Design web album and deployment using Adobe and Macromedia- Part
1
Here's my mission: Completely install a customer example photo
gallery found here http://www.cardprinting.net/. The basic
process starts from Adobe Illustrator CS or Corel Draw 12. This
is the format we save all our customer's work. There are aprrox.
300 files I need to access, export and create a fully
navigatable photo album.
Here's how I did it. Instead of opening each file in its native
program I tried opening CDR and AI files in Adobe Photoshop.
Guess what? It works with the ai files but not the cdr files.
Why is this important? Because 90% of my files are in ai format!
Illustrator only allows you to open 1 file at a time, Photoshop
allows you to open as many as your computer's resources can
handle. At the same time Photoshop converts each vector based
image to a bitmap, which is required for the web. Now, you could
create a course of 'actions' to complete this more efficiently,
but I want to remove or retouch some undesirable from each
image. I am a 'perfectionist' so I want these images looken good
AND loading fast for the web. Personally I find Adobe Photoshop
and Macromedia Fireworks offer the best export filters for the
web.
So now I have 300 images looken good, properly cropped and
optimized for the web. What is the best way to create a Photo
Album from so many images? Again let's refer to my favorites for
this, Macro Media or Adobe? I work with both for different
projects and really can't pick a favorite here! They are both
excellent applications for this. Macromedia Dreamweaver has a
function found under commands>create photo album, shown here
http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo.htm.
You will need Fireworks installed for this to work. Go ahead and
fill in all the text fields that are required information shown
here
http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo_menu.
htm.
It is important you take the time to craft your words carefully,
especially in the first field as this text is written into every
html file generated. Check the appropriate format, rows and
columns etc. Check the box for file names on or off and check
the box on for, 'create navigation page for each photo'.
OK that's it you're ready to fire away, click OK. Amazing, eh?
Well I am kind of busy right now working on my next project. In
my next post I will talk about the same process of creating a
web based photo album using Adobe Photoshop for the entire
process.