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.
Sean if you have customers wondering why large images load more slowly, I think they’ll get confused a lot earlier than that stage! 😉
Simply put in large capitals at apposite point in instructions ‘LARGER IMAGES LOAD MORE SLOWLY’.
So making site say 600×400, 600×200, 600×600 or 480×320 is no problem then. Outputting images from LR to any particular size is not a problem.
Hey Sean, I just downloaded “Exhibition” last night. It looks great and am anxious to jump in. You mention the 1.2 beta…any rough idea of its release date? I too am curious about pushing the 600 pixel dimension a bit.
Introducing new features can often bring in bugs of their own, so we’re at the testing stage. I’ve a new drop to go to testers tonight. If they give the thumbs up, then it’ll go out this week, otherwise, hopefully next week so I can get Portfolio 2.6 out.
1.2 beta is already up to 1200X800 max, and while you may not see the need to limit file sizes, you’re also not doing my customer support (e.g. why do my pictures load so slowly online?)!
As to targeting sizes, yes you can, but Lightroom would need to generate these sizes. I’m happy to charge a custom design rate if you want these in plugin form.
Sean, you did not answer the question about minimum size – which was actually the main part of my question.
I still do not see any need to limit max size even though images may all be in same div container or that someone may copy them. It’s up to the end user to determine what is best, for their needs and you may want 6 large 12000×800 images which may be quicker to download that 50 smaller 900×600 images. You can target websites to end user screen sizes as well.
hola,quisiera saber como poner las fotos en las galerias,como ejemplo: galeria Naturaleza las fotos de naturleza,Paisaje las de pasisaje. es decir crear las galerias con las fotos correspondientes a cada nombre.
un saludo
Google translate isn’t making much of this y hablo solo un pocito español.
Each gallery can be named in each gallery section, and the file named so, Naturaleza, y naturaleza.html. If you want a description at the start, make a text slide in Photoshop, or via the Slideshow Module. 1.2 will have Alt tags, but these are really only for search purposes. I’ve spent the time on implementing a slideshow and expandable sizes. Hopefully for 1.3, I’ll have a way of displaying these as captions.
I was just wondering about doing sizes other than 900x600px.I could use this for various things, but not if it was just the one size.
I saw a reference in one video to 900x600px being the max size for some reason, but what about minimum size? And why have a maximum size? Surely the size should be able to set by the end user to suit whatever their need is.
This has been covered in the comments already. When you load a gallery, you load all the images, not just the first one (they’re all in the same container div). So for 20 images @ 300K=6Mb per gallery. As you get larger, the files are getting even larger, taking even longer to load, even on fast lines. Couple that with the fact that a larger proportion of people are still working at 1024X768 and under, and that you can get a reasonable 9X6 print from a 900X600 image, I chose this as a maximum. You’re not obliged to buy.
Sean,
Is it possible to adjust the size and position of the home page image separately from the rest of the images that go in the gallery?
Or does this have to be done in Photoshop such that all images end up 900 x 600 ?
Thanks
Hi Ian,
One of the major suckages about the Lightroom web SDK is that if you want more than one size, even just for one image, it has to generate all of the images at that size. I do have a tutorial I’ve been rehearsing related to working around this. It’s based on using Print to create 2 verticals in a horizontal 900X600 image, but can be used to make any look you like.
If I have ten images in a collection…..and I want to use the first one for the Home Page and the next nine in Gallery 1….how do I go about it? I have been trying and don’t seem to be having any success.
Thanks,
–Bob
Sean, the new blog look is really nice. Thanks for making the comment type a bit larger. It makes it a lot easier to scan the back and forth for those great nuggets.
Sean,
I think after the download, I accidentally delete the email.
=(
Luiz,
The email you got does specifically tell you to save the email or bookmark the link. Did you search your email for LRB Exhibition Purchase?
Ronan, that message is a generic catchall, and often indicates that the host doesn't support mail().php fully. This is why there's a checkbox to turn the contact form off.
Hi Bob, when you choose Export, the folder you select is where the files will go. Depending on whether or not you specified a new name, it'll be the blank.html/about.html page you need to edit.
look for the img tag towards the bottom.
However, you could remove the img tag from the generated file.
Thanks. I assume I can do this with a text editor once I find the generated file, which is where?
–Bob
Sean, the update is a strong one. Thanks for the great work, you really smoothed out LRBE.
Hi Sean
Thanks for reply. Now I do have 1.1 and did replace the mail.html file. I still have the same email issue, when you fill in your details on the contact me page and press send it says it cant send the email i.e. that people cant contact by completing the form.
The page is here:
http://www.fotagenic.com/contact.html
Thanks
Ronan
Hi Sean,
How I recovery my link to download the 1.1 version?
Thanks
Luiz
I forgot to ask about the email issue. Without more detail I have no way of helping you.
Did you install the file ronan? The webengine has the same name, but is different internally.