Database Develop

[WIP] New Gallery Application

Hey everyone,
After wrestling with the HTC Album for a while, I've got tired of it not doing what I want it to do and have therefore started developing my own. I'm still in the algorithm writing stage but it's coming along very nicely as yet.
Here's some of the features that I'm planning:
Database Backend - This will be extensible through the use of 'tagging'. You will be able to add an 'infinite' number of tags to each photo.
UI - Will allow swiping through pictures and other enhancements over the standard app.
Different Browsing Views - Can browse via the database (and tags) or the normal file based directory views.
EXIF tags - Ability to read them. Not sure on where I'm going with this feature yet.
There's no time frame when this will be first released, but it will be out when I have it in a nice stable state, and feature-wise, similar to the HTC Album. Further features will then be added in further (quick) releases. I have a name of the application in mind but I don't want to announce it yet as this application is very much in progress. I also don't want someone to steal the name.
So why have I posted this? Well I know the good people of XDA are full of good ideas so I'm asking you this: what would you want from this new Gallery app?

Reserved for future use.

will you try to add in multi touch like the demo photo app of long ago that was never refined? i cant wait for you to finish, the htc album gets on my nerves too. it always reorders the pictures as it pleases even though i have "sort by date" selected after a wipe.

yea, add multitouch

As long as there are more sorting options ill be eternally grateful

Not sure on multitouch as I don't really see a need for it (plus can't be bothered with the potential Patent infringement stuff). I will include a nicer way of zooming in and out than the simple buttons though, and I think it's more elegant than multitouch.
Regarding sorting, there will definetly be better sorting options. And i'll make sure they actually work too. This is probably the number one thing that annoys the hell out of me with the HTC Album.

Have the ability to pick a folder of images or folders.
I hate using gallery on my phone and it picks every picture on my SD card. Kinda annoying honestly, but hey it is what it is.

Also implement features such as double tap to zoom...hate using the zoom toolbar
And auto rotate with animation
Refer to app called "Picture Viewer" to understand wht i am talkin about...its a nice app just lackin features...
http://www.cyrket.com/package/rip.android.GlImageView

an idea for zooming: clockwise to zoom in and counter-clockwise to zoom out ... i dont remember where ive seen that before but just seems like a cool idea if able to be implemented

xidominicanoix said:
an idea for zooming: clockwise to zoom in and counter-clockwise to zoom out ... i dont remember where ive seen that before but just seems like a cool idea if able to be implemented
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm the app i refered to in the above post has zoom in / zoom out by moving ur finger up or down
Different implementation possibilities lol

Check out the Albums program from Hero. It has some nice features: pinch zoom in/out, sd card/facebook/flicker albums, swipe to navigate, slideshow animations, autorotate animation, grid or directory view, etc.
The tags feature you are adding would be great since I have them in directories for now (basically 1 tag only).
The ability to add pictures from a remote "gallery" server (or similar remote server you can run at home) would be great since I don't put all my pictures on facebook/flicker (nor do I want to).
http://gallery.sourceforge.net/

I think a zoom feature like this would be nice if you think that you could do it. You can watch it in action if you watch the video. It two minutes and six seconds in.
http://phandroid.com/2009/03/18/androids-circular-zoom-on-the-htc-magic/

What annoys me the most is the phone generating thumbnails for all 1600 of my pictures, I have to leave it there for 10 minutes or so to let it do that. My old phone, which a dumb phone never had to do that when browsing all the pictures and was way faster.

I second SolemnWishing's request. I would like to see the thumbnail part in the default gallery done away with in the app. Are you going for a complete default gallery replacement app or will this piggyback in anyway off the default one? I would like to be able to replace it completely just like the launcher.apk and the mms.apk.

SolemnWishing said:
What annoys me the most is the phone generating thumbnails for all 1600 of my pictures, I have to leave it there for 10 minutes or so to let it do that. My old phone, which a dumb phone never had to do that when browsing all the pictures and was way faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm yea tht is frustrating, i hope the OP finds a way around it..perhaps read the images n instead of creating smaller ones it shud just resize the images n display them or somethin....

tmjonesva said:
will you try to add in multi touch like the demo photo app of long ago that was never refined? i cant wait for you to finish, the htc album gets on my nerves too. it always reorders the pictures as it pleases even though i have "sort by date" selected after a wipe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are a few great features in the demo app. If you could get a hold of the source ... WOW ... it could save you a lot of time and give you a great start on creating a kick ass gallery app. Good Luck!!

I don't agree with the request to eliminate the thumbnailing. Thumbnailing is a great feature and only happens the first time you open a particular image set - it is then databased so the thumbnails load instantly later. A more customizable approach would be a better idea, like the option to disable thumbnailing selectively.
It would be nice to have the option of EXCLUDING and/or HIDING certain paths, for example, some programs add in their own images that you most likely don't want visible in the gallery. I don't like those image hiding programs that screw with the file extensions, and suggest that password protection and obfuscation isn't necessary -- just the ability to keep the crap out.

[APP][WINDOWS]ZOE Repair Tool

So maybe it's just me, but I've been taken off guard by the wipe features on the HTC One clearing /sdcard along with the usual user data a few times. It's a bit of a struggle to find your "happy place" after remembering a couple minutes too late that the bootloader unlock actually erases the media storage too...so much for that nandroid backup you made just in case
Luckily, these phones come with all sorts of backup options right out of the box - but these (DropBox image backup specifically) have a few "quirks" that don't really work in our favor. One that especially ground my gears was the fact that dropbox doesn't play nice with the ZOE's filename-based groupings. So now those 12 ZOE shots you had now show up as 252 individual files. Neat.
So, since I'm overall a very lazy person it's safe to assume I had little to no interest in manually renaming each and every one of these files to make my Zoe collections work again. Ain't nobody got time for that. That's exactly what I made this tool to do for me, because hastily writing a few lines of code sounded way more appealing than fixing all those files just hitting the delete key.
Now, I can't reiterate enough that I'm really lazy. That being said, this tool is poorly written. I even decided that it was easier to simply disable the ability to minimize it rather than bother messing with a crash bug related to that option. Don't worry though, there's still plenty of ways to make this program crash horribly.
So without further ado: I made a thingy, and I'm sharing this thingy that I made with you. In case you're stupid about backing up your media storage, like me.
DISCLAIMER: I AM AN AWFUL PROGRAMMER AND I PUT VERY LITTLE TIME OR EFFORT INTO THIS. I ALSO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE COAUTHORED THIS WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH A BOTTLE OF VODKA. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK, MAKE BACKUPS, AND GENERALLY JUST BE READY FOR DISAPPOINTMENT. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING THIS APPLICATION MAY OR MAY NOT DO.
Using this app is pretty simple.
1) Copy your defiled Zoe images to a new folder (I can't promise you that this thing won't screw up, so make sure to work with COPIES of the files!). I didn't trust this with my original backups and neither should you!
2) Open the application and choose the directory that you copied the files to.
3) All the JPG files in that folder will be listed in the upper list, these may or may not be in correct order because the backup function doesn't even name them in a way that always sorts correctly. Focus on one Zoe at a time and use the arrows to put the files from that set in the correct order.
4) Use Ctrl/Shift+Click to select all 20 images from that Zoe's set.
5) Once you've selected 20, the app will try to guess which MP4 file to choose in the box below. This feature is super basic, make sure to double check that it has selected the correct file, correct this selection as necessary.
6) Look in your phone's /DCIM/100media folder to see how high the file numbering goes for the images on your phone. There's a box on the application bottom-right to fill in a number. Type in a number that is NOT already associated with another image on your phone.
7) If everything is selected correctly, the "Rebuild my ZOE" button should become usable. Click it. It should (hopefully) tell you that it has finished working on the selected files.
8) Move the newly renamed IMAGXXXX_ZOEXXX files back onto your phone's internal storage.
9) Rinse and repeat until all your files are renamed appropriately to be recognized as ZOEs.
PS - This application was was written in VB2012 using the .net framework 4.5, if you get errors starting it, make sure you have this framework installed. Source code is available upon request if anyone actually wants to put time into making this suck less, but for me it's "good enough".

Looks very handy.. Thanks
sent from the HTC "one"

Tardeaux said:
I ALSO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE COAUTHORED THIS WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH A BOTTLE OF VODKA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry... That little section made me choke! lol You're a funny guy. I can see this being a useful tool though.

Finding this made my day. Thanks man.

Thanks for this, huge time saver! The little preview is a plus to help weed out any accidental inclusions.

I'm glad you guys found this useful
I'm twice as glad that HTC changed the way the Zoes are saved in the new software release :good:

[Q] Location of camera thumbnails

Somehow I messed up setting up my wife's new Moto X. In the past I had some tasker tasks to transfer all the photos off our phones and onto our NAS every night. In setting up the task on her new phone I deleted a slew of pictures. I know the original photos are gone and I'll face the music on that one. However, if I go to camera and swipe to the left I can scroll through all the photos. I can't email or share any because the file is gone, but if I can see the photos there must be a low res image someplace on the phone still. Anyone know how to access these and possibly get me out of the doghouse? They're not in the DCIM folder at all. I poked around in the Android/Data folder a bit, but did not find them.
On the same note, is there a way to clean these out over time? Seems to me if I have a thumbnail of every photo ever taken it would eventually fill up the storage.
Thanks

Get an app like astro file manager, or root Explorer and go to storage then DCIM and your thumbnail pics should be there.
Sent from my XT1097 using XDA Free mobile app

clskier said:
Somehow I messed up setting up my wife's new Moto X. In the past I had some tasker tasks to transfer all the photos off our phones and onto our NAS every night. In setting up the task on her new phone I deleted a slew of pictures. I know the original photos are gone and I'll face the music on that one. However, if I go to camera and swipe to the left I can scroll through all the photos. I can't email or share any because the file is gone, but if I can see the photos there must be a low res image someplace on the phone still. Anyone know how to access these and possibly get me out of the doghouse? They're not in the DCIM folder at all. I poked around in the Android/Data folder a bit, but did not find them.
On the same note, is there a way to clean these out over time? Seems to me if I have a thumbnail of every photo ever taken it would eventually fill up the storage.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are probably all cached. As for recovering them, I'm sure you can find them in the cache -- I don't know where they'd be saved (I believe there is a /cache partition but then there's also the possibility that the gallery caches those previews somewhere in /data/). It may be easier to to screen shot the ones you want.
EDIT: see above post - that's probably what you want
As for the cache growing, I'd imaging that the gallery app has some sort of maintenance. But there is always the option of using apps (I have SD Maid, personally) and/or periodically clearing the cache partition via a custom recovery

Thanks all. This was good info also. I ended up finding the files on my NAS which leads me to a whole other question which I will post seperately from this as it only related by symptoms.

[Q] Need help deleting photos.

Does anyone know how to delete photos off of the Nexus 6. Everytime I try to delete a photo from the device a warning comes up and tells me it will be deleted from Google Drive as well. I just want it off the phone to save space.

I do want things synced so for local deletes I use Quick Pic https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alensw.PicFolder
The other thing I like about that program is all the photos snapshots videos in any directory are immediately available, regardless of whether it was synced or not. Also has better sorting options for looking at previews. I would probably delete photos app entirely if quick pics would sync to Google Drive.
I would definitely like more options or if somebody has a better solution I would like to hear it. It seems silly having to run two "gallery" programs.
Sent from my Google N6 on VZ

Is there a way to do it without having to add an app. Not being able to delete from the device seems quite ridiculous. If not possible through the photo app on Lollipop this seems like a MAJOR flaw that needs to be fixed.

Esantry78 said:
Is there a way to do it without having to add an app. Not being able to delete from the device seems quite ridiculous. If not possible through the photo app on Lollipop this seems like a MAJOR flaw that needs to be fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I might have a solution for you: open your stock camera app. Instead of taking a photo, just swipe toward the left. That'll give yourself access to photos without going into the Google Photos app. You can delete photos from there. It's not as efficient as it could be, but you won't lose your photos in the Google Photos app. Good luck.

Secure Folder isn't secure

I moved a photo to the Secure Folder and opened it in the Secure Folder Gallery. I then clicked the Recent Apps button which clearly displayed that photo (see photo).
Obviously, this makes the Secure Folder much less secure. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?
Apparently, I can't share a screenshot or attach a pic of this problem, but it is easily reproducible.
Thanks,
Chris

Was it locked again?

Clear all recent apps after the item is viewed. Saves/frees ram too! I keep mine cleared constantly and it saves battery life too from what I've noticed. Hopefully Samsung will fix all the pie issues FAST, I already have Oreo 8.1.0 firmware and odin ready to go back, hate pie at this early stage. Too rushed & needs much refining! Just need a pc and goodbye bs pie lmao

You are correct it shows them. The gallery is unlocked until you turn off the phone. After that that tile will be blank. Check the settings for more info

No shower selfies then.. right?

christopher53 said:
I moved a photo to the Secure Folder and opened it in the Secure Folder Gallery. I then clicked the Recent Apps button which clearly displayed that photo (see photo).
Obviously, this makes the Secure Folder much less secure. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?
Apparently, I can't share a screenshot or attach a pic of this problem, but it is easily reproducible.
Thanks,
Chris
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just use the list view for the recents. Thumbnail view shows any recent photos/camera. You can also save photos you want hidden to your sd card and place a empty file called .nomedia in the folder to hide them. Then just lock your gallery or file explorer app. You might have to restart your phone . You can encrypt the sd card as well.