A couple of weeks back I visited a small sales exhibition here in Oslo at Gallery View. The artist was Paida, and the exhibition was called “Tinn | Vann”
You can read more at the Photo Exhibit blog, and also look at some pictures.
This podcast is just about all the irrelevant stuff that happened that day.
And last, you get 3 good music tips, all about coffee.
I tend not to update my galleries as often as I want to. I have tried to find the best middle ground between look and feel, and easy maintenance, but I see now I have to work more on the easy updating. Right now, I’m running an export from LR, resizing and framing the pictures. Then I copy them to my RapidWeaver work directory, open RW, import the images, and publish to the web. Too much work.
So now I have started to investigate into directly exporting images from LR instead. The trick is to find the right gallery template, or make one myself, and to figure out the best structure and work flow. This solution makes it difficult to synchronize the menus and look between the galleries and the rest, but I’m starting to feel that I really don’t care that much. As long as it looks good, I can live with a small inconsistency.
Anyway, I have started to try out some templates, and I found one that contained support for Cooliris. I’m pretty sure it will be too much for my galleries, but the effects are very cool (as eye candy). If I start to use that template, I may keep the option of using it. After all, it is optional. The main viewing capability is done by the Java based uuuh not Lightbox …. not Greybox ….. uuuu … one of the boxes, I don’t remember which.
Anyway, have a look here http://www.lentic.net/test_gallery
You’ll have to install some CoolIris shit to make it work, but once you do, press “Start slideshow” at the upper right corner. I’ll probably remove that gallery some day soon, so forgive me if the link stops working.
This one uses slightly smaller images, comparable to the previous small version, but the layout is modified a bit to make a better fit.
Doug commented on the previous post that the pdf was a bit slow to load. Since I have a very fast connection I don’t see that myself, but as I wrote in the previous post, it is nearly 2Mb, and the jpg compression is as low as it can be. Just to try the options, I have created additional pdf’s. Two more using medium and high compression and one with smaller image size and medium compression. The highest compression is useless in my oppinion, but the medium compression is ok. The compromize to reduce image size is also acceptable.
Have a look and decide for yourself.
Considering the implications with download size, I think maybe a dual solution may be a good one. Keep the web galleries like they are now, maybe with slightly smaller images to make it snappier and more friendly to small screen sizes, and to offer the high quality pdf files for those who are ready to wait for it.
Thinking of it, if the galleries are large (many pictures), the pdf will become huge. That is a good reason not to rely on pdf as the only mean of presenting pictures on the web.
So far it has been only talk, so I decided to show a pdf sample. Since I am a strong believer in simplicity when it comes to layout and presentation of images, there is nothing fancy.
This pdf is saved with the jpg quality to maximum. The file is quite large, and I’m not really sure if I should turn the compression up a notch or two to reduce file size.
Anyway, here is the pdf file.
If you just click it on a windows computer it will show up in your browser window (given that you have Acrobat Reader installed). If you click it on a Mac, it will insist on saving it an viewing it in Preview, which is a bit of a pain. For best viewing experience on both platforms, right click the link and savethe pdf before you open it with a recent version of Acrobat Reader. It is also best to let it open a full screen session.
Since I haven’t found the motivation to do much shooting lately, I have spend some time playing around with pdf presentation of images. The attempt was triggered by the Lenswork Extended I received some days ago, and I must say I am impressed. It gives so much more control of the presentation than any web based gallery I have seen so far. The pdf adapts to different screen sizes in a very good way. I will probably start to use pdf much more on my web site in the future.
All this testing was done while I prepared the pictures from our honeymoon trip to be shown to our family. But then I thought, why not create the slide show on an ordinary dvd. That would be something even my mother could use without any help. A quick scan through the program folder, adn I found iDVD. 1 hour later I had a slide show running on my TV. Very nice.
