ShowMeProofs Blog

Ok, I’ve had more time to think about this while working on the new system and I finally decided that the easiest way to create your own custom flash galleries for Lightroom is to use Flex Builder. I don’t have a tutorial yet, but I do want to explain why I came to this decision.

For the past few weeks I have tried to learn Actionscript (the programming language for Flash) so that I could program the behavior that I wanted into my Flash presentation. The trick is that Actionscript is very tricky to learn. There isn’t much help online for it and even if you find a tutorial online for something similar it may not work the way you expect when you try to modify it for your own use. That’s where Flex Builder comes in.

Flex Builder does nothing that Actionscript and Flash can’t do on it’s own but Flex Builder is made for people who want to control Flash from a programming standpoint only. So if you don’t care about dealing with timelines or movieclips Flex Builder is much easier and much faster to learn and to use. The best part is that you can download the latest version of Flex Builder for free for 60 days. After that it costs $250 and to be honest that isn’t that much to spend for what you can create with it.

So from here I am learning how to use Flex Builder and hopefully I can get my project to work so that I can explain how you can do the same. If you are working with Flex Builder for the same type of project I would love some feedback and I know my readers would as well. It is always nice to have input from others working on the same type of project to help speed up everyone’s understanding of the problem at hand.

Recently I started working on my own custom Lightroom Flash Gallery, even though there were no tutorials I wanted to learn it on my own and post it for you guys here. Unfortunately it is going to take me much longer than I have time for right now, so you will have to wait.

But I did learn some things that might help some of you so I want to pass some of it on. Don’t expect much here, I’m still working on it.

Basically there are two files you need to edit: gallerymaker.xml and xmlTransformer.xslt

gallerymaker.xml deals with collecting the settings for your gallery and xmlTransformer.xslt deals with exporting those settings into the final flash presentation.

The only way you are going to learn how to edit the files is to get them from an existing gallery template and step through them one row at a time to see what each line does. I would recommend going through xmlTransformer.xslt first so you can put together the layout you want. Then go through gallerymaker.xml and put each of the settings and controls that you need for Lightroom in the file so you can create the final gallery using Lightroom.

I also learned that most of the code in both files is very similar to MXML which is used by Adobe Flex Builder to create flash content. If you need help trying to find out what a line of code is used for search for an MXML reference, chances are it’s very similar if not the same. I didn’t spend much time on Flex, but you may even be able to use Flex to create your layout (the xmlTransformer.xslt file) then go through your gallerymaker.xml file to set up your controls.

So far, that’s what I have. I’ll put my tutorial up when I have a chance to make it worth reading. Until then, I hope those few tips help!

As you might have noticed, I don’t post on the blog much because I am frantically trying to finish the next version of the Proofing System, so you know that if I take the time to post it must be good stuff!

So I am trying to learn how to customize the web gallery functionality in Lightroom and after a full day of research (nearly 24 hours straight) I can give you a few tips on how to narrow your search if you are looking for the same thing.

1. Information from anyone at Adobe or on any site owned by Adobe is crap. They will tell you things like, “This is just a sample, there are many more items you can configure” but they won’t tell you what items or where to find out. Skip anything Adobe related when trying to learn how to customize a Web Gallery Template for Lightroom.

2. http://www.lightroomgalleries.com/ has some good info, but it’s very basic. In fact you can’t really learn anything from it except maybe by studying the code in the templates that they have for download, if you have the patience to read through the entire blog to find the updated site where the templates are actually hosted which isn’t even on Lightroomgalleries.com, it’s on http://www.theturninggate.net/ (not the .com that everything is linked to) who is also responsible for most of the posts on Lightroomgalleries.com.

3. There are no tips anywhere on the web for learning how to customize the Flash Web Gallery Templates in Lightroom, so if you know how to do it make a video or something and put it on YouTube so someone might learn something.

I’m still working on the problem, and yes it relates to the new proofing system in case you were wondering. I’ll keep you posted on how to create custom templates for lightroom as I find out for myself. I’m sure I’m not the only one searching for answers, but if I’m the first one to post the solution I’m sure there is someone out there that will appreciate it!

Photoshop Lightroom is one of the most talked about programs in our business right now and although we bought it back in March of 2007, we have yet to integrate it into our workflow much less had the time to learn how to use it. So because we have some spare time right now we are forcing ourselves to learn Lightroom and how it can fit into our workflow.

So far it’s not hard to learn, but getting things just right can be tricky because we still need to be pretty quick with our editing. In Photoshop we have all of our actions hot-keyed so it’s really a quick process, but in Lightroom we don’t have anything set up equivalent to actions so we have been trying to recreate the wheel so to speak.

But to save ourselves some time I started looking for free presets online and to my surprise Pro Photography Show already has a list of where to find free Lightroom Presets. So instead of recreating the wheel again, I thought it would be a better idea to just give you guys a link: http://www.prophotoshow.net/blog/2007/11/09/where-to-get-free-lightroom-presets/

If you are trying to get Lightroom integrated into your work flow, check out Pro Photography Show’s site for the preset link list, tutorials and other cool stuff. It’s the best site I’ve found so far for free Lightroom preset links.

Well, I hope none of you noticed this but in the past week the site has been down three times for about two hours each time. It’s not a problem with the cart system, I promise, but the issue has been resolved.

Recently our hosting company, Westhost, upgraded to a new server setup. The problem was that the default setup did not allow for the number of connections that hit this site at peak traffic so basically you guys are doing some serious business and your customers were basically knocking the site offline.

The good news is that the Tech support team at Westhost was able to spot the problem for me and they adjusted my setup so I can handle the traffic you guys are sending my way. It was nice to find that the problem was not something I had done but it does make me want to speed up the development of the new system so I can rework the current one.

So just to keep you in the loop of my future plans, here’s what I want to do with the site. I am going to have the new system completed in the next few months and will have it on the site for sale. The reason I am going to sell the new system is because it is going to be far more complex than the current free system and there will also be some new add ons that will help you manage your clients, your site and your marketing. That means that there will be 4 parts to the system that you can purchase, each will work independently or if you put them together extra features will be available to make your life easier.

Don’t worry though, the free system will still be available and I will be upgrading it a bit once the new one is done, so you don’t have to worry about loosing your free option. The thing I want to change is that I would also like to have the free system as a download so you can run it on your own site instead of loading mine with the extra traffic. So hopefully in a few months you will be able to download and setup ShowMeProofs on your own site as a basic (free) cart system, or upgrade to a more robust system that will handle your file uploads, thumbnails and all of the other stuff that will really make your web site rock!

Further down the line I also plan on creating an add on that will help you to get your work published and distributed to your local area businesses, and a final add on that will help you manage any associate photographers that some of you may be using. Although I am not really fond of using associate photographers for several reasons, it is a part of the business that is important to some of you and I think I have a really cool way to help you manage associates that can make your life easier.

So that’s what’s been going on and because there are so many of you that have let me know how helpful the free system has been I thought it was important to let you know my plans for expanding the site.

There are many types of crowds when it comes to dealing with people. There is a party crowd, a business crowd, an adventure crowd, a religious crowd and many, many more. Some are mutually exclusive and some overlap, but we all have crowds that we fit into in our personal lives and in our businesses. So what crowd do you fit into?

Is there a way to market across those social boundaries? Can we find a way together to identify what appeals to different crowds and how we can market to more than just our familiar crowd? We can’t cover every market on our own, but maybe we can help each other to cover our markets more effectively.

There are an unlimited amount of ways to attract clients, if you ask me I get most of my clients through my website traffic. Others of you may get more clients through print ads, the phone book or word of mouth. There are even more of you that get your business from coordinators and those are the ones I really want to hear from.

How do you get your business if it’s not through the internet? How much do you spend on advertising? How do those coordinators get their business and how do you get them to refer to you?

I know I’m not the only one who wants to ask these questions so I’ll ask for everyone. I can share my internet tricks and I have shared quite a few on this site through the forum and the blog (although you may have to read between the lines to pick them out) and I have a killer set of tricks that I am including in the release of the next system, some of them I will be trying for the first time as well. But you won’t find this type of disclosure in any of the other systems so the more you stick around and share the more I can share with you and the more we can learn together.

Just don’t give in to the “pay for information” sites, hit the forum on this site for free, read what the rest of us have said and share what you can. There is no reason that you should have to pay to share ideas with other photographers like you.

I know there are quite a few of you that are itching to see what the new system is going to look like, but you have to wait just a little longer. I’m very close to being done and this is going to be something completely different than you’ve ever seen from an online sales system.

But I could use some ideas on a color scheme and I’m not talking about the color scheme of the user part of the system but the admin part of it. The new system will still match your site, but what color scheme do you want to stare at when you are trying to manage your photos?

Right now I’m leaning toward green, but a yellow/tan scheme wouldn’t be that bad either. Any ideas would be appreciated.

I don’t want to discourage you from hiring a web designer, but I do want to let you know what to watch out for. Your web site should be the single most important weapon in your marketing arsenal, but many of the latest designs take away all of the advantages of having a web site. In other words, if you don’t have a perfect web site you might as well not have one at all.

I could spend hours talking about web sites and how to create the perfect design, but to save you the time reading I just want to give you the things to avoid.

Don’t settle for a Flash web site. Although there appears to be more than one page to the site, Flash web sites only comprise one page, theirfore you are competing with hundreds of competing web pages with only one page, instead you want to use Flash as you would use static images on a page. That will allow you to create many pages that target individual searches rather than just one page to target all of the searches.

If someone tells you that linking out of your site is a bad idea, hire someone else. My site links to all of the wedding vendors in my target areas, and for most of the searches for those vendors I actually out rank them. Even though the page on my site links to the vendor for that search, my business name passes in front of every possible bride for my target areas. Brides search for dress shops, my photography site ranks well for bridal shop searches. Brides search for florists and DJ’s and my photography site ranks well for those searches as well. Make sure you have pages about all of the vendors in your area, have your business name and sample photos on those pages and linke to those vendors from those pages. Don’t market to brides searching for photography, market to brides searching for anything and make sure your name is in front of them every time they search for anything.

Make your site entertaining, if your site is static or booring, people don’t want to come back. Make people want to bookmark your site or email the site to their friends.

Separate your wedding gallery into multiple galleries, one for each location. Add some text about each location on each gallery. Brides search for locations, your site should rank well for each search on a wedding location that you want to shoot.

Make sure you have real text on your site, Flash text or text in images will not do anything in a search engine. Search engine robots can not read Flash text or images, so real text is your only option if you want to be found in a search.

Those are the absolute basics. You can learn more by searching “Search Engine Optimization” in Google. It has taken me years to get really good at getting every page of my site ranked and it pays off every day with someone contacting me for photography services. Our web site is the only form of advertising we have and it costs us almost nothing. If you are paying hundreds of dollars for marketing you are never going to compete with me because I don’t have that expense. Save your money and start working on your web site!

I know that many of you have caught on that slideshows are the best way to get potential clients excited about your photography, but you have to understand a few things about your clients before you can create the type of slide shows that will really help you sell your work.

Out of all of the possible brides, I think you can agree that 90% or more are in their 20’s. They grew up with MTV, Hollywood Special Effects and Rock n’ Roll. They have seen music concerts, Cirque Du Soleil and major sporting events, not to mention the hype of the commercials durring the Super Bowl. You will not impress them with a 10 minute song montage with a ton of images fading in and out like many slideshow programs produce.

What you need to do with your slideshows and your web site if possible is to make it exciting and fun. Keep your slideshows short, 2 minutes or less so that they see just enough of your work and it leaves them wanting to see more. The videos I use on our homepage (http://www.SJFoto.com) are about 30 seconds long, they are fast and exciting and they go to the beat of the music.

I use Final Cut Express to put my videos together and it is pretty easy to use. You can use Adobe Premier if you are on a PC to do the same thing, or you can use David Jay’s ShowItWeb for a cheaper alternative. (Although I think it is more difficult to use than Final Cut Express and David Jay uses Final Cut for the slideshows on his home page as well. He uses ShowItWeb to make the slideshows for his clients because it is quick and easy to plug a set of images into a premade template, which you can’t do with Final Cut or Adobe Premier.)

Whatever you do, don’t bore your future clients with long, slow slideshows that loose their impact in the first 30 seconds. Make them fast and fun, keep your presentation to the best images only and make them want to see it again and again.

You are dealing with the ADD generation, get the impact of your work into the shortest possible presentation, then move on to something else while they still have stars in their eyes!