Based on django-boilerplate, a more modern replacement of my ancient (2005ish) GalleryMaker (C#+GDI) code, this time as a django webapp.

Very much a work-in-progress, bad UI, but basic functionality is there.

1. Create a new gallery in the UI.
2. ./manage.py importimages $IMAGE_FOLDER $GALLERY_ID to load photos
   • All the photos have to be in that directory
   • You can run this again when you add new photos
3. Click into gallery and add captions in browser.
4. Re-order images by using the Admin button :/
5. Then ./manage.py buildgallery to emit standalone html in the publish folder.
6. If you want extra files, like images to use in the text that aren’t entries, put them in media/public in the gallery directory, and they’ll work in the editor and also be copied over to the publish directory.

I guess the main new features over GalleryMaker are:

• Supports video
• Supports live photos (heic+mov file with same basename)

Not great code, but at least Junie was fast—until I exceeded some limits that is. I guess they don’t expect you to run it in several IDEs in parallel for 4+ straight hours?

If you have an apple ‘live photo’ in Photos.app, the normal ‘export’ option just gives you a still image, and ‘export unmodified original’ ignores your edits such as cropping.

However osxphotos can do this. Here’s the command line I use to re-export a single image:

osxphotos export --ignore-exportdb --overwrite \
    --skip-original-if-edited --edited-suffix '' \
    --name IMG_1234.HEIC --year 2025 \
    .

I haven’t implemented HDR for thumbnails yet. But trying to enable an HDR workflow for edits in anticipation of that, edits beyond what Photos.app can do—

• Recent photoshop can open HDR .HEIC images via Camera Raw. Imported into photoshop keeps them HDR as long as you edit in 32-bit mode with some of the corresponding limitations for that. See [this guide][gregbenz-hdr] for some tips.

  • You might need to flip Settings → Technology Previews → Precise Color Management for HDR Display.

  • Also see Camera Raw → Settings icon in upper right → File Handling → JPEG, HEIC, and TIFF Handling

• All the apparently-useful export options in photoshop seem to lose the HDR, except Filter → Camera Raw Filter → the “Convert and Save Image” in the upper-right corner to save as HDR-aware JPG or AVIF.