You should read up on customizing the Web Photo Gallery templates. It’s VERY easy to do, especially if you use a web authoring app like Dreamweaver. But if you know a little bit about HTML then you could even do the modifications easily using Notepad.
Open Photoshop ‘Help’ and go to the "Web photo galleries" where youll find a section on customizing.
The templates all live in:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\PhotoshopCS\Presets\Web Photo Gallery
Each Style templates parts reside in its own folder and each folder is named as per what you see in the Photoshop Web Photo Gallery Styles pull-down menu.
1) Make a copy of the folder which contains the template style you want to customize and then rename the copy with whatever name you wish to appear on the PS8 pull-down menu (all those Styles names are simply the folder names).
2) Edit each template part in the folder and replace the variables with the values you wish to use.
Thats all there is to it.
The variables in the Style template are simply descriptive names surrounded by % signs, such as:
FONT size=%CAPTIONFONTSIZE% face=%CAPTIONFONT%>%FILEINFO%
In the above example the words "CAPTIONFONTSIZE", "CAPTIONFONT", and "FILEINFO" are the values you enter/choose when creating a new Web Gallery. The script searches these names and enters the values you specify. But if you fill in these values in the template then the option will be grayed out and will be replaced by the value you entered.
We could replace the example above with:
FONT size=3 face=Arial>%FILEINFO%
The font SIZE and FACE will then be predetermined (Arial size 3) and the font size and face choice will be grayed. But the Web Gallery script will still enter the correct FILEINFO values when generating the site.
You can replace any value contained within % signs. Just don’t change values that vary from image to image such as NUMERICLINKS, FILENAME, PREVIMAGE, etc.. The variable names used in the scripts are very self explanatory so it’s easy to figure out what each of them represents. You could even create a site using your preferred template values and then look at the code of the pages in Notepad (print it out if necessary) to see how the variables were changed. You can then use this as a guide for creating your own custom template.
Just be sure that you work on a COPY of the template folder and give it a name you will recognize.
Hope this makes some sense and puts you on the road to customizing Web Gallery templates.
Russell
Thanks for the info.
I can’t get to set the thumbnail height and width. just replacing the variables shows no affect when I choose the template from the menu.
thanks.
I can’t get to set the thumbnail height and width.
That isn’t something a template can save, afaik.
just replacing the variables shows no affect when I choose the template from the menu.
It won’t show what’s set in the template. That’s why you need to name the templates in a way that you’ll rmember what it is.
How will Photoshop know to create the thumbs in the size I want? I want the thumbs 150px but when I start the wizard and choose the new template the thumbs are set to small (75px).
Also, the recent directories are not saved and you need to choose the source and dest folders for each album.
As far as I can see, PS CS has gone back in all that is related to web photo galleries rather than forward.
I guess i will keep a copy of PS 7 just for this purpose. I hope someone from Adobe is reading this.
Photoshop remembers the last settings you used, including the destination folder. If you use similar settings each time (thumbnail size, image re-size, rows, columns, etc..) then there’s nothing to reset.
I create the Web Photo Gallery from images selected within Bridge. If it’s a whole folder I simply select Ctrl+A, so I rarely need to enter a ‘source’ folder.
I don’t have a problem changing these values when needed. I don;t think PS7 made this any easier. And (IMO) the browser generated by PS7 is not as good and PS8.
Russell
This is exactly the problem I’m describing. Photoshop CS does not remember anything. After i press "OK" and the album is created, if i want to create a new album i have to do everything from scratch.
I need to choose from scratch the source and dest directories. Reset the thumb sizes and the large sizes.
All of this has to be done over and over even if i don’t close photoshop between the albums.
I do not have this problem with PS 7
This is exactly the problem I’m describing. Photoshop CS does not remember anything. After i press "OK" and the album is created, if i want to create a new album i have to do everything from scratch.
Well I just tried it with CS and everything I did was saved for the next session. I closed PS8, reopened it, went to create a new Web Photo Gallery and all my previous settings are still there.
What’s special about your computer that’s not saving your Photoshop settings? I don’t have any suggestions other than to reinstall or find out if you are running any special settings that are causing this. I’m running my computer with Administrator permissions. Is it possible that the way you have your system (or Photoshop) configured resets Photoshop settings every time it runs?
Russell
