The MT2 Thumbnailer



Description
(this description is taken from the manual)

This manual describes the mt2 (that is, make-thumbnails 2) program, which is designed to make it easy for one to create and maintain large numbers of pictures in HTML photo albums, along with descriptions, titles, grouping, and a lot of other features that I will eventually explain. I used to write that mt2 is not a program for Quiche-Eaters, but starting with version 1.2, it supports output plugins with which you can generate pages as fancy or colorful as you would like; however, its main focus is still on the meat and content of the albums.

Why Choose MT2?
  • More precise control over the way pictures are ordered, commented, grouped, and titled.
  • Operates recursively through a tree of directories.
  • Splits large numbers of photos in one directory into multiple albums, with navigation controls among them.
  • Supports output plugins for a variety of album formats.

Documentation
The documentation is distributed as a PDF document, and can be downloaded here.
Or you can also read an HTML version (though the PDF is authoritative).

Download
The current version of mt2 is 1.3.2, and you can download it either as one tarball or ZIP file, or browse the directory tree.

To run mt2, you will need a Python installation of version 2.2 or higher, and either the Python Imaging Library (which I recommend) or ImageMagick.

I've put a pre-compiled version of the Python Imaging Library, for Linux on the i386, here. To use it, simply unpack it into the site-packages directory of your Python 2.2 installation.

Mt2 runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, etc., and also Windows, and is distributed under the terms of the GPL.


Changes
  • 1.3.2 - Modified mt2 to work with different versions of convert. Aka, a bugfix.
  • 1.3.1 - Added the dropshadow output plugin, and the ability to put comments underneath a group of photos.
  • 1.3 - Modified the output plugin interface (plugin authors take note), and added the ability to generate an HTML page for each picture, with navigation buttons. Also added include files.
  • 1.2.1 - Added support for image size information, and `date files'.
  • 1.2 - Added output plugin support.
  • 1.01, 1.02 - Various little feature enhancements.
  • 1.0 - First public release

Extra Plugins
If you write any of your own output plugins that you'd like to post here, please send them to me and I'll do that.

Writing plugins isn't too difficult, even with just elementary Python knowledge, and the plugin mechanism allows one to write a plugin that inherits from or communicates with another one, making the task easier.


Sample Albums
I've made a sample album to show some of the features of mt2.
  • Here is the album using the brushedmetalpages plugin: Go
  • Here is the album using the dropshadow plugin: Go
  • Here is the album using the plainhtml plugin: Go
  • Here is the album using the darkhtml plugin: Go
  • And here are the auxilliary files used to generate the album: Go

Contact
Mt2 was written by Jesse Pavel (jpavel at alum.mit.edu)

Please write him (me) with any questions, rants, or comments that you have, or bugs that you find.

There is also a mailing list for this program, mt2-users@pathwayjr.com. To subscribe, send an email to mt2-users-admin@pathwayjr.com.