Sep 25, 2009 4:21 PM
web photo galleries in CS4
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I just missed a deadline because I discovered that the menu item in CS3 was gone.
I had to go online to find out about the new procedure and after getting the preview to get somewhat how I wanted,
I found I could not upload the result to my website.
Then I decided to download the plug in for the old method. I had more problems and then tried installing from the CS4 DVD. After being as careful as possible to copy the files to the desired location in Vista 64, I still didn't see the menu item.
Then I was running out of time so I decided to copy the selected files to my older CS3 computer. Then I had permission problems, though I am the administrator and sole user. I finally got beyond this and was able to create the desired gallery appearance after a couple of tries but it was already pst 4:30PM CST, while the publication was in the east.
I had no idea that it was going to take over 3 hours to create a simple gallery that I could upload in CS4. I should have suspected that nothing works the same with this program, because the smae thing almost happened when I first went to create a contact sheet before mailing a submission.
And when I found that my Kodak PCD files are no longer viewable.
So far I have found nothing new that I want to use and have only found all the things I have lost the ability to do. Like with CS3 bridge, you used to be able to view all the files in subfolders by a simple click in the left pane window. Now I have to create a multistep "find" each time.
Zooming goes bigger than the area and all open files are zoomed but only the top one is zoomed back outNo manual or instructions included.
I guess the idea is to make things confusing so that Adobe can make more money with tech help. And when I did call trying to find out about the PCD, the guy in India hung up on me.
I requested a refund as I hate this program but was told that I could have if I had bought from B&H instead of Adorama, so I'm out of luck.
So what's the question?
Right.
I got so involved in grousing and expressing frustration at paying a couple of hundred dollars just to lose the ability to do most of the important things that I could before.
Question 1: Did I overlook something or is it just no longer possible to upload the galleries formed the new way onto my on existing website. All that moved was an empty folder.
Question 2: If that doesn't work, why might be the reason that trying to revert to the alternative of installing the older plug in have any effect -not showing up in the menu?
Question 3: Could there be some reason, besides wanting purchasers to spend money on technical help, for eliminating so many working things, making things more confusing and including no instructions nor manual?
Though the instructions said to merely restart photoshop to view the old photo galleries, after copying the plug-ins, this didn't work.
However when I later rebooted the computer and opened bridge, I found that now when I go to Tools> photoshop, Web Photo Gallery is now a choice.
Unfortunately when I click it to create a gallery I get:
The command "<unknown>" is not currently available
I can probably assume that the reason for this is just as unknown as the other unsolved problems.
Software must be the only business where the users are expected to solve other users problems when nothings works correctly.
Now I have to figure out what to do to meet another deadline when I can't create and upload a gallery with CS4, something that was so simple with CS3.
What a waste of $200.
Make sure you have the startup scripts in Bridge enabled for Bridge and Adobe Photoshop so they can talk to each other.
This is just turning out to be a nightmare. I spent an hour on the phone with Adobe tech in India, copying and repasting and double checking and still not working until it was determined that some should go into the subfolders in Program Files and not those of Program Files (x86)
Then I was finally able to create a gallery that looked ugly. I brought over a number of custom modified galleries I had used on my web site, created in CS3. Some were older and not until the last one which was a modified copy of the dotted white on black did I get something that looked like I had before.
Then I was already to upload it when I noticed that many of the thumbnails looked terrible, somewhat blocky. First thinking that they might have been from smaller files, it turns out the opposite. Though all in this gallery were of scanned slides, some were nearly full non-cropped size like 11"x15" at 300dpi. They look the worst, while the large image they show when clicked look fine.
Unfortunately these thumbnails are so bad that a reviewer won't go that far. With a deadline approaching I am at a loss at how to procede. If I make duplicate smaller tiffs of everything maybe the thumbnails will look better and the large images will be degraded.
I'm winding up spending more than half a day on something that used to work well in CS3 and take a few minutes.
So for now, I created 2 macros to reduce the image sizes to about 9x12 or 12x9 and then save to a different folder and re-sort the images to generate the gallery. The thumbnails look better but not the large size, so I increased the compression setting from 8 to 12.
As I have so far scanned almost 5000 slides with the Epson 5000 at the largest size and many are not cropped this will be a major problem in creating galleries - one that wasn't occuring in CS3.
Another problem I wonder if anyone knows anything about. Using modified white on black Adobe style galleries, in CS3 and with XP on the old computer, the file name would be below the large image. However with Vista it is blank, unless every time I open the gallery, I click a button to allow active X content. Like it's protecting me from myself. And if galleries are uploaded there will be no filenames. Is there any way to simply allow the filenames to be permanently allowed as with XP?
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