One of the very nice features in Lightroom is the ability to create web galleries directly from RAW images. It is as simple as selecting a group of images in the Library module and clicking on “Web” in the upper right corner of Lightroom. Once in the Web module, there are a plethora of choices for how to layout your web gallery. I really like the fact that one can customize the page with a logo or type face, add an email, even your website and make these hot links so all one has to do is click on the email to contact the photographer or go to your website.
Below is one of the provided FLASH templates by Adobe. There are many templates to choose from and many options to customize the formatting of the web gallery. I won’t go into all of the options as playing with it for just a few minutes will teach you all that you need to know. Isn’t Lightroom intuitive!?
I use the Lightroom web gallery feature when clients need an online lightbox right away. The only downside to the Lightroom web galleries is that no sharpening is applied to the large previews. In Photoshop, when I build web galleries I go through and run actions on the images to size them, convert to sRGB color space and sharpen the jpegs as well so they look really snappy when submitted to clients. In comparison, the Lightroom web galleries are super fancy but the images just look a little soft - not bad - but just a bit softer than I’d prefer. Maybe I’m just a perfectionist but hopefully a sharpening slider will be added to the right hand panel at some point.
If you don’t really like any of the preset web templates that come with Lightroom there are a few others that you can download from Lightroom Galleries, a website online at http://www.lightroomgalleries.com/. These folks have put together some pretty cool new templates for the Web Module in Lightroom. And best of all they are completely free! Here are a few samples…
TTG Simple Viewer Gallery 1.4
Large Flash Slide Strip v1.0
After you download the web template it is easy enough to install it so you can use it in Lightroom. For Mac users place the downloaded folder in Lightroom’s Web Galleries folder:
Users/Username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Web Galleries/
For PC users place the downloaded folder in Lightroom’s Web Galleries folder like so:
C:\Documents and Settings/username/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/Web Galleries
Last but not least, Lightroom smartly incorporated an FTP program within the Web module so you can upload your newly built web gallery from within Lightroom. Setting it up is as easy as typing in your FTP info and clicking upload. And as with all Lightroom operations, once you click upload you can move onto other work, as Lightroom will finish the upload in the background as you work on other images.
That’s it for this week.
Adios, Michael Clark
Hello
I have made a web gallery with LR. The part I have problem with is posting it online. Specificly, I do not understand the output FTP part and where it needs the server and server path information. Can anyone give me some examples of what to write in these fields. Thanks.
fmoayed@msn.com
hi
Alain - I don't know. You might check some forums online that deal with windows - maybe the Luminous Landscape Lightroom forum:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/
Thanks - any ideas on where I can go to find a fix? Vista / IIS7 is really becoming a pain, and I don't want to have to go to another third party programme to develop a webgallery if Lightroom does it!
Thanks!
Alain Jacquet
Alain -
I have no idea what is going on there - I'm not a PC or windows/Vista guy - I am on Apple.
There is an incompatibility issue between Lightroom's web galleries and Vista's and Server 2008's IIS7. I have tried on several machines, but the IIS server will not show the images. It is almost as if the images do not exist. There is a placeholder present, which provides a link to an image location, but IIS reports that the image is not there.
The same webpages work fine if you go directly to the home page of the gallery, and run it from a C:/..../index.html
This makes me wonder what activity is being done by Lightroom's web configurations. If this is not the case, please point me in the right direction - I really like the way in which Lightroom can produce stunning galleries very easily.
Thanks for looking - and the help!
My answer is I don't know. I'm not a computer programmer and haven't done that stuff for a long time now. Your on your own there....
Hi Michael
Is there a way to edit the templates source code, in order to adapt them to other languages?
I mean, I would like my navigation texts: Next/Previous actually shows their translations in my language (portuguese), for instance.
Thanks
Eneraldo Carneiro
Photographer
Brazil
Thanks, Michael. I've used a couple of their galleries in the past, and they are pretty good. However, I really want something that does not have the thumbnail front-end. i guess I'll have to rethink my plan.
John -
Sorry I don't. You might check out the new gallery template from the link above - that could work.
Michael, do you know of any single image templates for Lightroom? I know that wouldn't really be considered a 'Gallery', but I often have need for single image web pages, and it would be great to be able to create them quickly out of the LR enviornment.
I'd suggest calling your Internet Service Provider and asking them what information you need to put in for the Lightroom fields - it shouldn't be any different than using Fetch or an FTP upload software.
Yes - I have too have a problem uploading with the Lightroom (1.1 Demo) ftp. It either times out or says my domain does not exist. I am using the same settings that work in Dreamweaver. The one click web upload is the feature I would use most. Without it I will stick to bridge and PS. If I can get it to work I am buying Lightroom.
How does FTP work. First you need to have a website and a web url - without that it won't work. Then you'll need to enter the FTP info on where to upload the Lightroom web gallery which includes: Hostname, username, and password. Then the url for your newly uploaded website is the sitename.com/webgalleryname. Pretty simple....
Everyone blythely mentions the built in FTP upload program offered by the Web module and says just type in the info and click upload. But that's the part I don't get...I don't know enough about how FTP works. With much fumbling, I do have it working using Transmit, and I have a .mac account...but what are the step-by-steps for entering the correct FTP info?