Web Photo Galleries

Using Photoshop CS to create Web Photo Galleries

This page has been adapted slightly from the Adobe Photoshop CS help pages.

Use the Web Photo Gallery command to automatically generate a gallery from a set of images. A Web photo gallery is a Web site that features a home page with thumbnail images and gallery pages with full-size images. Each page contains links that allow visitors to navigate the site. For example, when a visitor clicks a thumbnail image on the home page, a page with the associated full-size image loads. Some styles also feature an automatic slideshow.

Web photo gallery home page and loaded gallery page

Photoshop provides a variety of styles which you can select using the Web Photo Gallery command. Advanced users with knowledge of HTML can also customize a style by editing a set of HTML template files or create a new style.

Each template for gallery styles comes with different options. If you're using a preset style, some options may be dimmed, or unavailable in that particular style.

To create a Web photo gallery:

When making a gallery from images in the file browser, your images will be presented in the order in which they're displayed in the file browser. If you'd rather see a different order, change the order in the file browser, then select Web Photo Gallery.

Select the files or folder you want to use from the file browser.
Choose File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery

Under Site, do the following:

Choose a style for the gallery from the Styles pop-up menu. A preview of the home page for the chosen style appears in the dialog box.
Enter the email address that you want to display as the contact for the gallery.
Choose an extension for the generated files from the Extension pop-up menu.

Under Source Images, do the following:

In the Use pop-up menu, choose Folder or Selected Images From Web Browser.
If you chose Folder, click Browse (Windows) or Choose (Mac OS). Then select the folder containing the images that you want to appear in the gallery, and click OK (Windows) or Choose (Mac OS). Your folder name appears in the dialog box next to the Browse/Choose button. Then check Include All Subfolders to include images inside any subfolders of the selected folder.
Click Destination, select the destination folder that you want to contain the images and HTML pages for the gallery, and click OK (Windows) or Choose (Mac OS).

To set general options for the gallery photos, choose General from the Options pop-up menu. Then do the following:

Choose an extension for the files (.htm or .html).
Check Use UTF 8 Encoding for URL if you want that encoding.
Check Add Width and Height Attributes for images to increase download speed.
Check Preserve All Metadata to maintain metadata info.

To set options for the banner that appears on each page in the gallery, choose Banner from the Options pop-up menu. Then do the following:

For Site Name, enter the title of the gallery.
For Photographer, enter the name of the person or organization that deserves credit for the photos in the gallery.
For Contact Info, enter the contact information for the gallery, such as a telephone number or a business address.
For Date, enter the date that you want to appear on each page of the gallery. By default, Photoshop uses the current date.
If available, for Font and Font Size, choose options for the banner text.

To set options for the gallery pages, choose Large Images from the Options pop-up menu. Then do the following:

To have Photoshop resize the source images for placement on the gallery pages, select Resize Images. Then choose an option for the image size from the pop-up menu or enter a size in pixels.
For Constrain, choose which dimensions of the image you want to constrain during resizing.
For JPEG Quality, choose an option from the pop-up menu, enter a value between 0 and 12, or drag the slider. A higher value results in better image quality but larger file size.
For Border Size, enter the width of the border around the image in pixels.
For Titles Use, specify options to display caption information under each image. Select Filename to display the filename, or select Description, Credits, Title, and Copyright to display description text drawn from the File Info dialog box.
For Font and Font Size, choose options for the caption text.

To set options for the home page, choose Thumbnails from the Options pop-up menu. Then do the following:

For Size, choose an option for the thumbnail size from the pop-up menu or enter a value in pixels for the width of each thumbnail.
For Columns and Rows, enter the number of columns and rows that you want to be used to display the thumbnails on the home page. This option doesn't apply to galleries that use the Horizontal Frame Style or Vertical Frame Style.
For Border Size, enter the width of the border around each thumbnail in pixels.
For Titles check either Filename, Description, Credits, Title or Copyright.
For Font and Font Size, choose options for the caption text.

To set options for colours of elements in the gallery, choose Customize Colors from the Options pop-up menu. To change the colour of a particular element, click its colour swatch, and then select a new colour using the Color Picker.

The Background option lets you change the background colour of each page.
The Banner option lets you change the background colour of the banner.

To set options to display text to appear over each image as an anti-theft deterrent, choose Security from the Options pop-up menu. Then do the following:

For Content, select Custom Text to enter customized text. Select Filename, Description, Credits, Title, or Copyright to display text drawn from the File Info dialog box.
Specify font, colour, and text alignment options. To place the text on the image at an angle, choose a rotation option.

Photoshop places the following HTML and JPEG files in your destination folder:

A home page for your gallery (named index.htm or index.html depending on the Extension options. Open this file in any Web browser to preview your gallery, remember to link to this page from your main site).
JPEG images inside an images subfolder.
HTML pages inside a pages subfolder.
JPEG thumbnail images inside a thumbnails subfolder.

Customizing Web photo gallery styles

You can customize an existing Web photo gallery style in advance by editing one or more of its HTML template files. When customizing a style, you need to follow these guidelines so that Photoshop can generate the gallery correctly:

The style folder must contain these files: Caption.htm, IndexPage.htm, SubPage.htm, Thumbnail.htm, and FrameSet.htm.
You can rename the style folder but not the HTML template files in the folder.
You can have an empty Caption.htm file, and place the HTML code and tokens determining the layout of the caption in the Thumbnail.htm file.
You can replace a token in a template file with the appropriate text or HTML code, so that an option is set through the template file rather than through the Web Photo Gallery dialog box. For example, a template file may contain a BODY element with the following bgcolor attribute that uses a token as its value:
bgcolor=%BGCOLOR%

To set the background color of the page to red, you can replace the token %BGCOLOR% with "FF0000."

You can add HTML code and tokens to the template files. All tokens must be in uppercase characters, and begin and end with the percent (%) symbol. For information on the tokens that you can use in the template files, see Using tokens in Web photo gallery styles.

To customize an existing Web photo gallery style:

Locate the folder for the Web photo gallery style that you want to customize. For the location of style folders, see About Web photo gallery styles.
If you don't want to overwrite an existing style, create a copy of the style folder, rename it and store it in the same location on your hard drive as the existing style folders.
Using an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver, open one of the HTML template files located inside the style folder.
Customize the HTML template file using the guidelines for customization outlined in this section, and save the file.
Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 to customize other HTML template files in the style folder.

When you have finished, you can create a gallery using the customized style. The customized style appears as an option in the Styles pop-up menu in the Web Photo Gallery dialog box.

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