« Part 1 • IPTC Editor • Select & Sort • Regeneration

So you have read part 1 of the Getting Started article and you successfully created your first gallery? Fine. You have read the top entries in the FAQ and the introduction to Customization? Very good. On this page you will learn how to control the EOS template using metadata.


IPTC Editor

Metadata is some kind of text information that is stored within the image file. As a photographer you know the EXIF data fields that hold the shooting data in the image files. In addition to the EXIF data fields there are IPTC data fields which are mostly used be press photographers to describe the image and include copyrights. You can find some background information at iptc.org.

In Photo Mechanic the IPTC editor can be opened when you move the mouse over an image and then click on the appearing (i) icon. The following window will open:



Here you can edit the EOS relevant IPTC fields:

IPTC
field name 		EOS feature Sample Content
Caption * Image Description Works with standard
DVD players.
Headline Special Items DVD slideshow
Special Instructions Section Name Reception


*) The source field for the image description can be set in the HTML Exporter window, see part 1. Using the caption field is just an example.

Note that you can batch edit a group of pictures! That is an essential feature when you want to define sections in your gallery. Read all about IPTC Stationery Pad in the Photo Mechanic help files.

The EOS template features special items and section won't be explained here in detail because they are not Photo Mechanic specific. However here is another screenshot that may help you to understand these features.


Select & Sort

If you only want a selection of photos to be shown in the web gallery then tag them. You can select all tagged files if you press Ctrl+t.

Another nice feature of Photo Mechanic is that you can sort your images by the IPTC field "Special Instructions". If you have entered values for gallery sections then you can automatically sort the images by section names, which is necessary for the EOS template. You can open the Custom Sort dialogue with selecting Edit Custom... from the Sort By drop down menu.


Regenerate the Gallery

You need to re-generate the gallery when you make changes in...

  • ... the image order.
  • ... the image file names.
  • ... the image selection (add or omit some).
  • ... the IPTC data of the images.
  • ... the HTML settings, like title, size, watermark or quality.
  • ... the file template-main.rb.

If you edit a file in the EOS template folder (apart from template-main.rb) you have two options to update the gallery. Either copy the file to the output folder or regenerate the gallery (which has the same effect). Of course, you can also edit the file directly in the output folder but if you forget to copy it back to the input folder your changes will be lost after the next regeneration of the gallery. Changes in the "eoscommon" folder can be made any time and do not require a regeneration. Just hit the Reload button in your browser.

Note that always a new gallery is created when you change the output folder. Photo Mechanic does not use the images from the old folder, instead it will create new ones for the new folder.

The setting Reuse existing images is highly recommended. If you didn't change the settings for the web-sized images (size, quality, sharpening, watermark) the available images will be used and just the HTML pages regenerated. That means a gallery with hundreds of pictures is updated in seconds - a huge time saver.


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