Written from the ground up with new internal code and ideas, LRB Exhibition is a new ‘Website in a gallery’ plugin for Lightroom’s Web module. From the Portfolio family, it allows the user to create home, about, contact and general use pages, along with 6 galleries and 2 external links.
The main image area in the gallery is based around a single image preview in an enclosed space. Using jQuery, each slide can be navigated to either using the navigation arrows, or numbered links to the relevant slide. LRB Exhibition is far more mature that LRB Portfolio was at version 1.0, in fact it’s almost par with LRB Portfolio 2.51, and probably equal to 2.4. It does however have features not available to LRB Portfolio, such as per page image and text placement and a floating text box.
Install.
Mac: Double click on LRB_Exhibition.lrwebengine to install.
PC: In Lightroom Preferences (Edit>Preferences), click Presets. Click ‘Show Lightroom Presets Folder’. Open the folder. Look for a folder called ‘Web Galleries’. If it’s not there, create it and drop LRB_Exhibition.lrwebengine inside it. Restart Lightroom
Intro Video.
Here’s a quick look at using the gallery. Click through for the full size verion.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=047NxVFRBqI]
There will be more forthcoming.
Basics
A basic look at how this gallery works:
Create a collection of images you want on the website. Decide how many galleries you will have and then sort them into order for each gallery. You might have 35 images for the first gallery, 20 for the next and maybe 26 for the 3rd of the 3 galleries you’ve decided you’d like.
Next go to Web and select LRB Exhibition from the list. Make sure All Fimstrips Photos is selected in the Filmstrip, or that you’ve selected all the Photos. Go to the Gallery section and enter those numbers in each gallery section. Give the galleries names for the menu. Now go add details to the Home, About and Contact pages. Same for the Blank page, which can be used for pricing, or services etc. These page have individual text box sizes and locations, along with a choice of locations for the image on the page.
Once you’ve customised the gallery to your taste, be sure to save your settings as a Template. While Lightroom will remember the settings for the collection, if something bad happens, you’re better off with a Template to get those settings back.
A lot of the internal stuff works in a similar way to LRB Portfolio, so you can access that User Guide for more details. Like I say, there will be more video tutorials to add usage.
Features
- Home, About, Contact and Blank page
- 6 Galleries, 2 external links
- Google Analytics support
- SEO features built in
- Custom jQuery Gallery
- Multiparagraph, floating text boxes
- Clean layout
- 900X600 images
- Compatible with Lightroom 2 and 3
- W3C vaild (base code)
Sample Gallery
Click to view a sample gallery.
Buy
LRB Exhibition is €15 plus VAT.
For the first week of sales, you can get a 20% discount using the sales code LRBEX20. Remember to update the Cart after you enter the code, or it will not be applied. Please note the download allows for 9 updates, after which you require a new purchase.
The Future
Like any software, LRB Exhibition will take on a life of it’s own in the wild. Feel free to ask questions or add suggestions in the comments.
Site Title is the header text in the home page, Page Header is what appears on the top of the page. Did you change the Page Header?
Sean,
The site title is not working for me, what can be?
In the HTML files (all files) the tag TITLE is without the information that I have completed in plugin.
Ragards.
5000 overall, but don't expect blistering performance with that number of images when up on the server. Images tend to load in parallel.
I may have missed this: Is there a limit on the number of photos that can be placed in each gallery? In that regard, is there a limit on the total number of photos the application can handle overall?
There isn't Marty. There's more to it than just the rename, there's also the fact that the file is generated as index.html and that Lightroom needs the file for preview
Your server sounds rather odd TBH.. Never heard that before.
Sean – is there a way to control the name of the home page – as in "default.htm" other than opening each HTML file and doing a search/replace? I've got a server out there that is finicky and doesn't like INDEX.HTML. Thanks, and great job on Exhibition.
Hi Dru, this is an entirely new product. There is a 20% discount until Sat next, but that's it. Portfolio hasn't become any less useful or less supported with the introduction of this plugin. In fact the last update happened while it was in development.
As website creation goes, it's not exactly expensive. Webdesigners would probably eat through the cost in 15 minutes, and you'd still need to supply the text and images!
It looks nice Sean! I purchased the LRB portfolio only 2 weeks ago. Do you offer the LRB exhibition as an upgrade or a discounted price?
Thanks, dru
1) I'm glad you see my problem! I could try some kind of popout, again, it would need to be nice.
2) Like I say, the numbers are not actual links. Literally what happens is the jQuery reads the number and multiplies it by 900px and then jumps that far along the images. I can change the code using a hover, but right now I know of no way of making it stick once clicked.. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying I don't know how.
3) I've already pointed out how to remove the menu and ID Plate backgrounds here. Just empty the BG image boxes. 1.1 now has a popup menu with 6 transparency choices from clear to black for both.
You can of course edit the generated CSS.
1) I was hoping you had an idea for placement that's not ugly. I'm still puzzling on that myself.
2) Folks looking at my photos – usually lots of dogs (the subjects, not the viewers) – need a way to identify the image they're looking at. This of course relates to 1) above.
3) Well, I did set to "none" the background color behind the identity plate and behind Home Description 2 and it works just fine for me.
1) This is the default code for that section, it's not attached to anything yet, because there is simply nowhere useful to put the info. Feel free to suggest somewhere. If it looks ugly, it won't happen.
2) The numbers are highlighted by jQuery, so they are not actual links. I'll see if they'll respond to an onClick colour change, but I think hovering over them might reset that anyway.
3) You mean the back of the text? You can't, it's there to help the text float over the image so your lettering doesn't get lost in the image underneath.
Several more questions for you:
I have set "Labels" to "Captions" assuming it would display the caption in the exif data but it does not. What am I missing? Can I display captions of individual photos in the Galleries? How? Where will they display? Is the position adjustable?
In Galleries, how can I display Image Numbers, or better yet, have the small image number turn a different color so a viewer can describe the image he/she is looking at?
Where can I change the background color behind the Site Title and Home Description to "None"?
Thanks for your help, I'm having fun with this.
Hi Bob,
Understood. What you're seeing is a result of the cropping of the shot. To fill the frame, you need to crop the images to 3X2. The current crop looks close to 4X3.
Sorry, I should have been more clear regarding the arrows comment.
When I look at your You Tube video and the example web site, landscape photo images cover the portfolio completely and the navigation arrows are superimposed over the image. My images leave a margin on each side so the navigation arrows are only superimposed over the portfolio.
Even though I am still working on it, I have uploaded my working copy of http://www.bobrickertphotography.com so you can more easily see what I mean if you go to my site.
Thanks.
Bob
Couldn't find an icon so had to make one.. Added to the list Luiz. You can of course use your own with the 'Own Link' and adding an![]("")
in the text part.
For the people asking for feature requests, these will all go into a 1.1 release to be launched in the future.
Not everything will make it in because somethings are easy and get added quickly, some are much harder and take longer. Finally some simply are not in the design brief for this plugin, but might well appear in another plugin at some stage. I do have a 3rd website plugin in mind.
Hi Sean,
You can please add the Flickr site (and icon) (in contact info) too in 1.1 version?
Thanks, great job!
The commands are here in my 1.1 working copy.
I have no idea what you are saying about the arrows.
Sean, I am trying to understand some of the comments –
You responded to Luiz with — Number Height=done
Swap=on the list.
Where are these commands?
You responded to Bob re the arrow commands superimposed over the photos as being part of the design. I am unable to get my images large enough that this happens ( I have the image size set as maximum for both height and width.
Thanks.
Bob
Ah, I see. Far be it from me to argue design choice!
I like the application a lot and am already thinking about various ways to use it.
It's called design choice, Bob. Simple as that.
Putting the arrows outside the layout would really clutter up the design.
You could of course remove the text from the arrows section and have nothing there. Clicking will still go back or forward.