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.
Grand. That's a doable request. Might not be 1.1, but it'll happen at some stage.
I think if you drop the rotator.php file into the 'large' directory and change the image to 'large/rotator.php' it should work. That's from memory though, but the instructions should be clear.
Hi Sean,
I was referring to the titles in the contact form.
Thanks for explaining the license issue. I thought if it is distributed under a public license you could just add it.
A List Apart is where I found the one I mentioned btw.
I guess if I can figure it out how to get it to work myself I am in the clear.
-Andreas
Hi Andreas,
The issue is with License, not ability. A List Apart have at least 2 tutorials on this, and I've used the script myself on personal sites. It's adding it to a website generator that means it requires a different license. Generally they just point at the images folder.
There's more than one set of text in Contact. There's the titles for the form, the describing text, and the information text. Not all can be accessed via CSS, so which are you referring to?
Hi Sean,
I have two php scripts, but have no idea how to make them work, I tried but wasn't successful.
If you are interested let me know how I can send them to you.
I'm also wondering if there is a way to add font, weight, size sliders for the contact form. At the moment I just changed it directly in the contact.html and css file.
Excuse my messing with your design.
Mitch,
There is only 1.0 of this plugin. It's about 2 weeks old. LRB Portfolio is a different plugin, it's up to version 2.51. They're not the same, although they do provide similar functionality for the same price.
Hi Andreas,
A php rotation script would do this, the problem is knowing enough PHP to write one, or finding one that allows commercial use.
Hi Sean,
By rotating I meant loading different images when the index page reloads, I choose the wrong word.
Something like a randomizer script. Maybe load all the images in the collection and then randomly select an image to display on the landing page.
I have little knowledge of coding and I don't know if it is possible to add such a script to what you are doing.
LUA looks pretty complicated to me, thanks for creating the plug-ins.
Purchased LRB and got LRB version 1.0 downloaded again from email link got 1.0 version again. How do i get LRB 2.51 or latest version?
Thanks Sean, Exhibition shows up just as I was thinking of a site update. Fine work.
Hi Paul,
There's no way to decide by page if the ID plate is present. It's global.
You could try making 2 exports, one with and one with. Then copy the .html files from the one that doesn't to the one that does, except the index.html file.
That should work.
Hi Andreas,
'Bug'ing me is fine. It's impossible to find all issues with plugins that offer this much control. Lua (the underlying coding language) is a strange beast and doesn't follow a lot of normal rules, so sometimes it does unexpected things.
Entering a period changes it from a number to a string, which cause the mess. Johnny V reported this and I fixed it last night believe it or not. For now, don't enter a period. There's no need. In fact in the code there's no period, it's just Lightroom sticking it in on in the UI.
Because the arrows are images, the browser thinks you're trying to select it for dragging. No way around it that I know. This happens on so many sites too.
When you speak of rotation, do you mean a small amount, or 90 degrees? If it's 90 degrees, just use a virtual copy of the image and rotate it in Lightroom.
Hi Paul,
I assume you're referring to the background image. It's just there as a sample. Feel free to edit it, or add your own.
Sean
Sean,
I keep bugging you, but I just thought of something else. (feel free to delete my comments)
Would it be possible to include a script that rotates the index page image?
-Andreas
Sean,
When previewing a gallery in Safari or Chrome, double-clicking on the right or left control highlights (blue box) the control_left.png + control_right.png file. It doesn't happen in Firefox though.
Any idea why that is and how to get rid of it?
Obviously it has something to do with the browser.
-Andreas
Hi Sean,
Not sure if this is a bug, but just wanted to share this.
Entering a number with a period like 1.00 instead of 1 in the "Image on Homepage (or Contact page)" returns gibberish/code in the LR window, and also exports that image as well. I can send you a jpg if you like.
Haven't tried the other page settings.
Sean, your new permutation is really great. How do I change the grey sweep to black? Can the nameplate be removed from the galleries, about and contact pages?
Exhibition is super, I'm ready to update my site thanks to your great work.
Paul
Andreas,
1.1 will be out soon. Just not yet.
Re: Banana Album? you'd need to ask the developers of the product. It's beyond my basic knowledge of Flash.
Hi John,
After peeking I see why this is. It's literally that a single space is missing. I've one or 2 more things to do before I push out 1.1.
In the meantime, if you want to fix it yourself in the plugin: Open the LRB_Exhibition package, and open the offending pages (looks like gallery4, gallery5 and gallery6. Go to line 33 in gallery4, and line 36 in gallery5 and gallery6.
Find <%= yikes %><% end %> and insert a space to make it look like <%= yikes %> <% end %>
i.e. between the and the <% end %>
On some pages the image numbers at the bottom are spaced out nicely, but on others they are all jammed together. Not sure how to fix that: http://cornicello.com/gallery5.html is a sample where they are bunched up.
Hi Sean,
Never mind my previous comment.
I misread and thought 1.1 was already out.
Do you think it is possible something like Banana Album could be developed for LR? I really like the layout and resizing behavior.
http://www.a-kornfeld.com/
http://www.bananalbum.net/
Best
Andreas