Support community for TTG plugins and products.
NOTICE
The Turning Gate's Community has moved to a new home, at https://discourse.theturninggate.net.
This forum is now closed, and exists here as a read-only archive.
You are not logged in.
Hello everybody!
First off Merry Xmas!
Second, I wonder whether anyone could help me with the issue described below?
Choosing Folder images for containing Folders
- I have a folder structure of the form Places/Japan/Tokyo
- All folders are maintained in LR CC 2015 within a TTG publishing service
- Only the Tokyo (child) folder has images published to by LR, the others are just containers
- For both of the containing folders (i.e. Places / Japan), the choice of ‘cover images’ in their drop-down box lists the images in the Tokyo child folder as well as ‘random' and ‘custom'
- If I try to set ‘cover image’ to ‘random’ for either / both of the containing folders (i.e. Places / Japan), then no images are displayed.
- To get a cover image for either of the containing folders, I have to explicitly choose an image from those listed from the Tokyo child folder.
- With ‘cover image’ set to ‘random’ for Tokyo I correctly get random images
- Question - a) Is there a way that I can select ‘random’ cover image generation for the containing folders, or am I really forced to stick with a single fixed choice?
- Question - b) what does ‘custom’ mean and how do I configure it in the ‘cover image’ drop down choices?
Here's a test website with the structure I described: http://www.stevenlippitt.com/galleries.php
Would appreciate any hints or tips!
Best regards, Steve
Offline
a) Is there a way that I can select ‘random’ cover image generation for the containing folders, or am I really forced to stick with a single fixed choice?
yes. you'll need to manually place thumbnails in the index's (album set's) thumbnails/ folder so that album set above that set to be able to use the random feature.
I've created an Export preset in Lightroom just for this purpose. I'll choose a few images to represent the albums inside of a set and export the thumbnails. I then FTP those thumbnails into the thumbnails/ folder of the album set that holds those albums.
This way, the index that sits above the album set in the folder hierarchy, whether it's the Galleries page or another album set, will be able to pull out random thumbnails to represent the album set.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline
Thanks very much Rod, super helpful - as always! I understand now. Is there a recommended pixel dimension / dpi for normal and mobile thumbnails I should bear in mind when doing that?
Offline
This depends on the design you've created in your Autoindex template.
If you plan on using the same Descriptive layout as in your test site linked above, then just use the same pixel dimensions that your Gallery templates are generating. DPI doesn't matter, just the pixel dimensions.
And you only need to generate thumbnails for the album set's thumbnails/ folder. I believe you'll also need to create a thumbnails/ folder in each album set.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline
Thanks Rod. Apologies: after posting I thought it was really a dumb question (and I should know better) as I just need to look up the dimensions in the gallery settings. I did and chose long edge = 194px.
You are also right that you need to put thumbnails in each album's thumbnail folder. By default only the lowest level target set you publish to has its thumbnail folder updated automatically.
All working now, thanks to you!
After doing all this, I must say that it would be nice to have some functionality to generate thumbnails for containing folders, based on the photos in the folders they hold (like generate a mosaic for Flickr! collections of albums). However, that doesn't seem possible? At least the manual work around you indicated, although time consuming, does give you complete control of what thumbnails will be visible at each folder level I guess...
Anyway thanks again for your help.
Best wishes, Steve
Last edited by Stevie_L (2016-01-18 01:26:13)
Offline
By default only the lowest level target set you publish to has its thumbnail folder updated automatically.
And those would be the albums. The autoindexes in the album sets pull from the thumbnails/ folders of the albums inside the index.
After doing all this, I must say that it would be nice to have some functionality to generate thumbnails for containing folders, based on the photos in the folders they hold
Lightroom can't output photos for an album set, this is why Matt and Ben added the ability to choose the cover image from albums contained in the set.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline