Photo Album

The Photo Album page type allows you to share your personal photos with friends and family on your website. RapidWeaver reads your iPhoto Albums to allow you to quickly build online galleries from them, or you can drag in photos manually (either from the Finder or iMedia Browser).

Figure 1: The Photo Album Page

Using iPhoto Albums

iPhoto albums are listed in the left-hand column. To use one of the iPhoto Albums on your website, highlight the desired album in the list.

When you select an iPhoto album from the list, thumbnails for each photo in the iPhoto album will appear in the thumbnails list on the right along with its associated file name from iPhoto. To arrange the viewing order of your photos, click on a thumbnail and drag it to the desired position in the thumbnails list.

By default, all photos will be selected for publishing when you choose an iPhoto album, but you can use the checkboxes that precede each thumbnail in the list to select which ones should be published on your website.

When published, the selected photos will display the file name of the image as listed in iPhoto, but you can over-ride the filename with a caption of your choosing by double-clicking and typing into in the ‘Caption’ field of the selected photo in the thumbnails list.

Creating Custom Photo Albums

You may also use photos or images located elsewhere on your hard drive to create a custom Photo Album page. Begin by clicking into the textbox located above the iPhoto albums list and typing a name for your custom album. Once you have chosen a name, simply drag-and-drop photos from your hard dirve into the thumbnails list, or use the (+) button located near the bottom of the window to navigate to the photos on your hard drive. You may arrange the viewing order by dragging the thumbnails to the desired position in the thumbnails list.

After you have added your photos, you can add a description for your custom photo album in the album description box located below the iPhoto albums list. As with iPhoto album photos, the published photos will display their respective file names when published, but you may override this by typing new captions in the ‘Caption’ field of any selected photo.

Photo Album Setup Options

Before publishing your Photo Album page, click the ‘Setup’ button in the lower right corner to configure publishing options. When you click the ‘Setup’ button, the Photo Album Setup sub-tab in the Page Inspector will appear, defaulting to the ‘General’ tab.

General

Use Flash Slideshow:

Figure 2: Photo Album SettingsThis allows you to specify whether to create a pure HTML gallery or a Flash slideshow. If you wish to use the Flash slideshow, tick the box and proceed to the Flash Slideshow tab to configure it.

Captions:

You can specify whether your photos’ captions should be displayed below each thumbnail, below each full- size photo, or not at all. To make your selection, choose one of the four options in the ‘Captions’ drop-down list.

Thumbnail Size:

Use the slider to set the size of the thumbnails to be shown on your Photo Album page. Based upon the se- lected size, RapidWeaver will automatically determine the number of thumbnails to be displayed in a row, and the spacing between them. Use smaller thumbnail sizes to maximise the number shown per row.

Description:

You may add a description about the iPhoto album that will displayed on the
published page by typing into the description box.

Image Quality

Specify the quality of the photos being published by selecting ‘Best’, ‘High’, ‘Medium’ or ‘Low’ from the Compression drop-down list. Higher quality photos will look better, but will take longer to download. If you are scaling your photos down from their original sizes, you may also specify whether to use High-Quality Scaling by selecting the indicated checkbox to reduce pixelation and other photo-resizing artifacts (recommended).

Scale Image:

By default, photos are constrained to a maximum width of 640 pixels and a maximum height of 480 pixels. RapidWeaver will not adjust the aspect-ratio of the images, but no photo will exceed a width of 640 pixels, or a height of 480 pixels. You can specify different maximums by typing in different values. If you uncheck the ‘Scale images’ box, RapidWeaver will not constrain your photos at all. Instead, your photos will be published in the exact dimensions of your originals, which will increase load times when using large images.

Tip: For best results, pre-size your photos to the exact dimensions you wish them to be viewed on your website using your preferred photo-editing application. Set the Compression to ‘Best’ from the drop-down list and un-check the “Scale images” checkbox in the Image Size portion of the General pane. This will result in no compression or resizing of your photos whatsoever.

Navigation:

Here you can set the labels for the navigation links in your Photo Album pages. Visitors to your website can navigate through your photos using the text links on the published photo pages. By default, these links are labeled ‘Previous’, ‘Home’ and ‘Next’. You can customise these links by changing the content of their corresponding fields. This is especially useful when publishing your photo album in a language other than English.

Flash Slideshow

Figure 3: Configuring the built-in
Flash Slideshow

Slideshow Interface Options

• Display - Controls:

  This will toggle the Flash slideshow’s navigational controls on and off.

• Display - Info:

  This will toggle whether to show additional information about each photo.

• Display - Loading Icon:

  If you do not wish to show the animated loading icon, untick this box.

• Activate on Rollover:

  Choose whether the slideshow should activate when a users mouse cursor rolls over the slideshow.

• Flickr RSS:

  With RapidWeaver 4, you can specify a Flickr RSS feed for photos you wish to slideshow. Simply enable this box, and paste in a Flickr RSS feed to show the pictures from that feed in the Slideshow.

• Slideshow Size:

  Configure the slideshow size to suit your page’s needs, and specify a background colour.

Visual Effects Options

• Transition:

  To choose which transition is used, simply select one from the drop down menu, and if required, a transition duration (in seconds) in the box to the right.

• Scale Image:

  Configure the scaling of slideshow images, by choosing to scale the images as desired.

• Link to large images:

  Allows you to specify whether, on clicking a slideshow image, the large image should open in a new window.

• Image Pause:

  Set the duration of each image’s appearance on-screen by entering a time (in seconds) here.

• Ken Burns:

  The Ken Burns effect (often used in iPhoto slideshows) is available as part of the Flash Slideshow. You can turn it on (and specify a type of effect) or turn it off via this drop-down.

• Variation:

  This sets the intensity of the zoom within the Ken Burns effect. Dragging to the left uses less zoom, whilst dragging to the right will create a more extreme zoom in, as part of the Ken Burns effect.

EXIF

When creating a CSS-based gallery, you can also choose to display EXIF metadata such as the ISO Speed, Aperture, or Shutter Speed the photo was taken at. To enable EXIF data, simply check the ‘Display EXIF Data’ checkbox, and select the EXIF data options you want to show on photo pages.

Note: EXIF data is only shown if the CSS-based gallery is used, and is displayed on the individual photo pages.

Advanced

Figure 4: Advanced SettingsThe ‘Advanced’ tab in the Setup sub-tab includes options that allow you to manage the Photo Album pages photo cache, enable support for multi-processor Macs and import comments from iPhoto.

Photo Cache:

Enabling the Photo Cache in RapidWeaver will dramatically improve refresh times when switching between ‘Edit’ and ‘Preview’ modes, and when exporting or publishing your website. It is recommended that you leave the Photo Cache option enabled. Click the ‘Clear’ button to reset your Photo Album page’s cache.

Tip: If you have previously published or exported your Photo Album page, and subsequently make changes such as disabling, adding or removing photos - or you re-arrange the order of your photos in the thumbnails list - you may sometimes find that the exported / published results aren’t what you expected. To correct this, click the “Clear” button in the Photo Cache section and re-export / re-publish your Photo Album.

Multi-Processor Support:

To speed the processing of your photos when being exported by RapidWeaver, owners of multi-processor Macs may enable multi-processor support by clicking the designated checkbox. Leaving this box checked will not result in any processing benefits on single-processor Macs.

Import iPhoto Comments:

If you are using an iPhoto album as the source for your Photo Album page and you want to use the comments you have created for your photos in the selected iPhoto album, clicking the ‘Import Comments’ button in the Advanced sub-tab will retrieve the existing comments. Be aware that this will overwrite any custom captions you have created previously.