AEU33: An image / photo cataloguer in Access (Chris Arnold)

Chris Arnold demonstrated his very versatile image/photo cataloguer.

Many of you will have thousands of pictures taken on your phone with only a meaningless number and a date to identify them. The cataloguer allows the user to catalogue the pictures – e.g. place name, a project, a person, an event etc.

It uses a legacy web browser control to display images and a continuous form as a multi value treeview control to provide selected cataloguing data. A ‘swipe right’ action applies the selection to the image with the use of a freeware command line utility called ExifTool. A ‘swipe left’ option is used to delete unwanted images. Users have the option of physically deleting the images or simply removing them from the display. The user also has the option to leave the images where they are or move them to a specified ‘catalogued’ folder.

The cataloguing data is stored in a table with a link to the image so you can use the app to also return images with specified catalogue data. The catalogue tree is a one to many relationship so specifying a child will also enable the user to retrieve images based on the parent/grandparent etc.

TIMES
00:00 Colin - welcome
00:32 Introduction by Chris Arnold
01:13 Organise images in Windows File Explorer - change view/use tags (very slow for large numbers of images)
01:46 How does the cataloguer work?
02:45 Demo - main form has 3 sections for images displayed in web browser controls. Middle section has all images from a chosen folder from which you can select individual images for processing. Swipe image(s) to left section to remove/delete. Swipe to right section all images for processing
04:25 Assign images to one or more categories for processing - add/edit/delete/move categories
06:48 Change image view in app - multi column/single column/single picture
07:01 Processing options-removal/tag/size/save
08:14 Move category items
09:19 Edit feature - allows you to view/edit HTML created for use in browser control
10:40 Process Images
11:24 Q1: Melvin - what is Exif? A1: Exif is metadata for JPG images created by cameras / phones etc.
13:40 Image types such as .png which do not support the Tags (Keyword) metadata property are not normally displayed in the app and cannot be processed
15:19 App uses IE10 browser emulation mode (set in registry)
15:57 Exif Tool - free command line utility used to process metadata in images
16:58 What's next? Future plans
17:52 Welcome to Edgar from Mexico followed by questions from meeting chat etc
19:07 Q3: Edgar - VBA can generate HTML code using the MS HTML library. It is also possible to write HTML code directly and the browser control will render it just fine too. A3: Chris doing the latter
20:07 Q4: Neil - consider using a TreeView control for the categories? Drag and Drop is built in. A4: Yes - but prefer approach used here with ADO disconnected recordset
20:33 Q5: Crystal - how long can a tag string be? A5: Chris - about 5000 characters (untested)
20:58 Q6: Neil - is the browser code static or generated 'on the fly'? A6: Both! Template HTML is interpreted by VBA to give the final code used by the 3 web browser controls. Further discussion / clarification
23:23 Hint: Neil / Colin - Move to function code easily using Shift+F2 or right click & click Definition
23:45 Web browser controls are populated using popWebCtl function
25:25 Q7: Neil - does the category 'treeview style' display work in a similar way? A7: Chris outlined how category order is stored in tblCatalog and displayed using frmCategoriesDev
33:17 Contact information and further discussion
36:02 Q8: Edgar - is drag & drop done with HTML or VBA? A8: A mixture of both!
41:02 Thanks to Chris - return for last few questions later
41:25 Next month: Custom Ribbons Using Command Bars (Adrian Bell)
45:16 Q9: Alex K - can recursion be used. A9: Yes, but its more work than method used here
49:10 Final comments and thanks
51:16 End

[tonyhine]

Amazing work, Chris! I’ll toast to your ingenuity… and remind you it’s your round next time. 🍺 Let’s tag that under ‘Important’! --- Tony (Uncle Gizmo)