I'd like to be able to edit comments for the images like gallery, but have the user comments stored in the EXIF data field instead of in a database so that it's portable and I can just burn the images and not have to worry about moving all the other data across.

I'd say start working with what Apache::Gallery has. It has (as I mentioned before) *almost* everything I'm looking for as far as auto rotation, template based, customizable, and no extra requirements or fluff (like a database.

I'd like to be able to just put a file called "description.txt" or something that'd describe the top level album, get/set comments directly from exif data, give it the ability to do X number of images on a page, and be (as I mentioned before) template based. Right now A:G uses imlib to get the thumbnail, so you could use this or convert(1) (from imagemagick) as a fallback.

Another thing I noticed in A:G was that I had to hack at some of the data to make it display properly for me. For example, they look for NN/NN for the aperture value, but my camera reported it as NN NN, ditto for focal length and exposure. Different cameras save exif data differently, so that'd have to be looked at. They are mostly the same, but not all have all fields, and not all keep the same data in fields in the same way. I have a vivicam 335 you can use for testing on that if you want.

What else... hm.... the slideshow feature in gallery is kinda cool (the fade from pics) but not important. I really just want something simple that works well, like A:G will do after I finish hacking it up to do things better :)

Oh, another thing! I'd like to use this to create an HTML gallery that can be burned onto a CD for archiving purposes, without the need to run a webserver. Maybe a standalone program that will extract/create the thumbnails and arrange everything.

The other thing would really just be a userfriendly way of editing exif data (ie: comments). IE: put it into edit mode and have just a textarea/textfield you can type in, hit enter, go to next, repeat. That'd make putting comments into (again, comments embedded into the exif data directly) a batch of pix quick and easy.

Sounds like I need to start hacking A:G with all these great ideas :)

I want the people in the photos to move, like the ones in Harry Potter.

Thanks.

EXIF should be the database otherwise what is the point? if you are going to use mysql into the mix at all then just use a standard php gallery package and fix the problem areas.

Godo point - the database was only going to be used for location & user login information though -- which wouldn't work well in EXIF format. :)

well you could take the location and user login out of the question and make that a server issue where it should be anyway.

you could take the logo for the project and store the app data in the EXIF, which would be geeky cool :)

Some way to see at a glance which images have (x # of) comments

I would like to have webblog/gallery combination where registered people could also send there pictures. I haven't found one even though I have searched a lot. Gallery should be with thumbnails and possibility to comment the pictures.