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.
Yes Bob, you do.
However, you could remove the img tag from the generated file.
Sean, I've already downloaded 1.1 and I'm enjoying it even more than 1.0, which is a lot….even if you haven't come up with an idea for captions yet. 🙂 However, this question: Do I have to have an image on Blank Page or About page? I'd like to have a blank page with text on it, but when I empty the Image on Blank Page field for example I get an error page: "…Web GalleriesLRB_Exhibition.lrwebengineblank.html:7: bad argument #1 to 'floor' (number expected, got string)"
==Bob
Hi Sean
How can we download 1.1 I went to the link on the email after purchasing 1.0 but it downloads the same file.
Also still can't figure out how to get email in the contact section to function?
Thanks
Ronan
It's more for advertising 🙂
But yes it is handy for troubleshooting.
Did an SEO course this week, so will add some of the features from that.
Sean. I didn't know about the cutoff, I was no beta tester;-)
ALT can be helpful for SEO so that’s good news for 1.2.
For the meta generator I guessed it would be handy for you when you have to review somebody's site.
Thanks for your great work!
Regards,
Peter
Hi Peter, I approved your other comment too, but Blogger gave an error and now it's gone 🙁
Cutoff for 1.1 bugs was 2 weeks ago. Alt isn't used strictly because you can't hover over the image. I will change it in 1.2 for SEO though.
Re: the meta generator, the number isn't really important, it's more that the name is there.
Hi Sean,
Maybe it's already mentioned before but it seems that the 'alt' text is not working. Whatever I choose for title in Lightroom the code shows only the filename.
Regards,
Peter
I've been looking at 1.1 so long I can't remember what's in 1.0, but 1.1 has a slider called Top that lets you change the page position.
Hi Sean,
Would it be possible to make the gallery content on the middle of the page (in height) instead of on the top of the page?
Best regards,
Mads
Hi Sean
I cant get the contact me page to work. It says "can't send email to" and under that lists the email address that you enter into the "your email address" section. I know its just something stupid I'm doing in the set up, but cant figure it out!
Thanks
Ronan
Sean, I suspected as much, but certainly wanted to bring it up…just in case. OBTW G.A. works fine now.
It's just the little things.
Thanks again for the great support.
Yes, they both create websites.
But they've entirely different designs and gallery engines. Not to mention being written quite differently under the hood.
I can't really help you decide, because I can't preempt your tastes or needs.
What is the main difference between Exhibition and LRB Portfolio?
I'm no technical expert and to my untrained eyes it looks like they do approximately the same thing..??
So I am confused which one to buy.
Thanks in advance for your answer.
Michaelbs
Fixed 2 days after 1.0 was launched. It think it was even listed in the fixes so far post about a week later. Beta testers have been slow in responding and I've been away/am going away.
Thanks for the prompt response Sean!
I just noticed another little thing, probably fixed in 1.1 but just to be sure:
Regarding the issue with the little numbers under the galleries, please note that on all galleries they are correctly placed with a space under the photo… However in gallery 5 they are not. The numbers appear very close to the broder of the frame. Take a llok at my website – http://www.lubezky.com – as example.
Thank you for your help and pelase feel free to delete this comment – only meant to help, and it it has been taken care for, no need to keep it!
Saludos!
Sergio
Hi Sergio
1. I'll have a look at this.
2. 1.1 can put the galleries first, beyond that we're into something that requires thousands of lines of code, even then it might not work well. There's no easy way to create a sort order.
3.If I remove the ':' from Own Text field that would do it.
3b. Now that's an idea I've never had suggested before. Might be easier said that done, because getting lua working inside PHP is painful. I've done it before, so hopefully a similar mechanism will work again.
Any changes won't make 1.1 though, which is ready to go apart from the fact that I'm away next week and can be there to support it if something goes wrong.
Sean,
This is a fantastic idea, I am VERY happy with the result! Here are my 2cents and wish list:
1. In Chrome, the line breaks in the about page are not respected.
2. In future versions it would be nice to be able to change the order in the menu… For example, start with about, then galleries and finally contact.
3. In the contact page,it would be nice to be able to add some text, as well as change the default thank you for sending e-mail page.
Once again, thanks for the fantastic work! My site is http://www.lubezky.com
Paul, I hate to say this, but that's probably from your cutting and pasting of the ID. The code in both galleries is identical.
Portfolio code
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("$model.nonCSS.Analytics");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
Exhibition code
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("$model.nonCSS.Analytics");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
Sean,
New Exhibition site has been up for a week. My google analytics has shown no traffic. I looked at the source code and compared it to my LRB Portfolio code and it seems that there is an extra space created before the closing quote ("ua-xxxx-1 "). I corrected this on my site and I will let you know what happens, but that is the only item different between LRBE and LRBP that I could see. Gotta have my analytics. Paul
Hi Gary,
Having the first page as a gallery is on the list for 1.2. 1.1 is ready to go right now. (waiting on testers final reports)
Having a different aspect ratio choices would actually require a lot of rewriting internally (i.e. to make it a choice), because the image sizes constrain each other. Even if you do go for it yourself you'll be limited to 700px wide with the 600px max height.
In the CSS and the jQuery, change all 900's to 700's in the exported files and it should work. In this case it's probably easier to work on the exported files (because Lua is so easy to break).
Rename the exported gallery1.html to index.html and then remove the a href for gallery1 on the 3 pages (index.html, about.html and contact.html).
I'll look at ratios again, because 4:3 is also a popular ratio.