With my application, it would make more sense to populate the database in MySQL with one upload directly to the MySQL server. Can I populate the database, then upload the photos? Will ZenPhoto handle this O.K. or will it try and populate the database again?
Any advise would be appreciated.

imlah

This is not really the way Zenphoto works. Zenphoto is file system based, meaning it will add what it finds within the albums folder. We have here a simplified diagram that shows how Zenphoto works: http://www.zenphoto.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/zenphoto-12-image-discovery12.pdf

In answer to your question, "it depends". If all you upload is information about images it will work. If you also upload comments or album information it probably will not work as there are linkages between images and albums and comments to images/albums. It is unlikely that the ID links would be correct in what you upload.

Another thought. Zenphoto uses EXIF information from the images it discovers. Perhaps you should populate those fields in the images before uploading.

I appreciate the replies. I'll try a couple different ideas and let you know how things work. I've loaded over 3200 images and added descriptions, one at at time, for each one. I'd like to try adding descriptions in one mass upload directly to the database for the next batch of photos. I think I'll first upload the images, let Zenphoto do it's thing and then add the descriptions to the database.