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May 23, 2007
[ SHOWING OFF ]
IT NEVER CEASES TO AMAZE US how much free stuff there is on the internet to brighten the life of the digital photographer. Who are all these cyber philanthropists offering goodies gratis? What do they get out of it? And is there a catch?
Take the case of web photo galleries. Most photo editing programs have web gallery generators built in – well, they’re not free, just a bonus feature. If you have Photoshop Elements or PaintShop Pro you already have the gear needed to make your own gallery for posting on your personal web site. Picasa gives you the whole works free.
Yahoo’s Flickr! is probably the most popular free web gallery service where the user does nothing much other than upload photos, and the upload process is made easy by the Flickr Uploader Tool. Flickr’s attraction is that it is easy to use and immediately connects the user to an international community of digi snappers. You choose your Flickr pals and let them know that you are watching their photos – and you hope they will return the compliment – by designating them as a contact.
Flickr’s downside is that the interface is a little cluttered and, frankly, boring. The user doesn’t have much control over the way the pictures are displayed.
When it comes to aesthetics our favourite web gallery, Zenfolio is a winner. Like Flickr it has a simple upload tool, but it also has a suite of page layouts and colour schemes that enhance the photos. The bad news is that it is not free. The charge for a one year basic service with 1gb of storage space is U$25. There is a free trial, so you can try before you buy.
We use Flickr! and Zenfolio but our preferred web gallery is one we create ourselves and post to the web host provided by our internet service provider. Every ISP includes hosting space for personal web pages as part of the basic service included in the monthly charge, so you might as well use it. This is where you post the galleries that you create in Photoshop, Picasa or whatever.
We have a soft spot for the free gallery creator called JAlbum. There are dozens of different layouts and colour schemes for this program and they are being added to all the time by a community of users and developers. The “skins” range from cluttered and tizzy to simple and elegant and everything in between. If you don’t like any of them you can always make your own.
Generating an album is simply a matter of dragging a folder of images into the workspace and then experimenting with different skins, colour schemes, image sizes and layouts until you hit on the one you like. The order of images can be changed by dragging any picture into a new spot in the list. Then you save the album and use JAlbum’s “publish” command to upload the component files to your web space. JAlbum creates the necessary folder structure and index.html file. Strictly speaking the user shouldn’t need to know anything about html code, but it helps to know the basics.
There is a gallery of photos taken with the Tokina 12–24mm lens and created with JAlbum here.
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COMPARE THE SAME PICTURE SET ON
FLICKR!
ZENFOLIO
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Posted by terry at May 23, 2007 11:58 PM
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Comments
There seems to be different generations of amateur photographers. One generation grew up with the 35mm slide projector, photos in a real gallery, framed. They seem to want to show their work off for people to admire but they don't really want critique or feedback, at least not in the form of internet based social networking or public remarks. In which case, Photobucket, Zenfolio and ISP hosted galleries suit them.
A different set are very gregarious, they want to bounce back from critique, they feel lonely without comment and discussion. In which case Flickr and Picasaweb are much more social - you can upload photos, the public or private restricted access allow comments from public or mates. Comments may be technical or just a sharing of nostalgia or beauty.
Also the provision of multiple sizes - thumbnails, quarter, half screen size allow multiple use of these photos - as in a gallery, as a posting in a discussion forum, as embedded in a personal blog and so on.
Finally, free is a good price, commensurate with the idea that digital cameras are an asset cost with little or no running costs.
Posted by: Ananda Sim at May 24, 2007 01:35 PM