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Create web photo galleries

Note:

To create web galleries with Photoshop CS5, see Create a web photo gallery in Adobe Bridge Help. To use the older, optional Web Photo Gallery plug-in described in the topics below, first download and install it for Windows or Mac OS.

About web photo galleries

A web photo gallery is a web site that features a home page with thumbnail images and gallery pages with full-size images. Each page contains links that allow visitors to navigate the site. For example, when a visitor clicks a thumbnail image on the home page, the associated full-size image is loaded into a gallery page. You use the Web Photo Gallery command to automatically generate a web photo gallery from a set of images.

Photoshop Web photo gallery home page
Web photo gallery home page

Photoshop provides a variety of styles for your gallery, which you can select using the Web Photo Gallery command. If you are an advanced user who knows HTML, you can create a new style or customize a style by editing a set of HTML template files.

Each template for gallery styles comes with different options. If you’re using a preset style, some options may be dimmed, or unavailable in that particular style.

Create web galleries using Adobe Bridge

Adobe Bridge provides updated web gallery features. For instructions, see Create a web photo gallery in Adobe Bridge Help, or view the tutorials below.

Use the older, optional Photoshop plug-in

  1. Download and install the older Web Photo Gallery plug-in for Windows or Mac OS.

  2. (Optional) Select the files or folder you want to use in Adobe Bridge.

    Your images will be presented in the order in which they’re displayed in Bridge. If you’d rather use a different order, change the order in Bridge.

  3. Do one of the following:

    • In Adobe Bridge, choose Tools > Photoshop > Web Photo Gallery.

    • In Photoshop, choose File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery.

  4. Choose a style for the gallery from the Styles pop‑up menu. A preview of the home page for the chosen style appears in the dialog box.

  5. (Optional) Enter an e‑mail address as the contact information for the gallery.

  6. Choose the source files for your gallery from the Use menu.

    Selected Images From Bridge

    Uses images you selected before opening the Web Photo Gallery dialog box.

    Folder

    Uses images from folders you select using the Browse (Windows) or Choose (Mac OS) buttons. Select Include All Subfolders to include images inside any subfolders of the selected folder.

  7. Click Destination, and then select a folder in which to store the images and HTML pages for the gallery. Then click OK (Windows) or Choose (Mac OS).

  8. Select formatting options for the web gallery. Choose from the Options menu to display each set of options. See Web photo gallery options.

  9. Click OK. Photoshop places the following HTML and JPEG files in your destination folder:

    • A home page for your gallery named index.htm or index.html, depending on the Extension options. Open this file in any web browser to preview your gallery.

    • JPEG images inside an images subfolder.

    • HTML pages inside a pages subfolder.

    • JPEG thumbnail images inside a thumbnails subfolder.

Making sure that your colors match

If you work with photos in a wide-gamut color working space such as ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB, image colors may change when viewed in a web gallery by a browser that doesn’t read embedded color profiles. If this happens, try converting the image profiles to sRGB (which most browsers use as a default) before optimizing them or including them in a Web Photo Gallery. Convert them to sRGB in one of the following ways. It is a good idea to work with a copy of the images.

If you use the Image Processor, you can save the files directly to JPEG format in the size that you want them. If you do so, make sure to turn Resize Images off in the Large Image options.

General

Options for file extensions, encoding, and metadata.

Extension

Uses either .htm or .html as the filename extension.

Use UTF 8 Encoding For URL

Uses UTF‑8 encoding.

Add Width And Height Attributes For Images

Specifies dimensions, shortening download time.

Preserve All Metadata

Maintains metadata info.

Banner

Text options for the banner that appears on each page in the gallery. Enter text for each of these:

Site Name

The name of the gallery.

Photographer

The name of the person or organization receiving credit for the photos in the gallery.

Contact Info

The contact information for the gallery, such as a telephone number or a business address.

Date

The date appearing on each page of the gallery. By default, Photoshop uses the current date.

Font and Font Size

(Available for some site styles) Options for the banner text.

Large Images

Options for the main images that appear on each gallery page.

Add numeric links

(Available for some site styles) Places a numeric sequence (starting at 1, ending with the total number of pages in the gallery) running horizontally at the top of each gallery page. Each number is a link to the respective page.

Resize Images

Resizes the source images for placement on the gallery pages. Choose a size from the pop‑up menu or enter a size in pixels. For Constrain, choose which dimensions of the image you want to constrain during resizing. For JPEG Quality, choose an option from the pop‑up menu, enter a value between 0 and 12, or drag the slider. The higher the value, the better the image quality and the larger the file.

Note:

Photoshop uses the default image interpolation method set in preferences. Choose Bicubic Sharper as the default for best results when reducing image size.

Border Size

Specifies the width, in pixels, of the border around the image.

Titles Use

(Available for some site styles) Specifies options for displaying captions under each image. Select Filename to display the filename, or select Description, Credits, Title, and Copyright to display description text drawn from the File Info dialog box.

Font and Font Size

(Available for some site styles) Specify the font and size of the caption.

Thumbnails

Options for the gallery home page, including the size of the thumbnail images.

Size

Specifies the thumbnail size. Choose from the pop‑up menu or enter a value in pixels for the width of each thumbnail.

Columns and Rows

Specify the number of columns and rows in which to display thumbnails on the home page. This option doesn’t apply to galleries that use the Horizontal Frame Style or Vertical Frame Style.

Border Size

Specifies the width, in pixels, of the border around each thumbnail.

Titles Use

(Available for some site styles) Specifies options for displaying captions under each thumbnail. Select Filename to display the filename, or select Description, Credits, Title, and Copyright to display description text drawn from the File Info dialog box.

Font and Font Size

(Available for some site styles) Specify the font and size of the caption.

Custom Colors

Options for colors of elements in the gallery. To change the color of an element, click its color swatch and then select a new color from the Adobe Color Picker. You can change the background color of each page (Background option) and of the banner (Banner option).

Security

Displays text over each image as a theft deterrent.

Content

Specifies the text to be displayed. Select Custom Text to enter customized text. Select Filename, Description, Credits, Title, or Copyright to display text drawn from the File Info dialog box.

Font, Color, and Position

Specify the font, color, and alignment of the caption.

Rotate

Place the text on the image at an angle.

Photoshop provides a variety of styles for your web photo gallery. If you are an advanced user who knows HTML, you can create a new style or customize a style by editing a set of HTML template files.

The web photo gallery styles provided by Photoshop are stored in individual folders in the following locations:

Windows

Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS5/Presets/Web Photo Gallery.

Mac OS

Adobe Photoshop CS5/Presets/Web Photo Gallery.

The name of each folder in this location appears as an option in the Styles menu in the Web Photo Gallery dialog box. Each folder contains the following HTML template files, which Photoshop uses to generate the gallery:

Caption.htm

Determines the layout of the caption that appears below each thumbnail on the home page.

FrameSet.htm

Determines the layout of the frame set for displaying pages.

IndexPage.htm

Determines the layout of the home page.

SubPage.htm

Determines the layout of the gallery pages with full-size images.

Thumbnail.htm Determines the layout of the thumbnails that appear on the home page.

Each template file contains HTML code and tokens. A token is a text string that is replaced by Photoshop when you set its corresponding option in the Web Photo Gallery dialog box. For example, a template file may contain the following TITLE element that uses a token as its enclosed text:

<TITLE>%TITLE%</TITLE>

When Photoshop generates the gallery using this template file, it replaces the token %TITLE% with the text that you entered for Site Name in the Web Photo Gallery dialog box.

To better understand an existing style, you can open and study its HTML template files using an HTML editor. Because only standard ASCII characters are required to create HTML documents, you can open, edit, and create these documents using a plain-text editor such as Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac OS).

You can customize an existing web photo gallery style by editing one or more of its HTML template files. When customizing a style, you need to follow these guidelines so that Photoshop can generate the gallery correctly:

  • The style folder must contain these files: Caption.htm, IndexPage.htm, SubPage.htm, Thumbnail.htm, and FrameSet.htm.

  • You can rename the style folder but not the HTML template files in the folder.

  • You can have an empty Caption.htm file, and place the HTML code and tokens determining the layout of the caption in the Thumbnail.htm file.

  • You can replace a token in a template file with the appropriate text or HTML code, so that an option is set through the template file rather than through the Web Photo Gallery dialog box. For example, a template file may contain a BODY element with the following background color attribute that uses a token as its value:

    bgcolor=%BGCOLOR%

    To set the background color of the page to red, you can replace the token %BGCOLOR% with “FF0000.”

  • You can add HTML code and tokens to the template files. All tokens must be in uppercase characters, and begin and end with the percent (%) symbol.

  1. Locate the folder that stores the existing web photo gallery styles.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • To customize a style, create a copy of the style folder, and store it in the same location as the existing style folders.

    • To create a new style, create a new folder for the new style, and store it in the same location as the existing style folders.

    The new or customized style (named for its folder) appears in the Styles menu in the Web Photo Gallery dialog box.

  3. Using an HTML editor, do one of the following:
    • Customize the HTML template file.

    • Create the necessary HTML template files and store them inside the style folder.

    When creating the template files, make sure that you follow the guidelines for customization outlined in About customizing web photo gallery styles.

    Note:

    When customizing or creating a template for a gallery style, you should place each of the following tokens on a separate line in the HTML file: %CURRENTINDEX%, %NEXTIMAGE%, %NEXTINDEX%, %PAGE%, %PREVIMAGE%, and %PREVINDEX%. When generating specific pages of a gallery, Photoshop skips lines in a template that contain tokens that don’t apply to those pages. For example, when Photoshop generates the first gallery page, it skips any line in the template that contains the %PREVIMAGE% token, which determines the link to the previous gallery page. By keeping the %PREVIMAGE% token on a separate line, you ensure that Photoshop doesn’t ignore other tokens in the template.

Photoshop uses tokens in the HTML template files to define a default web photo gallery style. Photoshop uses these tokens to generate a gallery based on user input in the Web Photo Gallery dialog box.

When customizing or creating a gallery style, you can add any token to any HTML template file, with the exception of %THUMBNAILS% and %THUMBNAILSROWS%, which can appear only in the IndexPage.htm file. When adding a token, keep in mind that you may also need to add HTML code to the file so that the token is used correctly.

You can use the following tokens in the HTML template files:

%ALINK%

Determines the color of active links.

%ALT%

Determines the name of an image file.

%ANCHOR%

Provides the ability to return to the thumbnail of the image the user is viewing, rather than the beginning of the index. This takes effect when the user clicks the Home button.

%BANNERCOLOR%

Determines the color of the banner.

%BANNERFONT%

Determines the font of the banner text.

%BANNERFONTSIZE%

Determines the font size of the banner text.

%BGCOLOR%

Determines the background color.

%CAPTIONFONT%

Determines the font of the caption below each thumbnail on the home page.

%CAPTIONFONTSIZE%

Determines the font size of the caption.

%CAPTIONTITLE%

Inserts the document title for a caption from the file information.

%CHARSET%

Determines the character set used on each page.

%CONTACTINFO%

Determines the contact information for the gallery, such as phone number and location.

%CONTENT_GENRATOR%

Expands to “Adobe Photoshop CS5 Web Photo Gallery.”

%COPYRIGHT%

Inserts the copyright information for a caption from the file information.

%CREDITS%

Inserts the credits for a caption from the file information.

%CURRENTINDEX%

Determines the link for the current home page.

%CURRENTINDEXANCHOR%

Resides in SubPage.htm and points to the first index page.

%DATE%

Determines the date that appears on the banner.

%EMAIL%

Determines the e-mail address contact information for the gallery.

%FILEINFO%

Determines the image file information for a caption.

%FILENAME%

Determines the filename of an image. Use this for metadata that appears as HTML text.

%FILENAME_URL%

Determines the URL filename of an image. Use this for URL filenames only.

%FIRSTPAGE%

Determines the link for the first gallery page that appears in the right frame of a frame set.

%FRAMEINDEX%

Determines the link for the home page that appears in the left frame of a frame set.

%HEADER%

Determines the title of the gallery.

%IMAGEBORDER%

Determines the border size of the full-size image on a gallery page.

%IMAGE_HEIGHT%

Enables the Add Width And Height Attributes For Images check box. This allows the user to download the attributes, reducing download time.

%IMAGE_HEIGHT_NUMBER%

This token is replaced by a numeral (only) representing the width of the image.

%IMAGEPAGE%

Determines the link to a gallery page.

%IMAGE_SIZE%

If the Resize Images box is selected, this token contains the image pixel value used in the Large Images panel. If the box is not selected, this token contains an empty string. This is useful for JavaScript in the templates, because it can show the maximum height and width values for all images for the generated site.

%IMAGESRC%

Determines the URL for a full-size image on a gallery page.

%IMAGE_WIDTH%

Enables the Add Width And Height Attributes For Images check box. This allows the user to download the attributes, reducing download time.

%IMAGE_WIDTH_NUMBER%

This token is replaced by a numeral (only) representing the width of the image.

%LINK%

Determines the color of links.

%NEXTIMAGE%

Determines the link for the next gallery page.

%NEXTIMAGE _CIRCULAR%

Sets the link from large preview image to next large preview image.

%NEXTINDEX%

Determines the link for the next home page.

%NUMERICLINKS%

Inserts numbered links on subpages to all large preview images.

%PAGE%

Determines the current page location (for example, page 1 of 3).

%PHOTOGRAPHER%

Determines the name of the person or organization receiving credit for the photos in the gallery.

%PREVIMAGE%

Determines the link for the previous gallery page.

%PREVINDEX%

Determines the link for the previous home page.

%SUBPAGEHEADER%

Determines the title of the gallery.

%SUBPAGETITLE%

Determines the title of the gallery.

%TEXT%

Determines the text color.

%THUMBBORDER%

Determines the size of thumbnail borders.

%THUMBNAIL_HEIGHT%

Enables the Add Width And Height Attributes For Images check box. This allows the user to download the attributes, reducing download time.

%THUMBNAIL_HEIGHT_NUMBER%

This token is replaced with a numeral (only) representing the height of the thumbnail.

%THUMBNAILS%

This token is replaced with thumbnails using the Thumbnail.htm file for the frame styles. You must place this token alone in a single, nonbreaking line in the HTML file.

%THUMBNAIL_SIZE%

Contains the thumbnail pixel value in the Thumbnails panel. This is useful for JavaScript in the templates, as it can show the maximum height and width values for all thumbnails for the generated site.

%THUMBNAILSRC%

Determines the link to a thumbnail.

%THUMBNAILSROWS%

This token is replaced with rows of thumbnails using the Thumbnail.htm file for the nonframe styles. You must place this token alone in a single, nonbreaking line in the HTML file.

%THUMBNAIL_WIDTH%

Enables the Add Width And Height Attributes For Images check box. This allows the user to download the attributes, reducing download time.

%THUMBNAIL_WIDTH_NUMBER%

This token is replaced by a numeral (only) representing the width of the thumbnail.

%TITLE%

Determines the title of the gallery.

%VLINK%

Determines the color of visited links.

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