Use Photoshop to Make a Flash Photo Gallery - the EASY Way!

I'm sure I can sound like a broken record. I constantly blab on about how absolutely anything is possible in Photoshop, and how easy it can be. If I sound like one, it's only because I strongly believe it's true.

Case in point ... the photo gallery. These are nifty little web pages that you can email or upload to the Internet and then share your photographs, artwork, or anything else in picture-format with friends and family. Artists love galleries because they showcase the artist's work. Families love galleries because they let far-away loved ones keep in touch.

Using Photoshop, you can create a full photo gallery without knowing a single bit of HTML (you'll never need it!) and without any real "work".

What will you need? Some graphics that you want to place in your gallery, and a copy of Photoshop CS or CS2 and this guide.

Ready to get cracking? It's going to be so easy you'll want to find new pictures to put in galleries!

The Flash Photo Gallery in Photoshop

One: First thing's first ... you need to set up a couple of folders just to make life easier on yourself. The first folder will contain the images you want to go in your gallery. Name it something that makes sense to you and copy the images into this folder.

The second folder will contain all the files that Photoshop creates to actually make your gallery run. Make sure that you put the word "gallery" in the name of the folder if you think you'll have problems remembering which folder is which.

Two: Here's where we give Photoshop the basic information it needs so it can take over and do all the hard work for us.

Click "File", hover on "Automate", and choose "Web Photo Gallery". This will pop up a new window.

With the Web Photo Gallery dialogue, you have a lot of options. What we're aiming for in this guide is to create a really cool flash web gallery. So, the first thing we need to do in the dialogue is click the drop-down box beside "Styles" and choose one of the Flash galleries. I'm using Gallery 2 because I love how striking images look against that dark background.

If you want to include a contact email address, you will want to type it in the E-mail box. Just remember that if you upload this gallery to the Internet and have an email address in it, you are pretty likely to start getting hit by more SPAM than you ever dreamed of ... so seriously consider how important that contact email is to you.

Now we're ready to tell Photoshop where to grab the pictures from. Click the "Browse" button under Destination and choose the folder that you filled with your images. Photoshop will then grab all the pictures that are in the folder and use them for your gallery - but don't worry, it doesn't do a single thing to the originals.

The next step is the Destination button. Click this button and choose the folder that you created for Photoshop to put all the web gallery files in. Trust me - you want it all to go in a folder of its own. Depending on how many images you are placing in your gallery, you could end up with hundreds of loose files littering your desktop or My Documents folder if you don't tell Photoshop somewhere specific to place everything.

Now for the options. Starting with the "General" options, which are pulled up already, you can decide specific things about the web pages that Photoshop creates. Do you want to leave the extension as .htm or change it to .html? It really doesn't matter, but some people prefer the .html ending. (Reference Illustration 03)

Click the drop-down that currently contains the word "General" in it and you can click "Banner". These options tell Photoshop how you want the page titled. Whatever is in these boxes will be displayed on the web pages, so take a second to make sure you get it looking the way you want it to. (Reference Illustration 04)

Now, personally speaking, I'd leave the the "Large Image" and "Thumbnail" settings alone. If you feel like experimenting, though, you can adjust the size that the large images (when they're clicked on) will display as, what information the title contains, etc. Photoshop has set it at a default that is more than reasonable - I wouldn't suggest changing it, simply because it will take longer for viewers to actually see your pictures if you do.

The next option in the drop-down is Custom Colors. If you want to change the look of links, text, your background, etc you can do it here.

The last option is for Security. This helps keep people from thieving your images ... but it isn't fool-proof. Using a flash gallery, you have additional security but you'll still want to choose something in this dialogue. I always set mine to "Copyright" and leave it be.

Three: Ready to let Photoshop perform its magic? You've got everything set up - all you have to do now is click OK and let Photoshop fly.

Do keep in mind that the more images you have, the longer this process will take. If you are using a lot of images, I highly recommend shutting non-essential programs down before you run the command. Automating a web photo gallery takes up a lot of your computer's resources, so the fewer programs you have sharing those resources, the quicker the process will be.

When Photoshop is done automating the page, it will open up in your default browser. Enjoy