How Many Web Photo Albums Do You Really Need?

ENCORE Review: Digital photography spawned a gazillion Mac applications that make photo albums for web sites.

iPhoto does it. So does the free JAlbum and Galerie. Will you pay for BananAlbum?

You take pictures with you digital camera and store them in iPhoto, right? Then what?

I send some to relatives via email. I create slideshows and save them as QuickTime movies with music.

Is there an easier way to make photos available to the world without all the fuss and bother of building a web site? Probably not, but Mac web photo album applications make easy all the inbetween steps.

For example, I’ve used iPhoto to build web page albums, but the end result is rather boring.  Apple probably doesn’t want to compete in that template area. There’s no money there.

One of the nice things about web page albums is that they’re cross platform and you don’t even need a web site. Just burn the album to a CD and send or give to friends and relatives.

It’s the 21st century version of home slide shows without the projector, screen, popcorn, or unhappy guests.

I use JAlbum and Galerie and Instant Gallery and Quickie X Web Album and half a dozen others that all do pretty much the same thing.

They take your photos from iPhoto and build attractive, easy-to-navigate web page albums. Most of these apps are free, the rest are low, low cost.

What’s new and different? How about BananAlbum Creator? No doubt about, BananAlbum thinks different.

I prefer web album galleries with plenty of templates from which to choose, so JAlbum and Galerie are tops on my list.

Simplicity and elegance are important factors, too, so Instant Gallery gets a nod from time to time.

BananAlbum Creator is elegant. It’s a row of thumbnails across the top. Click on a thumbnail and the image whooooshes onto the browser screen below the thumbnails.

That’s it. Elegance and simplicity don’t show much on top, but behind the scenes do all the dirty work.

The Free version of BananAlbum Creator does that. The Pay For version does more.

The more is Flash, that creative mass of splashy effects and tasty tart of cool looks and buttons from Adobe, previously from Macromedia.

BananAlbum uses a touch of Flash to display the photos, and really, really, really basic HTML so it’ll all show up OK on pretty much any browser in town.

So, it’s all cool and well and good and an attractive, inexpensive tool for creating yet another set of web page albums, right? Yes, and no.

Yes, it’s another tool; probably Number 123 in the list of never ending Tools For Your Mac To Create Web Page Albums. It has a place, and is particularly nice if you don’t mind all the Flash.

That’s the “no” issue. Flash is a religion to some. The anti-Christ to others. I don’t mind it if it’s kept to a minimum and BananAlbum does just that.

BananAlbum is pretty much devoid of the oodles of choices found in most web page album applications. Click to open, drag some photos on top, click a couple of times, and you’re done.

The resulting album is actually a nice addition to the many album creation tools I have already, despite the indulgence in Flash.

The look and feel of the album reminds you of CoverFlow in the new version of iTunes.

Black, black slider bars, images on black.

Galerie and JAlbum remain my favorites, not only because of price (free), but because of the extensive controls provided to tweak album displays.

The BananAlbum developer is so thoughtful of Mac users that he created a BananAlbum skin for JAlbum, which almost negates his own product.

Other BananAlbum tools help to create on-screen navigation to different albums, including a slideshow function.

Is this just another way to do the same thing as what there are already tools avaible to do? Yes. But that’s what we at the Miller household think of Windows, too.

Click Here to take a look at BananAlbum. What do you use to create web page photo albums? Did I miss one from my list?