• Jul
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TTG Polaroid Gallery

Current version 1.2

TTG Polaroid Gallery brings Christopher Einarsrud’s Polaroid Gallery to the Lightroom Web module. Polaroid gallery doesn’t allow for much customization, but it does provide a fun and casual way to present your photo collection.


TTG Polaroid Gallery 1.2


Download | Sample Gallery | Adobe Forum Thread | Installation


Achtung!!

A few things to be aware of when using Polaroid Gallery:

First, the gallery crop dimensions are set in stone. If you want to control which portions of your photos show up, you should crop them to either a 1:1 aspect ratio (which is not perfect, but probably close enough) or a 464:450 aspect ratio (which ought to be pretty spot-on). If you’re seeing empty space in your polaroids, try increasing the Image Size via the Web module slider.

Second, the polaroid.swf file is a little heavy at 336KB. Probably not the best choice if you’re expecting a lot of visitors on dial-up.

Last, Polaroid Gallery can be used to display photos from your Flickr account. You can’t use the Lightroom Web module to do it, but check out Christopher Einarsrud’s Polaroid Gallery page if you’re interested.

Variations

The zip archive contains two galleries, Type I and Type II.

The Type I gallery uses Christopher Einarsrud’s original code and SWF gallery file. The background image cannot be changed.

The Type II gallery uses modified index.html and SWF files. In this version, users can set their own background color via the Web module Color Palette panel. Users can also use their own background image by naming the image background.jpg and copying it into the folder of the exported gallery.

Changelog


v1.2 (2007-07-30)

The caption bug finally seems to have been squished for good, and the gallery has been tested in both Mac and Windows versions of Lightroom with positive results. Thanks where thanks are due: to Andy Rahn for setting me in the right direction, and to Joe Capra and John Moore for support and testing. Without them, I’d probably still be wracking my brains trying to sort this out.

For those curious about the version numbering, v1.1 was a bad beta that never went public.

v1.01 (2007-07-30)

Found a bug in 1.0 that prevented the gallery from working in Lightroom for Windows. The problem is related to code that fetches photo captions into the gallery; captioning support has therefore been dropped from the release in favor of compatibility. I’ll hopefully be able to return captions to the gallery in a future release.

Added a Type II gallery that allows for user defined backgrounds. See “Variations” above.

v1.0 (2007-07-29)

Initial release; feature complete.

Additional Notes

TTG Polaroid Gallery is based on the public version of Polaroid Gallery 1.01.

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Comment »

Tony Puerzer
31 July 07 / permalink

Hi

This is a great little gallery – very simple to use. One thing that made me smile is that the scan of the white Polaroid frame (“border”) is actually the BACK of a real Polaroid print, not the front. I keep wanting to flip over the gallery images on my computer screen to see the front of the prints. :)

Dale
4 August 07 / permalink

Good job, this is great stuff. Wish I had your kind of talent in writing flash and such. I found your site while looking for flash galleries for my photo site that I’m rebuilding. I then went to the guys site that you ported this gallery from and found this turning page one, “http://www.interviewchris.com/?project=3”. How hard is something like this to do. Is there a flash gallery out there available for download already? I would like to do this for my site.

Matthew
4 August 07 / permalink

Thanks, Dale. I actually don’t do any Flash scripting, though. I don’t know how. I’m just taking someone else’s Flash gallery, and using XSLT to integrate it into Lightroom.

His turning-page project looks pretty cool. Unfortunately, it’s not something he’s released as a gallery. I did see a turning-page flash gallery a while ago, but it was crap. That’s the kind of thing, if it’s not done well, then it’s not worth doing. And this one wasn’t done well. Is there a good one out there? I don’t know.

Matthew
4 August 07 / permalink

Okay, I found a good one, http://www.page-flip.com/, but it costs $25.

Doug
8 August 07 / permalink

Matthew,

the page-flip.com flash is very nice. That is something I would pay $25 for no problem. How hard is it to build a lightroom template for something like that?

thanks
Doug

Matthew
8 August 07 / permalink

Doug,
Shouldn’t be too difficult. I have it on my to-do list, but I have at least two projects to clear first – one a LR gallery, the other a website.

Robert Barnett
31 August 07 / permalink

I love this gallery, it is so cool. But, how about a version of this that worked with any shape image. I know it wouldn’t be able to include the polaroid frame, but maybe you could do this one with a more generic frame. Like maybe 20 pixels of white with a single pixel black edge and a small drop shadow. I would love this one if I didn’t have to crop the images to such a difficult ratio to use.

Robert

Matthew
31 August 07 / permalink

Hi Robert,

A request like that should go to the Flash developer, Christopher Einarsrud. You can get to his website from the link at the beginning of this page. I didn’t develop the Polaroid gallery, but only integrated it into Lightroom.

Cheers,
Matthew

dave
4 October 07 / permalink

Hey Matthew

Is there a way to get rid of the little question mark in the upper left corner?

Thanks
Dave

Matthew
4 October 07 / permalink

Nope.

jigs
16 November 07 / permalink

i think this archive is corrupt. wont open on a mac… tried to download many times….all the other galleries work great!

Matthew
16 November 07 / permalink

Hi Jigs,
I’ve replaced the archive with a fresh one. Give it a try and let me know if you have any further issues.

Cheers,
Matt

Marlo Clemente
20 November 07 / permalink

Hi guys,

I’m having a problem changing the captions per picture…I type a custom caption and it shows for all of the picture…please help

Thanks,
Marlo

Matthew
20 November 07 / permalink

Captions should be set in the IPTC data using the Library module. Then tell the Web module to pull data from the Captions field.

sam
22 February 08 / permalink

Hey Matthew, I’m already using some of your great stuff on my site, but I fancy a change, I was wondering if it would be possible to tweak this so that it functions as a Gallery Index?

Cheers mate

Matthew
22 February 08 / permalink

Hi Sam,
I think that’s a great idea, but it’s not something I can do. It would require changes to the Polaroid Gallery source, and being as I’m not the developer, I can’t do that. Christopher Einarsrud is the creator of the Polaroid Gallery (I only “ported” it for Lightroom). You might try contacting him and asking whether he can incorporate hyperlink functionality into the gallery.

Urs
24 March 08 / permalink

Hi Matthew,

On my WinXP computer your ZIP file is corrupt :-(
Do you have an other one?
Thanks, Urs

Matthew
24 March 08 / permalink

I’ve uploaded a fresh copy of the file. Try again.

Urs
25 March 08 / permalink

Hi Matthew,
Your new update works fine. Great!
Urs

Gerwin
6 April 08 / permalink

Just tweaked it a bit so i got a nice header above it, thanks!

(too bad for the question mark) :S

http://www.gerwinfilius.com/polaroid

oneshot
18 April 08 / permalink

Hi Matthew!

I have a problem!
I’m actually using the LR upgraded version 1.2 on Win XP.

I downloaded TTGPolaroid and then unzipped.
I had to create all the folders \Adobe\Lightroom\Web Galleries\ in Application Data MANUALLY… since I didn’t find it in there (why?). Then copied all the contents of zip file in Web Galleries.

When opened LR… nothing there was in!!!

Can you help me in simple English???

Many Thanks.

Matthew
18 April 08 / permalink

@oneshot:

The only folder you might need to create is Web Galleries.

Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\ should already exist. It might be a hidden file. You need to enable the See Hidden Files and Folders option in Windows in order to find it.

oneshot
18 April 08 / permalink

Thanks for your reply Matthew, but now I asked to see hidden files and the only file (exept that I create) I have in C-Doc&Setting-myname-ApllData is a folder named Syntrillium with the prog Cool Edit inside…

What can I do?

Consider that I have a LR 1.0 registered version that I upgraded to 1.2.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Matthew
18 April 08 / permalink

@oneshot:

First thing you should do is upgrade to Lightroom 1.4.1. It’s free and it’s important. Some of my galleries will only run in 1.3 or higher.

As for the folders, I’m honestly not the best person to ask. I’m a Mac user; getting folders to show on Windows is something I can probably do if I’m sitting down and looking at the Windows machine; but trying to remember it in order to explain, that’s more difficult. I’d recommend asking about it on Lightroom Forums. I’m sure some fellow Windows users there could help you out more easily than I. :)

Patrick
11 May 08 / permalink

I’ve been trying to use the polaroid gallery and am having some issues. It works fine in both IE and FF. However, in IE if you browse to another page with the SWF embedded in it, all the photos appear crammed in the upper left hand corner. I thin it has to do with IE caching the SWF file and not loading it properly…

Has anyone else had this problem?
Is there a work-around for it?

-Patrick

kris
24 May 08 / permalink

i’m having the same issue so i’m anxious to hear an answer :)

Matthew
25 May 08 / permalink

There isn’t. If it’s a caching issue, then the user needs to clear their cache. If it’s a bug with Polaroid Gallery, then you should trying convincing the author to continue work on the gallery. It’s not an issue with the LR template, so there’s nothing I can do.

David
8 July 08 / permalink

Hi,
I cannot find an answer to 2 issues for the Polaroid gallery: – how to add custom text to the bottom of the polaroid (mine just shows the file name) – in what file do I need to change what parameter to avoid cropping of the pictures?
Thanks a lot!!!

Matthew
9 July 08 / permalink

David,

You can set the text by changing the source for Captions, under the Image Settings pane in the Web module. You can source from any piece of metadata.

There is no way to prevent the images being cropped, however. The Flash-component does that automatically and it cannot be changed.

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