14 DAY TRIAL // Creating photo albums has never been easier than it is now. The process is completely automatic and users have little input. Actually, all you have to do is click here and there directing the software into what to do. All the wrapping and packaging are dealt with by the application itself. In just a couple of minutes (or even less) you are ready to take a look at the newly created slideshow which can be played on DVD players as well as ran from hard disks.
Up until recently, making a photo album for the web implied a pretty darn effort from the user and generally, you had to appeal to a web expert in order to create the necessary files, links and looks for a worthy web album. As anyone can have his/her own blog hosting their own ideas and opinions, it was a mere problem of synchronization until easy solutions for creating web galleries appeared.
Here comes YoPoW (Your Photos On the Web), a freebie designed to reduce the amount of sweat inputted in creating web photo galleries to a minimum. The easy to use step-by-step interface lets you create web albums from images stored on your computer, complete with details like thumbnails, titles, descriptions and adjustments to the general aspect of the gallery. The list of supported formats is not large, but it includes the most popular ones like PNG, BMP, PCX, JPG 2000 and TIF.
Stating the building of the gallery and creating all the files and folders for storing the data for the web is extremely easy thanks to a built-in wizard that walks you through all the necessary steps and automatically creates all necessary data (thumbnails and HTML files). All you have to do is point it to the right direction. However, the wizard will do part of the job, meaning that it'll create the project, let you make some of the settings and add the images to the gallery. The finer tuning of the way the gallery looks falls entirely on your shoulders.
Once the wizard has been completed (it only has three steps and if you have everything prepared it'll take less than a minute) you get into the real settings of the gallery. Main application window is split into four sections displaying the list of images added to the gallery, the list of options, a preview window and the settings themselves for customizing the appearance of both thumbnails and links added into the gallery.
When it comes to thumbnails, YoPoW can automatically resize them according to your wishes, add effects (the list includes a number of 12 effects: Grey, Grey Brighter, Grey Darker, Invert, Mosaic, Posterize, Split Blur, Gaussian Blur, Saturation, Anti Alias, Brighter and Darker) and the amount of change to be appended, set the ratio and maximum size of the images as well as define the colors for thumbnail's panel background, color when the image is selected and of the scrollbox background.
Each of the images comes with a short description and a long one for making them as descriptive as possible. Information like EXIF data (where available) can also be added to the short and long description of the picture.
Users benefit from great flexibility when it comes to placing the thumbnails in the web page, as well. You can define the number of rows and columns, customize the font (type, color, size) for both page and title of the picture. For making your gallery as distinctive as possible you can set borders which support customization in terms of color, width and style as well as number.
Customization of the elements in the page reaches high levels with YoPoWas it allows the user to modify everything from the position of the thumbs in the page, adding valid links and tampering with the way they look to font modification, adding borders, a suite of themes to choose from as well as the possibility of adding extra HTML code. If you spend enough time playing with all the settings available the result will look professional enough to fool even a keener eye. The great thing is that the effort input is minimum.
YoPoW capabilities extend even further with its ability of applying various effects to thumbnails, previewing the entire project as if it were already online or choose among the 26 different themes available in the application. More than this, your gallery can take the aspect of a PDF page, with thumbnails on the margin and the enlarged view in the left.
Preferences panel covers the general settings for the behavior of the application. It allows you to chose the length units, enable the preview of effects before applying them, set the browser to view the album with for a more realistic preview or define the colors for changing the looks of the Preferences window.
YoPoW also comes with an FTP client, as a bonus, but no matter our efforts to make use of the tool failure was at the end of each attempt. We could not establish any connection to a remote party as there was no way to input the necessary login details.
The software is not filled with complicated features and options that only the few understand and it is specially created for the less skilled users who do not quite get the ways of the mighty Web. The moment you complete the creation of the project you can start tweaking the way your gallery looks and even incorporate more images. However, when passing through the settings of each element I advise using the two arrows at the bottom of the screen as the panel in the left will do nothing but confuse you.
The Good
YoPoW is absolutely free (well, the developer asks you to send him a card with your home town) and the results are not at all negligible. If the images below do not provide sufficient proof on the obtained results, check out this page.
It is not too difficult to work with and the resulting gallery(ies) is/are clear-cut and looking great. Creating a project does not take too long and making the necessary modifications is an easy task even for a noob, especially when you get to preview all the modifications you have made right inside the application.
The Bad
If you do not need any confusion, I suggest staying away from the customization side pane in the interface as in many cases it describes the same window of settings. Use instead the back and forward arrows at the bottom of the screen.
FTP client, though it is thrown in as a bonus and it covers only the basic functionality of file transferring, extends the functionality of the application, but unfortunately it did not work in our case (we tested it on two different machines).
The Truth
I think this is the easiest way to create a web photo gallery. No web design knowledge is necessary and YoPoW will do all the hard work by itself. All you have to do is guide it to the right direction and make a few more settings for a more original result.
It comes for free and works great. The learning curve may be a bit steeper at the beginning, but once you got it figured out, it all comes very easy even for the inexperienced user.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
