SlideShowPro News

02.28.09  |  PHP XML Builder script updated

The free PHP XML Builder script we offer to SlideShowPro for Flash and SlideShowPro for Lightroom users was recently updated so that any IPTC metadata that’s in imagery is used for title and caption data in the XML file. Check it out if interested.

02.27.09  |  Flash and color shifting explained

Photographers, by their very nature, are a controlling bunch. They obsess over image quality and color, and can become rather upset when their work is misrepresented online with shifting colors, altered contrast, etc. For this reason we wrote a wiki document that tries to explain, in plain English, how color management is handled in web browsers, how Flash renders image color, and how to achieve the most consistent images across all web browsers and operating systems. We hope it helps.

02.27.09  |  New in SlideShowPro Director 1.3: Smart albums

Note: This is part of a “5 days of Director” series where we spotlight new features in the 1.3 version of SlideShowPro Director. These are beta features, and are subject to change before the final release of version 1.3. Click here to see all in this series.

We’ve previewed this before, but of all the new features in Director 1.3 “smart albums” is the biggest, so we’re talking about it again!

If you’ve used “smart playlists” in iTunes or something applicable this should already feel familiar to you. “Smart albums” are containers that aggregate content from across all your albums. You simply define rules to dictate what existing content you’d like to populate the smart album with, and Director handles the rest. But what’s even better is that smart albums are always “on.” Meaning, if you upload more content later that fall within the rule criteria, that content is automatically included. So you could, for example, have a continually updating slideshow presenting your 20 most recent uploads, regardless of which album they were uploaded to. For more editorial control, you could easily refine that rule to only look for new content in specific albums.

Below is a screenshot showing the “Content” screen for a smart album that’s setup to only include content uploaded within the last month (from any album):

02.26.09  |  New in SlideShowPro Director 1.3: Gallery utility

Note: This is part of a “5 days of Director” series where we spotlight new features in the 1.3 version of SlideShowPro Director. These are beta features, and are subject to change before the final release of version 1.3. Click here to see all in this series.

In the current version of SlideShowPro Director you can see which galleries an album is part of in the “Galleries added to” module displayed on each album’s Summary screen. While informative, what if you wanted to remove the album from the galleries in that list? Or if you wanted to add the album to other galleries? You’d currently have to visit the edit screen for each and every gallery you wanted to add/remove the album from. Not a big deal if you didn’t have a lot of content, but it would be a rather time consuming process otherwise.

So in Director 1.3 we’ve removed that module and incorporated a new “Add/remove from galleries” utility in the “Publish Status” box of each album. It displays a textual readout of how many galleries the album is included in, plus an edit button that kicks up the dialogue shown below. From here, you simply flip switches up and down to control which galleries should contain the album. Galleries that include the album are highlighted, while those that don’t are dimmed. See below.

02.25.09  |  New in SlideShowPro Director 1.3: Album settings / preview

Note: This is part of a “5 days of Director” series where we spotlight new features in the 1.3 version of SlideShowPro Director. These are beta features, and are subject to change before the final release of version 1.3. Click here to see all in this series.

SlideShowPro Director 1.3 will include a revised page layout for what’s now the “Summary” page of an album. Renamed “Settings”, this page takes what was useful from Summary, incorporates the Metadata module from the older “Settings” page (where it was rather lonely hanging out by itself), and adds a couple of new features as well.

First, we’re adding two new bits of album metadata to the mix: “Date taken” and “Place taken”. When clicking inside the “Date taken” box, a calendar widget appears to easily assign a date. The “Place taken” field (can’t see it in the screenshot below, but it’s under the calendar) allows you to assign a location for where the images were taken. It’s just a basic text input — no global positioning or anything like that — but should come in handy for those who want to assign dates and places to an entire album of content.

Here’s a screenshot of the new “Settings” screen:

As you can see at the far left of the screen above, there’s a new “Album Preview” module that provides an alternate (and hopefully easier) way to assign album preview images. Clicking the “Edit” button in the module header kicks up the dialogue below:

Clicking the “Select existing image” button alters the dialogue to show all the images in the album. Simply click on the image you want and it’s assigned as the album preview. See below.

Or if you click the “Upload” button you can select an image on your local machine, the image is uploaded, and you can then assign a focal point to it. Then you just click “Set focal point” and you’re done. See below.

You will still be able to assign content as album previews in the “Content” area of an album, but this module makes the process quicker and a bit more intuitive for new users.

02.24.09  |  New in SlideShowPro Director 1.3: Metadata defaults

Note: This is part of a “5 days of Director” series where we spotlight new features in the 1.3 version of SlideShowPro Director. These are beta features, and are subject to change before the final release of version 1.3. Click here to see all in this series.

SlideShowPro Director automatically assigns metadata (EXIF, IPTC, Director related data, static text, etc) to uploaded content for use in things like captions and hyperlinks. In the current version of Director, every time a new album is created it assigns no metadata by default. Director 1.3 however will offer a new “Content Metadata Defaults” utility that will allow control over these default settings. This will come in handy in production environments where the same content metadata is almost always used, for new albums can then be quickly created without having to change the content metadata settings each and every time. You’ll be able to override these defaults on an album-by-album basis, if necessary.

02.23.09  |  New in SlideShowPro Director 1.3: Archive size

Note: This is part of a “5 days of Director” series where we spotlight new features in the 1.3 version of SlideShowPro Director. These are beta features, and are subject to change before the final release of version 1.3. Click here to see all in this series.

By default, Director is designed so that you never have to think about image sizing or optimization. You simply upload your original images and Director takes care of the rest. Some users however install Director on servers where disk space is limited, or they never have a need for images that are larger than a particular dimension. For both of these scenarios we’re incorporating a new “Edit archive size” utility that will allow you to cap the dimensions of your imagery when uploaded. When capped, new versions of your originals are created no larger than the maximum dimensions entered and the originals are deleted.

In related news, the second beta of SlideShowPro Director 1.3 is now available for download. If you are a SlideShowPro Director user and are interested in trying out the new release, you may download it here.

02.20.09  |  Director 1.3 Public Beta

We’ve talked (and shown you) quite a bit about Director 1.3, and today it finally sees the light of day in the form of a public beta. It’s available right now via the account center, so if you like living on the edge, have a ball! The standard disclaimer about beta releases applies, be sure you make backups and don’t use it on anything important just yet.

This new release of Director features lots of shiny new stuff, including more efficient album gallery management, a new system for assigning album previews, album metadata presets, archive downsizing and last but certainly not least, smart albums.

Next week, we’ll be highlighting a new feature of 1.3 each day as a part of our “5 days of Director” series, so be sure to tune in Monday for more in-depth coverage of some of the changes introduced in Director 1.3.

Finally, if you are in the beta testing mood, please let us know what you think of 1.3 in the beta forum. Happy testing!

02.17.09  |  Top 10 user examples for February 2009

Every month loads of SlideShowPro users share their creations with us. From those submissions we pluck out the ten most creative, beautiful, interesting, or unique examples and post them here as well as in our monthly e-mail newsletter.

This month we’re starting something new, and that is a special “Site of the Month” honor to the one site that is our personal favorite of them all. “Site of the Month” honorees receive a free SlideShowPro t-shirt as our small way of saying ‘thank you’ for making us look so good. And our first “Site of the Month” honor goes to…

SITE OF THE MONTH: Times Two Studios

http://www.timestwostudios.com/

This month there were a lot of examples where people used SlideShowPro for Flash with our new add-on component SlideShowPro ThumbGrid, and while there were many excellent implementations (some are below), the site for Times Two Studios has that little something extra that makes it truly unique. For starters, they use SlideShowPro ThumbGrid to create a large, easily navigable thumbnail navigation that’s layered above their slideshow and toggled visible / invisible through an external button. With the grid visible, the SlideShowPro for Flash component instance tweens-out to invisible, which allows their site background to be seen in the transparent background of ThumbGrid. They also dramatically upscaled SlideShowPro’s “Bar” preloader and positioned it at the bottom for a unique look. Last but certainly not least, the photography is exquisite and worth perusing.

THE REMAINING TOP 9…

http://www.robertwrightphoto.com/
http://www.masonimage.com/
http://www.belayarchitecture.com/
http://marklangridge.co.uk/
http://www.ferroggiaro.com/
http://www.steveholmesphotography.com/
http://www.onehorsestudio.com/
http://woodenteeth.com/
http://www.ericasteiner.com/

Note: To respect the privacy of our users, only those sites shared directly with us are considered and included. If you’d like us to consider your site for next month, please submit your site through our contact page or post to the Show & Tell community forum.

02.14.09  |  Happy Birthday SlideShowPro

Four years ago today the 1.0 version of SlideShowPro was released. Back then, all that was sold was the Flash component, the only version of Flash that was supported was Macromedia Flash MX 2004 (much to the chagrin of Flash MX users), the component had about 30 or so parameters, there wasn’t an account center or way to download updates (I handled them all manually), we didn’t accept credit cards, there were no forums or wiki, we didn’t have a logo or much of an identity for that matter, and I kept purchase records by manually entering each order into an Excel spreadsheet. I also had no idea what I was getting myself into. Seems like such a long time ago.

In case you weren’t around in 2005, here’s a glimpse of what the home page looked like on the day it launched. Actually kind of miss that vertical, Kodak-inspired number strip.