Shooting for a special project here at Qwanoes, I was able to go to some great locations around the Cowichan Valley.

News

1. There are websites popping up all over the place that have images from the new Mars lander, Phoenix. The official website for the mission has posted some great images that are very high resolution of the surface of Mars. Check it out HERE.

2. The Strobist website has come out with a new collection of their great video tutorials on DVD. The man who runs this website is probably one of the best minimalist lighting guys in the industry. Check it out HERE.

3. The recent Photoshop User magazine features a great article on “Creative Organization” in Lightroom. From folder structure, archiving and keywording, they talk about it all. Every month I look forward to the Lightroom feature in the magazine, such great stuff!

One of Lightroom greatest assets within Lightroom is its ability to create amazing web content within minutes. Not only are the basic templates that come with Lightroom amazing, but the array of third-party web galleries available now is incredible. One of my personal favorites is the Slideshow Pro gallery. At first glance it looks like a basic web gallery system. But under that deceptively easy hood is an extremely powerful and flexible system. I recently have been playing with it a lot lately trying to do some brainstorming on how to use it more and I think I have come up with some great ways to take full advantage of this great utility.

Jordan’s Tips on Slideshow Pro in Lightroom:

1. Make sure you get to know the tool bar (inside and out) for within the web galleries module. Upon first glance it can be very overwhelming. It is strongly would recommended you dive in and start playing around, pop on that explorers hat and start changing colors, options, transitions, etc.
2. Know the different sections of the tool bar, there are ten different sections. Those sections are: albums, captions, content area, feedback, gallery, header, media player, navigation, typography and extra effects.
3. Understand the needs of the gallery you are creating. Is the gallery going at the front of a website, in a portfolio or basic slide show. This will help you define what the look of: control bar type, transition type, etc. that will be used.
4. Make multiple different templates and save them for future use. I always use the same template for my blog, a different one for another blog, etc. Templates are powerful and save time.
5. Lastly, is uploading and displaying on the web. If you have ever setup a web gallery from the FTP uploader within Lightroom, then you know that you can select a specific location you want the SSP files to go. I generally place them all within a specific folder, then from there I will choose my options for displaying. For displaying the gallery on my blog I will use an iframe html code that is in the dimensions of the specific gallery. For example: <iframe src=”place url here” height=”450″ width=”500″ name=”" scrolling=no frameBorder=”0″ ></iframe> is the coding I use to place a gallery within this blog.

Here is a quick example of a gallery that I created with SSP in Lightroom. If you like this look and feature set, here is a link to the template: Slideshow Clean