Zoph 0.5 Readme
21 Jan 2006

1. Introduction

   Zoph (Zoph Organizes PHotos) is a web based photo management system
   written using PHP and backed by MySQL.  Photos are loaded to the db
   using a perl script or a web interface.

   After I bought a digital camera I wanted some way to easily organize
   a growing number of photos.  I've worked on Zoph off and on over the
   last couple of years and have used it to store and cross reference
   a few thousand of my photos.

2. Features (or YAWPA? - Yet Another Web Photo Album?)

   Yes, there are tons of photo album projects it seems.  What makes Zoph
   different?  Well, here are some of it's features:

   - Photos can have lots of meta data.  Each photo record can store:
     - EXIF info (date, time, width, height, size,
       camera make, camera model, flash used, focal length,
       exposure, aperture, etc)
     - title
     - photographer
     - location
     - description
     - rating
     - people in the photo
   - Each photo can appear in zero or more albums.
   - Each photo can appear in zero or more categories.
   - Albums, categories and locations are hierarchical.
   - Searches can be performed using all this data:
     "Show me all photos taken by 'Joe Smith' between 2001-01-01 and
      2001-12-31 at 'Joe and Nancy's House' in which 'Nancy Smith'
      appears and whose rating is greater than 5".
   - Access privileges:
     - each user has an account and is granted permissions on albums
     - each user can specify preferences, including a color scheme
     - an automatically logged in guest user can be defined.
   - Watermarks:
      A (visual) watermark can be added to the high quality photos to
      prevent unauthorized use.
   - Slideshows.
   - Lightboxes.
   - "Email this photo" feature.
   - Basic reporting: most photographed people, places, etc.
   - Photos, albums, categories, people, places and users can be
     easily administered using the web interface.
   - Import photos from the web or by using a Perl script.
   - Export photos to generate static galleries with album or BINS.
   - Internationalized.

3. Installation

   Read the REQUIREMENTS, INSTALL docs.  If you are upgrading
   skip to the UPGRADE document.

   More documentation can be found on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/zoph

4. Copying

   Zoph is free software.  It is released under the GPL license. Please 
   read the file COPYING for more details

5. Feedback
   
   Please send feedback to zoph@nother.net.  Releases can be found at
   http://zoph.sourceforge.net

6. Thanks

   Zoph makes use of the following packages, for which I thank their authors
   for making available:

   HTML Mime Mail class by Richard Heyes
   http://www.phpguru.org/mime.mail.html

   PHP Calendar class by David Wilkinson
   http://www.cascade.org.uk/software/php/calendar/index.php

   Rycks Translation Project by Eric Seigne
   http://cvs.rycks.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/rtpclass/?cvsroot=RTP

   For a list of individuals who have contributed fixes, improvements or
   translations, click on the 'about' tab within Zoph.
