Basic MD2 Thumbnailer Tutorial

MD2 Thumbnailer is an intuitive and easy to use software package. This tutorial will guide you through a few of the extra features of the software, and you can choose whether or not you would like to enable them for your gallery project.

MD2 Thumbnailer has advanced options which are not detailed in this tutorial, such as FTP Upload, command line operation and image rotating from a rotate.txt file placed in the source directory.

We are currently working on a more verbose help file which you can download and install, and will detail all the currently undocumented and advanced features of MD2 Thumbnailer.

1. Select the source folder

First you must select the folder which contains the images you would like to be displayed in the gallery, or the images you would like to process into thumbnails. Click the button shown to 'Browse to the source folder'.

2. Select the destination folder

Next, you must select where you would like to place the generated files. Either type in the box indicated, or click the button to browse to a location. Notice the addition of the 'New Folder' button on the dialog box. This will help you to create a new folder. We recommend you create a new destination folder for each project to reduce confusion.

3. Select the process type

Click on one of the two big buttons. If you want to create a web gallery (as we do in this tutorial), click the 'Web Gallery' button. It will become highlighted as shown below.

• Optionally select a predefined 'Profile'

You can use one of the predefined Profiles to get you started. Click the 'Profiles' button and select a profile, then click the 'Load Profile' button.

If click the 'Set as default' button, the current profile settings will be saved to the 'Default' profile and loaded automatically every time you start MD2 Thumbnailer.

4. Choose the format of your thumbnails

Click the 'Options' button and you will see the dialog below. Here you can choose the Resize options and file format for your thumbnails. We recommend 'Crop' resize as then the thumbnails will all be of uniform size and both your width and height requirements will be met. The file format is probably best set to JPEG and the quality set to between 75 and 90.

5. Choose the filename renaming style

If you are just resizing some pictures using the 'Thumbnails' process, then you will probably want to use the 'Copy Source File' option as this will mean that your thumbnails will have the same filename as the source files.  If the 'Overwrite existing files' option is not set, an image file will not be overwritten and will instead have a number appended to it.

6. Configure the effects plug-ins

Now click the 'Effects' tab on the options dialog and then the 'Configure Effects' button. You can now see the effects chain. On the left is the list of available effects plug-ins with the plug-in that will be applied first, at the top of the list. You can drag and drop these plug-ins to choose the order in which they are applied. It is recommended that the 'Adjustment' plug-ins are applied before the other plug-ins because otherwise they will effect the drop shadows, borders and text as well as the original image.

You must enable a plug-in for it to be applied to you thumbnails. You can do this by clicking it, configuring the options, checking the 'Enable this plug-in' check box at the bottom of the dialog, and then clicking the 'Apply' button. You must click the 'Apply' button to save the settings if you change them.

When you have finished configuring your effects chain, click the 'Save and Close' button to exit the effects chain configuration dialog.

7. Configure the gallery options

Finally, you can configure the 'Gallery' options. Click the 'Configure Gallery Text' button on the 'Gallery' options tab. Here you can set the text for your gallery web pages including the use of the predefined macro variables shown at the bottom of the dialog. These ate values specific to each page or image that can be added to each page when they are generated.

Note: You can use the 'Rename Image' button in the EXIF viewer to properly caption your images for the web gallery.

Please configure the other gallery options as you see fit. The mouse hover effects are really cool!

8. You're ready to go!

Click OK and then OK again to return to the main screen. You can now click the 'Start' button to set the wheels in motion. The progress bar will show you the current progress of the generation. MD2 Thumbnailer is one of the fastest applications of its out there. Sit back and relax.

If the options are set, MD2 Thumbnailer will automatically upload your gallery for you, or present you with the generated files. If you would like to add shadows and process the main gallery images, remember to set the 'Process gallery images' and the 'Apply plugins to gallery images' check boxes on the 'Gallery' options tab.

Thank you for using MD2 Thumbnailer!