Creating a Web Gallery

Elements, like iPhoto, has an easy and elegant method of converting your stacks of photos into a Web-ready gallery that will display thumbnails of your pictures. Visitors clicking on a thumbnail will open up a full-page view of the image to appreciate it more fully. There are 14 different styles you can choose from, ranging from simple to elaborate. Bears is great for kid pictures, while Office is more businesslike, and Antique Paper is ideal for scanning in the old family album. Figure 22.8 shows a typical gallery page, as viewed from my Web browser. I chose the Horizontal Frame style, and selected pink for the background to best suit these little princesses.

Figure 22.8. These old photos and etchings are displayed in the Antique Paper format.

To access this feature, choose File, Create Web Photo Gallery. You'll see the dialog box shown in Figure 22.9. First, though, make sure your pictures are all in one folder. Because they will be listed in alphabetical order by default, if you'd prefer some different arrangement, add numbers to the front of their filenames. Choose a gallery style from the Styles list and then click Browse and select your folder. Choose whether or not to include subfolders as well. Click Destination, and tell Elements where to place the completed gallery.

Figure 22.9. Select the gallery style and set other options from this dialog box.

Some gallery styles have options; others do not. Here's a list of the options you may be able to set by selecting their category from the Options list:

• Banner ” Enter information that will appear in the text banner at the top or bottom of the gallery. The site name appears in the browser's title bar.

• Large Images ” Set the size of the images when they are selected from the home page, which displays the images as thumbnails. You can establish a size used for all images, or select a height or width, and allow the other dimension to be set proportionate to the image's original size. You can also select the JPEG quality used in the large displays. Add a border around the large version of each image by entering a value in the Border Size box. Select what you want to display as the title of the large image pages from the Title Use list.

• Thumbnails ” Set the options for the home page, where images are displayed as thumbnails. Select a size for the thumbnails, add a border around each thumbnail with the Border Size box, and select a title for the thumbnail page(s) from the Title Use list. If you select the Simple, Table, or Web gallery style, choose the number of columns and rows for each thumbnail page.

• Custom Colors ” Select the colors you want to use for each element of the gallery by clicking the appropriate color swatch and choosing a color from the Color Picker.

• Security ” Protect your images from unauthorized use by selecting an option from the Content list. If you choose Custom, enter the text you want to use.

If you select the Table gallery style, you can choose your own graphic to use as the background if you like, by clicking the Background button. Click OK after choosing all your options to create the gallery. The home page opens in your browser so you can try out your creation. The destination folder you select will contain folders with the thumbnails and larger pictures, plus the HTML code to go into your Web page editor. Follow the usual procedures for adding pages to your Web site.