Thre are lots of lovely new images on there from around the UK and further afield.
Snake and Ladder
(by Kevin Goodchild)
I was involved in the design of the site, so why not take a look and leave a comment below as to what you think about it.
Showing posts with label Web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Web. Show all posts
Thursday, 15 April 2010
KG Images - new site design
My good friend and one third of ImagesOfEssex, Keving Goodchild has just completely overhauled his website.
Thre are lots of lovely new images on there from around the UK and further afield.
I was involved in the design of the site, so why not take a look and leave a comment below as to what you think about it.
Thre are lots of lovely new images on there from around the UK and further afield.
I was involved in the design of the site, so why not take a look and leave a comment below as to what you think about it.
Friday, 19 March 2010
Mobified
I have just been playing with mobify: http://www.mobify.me/ and have created a version of this blog that should look ok on a smart phone. It was really rather easy.
If you browse to the blog on a phone it should automatically redirect you to the mobile version: http://m.shepherdpics.com/ I hope it helps those of you with wizzy phones.
If you browse to the blog on a phone it should automatically redirect you to the mobile version: http://m.shepherdpics.com/ I hope it helps those of you with wizzy phones.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Images of Essex
Over the last few weeks I have been working with Kevin Goodchild and Dave Peck to create the website Images Of Essex. it is hopped to build the website into an extensive collection of pictures from all around our home county of Essex.
Mersey Island
By Dave Peck
The Site features a collection of galleries organised by season and a map of Essex to help you find photographs of your favourite location.
The site was created using foliopic an new service providing websites for photographers and artists. Why not have a look at the site & let me know what you think in the comments section.
Mersey Island
By Dave Peck
The Site features a collection of galleries organised by season and a map of Essex to help you find photographs of your favourite location.
The site was created using foliopic an new service providing websites for photographers and artists. Why not have a look at the site & let me know what you think in the comments section.
Friday, 2 October 2009
Backing up to the Cloud - Got there in the End!
Hopefully long term readers remember my articles on backing up to the cloud:
Backup to the cloud - Part One
Backup to the cloud - Part Two
Backup to the Cloud - Final Thoughts
Well I am sure that none of you care but I just thought I would mention that my image archive backup is now complete and safe in the web:
Safe in the Web
(Click to View Large)
My Image archive was 300gb but I decided to got through it & cull a load of images I didn't want and would never use. I know some people keep everything but I really can't see the point in keeping out of focus shots, test shots, etc.
The cull got it down to 150mb and it has since grown back up to 285gb (sheesh those 5DmkII files are big). So it has take 163 days (I lost 10 due to being away) and has averaged 1.74GB a day. That means the system can cope with around 50GB a month of images, which is easily enough for my needs.
Think we can count that as a success and I can rest easy knowing my images are safe.
Backup to the cloud - Part One
Backup to the cloud - Part Two
Backup to the Cloud - Final Thoughts
Well I am sure that none of you care but I just thought I would mention that my image archive backup is now complete and safe in the web:
Safe in the Web(Click to View Large)
My Image archive was 300gb but I decided to got through it & cull a load of images I didn't want and would never use. I know some people keep everything but I really can't see the point in keeping out of focus shots, test shots, etc.
The cull got it down to 150mb and it has since grown back up to 285gb (sheesh those 5DmkII files are big). So it has take 163 days (I lost 10 due to being away) and has averaged 1.74GB a day. That means the system can cope with around 50GB a month of images, which is easily enough for my needs.
Think we can count that as a success and I can rest easy knowing my images are safe.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Lightroom and Iview Web Galleries
Regular readers will know that I use iview to generate my web galleries incorporating a Paypal shopping cart as I detailed here.
Phil Thomas contacted me to point out that although he had put the title of each picture into the metadata in Lightroom the titles were not appearing in the paypal shopping basket when he generated the galleries from iview.
It turns out that the field that Lightroom uses for "Document Title" in Photoshop maps to "Product" in iview... so the solution is fairly easy. If you look through the media.html file you will see the line:
repeated for each of the different items you are selling (item1Description will become item2Description on the next entry).
(iView:Headline) inserts the iview headline field into the code, so all we need to do is replace that with (iView:Product) and we are sorted. If you would rather use the filename simply replace (iview:headline) with (iview:filename) on each of these entries. Or you could even just put (iView:Headline) (iView:Product) (iView:filename) and get all three values in the text. If you want to use other fields take a look at the documentation here.
The alternative is to copy the product field to the headline field in iview, so here is a little iview script to automate that process for you.
Thanks for pointing this out Phil - saved me finding the problem myself.
Related Posts
Creating an ECommerce Site with iView and Paypal
Using The Controlled Vocabulary with iView Media Pro
Alternative template for iView Media Pro and the PayPal Shopping cart
Phil Thomas contacted me to point out that although he had put the title of each picture into the metadata in Lightroom the titles were not appearing in the paypal shopping basket when he generated the galleries from iview.
It turns out that the field that Lightroom uses for "Document Title" in Photoshop maps to "Product" in iview... so the solution is fairly easy. If you look through the media.html file you will see the line:
<input name="item_name" value="(iView:Headline) (iView:Item1Description)" type="hidden" >
repeated for each of the different items you are selling (item1Description will become item2Description on the next entry).
(iView:Headline) inserts the iview headline field into the code, so all we need to do is replace that with (iView:Product) and we are sorted. If you would rather use the filename simply replace (iview:headline) with (iview:filename) on each of these entries. Or you could even just put (iView:Headline) (iView:Product) (iView:filename) and get all three values in the text. If you want to use other fields take a look at the documentation here.
The alternative is to copy the product field to the headline field in iview, so here is a little iview script to automate that process for you.
Thanks for pointing this out Phil - saved me finding the problem myself.
Related Posts
Creating an ECommerce Site with iView and Paypal
Using The Controlled Vocabulary with iView Media Pro
Alternative template for iView Media Pro and the PayPal Shopping cart
Friday, 15 May 2009
Backup to the Cloud - Final Thoughts
I have had quite a lot of feedback about my articles on backing up to the cloud:
Backup to the cloud - Part One
Backup to the cloud - Part Two
I am glad I introduced the concept to so many people.
Gold Green and Blue
Backup to the cloud - Part One
Backup to the cloud - Part Two
I am glad I introduced the concept to so many people.
Gold Green and BlueThe feed back that I got was that it sounded interesting but it seemed ever so complicated. Sorry that will be me get too technical too quickly. For most people with one PC or mac i really is very simple:
I don't see any point in backing up a load of rubbish that I will never ever use or look at so I have taken the opportunity to have a real cull of images. When I look back it's amazing the amount of old tosh I have had cluttering up my disks. I estimate this should reduce the size of my archive by at least a third.
If you still don't think backing up to the cloud is for you this chart is worth taking a look at, as it gives you an idea of how cloud backup compares against other forms of backup. Though I must stress that they are not exclusive options, the more backups you have...the better.
- Download and install the BackBlaze client
- Create an account
- If you still like it after 15 days..pay for it.
I don't see any point in backing up a load of rubbish that I will never ever use or look at so I have taken the opportunity to have a real cull of images. When I look back it's amazing the amount of old tosh I have had cluttering up my disks. I estimate this should reduce the size of my archive by at least a third.
If you still don't think backing up to the cloud is for you this chart is worth taking a look at, as it gives you an idea of how cloud backup compares against other forms of backup. Though I must stress that they are not exclusive options, the more backups you have...the better.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Backup to the Cloud - Part Two
Having decided to use a remote backup solution and what I wanted to backup, the next things to look at were to decide on were how I was going to do the backup and which provider I was going to use.
After some looking around I settled on BackBlaze as my remote backup provider. Unlimited disk space for $50 a year didn't seem unreasonable at all.
To be fair the unlimited storage does have some limitations though. It applies to one machine and any disk drives attached to it - except network drives. This is a slight problem if you have your data spread across four machines and some network drives as I do.
Dark Cloud backup?
I decided the best thing to do was to build a PC specifically to handle backups. As long as this PC held a copy of all the data that I wanted backed up then things should be OK. So I took an old PC I had kicking about (it's a Pentium II - remember them), reformatted all the drives and installed Windows XP. XP seems to run rather well on an old machine like that, its the applications that slow it down.
Next steps were to remove any unnecessary items that had been installed (msn messenger & such like) and disable any services not required to store files & connect to the internet. This was followed by installing a virus scanner and the rather long wait as it downloads all the updates and patches for XP to make sure we were protected from all those nasty threats on the web.
It really dosn't matter if the machine is a little slow anyway as the crucial bottle neck is broadband upload speed. In case you hadn't realised ADSL stands for Asymetric Digital Subscriber Line - The Asymetric bit is critical. Downloads are a hell of a lot faster than any uploads and there doesn't seem to be any real way to improve them.
I ran the BackBlaze Speed test to get an idea of what sort of speed I could expect and then ran the TCP otimizer to squeeze out every last bit of bandwidth I could. I seem to be achieving around 2GB a day so it's not great but it's acceptable. The next step was to install the BackBlaze software and configure it to ignore any stuff I didn't want backed up on the machine (like the windows XP install directory).
The final install was to load and configure All Way Sync to copy over all the critical information I need backed up from all the various machines.
For my initial backup I chose to backup everything except my image archive. The initial backup takes a long time as it has to copy up every file (6 Days in my case), but after that things should be much quicker as it just copies up changes.
I have now started adding my image archive to the backup. At 300GB I guess it will take 150 days to upload 7 years worth of images. I figure that isn't too bad, if it took me 7 years to create that much data, half a year to upload it is pretty good. Good job I am looking on this as a long term project.
Once this initial upload is complete things should work fine as long as I generate an average of less than 2GB of data a day, that's 700GB a year. At the moment I am at nowhere near that sort of volume, so it seems I have a workable solution.
After some looking around I settled on BackBlaze as my remote backup provider. Unlimited disk space for $50 a year didn't seem unreasonable at all.
To be fair the unlimited storage does have some limitations though. It applies to one machine and any disk drives attached to it - except network drives. This is a slight problem if you have your data spread across four machines and some network drives as I do.
Dark Cloud backup?I decided the best thing to do was to build a PC specifically to handle backups. As long as this PC held a copy of all the data that I wanted backed up then things should be OK. So I took an old PC I had kicking about (it's a Pentium II - remember them), reformatted all the drives and installed Windows XP. XP seems to run rather well on an old machine like that, its the applications that slow it down.
Next steps were to remove any unnecessary items that had been installed (msn messenger & such like) and disable any services not required to store files & connect to the internet. This was followed by installing a virus scanner and the rather long wait as it downloads all the updates and patches for XP to make sure we were protected from all those nasty threats on the web.
It really dosn't matter if the machine is a little slow anyway as the crucial bottle neck is broadband upload speed. In case you hadn't realised ADSL stands for Asymetric Digital Subscriber Line - The Asymetric bit is critical. Downloads are a hell of a lot faster than any uploads and there doesn't seem to be any real way to improve them.
I ran the BackBlaze Speed test to get an idea of what sort of speed I could expect and then ran the TCP otimizer to squeeze out every last bit of bandwidth I could. I seem to be achieving around 2GB a day so it's not great but it's acceptable. The next step was to install the BackBlaze software and configure it to ignore any stuff I didn't want backed up on the machine (like the windows XP install directory).
The final install was to load and configure All Way Sync to copy over all the critical information I need backed up from all the various machines.
For my initial backup I chose to backup everything except my image archive. The initial backup takes a long time as it has to copy up every file (6 Days in my case), but after that things should be much quicker as it just copies up changes.
I have now started adding my image archive to the backup. At 300GB I guess it will take 150 days to upload 7 years worth of images. I figure that isn't too bad, if it took me 7 years to create that much data, half a year to upload it is pretty good. Good job I am looking on this as a long term project.
Once this initial upload is complete things should work fine as long as I generate an average of less than 2GB of data a day, that's 700GB a year. At the moment I am at nowhere near that sort of volume, so it seems I have a workable solution.
Monday, 20 April 2009
Backing up to the Cloud - Part One
I might have mentioned it before but I make no apologies for mentioning it again, make sure you have your data backed up. There are loads of interesting and unusual ways that you can lose the information that you need and a good backup strategy is the only way to protect yourself.
Having taken the time to asses my existing backups and possible threats to my data I came to the conclusion that I had no real protection against a total loss event. What's a total loss event? Well in my case I can see some possible events that would fall into that category: flood, fire & theft. A house fire would melt all my hard drives, a flood wouldn't do them much good either and it is possible that some thieving toe rag could break into the house and clear out all originals and backups.
In the Clouds
So how can I protect my data from total loss? Well traditionally the answer is off-site backups. An off-site backup is where you copy your data to disk or tape and then move those devices far enough away from you to ensure they survive a disaster. This is common practice in the business world. Alternatively, we can take advantage of the internet and backup to The Cloud. Having considered a system of swapping portable hard drives in and out of the house, I thought it would be worth trying out the cloud first as its the modern way.
The first decision was to decide what I wanted this backup for. For me this would be a "last resort" backup as I have a layered strategy:
So now we have established the why and the what. In part two we will look at the how.
Having taken the time to asses my existing backups and possible threats to my data I came to the conclusion that I had no real protection against a total loss event. What's a total loss event? Well in my case I can see some possible events that would fall into that category: flood, fire & theft. A house fire would melt all my hard drives, a flood wouldn't do them much good either and it is possible that some thieving toe rag could break into the house and clear out all originals and backups.
In the CloudsSo how can I protect my data from total loss? Well traditionally the answer is off-site backups. An off-site backup is where you copy your data to disk or tape and then move those devices far enough away from you to ensure they survive a disaster. This is common practice in the business world. Alternatively, we can take advantage of the internet and backup to The Cloud. Having considered a system of swapping portable hard drives in and out of the house, I thought it would be worth trying out the cloud first as its the modern way.
The first decision was to decide what I wanted this backup for. For me this would be a "last resort" backup as I have a layered strategy:
- Currently active work on any PC is copied overnight to another PC using Allway Sync. This allows me to recover yesterdays work quite easily should I accidental delete or corrupt a particular file.
- Once a month each machine is imaged to a USB drive, using Acronis True Image. This is to protect against HDD failure and to allow me to recover files that are not on the daily backups i.e. ones I deleted a few weeks ago and suddenly realise I need now.
- Image archive. Once a month I move the previous months photos to my herd of buffalo.
- Cloud backups would add the final layer that allows me to protect myself from total loss and to go back to much older files if I need to.
- Email is a major priority, all sorts of things can be kept in the various folders of an email system: logins to infrequently used systems, licence keys for downloaded software, travel bookings, reservations.
- Documents created in Wod, Excel,etc
- IView Media Pro catalogues, so I can find all my images.
- My Image Archive
- The latest release of Lemon
- A copy of my website including the templates used to generate it.
- Music: I don't think I need to keep a copy of my music as I have it all on CD & 2 hard disks. In event of a total loss I would just have to buy all those CDs again.
- Bookmarks: For some people their web bookmarks are essential but I hardly use bookmarking so there is no need to worry about them.
- Programs: As long as I have the licence keys I should be able to download the latest versions.
So now we have established the why and the what. In part two we will look at the how.
Monday, 26 January 2009
Remember The Milk
Well I have managed to stick to one of my New Years Resolutions (from last year) - I suppose there is a first time for everything!
My resolution was to get more organised. There were hundreds of things that I had promised people, decided to do or needed to be done and I was drowning in a sea of disorganisation. I would spend whole weekends doing things that weren't particularly important and then realise that I should have been doing something else.
What I needed was to get myself organised.
What I needed to do was get a jobs to do list organized, prioritise it, add diary entries for repeating items and generally sort out what I should be doing when. I found the ideal tool for this: RememberTheMilk.com. RTM (as it's known to its friends) is a brilliantly simple application for managing your todo list.
First thing I did was to go through, all the emails I had marked, notes I had written, things in my head and add them as a list of things to do. Next I added any repetitions, for instance I like to archive off my work once a month, check my backups once a month, and put the rubbish out every week. Finally I marked the tasks that were important.
Now it is simply a question of adding dates in to do things, I like the way the system takes entries like "Wednesday", "next thursday", "2 weeks" and a whole host of similar entries. Each week I shuffle round all the things to do so I hit whatever deadlines I have.
So what makes it so much better than a paper list or any of the various other options. Well I like the fact that I can have my todo list wherever I need it. I have it showing on my Netvibes page, any web browser I can get to, I can use it off-line on my laptop thanks to Google Gears, and even on my mobile all for free.
The second feature I like is that your todo list comes with it's own (hard for spammers to guess) email address. Forward an email to this and it becomes a task. So when an order comes in from my website I have a rule set up in my email client that automatically forwards the order onto my todo list as a high priority task.
I can also have shared todo lists wih my wife, so we can see which jobs we need to tell each other to do.
It's a really useful bit of software and it's free..we like that.
My resolution was to get more organised. There were hundreds of things that I had promised people, decided to do or needed to be done and I was drowning in a sea of disorganisation. I would spend whole weekends doing things that weren't particularly important and then realise that I should have been doing something else.
What I needed was to get myself organised.
What I needed to do was get a jobs to do list organized, prioritise it, add diary entries for repeating items and generally sort out what I should be doing when. I found the ideal tool for this: RememberTheMilk.com. RTM (as it's known to its friends) is a brilliantly simple application for managing your todo list.
First thing I did was to go through, all the emails I had marked, notes I had written, things in my head and add them as a list of things to do. Next I added any repetitions, for instance I like to archive off my work once a month, check my backups once a month, and put the rubbish out every week. Finally I marked the tasks that were important.
Now it is simply a question of adding dates in to do things, I like the way the system takes entries like "Wednesday", "next thursday", "2 weeks" and a whole host of similar entries. Each week I shuffle round all the things to do so I hit whatever deadlines I have.
So what makes it so much better than a paper list or any of the various other options. Well I like the fact that I can have my todo list wherever I need it. I have it showing on my Netvibes page, any web browser I can get to, I can use it off-line on my laptop thanks to Google Gears, and even on my mobile all for free.
The second feature I like is that your todo list comes with it's own (hard for spammers to guess) email address. Forward an email to this and it becomes a task. So when an order comes in from my website I have a rule set up in my email client that automatically forwards the order onto my todo list as a high priority task.
I can also have shared todo lists wih my wife, so we can see which jobs we need to tell each other to do.
It's a really useful bit of software and it's free..we like that.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
PhotographyVoter.com buttons for your rss feed
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:
That's it! I hope you find it of use.
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:
- Sign up with Feedburner and set your site feed up to use feedburner (all the instructions for this are on the feedburner site).
- On the Optimize tab select Feedflare
- In the box marked (Enter or paste Unit URL) enter this: http://web.shepherdpics.com/FEEDFLARE.XML
- Click Add New Flare
- Check the feed box next to Vote for this on Photography Voter.com
- Then click Save
That's it! I hope you find it of use.
Tuesday, 4 September 2007
We got an award!
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.
Moonlight Fossett
(Click to view Large)
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.
Moonlight Fossett(Click to view Large)
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.
Monday, 2 July 2007
LightroomGalleries.com and Paypal
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
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
Friday, 22 June 2007
Lightroom Paypal Galleries
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
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
Saturday, 26 May 2007
Looking for a Lightroom Gallery
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.
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.
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Digital Photography Workflow Part 3 (Output)
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.
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
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.
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
Thursday, 19 April 2007
LightroomGalleries.com gets started
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.
Why not take a look at the site, it looks like it will develop into a very useful resource.
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
ECommerce sites with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart..continued
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:
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
- Sequential numbering for each item.
- Next & Previous buttons for each image allowing users to easily page through.
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
Saturday, 14 April 2007
Creating an ECommerce site using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and the PayPal Shopping cart
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):
4. Now use the new template
In Lightroom generate the web site using the new Paypal Template.
Summary
Update 16 April 2007
Improved version with forward and back buttons added.
Related Posts
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.
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">£</xsl:variable>
<!-- Individual Sale Items -->
<xsl:variable name="Item1Description">10"x20" Print</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item1CodeNo">100</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item1Price">150</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2Description">11"x22" Print</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2CodeNo">101</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2Price">155</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3Description">10"x20" Print framed</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3CodeNo">102</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3Price">150</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item4Description">11"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 (£ = &pound;, $ = $ € = €) |
| 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
Friday, 13 April 2007
Creating Web Gallery Templates for Lightroom
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.
Once again close Lightroom.Edit the GalleryMaker.xml file to Generate the output sizes you need.
To this:
4.Edit the transformer.xslt file
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.
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.
Download the demo template from here: lightroom_wpg_example.zip
Unzip the file into the web galleries folder you just created.
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.
- 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.Saturday, 31 March 2007
Creating an ECommerce site using iView Media Pro and the PayPal Shopping cart
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
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:
You need to change the value in quotes for default for each line that begins with (iView:Variable name
The Settings:
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
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:
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
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