What is a good photography portfolio tool?
July 26, 2010 8:48 PM Subscribe
Photography self-publishing platforms: what are my options?
I have a lot of images that I want to present on my website. Most of these images are artistic in nature, and I seek a method of presenting that would allow viewers to have an attractive, easy way of browsing them.
Requirements:
- easy for me to add new images
- optional tagging/classification
- "pretty" or easy to make pretty (by pretty I mean simple, clean, modern looking)
- RSS is a bonus
- shopping cart type feature is a bonus
- free or incredibly strongly recommended
Challenge:
- I've started shooting weddings, and would like to show that work side by side with my more artistic work
- Additionally, I enjoy shooting commercial-type photography and would like to present that too
- no flash interfaces (breaks portable devices, frustrates users, annoys me) :-)
I have a server with PHP and mySQL, and am fairly comfortable with PHP modification/installation if its required.
What are good platforms to use for this? Google-fu is failing me.
Thank you, hive mind!
I have a lot of images that I want to present on my website. Most of these images are artistic in nature, and I seek a method of presenting that would allow viewers to have an attractive, easy way of browsing them.
Requirements:
- easy for me to add new images
- optional tagging/classification
- "pretty" or easy to make pretty (by pretty I mean simple, clean, modern looking)
- RSS is a bonus
- shopping cart type feature is a bonus
- free or incredibly strongly recommended
Challenge:
- I've started shooting weddings, and would like to show that work side by side with my more artistic work
- Additionally, I enjoy shooting commercial-type photography and would like to present that too
- no flash interfaces (breaks portable devices, frustrates users, annoys me) :-)
I have a server with PHP and mySQL, and am fairly comfortable with PHP modification/installation if its required.
What are good platforms to use for this? Google-fu is failing me.
Thank you, hive mind!
You could use Wordpress with photo gallery and shopping cart plug-ins. There are tons of gallery plug-ins, so you can test different ones out.
posted by neushoorn at 11:26 PM on July 26, 2010
posted by neushoorn at 11:26 PM on July 26, 2010
Best answer: If you're using Adobe Lightroom for your workflow, the perfect solution lies in their web export plugins. The Turning Gate offers some very powerful web gallery plugins for Lightroom; specifically, the TTG Highslide Gallery pro sounds up your alley.
Basically, you do all your editing/organizing in Lightroom, and then you go to the Plugins page and export the photos you want to your web gallery. The TTG plugin adds all sorts of fanciness like optional shopping carts, etc. The beauty is how easy it is to implement. All of your tags/metadata from LR is kept with each photo and you can easily add/remove photos from your library with drag-and-drop. It's cake. You can do everything in your photo workflow, from import to upload, without ever leaving LR.
Even if you aren't using Lightroom currently, it's so easy it would be worth switching to it (not even mentioning all the other enormous benefits of LR).
posted by sprocket87 at 6:34 AM on July 27, 2010 [2 favorites]
Basically, you do all your editing/organizing in Lightroom, and then you go to the Plugins page and export the photos you want to your web gallery. The TTG plugin adds all sorts of fanciness like optional shopping carts, etc. The beauty is how easy it is to implement. All of your tags/metadata from LR is kept with each photo and you can easily add/remove photos from your library with drag-and-drop. It's cake. You can do everything in your photo workflow, from import to upload, without ever leaving LR.
Even if you aren't using Lightroom currently, it's so easy it would be worth switching to it (not even mentioning all the other enormous benefits of LR).
posted by sprocket87 at 6:34 AM on July 27, 2010 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks for the helpful answers, everyone!
I used WP extensively, and am not so sure I want to dive into it for building what I want - it's an amazing platform but its more suited to regular updates as opposed to portfolio. (Or am I wrong on this one?)
Sprocket87 - I do indeed use and love Lightroom! TTG looks just about perfect. I'll poke at it and see if I can trial it out before paying. That's awesome! Thanks!
posted by olya at 7:56 AM on July 27, 2010
I used WP extensively, and am not so sure I want to dive into it for building what I want - it's an amazing platform but its more suited to regular updates as opposed to portfolio. (Or am I wrong on this one?)
Sprocket87 - I do indeed use and love Lightroom! TTG looks just about perfect. I'll poke at it and see if I can trial it out before paying. That's awesome! Thanks!
posted by olya at 7:56 AM on July 27, 2010
Best answer: I think you'll find that you can massage it pretty much into whatever you want it to be.
Note that there are other LR plugin makers out there as well. I'm fond of some of the plugins at the Photographers Toolbox as well, specifically jigsawrus (example using some of my photos here). His galleries can also be integrated into the TTG framework if you prefer their look & feel with some more advanced functionality.
Good luck!
posted by sprocket87 at 9:57 AM on July 27, 2010
Note that there are other LR plugin makers out there as well. I'm fond of some of the plugins at the Photographers Toolbox as well, specifically jigsawrus (example using some of my photos here). His galleries can also be integrated into the TTG framework if you prefer their look & feel with some more advanced functionality.
Good luck!
posted by sprocket87 at 9:57 AM on July 27, 2010
My friends started the site 4ormat. It's very easy to use, but it's not free.
posted by chunking express at 12:40 PM on July 28, 2010
posted by chunking express at 12:40 PM on July 28, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:59 PM on July 26, 2010