Having a digital camera means that I take too many pictures. Pictures of my family, my friends, the guy at the drive through window at Taco Bell. You name it and I’ve probably taken pictures of it. It’s great, because I’m not wasting film or spending money. I can just take pictures of what suits my fancy. The taking pictures part of the equation is easy, it’s working with them once they’re on the computer that’s time consuming.
If you’re editing just one photo that you’re going to e-mail to your friend or post on a Web page, that’s one thing. You just fire up PaintShop Pro or what have you and you’re good to go. But if you need to worry about dealing with a large number of images, things quickly drag down. Saving the pics in the file format you want, resizing them to fit your needs, etc., all become an unwelcome chore. That is unless you use AutoGraphicsHTML. It's the epitome of a one trick pony, it does one job and only one job. Now normally that might be considered a bad thing but in this case it’s not. Is it going to be able to match Adobe PhotoShop for image editing features? Of course not, so instead of trying to fight a war it can’t win it instead focuses on doing one thing (one very handy thing I might add) exceptionally well.
The thing AutoGraphicsHTML does is help you quickly create a Web page full of image thumbnails that then can be uploaded to the Internet in a snap. You start out with a folder full of ragged pictures and end up with a neatly organized, stylish HTML page complete with image thumbnails and links to a full size version of the clicked on picture. AutoGraphicsHTML’s wizards guide you through the whole process, which begins by selecting the folder where your images are stored. You just need to answer a few questions that it asks like what color background or image you want on the Web page, the style of the page layout, specifics like size of the thumbnails and where the final product will be saved.
It will then go about spitting out thumbnails and creating the HTML for you. You can then upload it directly to the Web or copy and paste a portion of the created HTML into an existing Web page on your site. The various styles of Web page layouts that can be created by AutoGraphicsHTML are pretty decent but if you prefer you can create your own. That might be a good idea if you intend on frequently uploading new sets of thumbnails to the Web. By designing and reusing the same “template” for thumbnail creation every time you can really streamline the whole process and be done in a matter of minutes. AutoGraphicsHTML is a tad pricey for such a singular utility ($29) but the time and frustration you’ll save yourself by using it is worth it.