Thanks Justin for this link.  I'll look into it. 

The problem is that Gallery2 is not working for me.  It does a lot but missing some key points that could be project killers.  I do not like the date (and general) search mechanism.  It only makes a few metadata items (IPTC Keywords, Caption, Object Name and GPS Coordinates) searchable by mapping them to image attributes in the database.  And there's no way I know of to sync these attributes in the web/database with the image file itself.   Ultimately, I want my images to be searched the same time as my other web content.

So, I will have to pay for a service (like Fluxiom), pay for a commercial image management product, or get my hands dirty in Drupal and/or Gallery2.   Looks like I'll be getting my hands dirty.  :-)   Now, if I can just fit that in with the other 20 projects I need to get my hands dirty with!

- John



Justin Gruenberg wrote: 
On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 8:20 AM, John Callahan <john.callahan@udel.edu> wrote:
  
1) batch upload, even if only one directory
    

http://drupal.org/project/image_fupload

That module provides a pretty nice way for you to upload images.
Probably not 11k at a time nice, but it does work well and does allow
you to fiddle with some attributes per image when you upload.  It
works with ImageField (CCK) and image.module.

If you go the image.module route, theres some other batch upload
modules that can work with a directory on the server.

  
2) reading EXIF/IPTC image metadata and mapping them to taxonomy terms
and/or CCK fields. 3) syncing attributes (i.e., edits to raw image EXIF/IPTC
can update/reimport the node fields/tags and edits to node fields/tags can
update the EXIF/IPTC metadata.)
    

I haven't done anything this complex with image galleries, but I can
say... expect to do a good amount of fiddling and possibly writing
some custom code to get what you want.

  
I'm using Gallery2 right now (http://gallery.menalto.com/,
http://drupal.org/project/gallery) and it does some (item #1 and partially
#2) of what I need.  It even integrates nicely with Drupal for users and
display of images and albums.   However, I use Drupal for many other sites
(and I'd like to use views, lightbox, tags, etc...) and wondering if I can
bypass Gallery altogether.  Any thoughts or experiences out there?   Thanks.
    

I'd say if gallery2 works for you, stay with it.  That's a package
thats built for hosting images.  If you're not afraid of getting your
hands dirty, drupal might meet your needs closer.
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