Edward,
Getting over-complicated is an occupational hazard once you move
past an app's standard User Interface. But I realized my
suggestion could have been even easier, so I over-complicated the
first part of those instructions myself:
Since you have access to your sever, you could have gone to
directly to the location of Test Gallery files and found the /var
folder -- which is where all the images are stored -- in Gallery
images are not stored in the database -- just a text link in the
database points to the physical location of an image in the
/var folder and its sub-folders.
In the /var folder there are at least three sub-folder
directories:
/var/albums
/var/thumbs
/var/resizes
var/albums... is where an image you upload is stored when you
use the "add photo" tool.
val/thumbs... is where a thumbnail image of the uploaded image
is automatically created and stored.
val/resizes/... is where a *copy* of the uploaded image is
automatically created and stored.
The image in /var/resizes is what actually displays on
the Gallery screen when you click on its thumbnail, not the
original uploaded image.
This is a valuable (and fairly unique) feature of Gallery:
Normally, the viewer never sees the original image on the screen
-- they see the copy of the image stored in /var/resizes.... which
functions as an archive of the original images you upload into
Gallery using the "add photo" tool.
So what you could have done instead of going to individual images
in the Test Gallery and downloading them one at a time to your
local computer is use an FTP program to navigate to the Test
Gallery files and find /var/albums... and then directly select
and download images into your local computer. However, the second
part, where you login to the Production Gallery is the same --
it is mandatory to use the "add photo" tool to upload any image
into Gallery. The "Add photo" function is how the Gallery
system uploads an image into the archive, creates its thumbnail
and a copy off the image and stores them the three proper
locations physical locations -- and at the same time creates the
corresponding links to everything in the database itself.
Full Disclosure: OK, sure... those of you who know how to
user the server_add module realize there is yet another way...
but, honestly, server_add is way too hard (and potentially
dangerous) for most people to use.
-- J.R.