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Creative Photo ProjectsFun ways to put your photography to good use, from classic to high tech |
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Page 6 of 8  Create a Web Galleryby Harlon Mitchell Creating a Web gallery is definitely one of the coolest ways to show off your work. And thanks to the new, easy-to-use Web module in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you don’t need to hire an expensive Web designer or learn HTML code to create a professional-looking gallery. The Web module has a selection of 17 automatic HTML and Flash photo-gallery templates with adjustable layouts, which can then be saved and added to the list of template presets. The color palette can be customized for each section of your gallery pages—text, header text, menu text, border and so on—so that each can have its own background color of your choosing. The collection title, collection description, photo captions, copyright watermark, contact info and e-mail link can all be included in the Web pages. If you want the look of a lightbox with a selection of thumbnail images displayed in rows and columns, then the HTML templates are the way to go. You can select up to five rows and seven columns for a maximum of 35 images per page. Then if someone clicks on a thumbnail, the Web gallery displays an enlargement with the option of going forward to the next image, back to the previous image or back to the index page with all the thumbnails. For a more sophisticated layout, there are four Flash templates to choose from: Scrolling, Left, Paginated and Slideshow Only. Scrolling puts a small image in the center of the Web gallery with the remaining photos displayed as thumbnails just below on a scroll with a slider. That way you don’t need multiple pages—your viewers can simply move the slider and pick which photo they want to click on for a larger view. The Left layout is basically the Scrolling layout with the scrolling feature displayed vertically along the left side of the Web gallery instead of along the bottom. The advantage here is the enlarged thumbnail displayed on the right is considerably bigger compared to the one displayed in the Scrolling template. Paginated splits the Web gallery down the middle. On the left side, your collection of images is broken into a series of pages with six images per page. On the right side, one of the six images is displayed in a larger view. To navigate through the collection, you can use the arrows below the index pages on the left side; clicking on a particular thumbnail displays a larger view on the right side of the Web gallery. Or you can simply use the arrows below the larger view on the right side and scroll through the collection one image at a time. Slideshow Only puts an enlarged image in the center of the Web gallery and has arrows just below for navigating through your collection. There’s also a play button if someone wants to just view an automatic slideshow. Once you’ve decided which template to use, imported your photos and made any custom changes to the layout, text, captions and various color palettes (all of this could take as little as 20 minutes), all you have to do is enter your FTP server information and upload the gallery. It’s that simple.   |
