PhotographyVoter.com (PV) is a great site that allows you to see what's new in the world of photography. Stories are voted on by the sites members so it helps you find the really interesting stuff easily.

As you can see I have added vote buttons to the site to make life easier for PV users to tell the world how great my blogs are. Now I have worked out how to do the same for my rss feed and I thought I would share it with everyone. So this is what you do:

1. Sign up with Feedburner and set your site feed up to use feedburner (all the instructions for this are on the feedburner site).
2. On the Optimize tab select Feedflare
   
   
3. In the box marked (Enter or paste Unit URL) enter this: http://www.shepherdpics.com/FEEDFLARE.XML
   
   
   
4. Click Add New Flare
5. Check the feed box next to Vote for this on Photography Voter.com
   
   
6. Then click Save

That's it! I hope you find it of use.

Labels: feedflareUnit, Web

Well September has only just started and it's a pretty fine month in my opinion. After an August where events conspired to stop me taking hardly any pictures at all, I managed to get down to Leigh-on-Sea for the dawn on Saturday morning and capture some interesting light.



In addition I am chuffed to bits that this site has been awarded "website of the month" by Outdoor Photography magazine. It's actually for the October issue but magazines being what they are the issue is out now. A big welcome to all those hundreds (indeed hundreds, I checked my logs) of people who saw the article and decided to check out the site. Hope you will stick around.

The final piece of good news is that I have a gig. Yes a gig, not an exhibition. I have been invited to exhibit my pictures as part of a charity concert. More details real soon.

Yup, September is a good month.

Labels: Awards, Exhibitions, News, Site Updates, Web

LightroomGalleries.com keeps going from strength to strength. Joe has now added a whole raft of features to the free templates there including paypal support.

I won't be doing any more with Lightroom web galleries as I generate all my own galleries using iView Media Pro and the Lightroom Stuff came about as the result of being dared to do it by John Beardsworth. So those of you who have come here looking for stuff on Lightroom and Paypal are welcome to checkout the related links below or surf on over to LightroomGalleries.com and use theirs.


Related Posts

• Creating Web Gallery Templates for Lightroom
  
• ECommerce sites with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart
  
• ECommerce sites with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart..continued
• Lightroom Paypal Galleries

Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web, Workflow

Darryn Mckay of mckayphotography.com.au has taken the Lightroom Paypal Web Gallery template I produced and made it into some really good looking and effective Wedding galleries.

It's great to see people taking my experiment and producing something really useful.

I'd love to see any more galleries people have made with the template, why not add a comment linking to your site that uses lightroom and paypal below.

---

Related Posts

• Creating an ECommerce site using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart
• ECommerce sites with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart..continued

Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web

I must say that over the last month or so LightroomGalleries.com has become a really useful resource for those looking for something different to the standard lightroom web galleries.

New flash and HTML galleries have appeared at quite a rate and it is probably the only place in the visible universe where you can find any documentation on how to make your own galleries.

A very well done to all concerned.

Labels: Lightroom, Web

The next stage in my image processing workflow is to output to my chosen media. the actual process depends on my intended target.

Web Site
I often display my work on websites like Ephotozine to get feedback on my work. To prepare for a web page I do the following in Photoshop.

• Add a border.
• Select Image>Mode and convert to 8bits per channel.
• Use Image>Image Size to reduce the size of the so that maximum height is 800 pixels and the maximum width is 1000 pixels. I ensure that bicubic sharper is selected.
• Then I convert to SRGB using Edit>Convert to profile.
• Finally I add an unsharp mask of around 40%, 1 pixel threshold 1.
• use Save For Web to reduce the final image size to around 200K.

All of this has been recorded as an action in Photoshop so it is actually a matter of clicking and waiting for a few seconds.

My Web Galleries
I will cover part 4 of my workflow (archiving) soon but for the moment trust me when I say it relies on iView Media Pro quite heavily. My web galleries are generated directly from iView.

A catalogue set for the gallery is created and all items selected for the gallery are added to it. Each picture has the comments updated and a title added. The Gallery is then generated and uploaded through Dreamweaver.

Print
For Print output the image is resized to the required output size at 300dpi with bicubic-smoother selected. I then use the professional sharpening toolkit from The Lights Right Studio to sharpen the image with specific settings for ink-jet at 300DPI on matte paper.

Finally the prints are produced on an Epson 2100 printer on to Epson archival matte paper using genuine Epson inks. Prints are left to dry for 24 hours then checked and signed in pencil and mounted using acid free mountboard.

Part 4 covers the final part of the workflow - Archival.


My Workflow

• Capture
• Processing
• Output
• Archiving

Labels: iView Media Pro, Photoshop, Web, Workflow

Over at lightroomgalleries.com Joe has got galleries with paging working...hurrah!

Why not take a look at the site, it looks like it will develop into a very useful resource.

Labels: Lightroom, Web, Workflow

Those of you who are interested in Lightroom web templates (and there does seem to be an awful lot of you) will be pleased to know that I have extended the template to add two new features:

• Sequential numbering for each item.
• Next & Previous buttons for each image allowing users to easily page through.

Install instructions are the same as for the previous version except you will need to download this new version of the file from here: paypalLightroomForwardBack.zip

I will be leaving each of the different versions available so that you can see how each of the elements was added to the template. hopefully this will help people develp their own versions.

I am currently working on getting paging working.

Things I have yet to work out is how to get keywords & descriptions in to the source xml.

After that I will look at how to get settings in to the lightroom panels...still a long way to go.

---

Related Posts

• Creating Web Gallery Templates for Lightroom
  
• ECommerce sites with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart
  
• Lightroom Paypal Galleries

Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web, Workflow

In my previous post I covered what I have learned so far about Adobe Lightroom Web Gallery Templates.

Using what I have learnt so far I have created a template for web-gallerys that uses the paypal shopping cart. It's far from perfect..but I intend to re-visit the issues when I get a chance, and others might be able to progress things faster than me.

To use the template:

1. Download the paypalLightroom.zip file.

2. Unzip it to the Web Galleries folder (by default you don't have one so you will need to create it):

• On Mac, <your home directory>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Web Galleries/.
  

• On Windows, put the gallery in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Web Galleries.

On a PC the Application Data directory is hidden so you will need to enable "show hidden folders" before you can browse to it.

3. Edit the transformer.xslt file:

near the top you will find a section that looks like this:

<!-- paypal Settings -->
<xsl:variable name="PayPalAccount">You@there.com</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="ReturnScreen">www.test.com</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="CancelScreen">www.test.com</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="CurrencyCode">GBP</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="CurrencySymbol">&pound;</xsl:variable>

<!-- Individual Sale Items -->
<xsl:variable name="Item1Description">10&quot;x20" Print</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item1CodeNo">100</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item1Price">150</xsl:variable>

<xsl:variable name="Item2Description">11&quot;x22" Print</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2CodeNo">101</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2Price">155</xsl:variable>

<xsl:variable name="Item3Description">10&quot;x20" Print framed</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3CodeNo">102</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3Price">150</xsl:variable>

<xsl:variable name="Item4Description">11&quot;x22" Print framed</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item4CodeNo">103</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item4Price">155</xsl:variable>

You need to change the values between <> and <> on each line to reflect your settings.

The Settings:

Setting	Current Value	Description
PayPalAccount	You@there.com	Your paypal account ID
ReturnScreen	www.test.com	URL to return to after a succesful purchase
CancelScreen	www.test.com	URL to return to after the user has pressed cancel
CurrencySymbol	£	Currency symbol in HTML (£ = £, $ = $ € = €)
CurrencyCode	GBP	Currency code (GBP = pounds, USD = dollars, etc )
Item1Description	10"x20" Print	Description of first item type you sell
Item1CodeNo	100	A code number for this item if you have one
Item1Price	150	Price for item 1
Item2Description	11"x22" Print	Description of second item type you sell
Item2CodeNo	101	A code number for this item if you have one
Item2Price	155	Price for item 2
Item3Description	10"x20" Print framed	Description of third item type you sell
Item3CodeNo	102	A code number for this item if you have one
Item3Price	150	Price for item 3
Item4Description	11"x22" Print framed	Description of fourth item type you sell
Item4CodeNo	103	A code number for this item if you have one
Item4Price	155	Price for item 4

Having made all the changes, save the file.

4. Now use the new template

In Lightroom generate the web site using the new Paypal Template.

Summary

As I said it's not perfect yet but hopefully it will give those of you who wish to dabble, something to dabble with.

Update 16 April 2007

Improved version with forward and back buttons added.

---

Related Posts

• ECommerce sites with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart..continued
• Lightroom Paypal Galleries

Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web, Workflow

I have started looking at the process for creating your own custom HTML web galleries in Lightroom and I thought I would pass on what I have learnt so far.

1. There ain't much documentation out there.

For a flagship product like Lightroom Adobe seem to have been particularly tardy in providing the documentation as to how to create your own web galleries. The entire total of what I have found is this:

• This post in the Lightroom journal ,which updates this original post.
• This article, which majors on Flash but has a lot of useful nuggets of information.
• This pdf, which gives you some clue about the XML Specifications
• Seans Blog which is full of tips about Lightroom.
  

2. Getting Started

Check you have a Web Galleries folder (by default you don't) so you will need to create it:

• On Mac, <your home directory>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Web Galleries/.

• On Windows, put the gallery in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Web Galleries.

On a PC the Application Data directory is hidden so you will need to enable "show hidden folders" before you can browse to it.

Download the demo template from here: lightroom_wpg_example.zip

Unzip the file into the web galleries folder you just created.

If you now open Lightroom and go to the Web module, you should see this available as a new option:

Now close Lightroom as it caches the web templates so you won’t see them unless you close and reopen them.

3. Create your own web Gallery

Copy the example folder in Web Galleries and give it a new name.

Now open the galleryMaker.xml file and edit the values in the <galleryInfo> section to describe your template (unless you change these values Lightroom won’t detect your new template):

Original version
<galleryInfo>
<amg ver="0.5" />
<thumbnail path="preview.jpg" />
<galleryName>Demo Template</galleryName>
<galleryDescription></galleryDescription>
<gallerVersion ver="1.0" />
<livePreview enabled="yes" />
<creator company="Adobe Systems, Inc." designer="Adobe Lightroom Engineering" />
<category>Web photo gallery</category>
<identifier>com.adobe.wpg.demo1t</identifier>
<ag:galleryType>HTML</ag:galleryType>
<ag:maximumGallerySize>20</ag:maximumGallerySize>
</galleryInfo>

My Version

<galleryInfo>
<amg ver="0.5" />
<thumbnail path="preview.jpg" />
<galleryName>PayPal Template</galleryName>
<galleryDescription></galleryDescription>
<gallerVersion ver="1.0" />
<livePreview enabled="yes" />
<creator company="www.shepherdpics.com" />
<category>Web photo gallery</category>
<identifier>com.shepherdpics.wpg.paypal</identifier>
<ag:galleryType>HTML</ag:galleryType>
<ag:maximumGallerySize>20</ag:maximumGallerySize>
</galleryInfo>

Start Lightroom and you should now see your new template in the available list.

Once again close Lightroom.Edit the GalleryMaker.xml file to Generate the output sizes you need.

For my templates I wanted both thumbnails & large images so I changed the <sizes> section from this:

<sizes>
<size height="130" name="thumb" width="130" />
</sizes>

To this:

<sizes>
<size height="130" name="thumb" width="130" />
<size height="500" name="full" width="500" />
</sizes>

Though you might want loads of options - like this:

<sizes>
<size name="thumb" width="160" height="120" />
<size name="small" width="640" height="480" />
<size name="medium" width="880" height="660" />
<size name="large" width="1024" height="768" />
<size name="video" width="400" height="300" fps="30">
</sizes>

Open Lightroom and Export the web gallery to a new directory. If you open this directory you should see contents similar to this:

In the main directory are the index.html and individual html documents for each image. The thumbnail images have been created in the images/thumb directory and the larger images are in images/full.

4.Edit the transformer.xslt file

The transformer.xslt file is an XSLT template that you use to transform the XML in source.xml into XHTML files. If you didn't understand that last sentence you are in for quite a rough ride and it might be worth looking through some tutorials on XSLT now.

Some things I have learnt about the transformer.xslt file are:

• It does not support the <xsl:include> tag so you have to put everything in the same file.
• If you have any errors in your transformer.xslt file then Lightroom will just not generate the file…no error messages, no logs nothing.
• A good XSLT tool like Stylus Studio makes developing the pages considerably easier.

Some things I have still to work out are:

• How to implement multiple index pages
• How to get resource files (css/buttons/graphics) copied to the new directory
  
• Why Adobe picked quite such a complicated way of doing things.

Next blog I will be posting my first go at integrating Paypal and Lightroom Web-Galleries. This will include example download files for you to use.

I hope this posting has been of use, please feel free to add a comment if this has helped you or if you have discovered anymore information.

Labels: Lightroom, Web, Workflow

First visit Dave Beckermans guide to using iView and PayPal as it covers an awful lot of the basics you will need, The main difference between his method and mine is that he has individual sizes and prices for each picture where as my method is designed for a gallery where all the prints are the same sizes & prices.

Take a look at the Galleries on this site, to get an idea of how the web pages generated by this method. While you are there why not buy a picture or two.....you know you want to.

How to do it

• Download the Paypal.zip file.
• Unzip the contents into the iView HTML template directory which is under the Plug-ins directory of iView media pro.

Set your products and paypal items

Open the Media.html file (its in the paypal directory you just created) in notepad or an HTML Editor. Find the section that looks like this:
<!-- iView HTML Engine Directives
(iView:InMediaWidth 500)
(iView:InMediaHeight 500)
(iView:Variable name = "Gallery Title" default = "")
(iView:Variable name = "PayPalAccount" default = "paypal@paypal.com")
(iView:Variable name = "ReturnScreen" default = "http://www.yoursite.com/Success.html")
(iView:Variable name = "CancelScreen" default = "http://www.yoursite.com/Galleries.html")
(iView:Variable name = "CurrencySymbol" default = "£")
(iView:Variable name = "CurrencyCode" default = "GBP")
(iView:Variable name = "Item1Description" default = "18 x 12 inch Mounted print")
(iView:Variable name = "Item1CodeNo" default = "")
(iView:Variable name = "Item1Price" default = "75")
(iView:Variable name = "Item2Description" default = "18 x 12 inch Framed & Mounted print")
(iView:Variable name = "Item2CodeNo" default = "")
(iView:Variable name = "Item2Price" default = "125")
(iView:Variable name = "Item3Description" default = "24 x 18 Mounted print")
(iView:Variable name = "Item3CodeNo" default = "")
(iView:Variable name = "Item3Price" default = "250")
(iView:Variable name = "Item4Description" default = "24 x 18 inch Framed & Mounted print")
(iView:Variable name = "Item4CodeNo" default = "")
(iView:Variable name = "Item4Price" default = "300")
-->

You need to change the value in quotes for default for each line that begins with (iView:Variable name

The Settings:

Setting	Current Value	Description
Gallery Title		Title of your Gallery - best left blank
PayPalAccount	paypal@paypal.com	Your paypal account ID
ReturnScreen	http://www.yoursite.com/Success.html	URL to return to after a succesful purchase
CancelScreen	http://www.yoursite.com/Galleries	URL to return to after the user has pressed cancel
CurrencySymbol	£	Currency symbol in HTML (£ = £, $ = $ € = €)
CurrencyCode	GBP	Currency code (GBP = pounds, USD = dollars, etc )
Item1Description	18 x 12 inch Mounted print	Description of first item type you sell
Item1CodeNo		A code number for this item if you have one
Item1Price	75	Price for item 1
Item2Description	18 x 12 inch Framed & Mounted print	Description of second item type you sell
Item2CodeNo		A code number for this item if you have one
Item2Price	125	Price for item 2
Item3Description	24 x 18 Mounted print	Description of third item type you sell
Item3CodeNo		A code number for this item if you have one
Item3Price	250	Price for item 3
Item4Description	24 x 18 inch Framed & Mounted print	Description of fourth item type you sell
Item4CodeNo		A code number for this item if you have one
Item4Price	300	Price for item 4

Having made all the changes, save the file.

Creating the Galleries

Now go to iView and select the items that you wish to appear in your gallery.
Select Make>HTML Gallery...
On the Theme tag check the settings.


Click the Theme Fields Tab and change any fields that you need to.


Click Make... and chose a directory to load the gallery into.

That's about it, if you have any questions please add them as comments at the bottom of this article and I will see if I can help.

---

Related Posts

An Alternative template for Paypal and iView Media Pro

Labels: iView Media Pro, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web, Workflow

I've been a bit busy over the last few days changing the Galleries and Exhibitions Sections of the site. The site even includes the obligatory gradient background that all css based sites seem to have these days.

The main reason for this is that I wanted to change the way the galleries were generated. Previously I used Breezebrowser to generate the web galleries through The EOS template. There were two main reasons for deciding to change.

• Breezebrowser is an excellent product and I use it at the front end of my workflow to sift through the images and quickly sort out the shots I don't want. The trouble is that generating web galleries is usually an end of workflow thing for me, and by the end of the workflow my images are all safely stacked away in iView Media Pro. So using iView would be a much better option.
• The EOS template is a fantastic piece of javascript programming an for event/wedding photographers it does a great job of delivering galleries for users to buy prints from. The problem from my point of view is that all that javascript stops the site being indexed by search engines. Additionally i wanted something I could easily controll with css and minimal javascript and it was time for a change.

I decided to use the iView HTML generation technology combined with the Paypal Shopping Cart system to produce exactly what I wanted. In a future blog I will provide some instructions on how to do this yourself for those who are interested.

In the meantime here is a picture I found whilst tidying up the galleries:

Labels: iView Media Pro, Site Updates, Web, Workflow

A common question I see asked on websites is something along the lines of "I've been asked to create a website for my club/organisation, where do I start?".

Often things like Dreamweaver, Frontpage and Notepad are suggested. These are combined with guides on CSS & HTML plus descriptions of how to upload changes to the site. Not forgetting hosting solutions, domain names, etc, etc.

That's a lot of stuff to learn if all you want to create is a fairly standard website and have no intention of becoming a web guru, but there is another way...

If you want to drive a car you don't need to learn how the internal combustion engine works, you just worry about how the mechanisms of driving.

If you want to create a blog you don't need to write your own blogging system, you simply sign up to Blogger.com and create a blog. No need to worry about the mechanisms involved, just worry about what you want to say in your blog!

You can do the same thing with an entire site, all you need to do is worry about what content you want on the site, all you need is a Content Management System (CMS).

A CMS removes the worry of how you create the site and leaves you to think about what you want on the site. A club calendar can be added with just a few clicks. the same goes for forums, articles, photo galleries, classified adverts and a whole host of other content.

Recently I was asked to help a friend with updating the website of The Lusitano Breed Society and it quickly became obvious that the existing site needed a complete redesign and an awful lot more functionality. We decided to use a CMS as the administrator of the site was more interested in getting the site running then learning to be a web site developer.

The first problem was which CMS to use - there are an awful lot out there. We looked at a few CMSs and tried out the demo sites of each before settling on Joomla. We then signed up to a hosting provider who pre-installs joomla as part of the package.

All we needed to do now was to worry about the look of the site, its possible to buy or download templates to provide the look you want, but in this case I simply took the standard template and hacked it about a bit.

All in all, I think, a more preferable and maintainable option than coding the whole thing from scratch.

If you need to create a complex site it is always worth taking the time to investigate the CMS option. It could save you a lot of hassle in the long run and will provide you with a flexible paltform to meet your future needs.

Labels: Web

I have had a few mails over the last couple of months asking about the site and what software I used to create it.

Generally people are after an "out of the box" solution that will generate the site for them quick and easily. I'm sorry to say that I can't help with turnkey solutions as the site is pretty much hand crafted. If you are looking for a turnkey solution the Photium or clickpik are the people you need.

To create the site, first the menu layout and design were sketched out on paper, as I tried to work out what I did and didn't want on the site.

Then it was on to the front page, this was first laid out in Photoshop, doing this allowed me to play with fonts, sizes, colour and layout very quickly and easily. The front page is designed to act as a taster for the whole site.

Once I was happy with the design of the front page, I use Imageready (part of Photoshop) to generate the page as XHTML and CSS. Then it was into Dreamweaver to tweak the CSS so that it worked in most browsers (well lets hope so anyway).



A new page layout was then designed in Dreamweaver, based on the home page and this was saved as a template. The other pages were then based on this template to give the final effect I was after. Templates allow me to apply global changes to the site very easily and quickly...which is a good thing.

The galleries are generated using iView Media Pro to select the files, then the pages are generated using a set of templates I created.

This Blog is provided by blogger.com which is automatically copies any changes over to my own site, yet still allows me to edit it anywhere in the world...nice. The RSS feed from this is pushed through Feedburner to provide statistics and analysis.

I would be happy to explain more to those who have questions, if that's you then please email me on chris AT shepherdpics.com.

Labels: Site Updates, Web