New Podcast: Richard Benson and Thomas Palmer

After a long time without a podcast, George Jardine has posted a new one to his iDisk

"This podcast was recorded on Monday October 30th 2006, at Richard Benson’s home in Newport, Rhode Island. Adobe Pro Photography Evangelist George Jardine speaks to fine art printer and photographer Richard Benson and his printing partner, Thomas Palmer, while they recount many fascinating stories such as working on the Gilman Paper Company book, working with Irving Penn and Paul Strand, and many other luminaries."

More Webtemplate stuff.

Alright, as George Jardine would say, welcome to or new post on customising your web template.
If you're happy with the Jardine Pro template but really would like to have better HTML linking to other galleries or to parts of your site, follow this thread!
Custom Web Templates live in a folder called Web Galleries in the USERNAME/Library/Adobe Lightroom folder on Mac. This is in C:\DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS\USERNAME\Application Data\Adobe Lightroom on PC (C being to root drive and USERNAME being what you log in as. At first you'll need to create this folder. Then download the the Jardine Pro template from Georges iDisk. It's there under Example Lightroom Web Gallery. As per my last post:
"Copy the files contained in the zip file to this new folder. Open the new folder. Search for a file called galleryMaker.xml in jardine_pro. Open it in a text editor. On Line 7 change Title=Jardine Pro to Title=YourName and on line 14 change com.adobe.wpg.templates.jardinePro to com.adobe.wpg.templates.yourName. Save the file. "
If you already followed the last post, you should create a different name to distinguish the 2 inside Lightroom.
Okay, now we want to add our site HTML to the template. This is done by editing the "transformer.xslt" file. This is a well commented file and we can find where to put our html easily. On line 179 we can see a comment saying Begin Stage. This is where the thumbnails get displayed and seems like a good place to add our links. So away we go:

<a href="../index.html">Home</a> | <a href="../contact.html">Contact</a> .... etc etc

You will also need to add this code after line 960 because the "transformer.xslt" file creates the detail page as well as the index page for the gallery.
Save the file and open Lightroom. Select a few images and then go to Web. Your new gallery template should appear in the drop down menu in Gallery Style. Try it out.
You can add any HTML you want in the transformer.xslt file. I've just done a very quick start here to get you going. If you are looking for an HTML editor that's free and easy I recommend Taco HTML for Mac users out there. Anyone who wants to interject with a good PC one, feel free.

Changing Typography in Web Galleries

Currently there is no way in the program to change fonts in your galleries. It's not too hard but takes a little time to do this outside the program. Basically we need our own editable template. Fortunately George Jardine has provided his Jardine Pro gallery on his iDisk. Click the link and download Example Lightroom Web Gallery/jardine_pro.zip.
You need to create a folder called Web Galleries. On Mac create it in username/Library/Adobe Lightroom/, On PC create it in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\ where username is the name you log in with.
Copy the files contained in the zip file to this new folder. Open the new folder. Search for a file called galleryMaker.xml in jardine_pro. Open it in a text editor. On Line 7 change Title=Jardine Pro to Title=YourName and on line 14 change com.adobe.wpg.templates.jardinePro to com.adobe.wpg.templates.yourName. Save the file.
You can rename the jardine pro folder to something more usable like yourName. Inside the folder there is a master.css file located in resources/css. Open it in a text editor. On line 8 we have the font family set to Arial etc. Change the font family here to whatever you want to use. Bear in mind to choose fonts that have a chance of appearing on your viewers machine or the browser will replace it with a font of its choice. Save the master.css file.
Restart Lightroom and open Web. On the top right drop down menu your new template name should appear. Select it and enjoy.

Shortcut list

I was just about to post a shortcut list but Ian Lyons has a much more beautiful set done:

From this Post: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=590&threadid=1214586&enterthread=y

And this page : http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lightroom_b4/lightroom_b4_1.htm

You can download a PDF for Mac: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lightroom_b4/lightroom-mac.pdf
And PC: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lightroom_b4/lightroom-win.pdf

Emailing from Lightroom.

One much requested feature not currently in Lightroom is the ability to email files from inside the program. Or is it? With the advent of the Export Action in Beta 4, it is. Originally in this post I suggested adding you email client (Mail in my case) as an external editor, this still works but there is a better way. Create an Alias/Shortcut for your program and place it in the Export Actions Folder (see Below for the location). Now select the images you want to email. Hit CMD/CTRL Shift E to Export and use the following settings:
File Format: Jpeg, Quality:60, Constrain (ticked) Width:700, Length:700, Color Space:sRGB, dpi: 72 and in the Export action select Mail.app (or your email client name). This will open a reduced size and quality copy of your files in Mail ready to email. To reduce the size further you could try Quality 50 instead of 60.



While you can't add more than one external editor, you can export to as many programs as you like by putting an alias/shortcut to the program in you Export Actions folder in the Adobe Lightroom folder. This is in a hidden folder in My Documents called Application Data on XP and in your User Library on OS X i.e. My Documents/Application Data/Adobe Lightroom/Export Actions or User/Library/Adobe Lightroom/Export Actions

More from PPE

Martin Evening has posted an enlightening article on Beta 5 and the Adobe presence at PPE over at Photoshopnews:
http://photoshopnews.com/2006/11/08/photo-plus-east-new-york-2006/

Beta 5 at PPE

Jeff Schewe demoed Lightroom Beta 5 at Photo Plus Expo in New York. He did add that caveat that he was unaware if it would actually be released to the public. Among the other things added was a spot healing tool. Here's a collection of posts from people at PPE:
Rob Reese:
"I attended a couple of sessions on Lightroom at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York yesterday. I thought folks might like to know that Jeff Schewe was showing Beta 5 at the Adobe booth. He was clear that this didn't mean that a Beta 5 was ever going to be released and still wouldn't say when the production version would be out.

I wish I had taken better notes. One very interesting thing he demonstrated was the healing brush (very cool). He suggested that in the final implementation you would be able to remove dust spots and then apply the "healing" to other shots with the same spot pattern.

He also demonstrated the variable zoom. You will be able to pick from a list ranging from 1:4 to (in the demo) 1:11. The 1:11 is apparently a programmer's joke (like the amp in the movie "Spinal Tap" - it's one better isn't it?).

Wish I could remember more. I'm not an in-depth user of Lightroom at this point, so I'm not sure if some of the other things he showed were new or not.

OK - I remembered two more things:

There are now view options in the print module, showing an overlay of printer and profile selection on the image.

"plug ins" will be accomplished by allowing folks to add additional modules (like Library and Develop), so in the future I can imagine a Noise Ninja or Lightzone tab. However, the SDK will not be available until after the 1.0 release. "

DAJr comments :
"I was also at the PPE show on Friday, and caught one of Jeff's LR presentations at the Adobe booth. For those who want the option of NOT using the database, there is hope... While I didn't see it "in action," I did catch a glimpse of a new "FOLDERS" tab on the left, in Library mode, next to the "COLLECTIONS" and "SHOOTS" tabs. I can only hope that this is for the purpose of using LR in folder, rather than database mode.

DAJr
www.dajphotography.com
"

Interesting.
In this same thread, Michael Tapes mentions that Beta 5 still may not be a public Beta. Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape has previously stated that Beta 4 was the last beta and having a .1 release with 4.1 seems to support that. As a lot of people felt that these Public Betas were more like Alphas, it may be that the feature complete Betas may not see the light of day to keep stuff secret for the V1.0 release. Time will tell.

Resources

Adobe Evangelist George Jardine has started a post on Lightrrom resources worth checking out:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=589&threadid=1212473&enterthread=y