Create An Album
step one: create an albumSlideShowPro and SlideShowPro Director organize your images using “albums.” One or more albums are part of a “gallery.” To put it in real-world terms, an album would be a book of photos, and the gallery would be the shelf you place your books on. To upload images into Director, you must first create an album. On the Dashboard tab you’ll see a column on the left with a header that reads “Your albums.” Click on the white “Add an album” text link on the right. (Figure 1) Enter an album name in the input field and click the “Add album” button. Upon completion you will be redirected to the “Edit album” tab, with the “Upload content” secondary tab automatically selected.
step two: add content
Now we’ll upload album content. You may upload full size images, thumbnails, an album thumbnail, and/or audio for your album. All of these content pieces may be uploaded in one batch. Select the type of content you wish to upload, then click the “Browse” button. Your operating system will open a window to browse your computer. Navigate to the content type you wish to upload, and Command (OS X) / CTRL (Windows) click on as many files as you want.
Director will display a “File list” on the right with the files you selected. To remove a file, click the red “Remove” button. To add more, click on “Browse” again. When complete click “Upload.” A progress dialog will appear. The green line on the bottom expands as files are uploaded. When complete, the dialog will display “done” and automatically transfer you to the appropriate secondary tab (depending on the type of content you uploaded).
step three: edit images
If you uploaded images in Step Two, Director will automatically redirect you to the “Edit images” tab for editing image attributes and order.
Image attributes
To edit an image caption, hyperlink, and other attributes, click its edit icon. A window containing form inputs will slide down from above. Enter your data and click “Save” when finished.
Image order
Director offers two modes for image order: manual (default) and automatic. To manually adjust image order, drag and drop photos into the order you need. A counter in the lower left of each photo will update to reflect its position. Automatic sorting options include “File name,” “Date (newest first)” and “Date (oldest first).” When any of these options are selected, Director will automatically sort the photos you just uploaded and any new photos you add down the road.
Image deletion
Click an image’s delete icon to permanently remove it from your album.
step four: generate content
The “Generate content” tab is for publishing web-optimized copies of the images you uploaded, as well as for globally editing image attributes.
Image processing
Click “Edit” next to the type of image you need to generate. An input area will appear containing inputs for the maximum image width and height you want your photos to be, an input to control image quality (number between 0 and 100), and two scaling options: “Proportional” and “Crop to fill.” “Proportional” scaling means that Director will downscale your images so that neither their height nor width are greater than the maximum width and height you enter. “Crop to fill” will proportionally scale your images to the maximum width and height you enter, then crop out the center area. This latter option gives all your photos a uniform width and height, regardless of their original aspect ratio. Behind the scenes, Director will move your original photos to a new folder named “hr” and generate new, web-optimized images using your target dimensions. Your original photos will be used whenever you generate new images. Director will also save the “Image processing” information you entered, and automatically reuse them whenever more images are added to your album.
Album thumbnail
After you have processed thumbnail images you may designate one of them as the album thumbnail. To assign a thumbnail to your album, click the “Select” link to open the drawer. Select any image by clicking on it. Next you will need to resize your chosen image. Click the “Resize” link. You will be presented with an interface identical to the “Image processing” interface. Enter the maximum image width and height for the thumbnail, a quality setting between 0 and 100, choose either “Proportional” or “Crop to fill” for scaling, and click “Generate.”
Image attributes
This area contains three optional attributes you may globally assign to all your album images -- “Titles,” “Hyperlinks,” and “Captions.” Titles are an optional caption header in SlideShowPro (set through the “Caption Header Type” Component Inspector parameter). To populate all your album images with titles, click “Edit” and enter a global value or tag to make each title unique. Then click “Populate.” Hyperlinks are assigned to each slide show image and are loaded in the browser when clicked. To automatically link each image to its original version click “Populate” and then assign which browser window it should open in. If you’d like to popup your hyperlinked images in a chromeless window, click the “Populate (js)” button.
Captions appear in SlideShowPro using one of the available “Show Captions” parameters in the Component Inspector. To populate all your album images with captions, click “Edit” and enter a global value or tag to make each title unique. Then click “Populate.”
step five: edit info
Next click on the “Edit info” secondary tab. The album title you assigned in Step One is already assigned. Enter a description for your album and click “Save changes.” You also have the following options available:
Album options
To display the album title and description in SlideShowPro’s gallery, toggle the “Show album title & description in slide show” option on or off. To display thumbnails, toggle the “Show thumbnails in slide show” option on or off.
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