Tag: TTG

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I Built My Photography Website with Lightroom and TTG

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As much as I love using Adobe Muse CC to create websites like macgroup.org, I have one website that was better to build using Lightroom 5 and the NEW CE4 Web Publishing Suite from The Turning Gate. My terrywhitephotography.com site is built 100% from Lightroom and the plug-ins from The Turning Gate. While I can certainly have a more customized site using Adobe Muse CC, the one thing that makes it better to do this site in Lightroom is the ease of updating it when I have new photos and videos.

It starts with Collections

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Each of my Portfolios are Collections in Lightroom and from there I can sort images, add, and remove images at any time. My website has a slideshow on the home page and again that’s simply controlled by another collection that I can change at any time. One of the BEST features of the CE4 Web Publishing Suite is the “Publisher” plug-in. Once you set this up all you have to do to update your website is add/remove images from the Collection and hit the Publish button. Behind the scenes the images are uploaded to your hosting provider and put right into your galleries. I can’t believe how easy and fast it is to update my website at any time. This is the main reason why I prefer Lightroom for this site instead of Muse. I’m constantly changing my “Recent Work” gallery and it’s so easy to do it with the collection in Lightroom and hit the Publish button as opposed to manually exporting the images and having to update a slideshow in Muse. Again I LOVE Adobe Muse CC, but this workflow rocks in Lightroom!

 

Yep it’s Responsive

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All of the modules/plug-ins used in the CE4 Web Publishing Suite use modern web technologies such as Responsive web design/CSS that looks good on desktops, tablets and mobile phones. This way I know that visitors to my site will see my work the way I intend them to no matter what device they view it on. My photos and videos playback great on all platforms. Even my landscapes will show the location where they were shot if the use taps/clicks on the location icon.

 

It works with Videos too

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The CEW Web Publishing Suite supports HTML 5 video that you host on your site or videos from YouTube and Vimeo. You can even mix them as I have some in HTML 5 and one from YouTube. Again using the Publisher plug-in I can add new videos with ease.

Watch me do a LIVE update to my site in this short clip

 

A GREAT Client Response Gallery

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Although it’s not a part of my main site, another one of The Turning Gate plug-ins that I couldn’t imagine life without is the Client Response Gallery. This is the one that I use when I want to send a client their proofs and have them make their choices/selections on the web and send them back to me from the site. Even if you’re not going to build your website with the CE4 Web Publishing Suite, you should still check out the Client Response Gallery Plug-in for Lightroom.

 

The Bottom Line

My photography is my hobby and my way to express my creativity. Since I don’t have a staff or web team I have to do everything myself. The CE4 Web Publishing Suite from The Turning Gate makes my life so much easier and as I always say, “If a website is easy to update you will update it more often, if it’s not you won’t!” My photography website is always up to date because I manage all my photos with Lightroom and updating my website is as easy as clicking a button.

Learn more about The Turning Gate CE4 Web Publishing Suite here.

 

Great hosting matters too

I’m going to do a separate post on my recent move to Bluehost.com, but they totally ROCK! I moved all my main sites there and haven’t had a single problem. It’s such a relief knowing that my sites are UP and that if there is a problem they have 24/7 phone support with people located here in the U.S. Highly Recommended!




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Creating an HTML 5 Website for Photographers in Adobe Lightroom 3

This one is for the Photographers out there!

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has had web galleries since day one. You can either export out an HTML gallery of your images or a Flash Gallery of your images. Each one of course having its advantages and disadvantages. I find that photographers in general like Flash galleries because of two things: 1) they're (pardon the pun) flashy. You get transitions, animations, zooming, automatic slideshows etc. 2) they offer one more level of image protection by making it harder for people to just right click and download the images. The disadvantage is that not every device can display Flash galleries. If you go with an HTML gallery it can be seen on just about any device, but you lose the flashy appeal. 

 

What about HTML 5?

Up until yesterday my photography website was all Flash with an HTML fallback. I loved the features of my template. I loved the animations, image fading and slideshows and while I did have an HTML fallback for those that couldn't see the Flash site the biggest problem was keeping them BOTH up to date. The Flash site was driven by XML and was pretty easy to update with new images.. The HTML part was driven by a Lightroom web engine (more on that later) and required a separate export and upload each time I needed to do an update. It wasn't the end of the world to update them both, but I found myself updating the Flash site more often (because it was faster), which meant that people on non-Flash devices/computers wouldn't see my latest images. Not good!

What's this HTML 5 thing anyway? HTML 5 is next standard of HTML and it's still very much a WORK IN PROGRESS. This is why you don't see a ton of tools for it yet. Also and probably the biggest thing to note is that HTML 5 may never do all the things that Flash can do. This means that it's not a direct one to one replacement. At least not today for sure. HTML 5 authoring isn't just one thing. It's using HTML 5, CSS3 and Javascript. . Actually it's CSS3 that's the really interesting part. If you're really interested in developing in HTML 5 Adobe has already released the HTMl 5 pack for Dreamweaver and Illustrator. Check them out on Adobe Labs. More tools are in the works! Back to the photographers…

 

My goal

I started thinking about my site and the fact that it was a pain to update and therefore I wasn't updating it as often as I'd like to. Then I started listing the ideal things that I would want to have to make it easier:

  • I'd want as much of the site as possible driven by Lightroom since that's where my images live anyway.
  • Until HTML 5 is further along I still want Flash galleries for those who can see them.
  • The site has to be viewable on devices/computers not running Flash
  • I only want to update ONE set of images. In other words, both the Flash and HTMl version would use the same images.
  • I want Video that plays on everything <-this is not as easy as you think!
  • I don't want to write any code! Writing a line here and there during setup is fine, but I don't want to have to code the thing with every update.

 

The Turning Gate To The Rescue

Once again The Turning Gate has come through for me. You might remember my post on using one of their web engines for my client review galleries. Since that review went live I've been working with Matthew Campagna at TTG on the ultimate solution to my goals. After countless emails back and forth (he's a great guy!) on what I wanted and tweaks to his engines based on my feedback I was able to create my entire site from scratch using Lightroom 3 and three TTG plug-ins. 

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