Create 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 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 a web photo gallery

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

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.

• To convert a single image, choose Edit >Convert To Profile and then choose sRGB. See Assign or remove a color profile (Illustrator, Photoshop).

• To convert a folder of images, use the Image Processor. Choose File > Scripts > Image Processor. See Convert files with the Image Processor.

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.

Web photo gallery options

Options for file extensions, encoding, and metadata.

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

Uses UTF‑8 encoding.

Specifies dimensions, shortening download time.

Maintains metadata info.

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

The name of the gallery.

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

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

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

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

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

(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.

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.

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

(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.

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

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

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

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.

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

(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.

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

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).

Displays text over each image as a theft deterrent.

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.

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

Place the text on the image at an angle.

Web photo gallery styles

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:

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

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:

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

Determines the layout of the frame set for displaying pages.

Determines the layout of the home page.

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).

About customizing web photo gallery styles

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.

Customize or create a web photo gallery style

Web photo gallery style tokens

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:

Determines the color of active links.

Determines the name of an image file.

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.

Determines the color of the banner.

Determines the font of the banner text.

Determines the font size of the banner text.

Determines the background color.

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

Determines the font size of the caption.

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

Determines the character set used on each page.

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

Expands to “Adobe Photoshop CS5 Web Photo Gallery.”

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

Inserts the credits for a caption from the file information.

Determines the link for the current home page.

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

Determines the date that appears on the banner.

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

Determines the image file information for a caption.

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

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

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

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

Determines the title of the gallery.

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

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

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

Determines the link to a gallery page.

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.

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

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

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

Determines the color of links.

Determines the link for the next gallery page.

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

Determines the link for the next home page.

Inserts numbered links on subpages to all large preview images.

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

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

Determines the link for the previous gallery page.

Determines the link for the previous home page.

Determines the title of the gallery.

Determines the title of the gallery.

Determines the text color.

Determines the size of thumbnail borders.

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

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

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.

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.

Determines the link to a thumbnail.

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.

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

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

Determines the title of the gallery.

Determines the color of visited links.