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Creating A Photo Album

The Adobe Photoshop Elements application can be used to create a set of web pages for displaying a collection of photographs. This page gives a brief outline of the process, with recommended parameter settings.

Overview

The basic steps in creating a photo album on the web are as follows:

  1. Take some photographs.
  2. Select a subset for public display.
  3. Fix filenames by removing spaces.
  4. Run Photoshop Elements to create a folder full of web pages.
  5. Copy the new folder onto the website.
  6. Create a link to the new folder.

Preparation

First, you must create a collection of photographs; details of that are not covered here. You will want, at a minimum, to review them and choose a subset for display. If you are more ambitious you might also wish to adjust the color and cropping. In any event, the end result should be a folder containing the final set of images to appear on the web.

Spaces within filenames are problematic on a Unix-based webserver. If your photo files contain spaces in their names, rename them before building a photo album.

Configuring Photoshop Elements

These instructions were written for Version 3 of Photoshop Elements running on a Macintosh. You may see slightly different dialog boxes if using another version or another platform.

Start up Photoshop Elements and pull down File -> Create Web Photo Gallery. This brings up a dialog box in which you can set a large number of parameters. Recommendations for these are given in the following subsections.

Basic Options

Styles: choose Simple.
Email: leave blank.
Extension: choose .html.
Folders: select your input folder.
Destination: create a new folder with a name of the form yyyymm-description (for example, 200605-graduation).

Options: Banner

Site name: choose a meaningful title.
Photographer: set if desired, or leave blank.
Contact Info: leave blank.
Date: enter a date of the form May 3, 2006 or just May 2006.
Font
: use Helvetica, size 3.

Options: Large Images

Resize Images: check the box and set Custom 640 pixels.
Constrain: set Both.
JPEG Quality: set High 8.
Border Size: set 0.
Titles Use: leave all boxes unchecked.
Font: use Helvetica, size 3.

Options: Thumbnails

Size: set Custom 128 pixels.
Columns: 5; Rows: 4.
Border Size: set 0.
Titles Use: leave all boxes unchecked.
Font: use Helvetica, size 3.

Options: Custom Colors

Leave these alone.

Options: Security

Content: set None, in which case the rest is irrelevant.

Creating the Gallery

After setting all the options in the Photoshop Elements dialog box, click the Okay button to create the album. The Elements program will go through the collection of photos to create a set of web pages, and may give you a whirlwind slide show in the process. When this completes, the result is a new folder full of images and web pages, ready for installation on the webserver.

Installation

Copy the newly created folder to the webserver. Make sure the file permissions allow anyone to browse it. Departmental albums should be made subfolders of /cs/www/news/albums.

Create a link to the album index page. For departmental albums, this link should go on the Photo Albums page (from the Events & News menu select Photo Albums).

Save Your Originals

The gallery of photographs created by Photoshop Elements typically contains reduced-quality versions of the original photographs. This is necessary for easier viewing on the web. A consequence of this is that the album is not suitable as a backup, and you should retain the original collection.

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