Drupal Image Management
Please suggest how I should approach these requirements. What out-of-the-box solutions (modules) are best for achieving something like this:
I need a searchable image library, tagged images that have already changed when posted. If the author is looking for a library and the image he wants is not, he can download one and add it to the index. The important thing is that the images in the library can be sorted into three categories: news images, top-level images, and feature images, so that over time we don't have hundreds of images crammed into one folder, thus making viewing a pain (and to prevent someone like : Search so they can find an image for news, select an image and then see it 1600X. 1200). Also, I need something that can easily collect miniature galleries. I don't want to go to the image library, get the url, return, embed it, etc. I should be able to choose, say8 images and say "create gallery". How to achieve this is flexible, but I am looking for a shortcut to get around manually assembling screenshots.
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You can create an Image content type using CCK and Imagefield to save the image.
Images can be categorized into three categories, either with a CCK field or using the Taxonomy module, and the Taxonomy module will allow you to create a separate dictionary for tags. Taxonomy terms will be searchable using the default main search engine.
Imagecache will allow you to specify presets for displaying images - for example, a user can upload any image (for example, 1600 x 1200), but when it is displayed, ImageCache will create a modified version (for example, 400 x 300). You can specify multiple presets so that the image is displayed at different sizes in different places.
To manually create galleries, you can create a separate Gallery content type with a Node Reference field for Image. I don't know about the "click to add" module as you seem to be describing, but if the images are clearly labeled, they can be easily added when creating the gallery via the autocomplete widget.
Otherwise, the Views module will allow you to programmatically create lists of images, such as all recently uploaded images.
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try http://drupal.org/project/media in drupal 7. please note that neither drupal 7 nor media module has been released, so expect a job upload to back up the media module or fix drupal 7 bugs.
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