Welcome to WebPics

What's New

Version 2.8 of WebPics is the latest release. Here is the new stuff:

• added image watermark feature to provide more capable image marking functionality
• added support for iPhoto Library Manager when locating album information for importing from iPhoto
• added standard font group choices to the font popup menus
• added background image repeat (tiling) control
• streamlined the build process to re-use the current build folder if it is available
• added information to the document that tracks the build state to avoid rebuilding the full gallery when minor changes are made
• created a Spotlight importer to allow searching for text in WebPics documents (see below for more details)
• updated the navigation link style to be easier to use
• improved the iPhoto caption import process and added preference to turn it off if desired
• added 'Starting Point' feature for saving initial document settings
• added commands to auto-insert web and email links in text fields
• added 'Reveal Picture File in Finder' command
• added support for including full size original photos in addition to the scaled image
• added 'Updated on' date option for bottom of gallery pages
• added support for PNG (Portable Network Graphics) image file type
• added support for home page links on the gallery pages
• and the usual many other small cleanups and bug fixes

New in WebPics 2.8 an image watermarking feature has been added. This allows for a much more capable and flexible means of adding information or copyrights to pictures. You can control the position of the watermark and the transparency level used to apply it. Here is a sample image that has been watermarked by WebPics. See the lower part of the Graphics tab for details.

WebPics 2.8 also adds standard font groups for selecting text fonts and fallback fonts. This allows for a more predictable display of text on your photo galleries. See the Font popup menus in the Text tab for details.

WebPics 2.8 adds new support for setting up the background image repeat (tiling). You can now have the background image just repeat across the top or down the left side or no repeat at all. See here for an example using an image with a transparent background and repeating it along the left edge of the window. The remainder of the window background is provided by the chosen background color. See the upper part of the Graphics tab for details.

WebPics now has a Spotlight importer plugin to allow searching for the text (title, descriptions and captions) in WebPics documents. Changes to the WebPics document format were needed to make the import plugin work efficiently. Because of this Spotlight will only search documents created with WebPics 2.7 or newer. You can open your older documents and immediately save them to update their contents to be searchable.

A great new feature in WebPics allows you to save the various settings as the starting point for future WebPics documents. Just setup all of the settings the way you like them and then choose "Save Starting Point..." from the File menu. The next time you create a new WebPics document it will have your starting point settings.

New commands have been added to the Edit menu to allow web links (URLs) and email links to be inserted into the various text fields in WebPics. This was always posible with HTML quoting but it is now much easier with these new commands.

WebPics can now import photos from an iPhoto album. This feature is available with iPhoto 2.0 (and later). Now you can keep your photos organized in iPhoto and quickly generate web pages from them in WebPics. A new button in the lower right corner of the Pictures tab brings up the iPhoto import window. Version 2.8 incorporates support for the iPhoto Library Manager.

There have been problems where WebPics cannot locate the pictures when opening a previously created document. It will now give you the option of showing WebPics where the files are. This makes it much easier to use old document after the picture files have been moved.

To try out the new home page link feature, enter your home page URL in the Preferences window.

Thanks for all of the good ideas - keep them coming!

See complete details for this release and all previous releases here.

Overview

WebPics is easy. With no understanding of web page authoring, you can create a great web page for your digital pictures in minutes. And with some of the more advanced features in WebPics your web pages can be as sophisticated as you like.

WebPics is fun. It allows you to create great web pages from your digital pictures to share with your family and friends.

WebPics is free to download and use to determine whether it will be useful to you. If you decide that you want to keep it, I ask that you purchase your copy. The fee for purchasing WebPics is USD $16.

With WebPics you can:

• quickly create great gallery web pages from your digital pictures to share with friends and family
• create web pages with no prior knowledge of web page authoring
• automatically generate thumbnail pictures for gallery pages
• automatically link the thumbnails to the full size pictures
• set font size, style and color for titles and captions
• set web page background colors and patterns
• use many image file types: JPEG, GIF, PICT, BMP, TIFF
• automatically move the generated web page files to your web site via FTP
• embed custom HTML code in web pages via the HTML quoting feature
• all operations in WebPics are fully scriptable with AppleScript

Requirements

WebPics can be used on any PowerPC Macintosh that is running Mac OS 9.0 or newer or Mac OS X 10.1 or newer. 32 megabytes of RAM minimum, the more RAM the faster WebPics will build web pages. QuickTime version 3.0 is required and QuickTime 4.0 is suggested (Mac OS X 10.1 has QuickTime 5.0).

Support

Support for WebPics is available via email. Please check the online documentation and frequently asked questions (FAQ) before sending your question.

I am very interested in hearing your feedback about WebPics. Please send comments, suggestions, and feature requests to me via email.

Credits

Many people have contributed to the development of WebPics.

My wife Cathy has spent many hours trying new versions of WebPics and the Quick Start Guide. She also proof read all of the documentation. Any remaining errors are mine, hers was a thankless job.

Ryan Martinez and Todd Linkner have helped with graphics - an area where my talents do not shine.

Many friends have been using WebPics for the past year and their feedback has been very valuable in polishing WebPics for this release.

Thank you.

History

I began working on WebPics in the early summer of 1999, just after purchasing my first digital camera. I wanted to make web pages from the pictures I was taking, but found that creating the HTML code by hand was tedious and the available Macintosh applications did not do a very good job of it. I have since taken thousands of digital pictures and most of them are in web pages created with WebPics. It has been a great way to share the pictures with friends and family.

Version one of WebPics was very simple, but created nice web pages quickly and easily - this version was never released to the public. Version two brought the notion of a document that you can save and later add more pictures or change the options on and then rebuild the web pages again.

I have many ideas that I hope to incorporate into WebPics in the future.