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Author Topic: LR4 web module  (Read 8291 times)

jeremyrh

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LR4 web module
« on: January 29, 2012, 04:19:17 am »

As a new LR user, seduced by the new image processing options in LR4, I am amazed by the poor functionality of the web module - or perhaps by my misunderstood version of that functionality  :-\

I am wondering if there is an accessible tutorial about how to customise the web templates to include EXIF information, change thumbnail sizes, simple stuff like that?
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jeremyrh

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2012, 04:24:41 am »

As a new LR user, seduced by the new image processing options in LR4, I am amazed by the poor functionality of the web module - or perhaps by my misunderstood version of that functionality  :-\

I am wondering if there is an accessible tutorial about how to customise the web templates to include EXIF information, change thumbnail sizes, simple stuff like that?
Doooh - of course as soon as I hit "send" I saw how to edit the caption.  :(
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dchew

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #2 on: January 29, 2012, 08:56:17 am »

The Turning Gate is a good resource if you want to create a website from the LR web module.

http://shop.theturninggate.net/

They have several plugins and templates that you pay for, but just browsing the site will give you an idea of what can be done in LR web.  I created my whole site from their templates (like is in my signature).  My site still has the "template" feel, but you can get an idea of how flexible it is.  Aside from hiring someone to build a custom site I think it was my best option.  Their templates are all done without Flash and work pretty well on an ipad.

Dave
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jeremyrh

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #3 on: January 29, 2012, 10:59:05 am »

The Turning Gate is a good resource if you want to create a website from the LR web module.

http://shop.theturninggate.net/

They have several plugins and templates that you pay for, but just browsing the site will give you an idea of what can be done in LR web.  I created my whole site from their templates (like is in my signature).  My site still has the "template" feel, but you can get an idea of how flexible it is.  Aside from hiring someone to build a custom site I think it was my best option.  Their templates are all done without Flash and work pretty well on an ipad.

Dave
Thanks, Dave, that looks interesting. May I ask which "modules" you used to create your site?
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #4 on: January 29, 2012, 12:17:04 pm »

The LR webmodule is fairly crude and unless one is willing to learn the programming language, Lua, it's difficult to modify.  The only other alternative is to do use it and then modify the HTML code directly which means that each time you do an update you need to modify the LR web output pages.  It's a kludge and that's what I did for my site since I wasn't going to learn Lua.  I did look at the Turning Gate offerings but wanted to brush up on my HTML and web design abilities.

Alan
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dchew

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #5 on: January 29, 2012, 04:50:34 pm »

Thanks, Dave, that looks interesting. May I ask which "modules" you used to create your site?
My site is over a year old. I think there have been many improvements in the templates since then, but I used TTG pages and highslide gallery pro (if I remember correctly).   It does help to have some very basic knoledge of html.

Dave
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solardarkroom.com

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #6 on: February 01, 2012, 02:53:07 pm »

My experience only:

The Turning Gate seems to be the most active and progressive developer for the LR web module. It's very modular, comprehensive and reasonably priced. If one sticks to the presets it's not too hard to build your entire site from within LR which is great. If however you want to really customize your site, the sheer volume of settings available and the way they're laid out can be quite laborious. Apparently the SDK puts some constraints on how the modules can be designed. Sooner or later you may find you need to at least find, copy and paste some code to make things work the way you want. There are tutorials and an active community to help.

If you want to consolidate your web presence into LR, have mega-control and have lots of spare time go for it! I wish I had a personal assistant to do all this stuff;-)

David

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john beardsworth

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #7 on: February 01, 2012, 03:29:45 pm »

Web's great for individual contact sheet style galleries, but it's not really for generating a complete web site - which is what a lot of people hope it may be. To use these galleries in a full site, you need to learn some HTML.

Even then, you're stuck with the issue of updating the pages. Imagine when you have new pictures to add, or just notice a dust spot you'd overlooked on one image - you have to regenerate the entire gallery or figure out where to edit the HTML. That's a shortfall of all these static HTML galleries - and in that sense LR is no better that many other cataloguing apps or image browsers.

A year ago I got as far as writing a web gallery for LR that allowed for multiple galleries (see here. I think it's as polished as anything around, but I never got round to releasing it - one reason being that I wanted to address the updating aspect too. I just never got round to it.

But I also think that if you want a full web site, you're really better off with a WordPress-based site which provides an online content management system. So you'd rely on exporting and uploading to this, rather than generating static galleries from any of the templates available for Web.
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jeremyrh

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2012, 03:24:29 am »

Well, agreed that the web module is not meant for making big and fancy websites, but I am still a little surprised by the lack of some basic functionality - resizing thumbnails seems an obvious one, some more sophisticated sizing of main images rather than fitting them into a square box. I don't need a very complicated site, but the LR output is not suitable for ANY site beyond a quick way to communicate some images.
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john beardsworth

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2012, 03:35:36 am »

Yes, in fact I have cloned the built-in galleries to allow thumbnail resizing. It also changes the sequential number that's displayed behind thumbnails, so you can use characters from the file name - the idea being that a client can say "give me image 2501" which corresponds to the file "20120130_2501" in your catalogue.

But this is just tweaking features that are essentially intended for contact sheets or standalone client-facing galleries - not complete web sites. Users though see Web and think they should be able to create web sites (note I only said "complete", not "big and fancy" or "complicated"). While the current offering is no worse than other apps' web gallery generators, I think Adobe should have anticipated this.

John
« Last Edit: February 02, 2012, 03:50:44 am by johnbeardy »
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jeremyrh

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2012, 03:47:46 am »

While the current offering is no worse than other apps' web gallery generators, I think Adobe should have anticipated this.

John
Don't want to get into the territory of jihad, but I think Aperture is quite a bit better than LR in this respect (and most aspects of UI, for that matter :-)  ).  I have used it to make some websites that are not "professional looking", but at least are a step above LR's very amateur-looking results.

Anyway - thanks for your valuable comments :-)
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john beardsworth

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #11 on: February 02, 2012, 03:52:32 am »

No, it's just another generator of static web sites with the same maintenance problems. Customisation is nightmarish, whereas with LR you've seen a lot of 3rd party galleries. Apple built a black box, Adobe a platform?
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jeremyrh

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #12 on: February 02, 2012, 04:02:01 am »

No, it's just another generator of static web sites with the same maintenance problems. Customisation is nightmarish, whereas with LR you've seen a lot of 3rd party galleries. Apple built a black box, Adobe a platform?
Agree about the issue of static web sites, but for me the Aperture pages are usable to present my photos to a (maybe not so discerning) public, whereas the LR ones simply aren't (unless there are more options than the ones I see). Obviously this is a subjective judgement :-)
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john beardsworth

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2012, 04:56:49 am »

But then you've got to use Aperture.... However, on a similar note I felt £79 for Aperture wasn't too much to pay a much better slideshow feature - I just export JPEGs from LR.
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john beardsworth

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2012, 04:57:39 am »

By the way, anyone is welcome to my clone of the built-in galleries.
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SteveF50

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #15 on: February 03, 2012, 05:22:47 pm »

I have had this same dilemma with LR for the web.  It is not sufficiently complete for a complete web solution.  But I like ability for it to produce simple HTML/CSS based simple galleries for web browsing.  What I ended up doing was using a separate web authoring tool (as I wanted some experience at this anyway) and then importing the web output from LR with my web authoring tool. In my case I used Microsoft Web Expression, which is more of a poor-man's version of Adobe Dreamweaver.  After importing the LR output, and then have to so some simple search-and-replace edits to the HTML in order to tie in the necessary linkages. For example, I added a link at the bottom of each LR web output page that can take me either to the main gallery page or the home page of my website.  One big advantage of using a web authoring environment like Web Expression or Dreamweaver is that it gives you flexibility to include different functionality like other javascript routines, flash routines, custom formatting, etc. without being constrained to a particular template or at the mercy of a particular ISPs tools.

You can see the results of this onging effort here: http://www.stephenfischerphotography.com/default.html
For an example of what was produced with Lightroom (3.0), go to the 'Image Gallery' on the left.
At this point I still consider myself an amateur in web development.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #16 on: February 03, 2012, 07:16:55 pm »


You can see the results of this onging effort here: http://www.stephenfischerphotography.com/default.html
For an example of what was produced with Lightroom (3.0), go to the 'Image Gallery' on the left.
At this point I still consider myself an amateur in web development.
I think you should mover yourself out of the amateur category.  Well done and very tasteful website.  I used Dreamweaver to set up mine and only had to do a little tweaking of the LR galleries but the big pain is that you need to do every page of the gallery if you include page buttons.  I guess this is the reason that there are good opportunities for individuals making plug ins. 

Alan
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Marty Tannahill

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #17 on: February 08, 2012, 01:46:38 pm »

It would be great if LR4 would include the capacity to use a user graphic or photo as a background option in addition to the current colour only choice.
Marty
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john beardsworth

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #18 on: February 08, 2012, 02:22:09 pm »

I'd be surprised if they changed that in LR4 at this late stage, Marty.

If you can handle a bit of HTML it wouldn't be too difficult for you to create your own version of the template - see Sean's articles here http://lightroom-news.com/category/adobe-lightroom-modules/web/page/2/
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Marty Tannahill

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Re: LR4 web module
« Reply #19 on: February 08, 2012, 05:15:14 pm »

Thanks John, I will need to get some help with this. I was able to apply the background on the gallery page with all of the thumbnails and that meant manually changing each gallery's page html code. However, I was not about to make the same changes to each individual image using html. Just too much time. I will look into it using css which I know nothing about.

Marty
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