I originally posted this entry at the TP Users Group. I noticed that there are only two (now three) threads running in this section. I think that tells you how many fewer TPers are using the Photo Album feature than the text blogging feature. Too bad. Here’s why I’m not actively using the Photo Album feature:
Thumbnail display: TP squishes horizontal photos into a (square) thumbnail format. Pbase (my active photo site), on the other hand, allows thumbnails to display as horiztonal & vertical but it gets a uniform look by overlaying a square grid on the thumbs (you can see this at Into the Great Wide Open, my photo gallery). I’m guessing that some of my TP thumbs look especially bad because some of my images are cropped to non conventional sizes. I can’t stand the squishedness of the way the thumbnails display.
Inadequate image display options: I don’t like having 2 display sizes, thumb and small (that’s what I’ll call the next larger size). In pbase you can display small/med./lg./original sizes.
Zip files: TP does not allow zipped file uploads. So if you want to upload say 30 images at once you have to add ea. image manually. In addition to being a drag, this increases the chances that your upload will fail (as mine have). UPDATE: TP does now allow zip file uploads.
Comments/Trackbacks: Photo Album does not have a trackback or comment feature. Pbase does.
Mass file editing: You cannot edit groups of individual photos (say in an album or folder) en masse. Instead, you have to click on ea. individual image you wish to edit. This is incredibly inefficient & archaic in terms of what other online photo album sites like pbase.com allow.
Moving files en masse: You cannot move images between folders or galleries. If say, I accidentally upload images into the wrong folder, there’s no easy way to create a new folder & move those images into it. Perhaps I could use File Manager to do this, but I’m not sure even that’s possible. Photo Album does have a cloning feature, but you can only move a single image at a time.
No Root gallery: There should be a root gallery so that both gallery owner & gallery visitors can see all galleries on one screen & choose which ones they want to visit or review.
I’d love to use the TP Photo Album feature, but tp has been extrememly slow in adding features necessary to make the service usable & efficient.