Modifying the Lightroom Flash Gallery for Windows Servers.

A recurring question that I get is how to get the Lightroom Flash Gallery to work with Windows Servers. By default, Lightroom exports web images into a folder called "bin". This folder as it turns out, causes problems with Windows Servers. To get around this you have 2 options: Modify the gallery, or copy it and modify it. The latter is the safest way.

First you need a copy of the gallery.
Mac. Control Click (or Right Click) on the Application file: Adobe Lightroom.app.
From the menu, choose 'Show Package Content".
A window will open with a folder called 'Contents'. Open this and then open 'Plugins'.
Control Click (or Right Click) on the file: Web.lrmodule.
From the menu, choose 'Show Package Content".
A window will open with a folder called 'Contents'. Open this and then open 'Resources'.
Finally open the folder 'galleries'.
Inside is a file called 'default_flash.lrwebengine'.
This is the file you need to copy.

XP: The default location for the file you need is C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2\shared\webengines.
Inside is a file called 'default_flash.lrwebengine'.
This is the file you need to copy.

Vista: I don't have Vista to check, but I think it's also in a similar location inside the Lightroom Program folder.


The location this needs to be copied to is found with Lightroom open and going to the Presets tab of Lightroom Preferences (Edit>Preferences on PC, Lightroom>Preferences on Mac). From there click the 'Show Lightroom Presets Folder" button. Inside the window that opens, create a folder called 'Web Galleries" (no quotation marks), if it doesn't already exist. Open this and copy'default_flash.lrwebengine' into.

Open the default_flash.lrwebengine folder (you need to right/ctrl click on Mac and choose Show Package Contents). Inside are a number of files, but the one we need is called 'galleryInfo.lrweb'.

In the version I'm looking at (V2.4 on Mac), lines 21 and 22 read:

	title = LOC "$$$/WPG/Templates/Flash/Bluefire1=Lightroom Flash Gallery",
	id = "com.adobe.wpg.flash.bluefire1",

Change these lines (they may be different line numbers for you) to

	title = LOC "$$$/WPG/Templates/Flash/Bluefire1=Lightroom Flash Gallery MOD",
	id = "com.adobe.wpg.flash.bluefire1mod",

Then after Line 45

	[ "photoSizes.tracking" ] = false,

Add the following lines:

		["photoSizes.large.directory"] = "large", 
		["photoSizes.small.directory"] = "small", 
		["photoSizes.medium.directory"] = "medium", 
		["photoSizes.thumb.directory"] = "thumb", 

What we've done here is to give our copied gallery a new identifier for Lightroom, and a different name that will appear in the Engines panel of Web. The 4 new lines create new folders for the generated images for the gallery, and are not inside a 'bin' folder.

Save the file, and then restart Lightroom. A new gallery should appear in the Engines panel of web called 'Lightroom Flash Gallery MOD'. Use this to generate your galleries. Please bear in mind any of the Flash Web Templates will call the default gallery, so make sure the Engines panel reads Lightroom Flash Gallery MOD if you apply a Template.


And now for the fun bit:
Disclaimer: This information is provided 'as is' and may or not work for you. You agree to hold Sean McCormack/Lightroom-blog.com harmless for any damages that may occur due to use of, or inability to use, this workaround. Using this information is entirely at your own risk.

Watermarking Web Galleries with LR2/Mogrify

One feature sorely lacking in Lightroom is a good watermark on Export. Using the fabulous 3rd party plugin LR2/Mogrify from Timothy Armes solves this issue for a straight export, but unfortunately post process plugins are not available in the Web Module. So how can we do it?

Well for my recently launched music photography website Muso Foto, I wanted nice (i.e. not the normal Lightroom one) watermarks on my images. Nothing intrusive, but something that doesn't take from the image.

Here's the steps I took:

1. Create the web gallery as you like. Leave the Add Copyright Watermark off. Also create a nice logo using the Identity Plate. Set the Quality high (like 95 or so).

2. Export the gallery to a folder (shortcut Cmd/Cntrl J).

3. In Library navigate to the folder you created via Import. Locate the folder with the large images. With LRB Portfolio, this is called 'large'. In the default HTML, this may be something like 'bin/images/large'.

4. Import this folder in to Lightroom via 'Add to Catalog'.

5. Select all the images in the folder.

6. Click Export.

7. Using Files to Disk, I set up the export as below: Jpg, sRGB, quality 80, subfolder of original folder.

8. In the Post Process Actions section, I click on Graphical Watermark and Inner Border.

9. For the Watermark, I navigate into the Gallery folder exported earlier and find 'logo.png'-the exported Identity Plate. I do this to keep the watermark and logo consistent. It helps create a 'brand'. With a little calculation, I work out a size I'm happy with and enter it.

10. I also want a semi transparent bar across the bottom which encompasses the logo. With the logo being 24px high, I opt for a 25px high Inner border on the bottom. I select Black as the colour and reduce the transparency to 50%.

11. With all this set up, I hit export.

12. From there I move the images from the subfolder up a level and overwrite the original gallery images-this is in Finder/Explorer.

13. In Lightroom I remove the still selected images from the Library with the delete key and choose 'Remove from Library' as my dialog option. After all I don't want to delete the image files I worked hard to create!

14. Finally I upload the Gallery.


Notes: Lightroom renames '-' to '_' and forces the filenames to lower case when exporting for Web Galleries. For this reason I use the actual gallery images, which will retain their correct names for the HTML files. This is the only reason why I simply don't export the files directly from Lightroom, overwriting the original gallery files.

Just in Time Debugger

As the headcount reaches 3 on this subject, it's time to have a chat about this.

The Just in Time Debugger causes havoc with lots of programs on PC.. So it isn't just that you can get error messages with LRB Portfolio, Sonar, Mcafee, Filezilla are affected as well.

The 2nd from top link in Google comes to the rescue here though, or at least it did for 2 of those that reported it! The other one still has to get back to me!
The link is http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsdebug/thread/a52eb0ae-bcd8-4043-9661-d5fc3aa5167c/

And the bit that works is:

Solution

Open Start>Control Panels>Internet Options: Advanced and activate (check box)

* Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)
* Disable Script Debuggung (Other)


The post itself is a wonderful tale of hate for the JIT debugger, so those with this issue can get sympathy from me!
Why does it happen? Well I believe it's because Lightroom for Windows use Internet Explorer to preview inside Web, and the IS is throwing the errors.

Managing CMYK in Lightroom 2.0

Lightroom 2.0 (and 1.x) has no official support for CMYK files. Alot of people are not happy about it too. However Ian Lyons has detailed a workaround which allows you to manage and even edit CMYK files in Lightroom 2.0. The major limitation is that you can't export these files, but you can open them in Photoshop.
Check out his rather innovative workaround over at Computer-Darkroom.com