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.
Hi Sean, Great additional website as ever thanks. I have a quick question regarding .PNG files… they don’t come out transparent… Is it a glitch (or me). I use png-24 in CS5.
I looked at it in a browser preview in opera and firefox… Any ideas..?
Thx.
Steve
Hey Steve, never had an issue with PNGs before. How is the original file? Is there somewhere I can look at an example?
Hi Sean. Love the ease of design of LRE, but I have a problem with the first site that I put up live yesterday. It looks great on my home PC, but I tried it at work and the slideshow gives a blank blue screen once it tries to move from the first image on the page.
Site is: http://www.stephenroberts.net/hallan.
Could it be JS incompatibility with my work PC?
Cheers, Steve
Could be Steve, I’ve not seen it in any browser normally. Looks fine in Chrome, Safari and Firefox on my machine.
Thanks Sean!
Hi Sean: Lr Exhibition and Lr Portfolio support Lightroom 3? Only LR 2?
Thanks
Both LR2 and 3 are supported from the same file.
Im sure I am missing something simple here, but I have an issue.
When I change set an image for my Home page, then move to the about page and set an image, it sets the image for all pages.
Even when I set up a gallery, the first image becomes the image on all pages.
How do I set a different image on each page?
I have no idea exactly what you’re doing to make this happen, but the image code for each page is different, so if you enter a different number in each section, then it’s different. Of course, if you’re not on that page, then you won’t see a change.
Nice! I like this.
Just applied it to one of my websites, in fact: http://www.mpetersonphoto.com
Thanks Sean!
Sean, Exhibition runs on Lightroom 3 Beta?
It does, and includes code for LR3 watermarking.
It’s jQuery, a javascript frame work, so it should be visible on iP*’s
Sean, a possibly dumb question but I’m not easily embarrassed: Is the slide show function in v1.2 Flash or is it HTML5 or whatever it is that is compatible with Apple’s iPhone or iPad?
Thanks, Bob
I don’t know if its been mentioned yet but can you make the back and forward arrows only visible when the mouse is on the right and left 20% of the photo. Its driving me nuts that the arrows are always visible and on top of my photos. Or at least make the arrows fade away when the mouse is not moving.
Todd,
The links to the arrow locations is in the UI, you can put whatever you like in there. They’re in the ‘resources/images’ folder and there’s a video on accessing it on youtube, beside the video in this post. Even just edit the ones there. These are only sample arrows.
Hi,
For some reason, I have tried a few times now, it will not install at all. I have followed “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” and I just don’t see anything different. Do I have to add it as a plugin too? HELP!
That should be it Heather. Few questions. Can you post a screen capture of your folder layout showing where ‘LRB_Exhibition’ is? What version of Lightroom are you running?
Hey Paul..
@1200, not really. The files are simply big files, no real way around it, unless you do a batch save for web after the fact in Photoshop. If you do this save out as quality 100 though, to lessen the double save as JPEG.
The button takes a while to load. I should put it in a hidden div to preload it. Didn’t think of that.
@Alt tags, yes, you can use it for SEO, that’s the intention. I’m looking for an elegant way of displaying the captions, but still not happy yet.
Sean, 1.2 rocks! Is there a workaround for faster loading on the 1200px display? Also when I first installed 1.2 I enabled the slideshow and the start button never changed so I disabled it until I fully understood it’s operation. Is it possible that it is something that can’t be visualized until uploaded?
Having been an LRB user for more than a year, I must say that the latest iteration of Exhibition is a fine accomplishment. Thank you for your diligence and creativity.
Could you expand on the “Changed Alt tags to use Image Info title”? I think I’ve got an idea of the benefit but would like to hear your thoughts. Can I leverage it for SEO?
As my images vary in aspect ratio and orientation, what I do is place them inside a box that fits the layout if layout is a fixed shape like in this case. So maybe two portraits together or a single image framed to fit does the job.
That would do it alright..
I do intend adding iPhone support of some kind in the future. Custom sizing was the only way to allow for aspect ratios for different camera systems, hence getting the priority in the current develop cycle.
I also think my post you took exception to should have been ‘not good for’ as opposed to ‘no good for’. A small typo elision, but changes tone somewhat, particularly without context of face to face interaction.
Eh! I’m not trolling. I came across this plugin and thought it would be able to solve a a particular [small] display problem, that all. I was simply trying to clarify what it could do. Not sure why you thought otherwise!? But then misunderstanding tone and intent is one of the perils of online communication. Maybe if I’d said “So Exhibition is not appropriate for making websites for smaller screens then”, it may not have been taken the wrong way.
And I think I’ve said before you should charge more for your plugins.
If this one can do user specified [smaller] sizes then I’d buy it.
Jeremy.
Your habit of specifically trolling around the net poking and prodding to get a reaction doesn’t wash with me. I’m not interested. I have no problem with the specific trouble you are having elsewhere, but this matter is closed.
If you feel your €15 is better spent somewhere else, then by all means, spend it somewhere else.
By customers I mean customers who are making website, not viewing the photographer’s website.
So Exhibition is no good for making websites for smaller screens then. As I thought it would be ideal for targeting them.
Customers that only see one image loading might well have reason to wonder why it’s loading so slowly. But you only care about you ultimately.
Whatever size you want, hundreds if you want. Except that each mini site requires the encoding for that size, because all the layouts are based on the image size. Of course if you can find a designer that will do that for €15, more power to ya Jeremy.