Publish a Web Album Using Adobe Photoshop or Macro

Publish a Web Album Using Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Dreamweaver Part 3

by: Robert Kennedy

So now we have you pile of images looken real good, nicely organized in directories with an index.htm file, nice. Are we ready to publish this on the net? Well, yes…but. There always is a but. Here are a couple of suggestions that will help you enhance your online photo album.

1) Make sure your album (folders and all) are in the correct location with the website contents that you publish from, usually it is best to create a new folder in the root of the domain that will display the photo album online.

2) Fire up your favorite web editing program. In my case it is Dreamweaver so I will use this program as an example. If you are using GoLive, Front Page or any other web editing program you have to equate it to Dreamweaver’s examples.

3) Open the index file. Have a look. If there are any cosmetic changes you want to make do it now. Here is an example of an Adobe Photo album; http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_ps_photo_album_sample.htm . Here is an example of a Dreamweaver Photo album http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_photo_album_sample.htm .

4) Open one html page from the ‘pages’ directory. Have a look. This time what you are looking for is ‘Global’ changes that you would like to make. By global changes I mean changes that can be implemented using the ‘find and replace’ feature. Remember that each one of the auto generated webpages is still basic html. The great part about this is the code is consistent, so find and replace is easy. The first find and place is for ‘text’ only. What we are looking for is improper grammaticism such as .gif or .jpeg appearing in the body. Often Photoshop and Dreamweaver will create this automatically unless you turn it off. If not, no biggy we’ll do a find and replace. ‘Find’ the word .gif and replace it with nothing (no value).

5) This one is for the advanced webmaster. Look carefully at an html page within your ‘pages’ directory after you have done your facelift. Create a couple of include files. Plan on placement, sizing, content etc within this page. The reason you may wish to do this is for common footers, banner advertising or any other use you may have to update all files from one. Once you have your webpage figured out, use the find and replace feature again to place your include files.

6) In the photo album created in Dreamweaver You will notice a line of code that reads as follows (in tags) meta httpequiv=กContentTypeก content=’text/html; charset=iso88591ก. You can find and replace this with your Meta tag keywords and description. In Photo shop it looks like this (in tags) META name=กgeneratorก content=กAdobe Photoshop(R) 7.0 Web Photo Galleryก

Once you have completed your photo album employing the above noted tips you are ready for the search engines to crawl your website and understand your subject matter. Here are a couple of examples of photo albums I have built:

http://www.cardtemplates.com/business_sets/index.htm

http://www.cardprinting.net/

http://www.printinglogos.com/logos_start.htm

http://www.stockphotowarehouse.com/

http://www.weprintcolor.com/buscard_samples/

http://www.weprintcolor.com/buscard_examples/index.htm

Happy photo album building 😉

About The Author

Robert is regarded as an industry expert is print and design. Online since 1999, Robert was one of the pioneers that brought graphic design tools to the web. For online graphic design solutions visit http://www.weprintcolor.com/.

This article was posted on December 11, 2004

by Robert Kennedy

Design Web Album and Deployment Using Adobe and Ma

Design Web Album and Deployment Using Adobe and Macromedia Part 1

by: Robert Kennedy

OK, here is my mission; completely install a customer example photo gallery found here http://www.cardprinting.net/ in 2 hours or less. The basic process starts from Adobe Illustrator CS or Corel Draw 12. This is the format all customers’ work is saved in. There are aproximately. 300 files I need to access export and create a photo album with full navigation.

Hereกs how I did it. Instead of opening each file in its native program I tried opening CDR and AI files in Adobe Photoshop. Guess what? It works with the ai files but not the cdr files. Why is this important? Because 90% of my files are in ai format! Illustrator only allows you to open 1 file at a time, Photoshop allows you to open as many as your computerกs resources can handle. At the same time Photoshop converts each vector based image to a bitmap, which is required for the web. Now, you could create a course of กactionsก to complete this more efficiently, but I want to remove or retouch some undesirable from each image. I am a กperfectionistก so I want these images looken good AND loading fast for the web. Personally I find Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks offer the best export filters for the web.

So now I have 300 images looken good, properly cropped and optimized for the web. What is the best way to create a Photo Album from so many images? Again letกs refer to my favorites for this, Macro Media or Adobe? I work with both for different projects and really can’t pick a favorite here! They are both excellent for this. Macromedia Dreamweaver has a function found under commands>create photo album, shown here http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo.htm. You will need Fireworks installed for this to work. Go ahead and fill in all the text fields that are required information shown here http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo_menu.htm. It is important you take the time to craft your words carefully, especially in the first field as this text is written into every html file generated. Check the appropriate format, rows and columns etc. Check the box for file names on or off and check the box for, กcreate navigation page for each photoก. OK thatกs it you’re ready to fire away, click OK. Amazing, eh?

Well I am kind of busy right now working on my next project. In my next post I will talk about the same process of creating a web based photo album using adobe photo shop for the entire process.

Cheers,

Robert

About The Author

Robert is the marketing director of an online print and design firm http://www.weprintcolor.com. Robert covers all aspects of graphic development and digital media designs.

This article was posted on December 11, 2004

by Robert Kennedy