Making a Web Album

These are skeleton instructions only and assume you have Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.

 

In My Documents, make a workshop folder Web Prep and in it, three sub-folders, Album, Originals and Renumbered. You may substitute for Album whatever you like – Bread, Quilts, Kakadoo?

Note that copying across folders using ctrl/click/drag may cause problems by making copies when you don’t want them. To avoid this, release the ctrl key between clicks for multiple selection.

Copy your photos into Originals. Perhaps it’s safer to copy the whole contents of a folder and then selectively delete those not wanted. Next, rotate, adjust colour, redeye etc and crop. If you want to display them in a different order than original name order you must rename them to sort in the name order you wish to display them.

Open Adobe Elements 2

Click File / Batch Processing. Choose Folder, Source Originals, File type JPEG MAX, leave size alone, Rename files None + 2 digit number, Output Destination Renumbered and press OK. Now they are all neatly numbered 01, 02, 03 etc. (If you goof try again over the top)

Click File / Create Web Photo Album Gallery

Choose Styles / Simple. (Other possible styles are Table and Vertical Frame)

In Options choose Banner from the pulldown – remove or adjust the date and change the site name to November 2005 or whatever. Change the font size if required

(Note that the date re-appears when you reopen the Create, the other settings are remembered)

Large Images – tick Resize – this reduces the multi-megapixel pictures to web size

Choose Custom (640 or 700) … this setting works for 800x600 as well as 1024x768
Just untick title. JPEG set to 5

Thumbnails – Custom (140) Border size 2. Columns 5 Rows 10 or more. Tick Caption. Font 3

Custom Colours – Try making Link, Visited link, Text and Active link a dark colour (dark green) and Background and Banner white (#FFFFFF) or a pale version of the dark colour. Use the # number at the bottom of the palette replicate the colours in each box.

Now set source and destination folders

Browse for source folder which has your selection of photos (My Documents\Web Prep\Renumbered)

Destination folder must NOT be a sub-folder of the source, hence (My Documents\Web Prep\Album)

Click OK and the album is auto-created

Now fiddle with the colours of the page by repeating the creation process, but carefully!

Notice the name above each picture. To change this, open Front Page.

Click File / Open and navigate to My Documents\Web Prep\Album or your equivalent.

Open index.htm. In Normal mode make sure the paragraph markers are showing (the button with on it) Click at the end of November 2005 and delete down to the flag. Then delete the two after the dotted box. Save.

In My Documents\Web Prep\Album\pages open 01.htm highlight from the start of November 2005 / 01 to the flag in front of the paragraph marker a few lines down and press delete. Change the font and font size if you like. Type in your text eg, The dog having his afternoon sleep. Now centre it or not as you choose. Delete the 3 below the text. Save. Text font size and the amount of waffle may cause your picture to go down the page, so try it and adjust. Do the same for the rest of the pages.

Check in the browser. Use refresh to make sure you see the latest version.

Now it’s working, copy the whole folder Album into your website folder structure.

You will need to put a hyperlink back to the page from which you access this album. This hyperlink goes at the top of Album\index.htm page in front of your title. Put 3 spaces in front of the title and click at the start of the line. Insert the Album\images\home.gif graphic.

If you want to direct someone to your album, the URL is <your website name>/Album,
eg http://www.rossyfix.com/Album/ which automatically opens index.htm in that folder. Note: The url is case sensitive.