I'm preparing to build a site for organizing, managing, tracking, presenting, selecting, and delivering digital images.
It would be used as both a showcase and a product delivery tool. It would most likely be "fed" from Lightroom using a custom export.
My initial goals are:
Maintain libraries of images, each stored in one or more formats (TIFF,JPEG, and in some cases RAW).
Present water-marked, reduced size JPEGS in access-controlled galleries (some galleries requiring a specific password to log into, others open to the public)
Associate keywords with each image and gallery to aid users searching both locally and across the web.
Allow users with appropriate rights to download full-res images.
The galleries need to have easy overview and navigation, such as Flickr and other image sharing sites offer.
Eventually I would also like to:
Allow registered users to build lightboxes from the galleries to which they have access
Provide an e-commerce engine to allow simple purchasing of images in different resolutions.
Provide a roll-over showing image information - size, location, keywords, etc., and possibly price and licensing information.
A system similar to any of the large microstock sites could probably be adapted to work well. (access control restrictions by gallery being absent in most.)
Does anyone have recommendations about (or experience with) specific modules that are suitable or helpful, or the best way to go about building such a site?
Examples of similar sites would also be welcome.
I am interested in the technical aspects of building such a site, not particularly in buying this service from any of the photographer-service sites available (I have reviewed and researched a number of them, and their cost/benefit ratio is too low, and their feature set not a perfect match for my intended use.)
Thanks for any and all advice!
Comments
Take a gander at SlideShow Director & SLideShow Pro
I can't say that they do everything you require but they ar quite powerful.
Slideshow Pro
Slideshow Director looks like an interesting concept. The problem with the front end of the Slideshow products, and I believe this is a big problem for anyone who wants their work to be found, discovered, or reasonably viewable online, is that it's Flash-based. I won't get into the flame wars here, but I truly believe one does their client a disservice if the build an image gallery in Flash.
Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse
Suggested Modules
Art,
That sounds like an exciting project. I'll be interested to see your progress, and I'm sure members of our group will be excited to see what you come up with.
Here's a brief list of modules which I've used that may be something you'll want to look into as you work on your project. You're probably familiar with most of them, but maybe you'll find some gems. No guarantee on any of these, although I haven't had any specific trouble with them.
Best,
Scott
Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse
Thanks!
Thanks for the list - I've been experimenting with several of them, but there are a number that are new to me as well! And they are even links - talk about making it easy! (at least to get started.)
I'll try to share my progress - and invite testers when I've got something worth throwing dirt at.
Thanks again, everyone!
Additional comments and after-thoughts always welcome!
www.aheld.com
www.HikersCameraBelt.com
Thank you!
This post should prove helpful for my development of my wife's new photography business' website.
Like Art55, I looked at the available products that provide galleries, user accounts, etc. and didn't like what I saw. I am hoping to create everything I want/need from Drupal.
Art, if you have an update, I'd love to see it.
Chris
Interesting
i'll be keeping an eye on this post. I'm using Lightroom and am learning Drupal now for building and maintaining a site for my freelance business and startup record label... let me know if you discover anything.
I am interested
I have spent a high number og hours looking for a Sharepoint replacement and have looked at Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress.
My main issue is that I will not have to upload every digital image I have as content, I just want them in a specific folder structure under a main folder. From this folder structure I will present them as/in content, and if I specify a folder in the structure, I just want the users to be able to drill down automatically.
I have 10 Years of photos with a folder for each event - aprox 5000 photos. Every night, new pics's are synced to my CMS, and should just be availabled then.
Most galleries require me to specify a specific folder and then the gallery just show images from that folder, not link to the next level of images...
SlideShow Pro
If you know what your doing, you should be able to do this with SlideShowPro. It's probably the most flexible program I've found for slide shows, it handles Flash if available, and has a great fall back if Flash is not. Worth the look.
SlideShowPro
Are You referring to: http://drupal.org/project/slideshowpro - My very first observations is that there are no real v6 version, no v7 version at all, and that maintenance and development status are : unknow . eventhough some submission for 2011 has occourred....
It does not seem to be something to rely on for me, as I want to use D7.
Actually...
A way to solve my (an problably) others could be updating content in 1 or several nodes automatically, by
Running a script of some for that is updating a content field in 1 or more node, mapping a file structure like:
Family pictures
-2008
--New House
--First step
--Playtime
-2009
--Folder A
--Folder B
--Folder C
-2010
--Folder A
--Folder B
--Folder C
into some content like (using Brilliant Gallery as an example):
2008
[bg|New House]
[bg|First Step]
[bg|Playtime]
2009
[bg|Folder A]
[bg|Folder B]
or a content item for each Year and/or foldername in the file structure...
Links
(http://slideshowpro.net/)
I spent days searching through Drupals modules, considered writing my own. The flexibility required for a good slide show module is quiet a list. Keeping up with changing formats and desires another interesting list. I do not want to spend my time maintaining a module. So the question for me is where do you want to spend your time? How important is it to stay with Drupal?
You can probably recreate the same functionality in Drupal - over time with several modules. Then you have the honors of keeping up with multiple module updates and resolving conflicts. There is a point where staying with Drupal is not beneficial -at least for me. I've been using SlideShowPro with Drupal for years. I have taught clients how to use it to their advantage to save them time and effort.
Integrating SlideShowPro with Drupal is not difficult. Yes, it is external software and it will do more than just flash. But it allows me to organize mass amounts of pictures in a user friendly format. They have a filter for uploading from Lightroom as well.
Second on Slideshow pro
I have had limited exposure (one site) to SSP but it does do the trick. Once integrated (fairly easy) it is a breeze for clients to use and it can use Flash or HTML (5). Pretty slick piece of software.
Thanks Mt_Roxx for that tip last year, saved my bacon. ;-D
I will use it again for other site builds...
And yes, all the points Mt_Roxx points out (module wise) are valid. Sometimes one just has to punt to an outside program and this is one of those times.
Recipe for SlideShow pro and Ubercart?
Any one know how to get slide show pro to work with Drupal 6 and 7 and to get it to work with ubercart for print and stock sales?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Use something else
I'll just reiterate what I said before. SlideshowPro is a Flash-based slideshow. Pretty much deprecated as far as modern web technologies go. I'd look for another solution.
Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse
While this is a rather old
While this is a rather old thread I recently had the same question and thus far enjoy the juicebox galleries the most. Turns out there is even a existing drupal module Juicebox that will provide functionality.
While this solve the display side is does not yet provide full integration from Lightroom to your drupal instance. There are quite a few possibilities but I would like to see one that allows you to either publish them to your site (much like Publish to Flickr) or as a gallery via the web module.
Has anyone else found seamless workflow (or one that is close) for this yet?
So how did you go?
Yes, this is an old thread, but for all the searches I'm doing, this one keeps popping up.
Art55, how did you go with creating your Drupal site?
I'm looking to make a photography site as well. I've got most of the functionality covered, except the image resizing. I'm struggling to work out how to create the image styles so uploaded hi-res images maintain their DPI (so if the original is 300dpi, then the resized image is also 300dpi, and not made 72dpi).
I've also read that there is 0 difference between 72 and 300dpi images.
What did you (or anyone else reading this) do in regards to offering up different sizes of images for purchase?
--
Simon Olsen
Web design, graphic design, motion graphics
Find me on LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/pub/simon-olsen/12/359/143
Final result
What did you decide? this post keeps coming up on mu searches and would love to know the end result. Especially since slideshowpro is now dead as we expected!