• Jan
  • 07

TTG Selection Gallery

Discontinued

TTG Selection Gallery is made with hired photographers in mind. It provides an interface through which a client can review and select photos from an event, submitting their choices directly to the photographer’s inbox.

A checkbox accompanies each thumbnail. Clients tick the images they want, and leave the others alone. The gallery employs Slimbox, allowing clients to view large-size images atop the thumbnail page, without disrupting their selections. The gallery also allows clients to input their name, email address (for replying) and any additional comments. Click Send, and it all goes directly to the photographer’s email address.

Form-to-Email functions are powered by FormToEmail.com‘s free PHP form-to-email script.


TTG Selection Gallery

NOTICE, 2008-04-01:
TTG Selection Gallery has been discontinued as a standalone template. It’s features have been integrated into TTG Shadowbox Gallery and TTG Slimbox Gallery versions 2.6 and above. The usage instructions below, however, still apply to using the selection gallery features in those templates. Please read on.

I’ve also put together a brief screencast, demonstrating how the gallery works, and how to isolate the submitted image selections back in Lightroom.

Download the Podcast


Requirements

TTG Selection Gallery requires Lightroom 1.3 or above.

The Form-to-Email script requires a web server running PHP.

Setup

In order for the form submission to reach you, the photographer, the form-to-email script needs to be configured.

First, configure and export your gallery from the Lightroom Web module, as usual.

Next, open the FormToEmail.php file. Locate “Step 2” on line 69, and follow the instructions you find there, setting your email address and, optionally, a continuation address to which users will be redirected after form submission.

Rather than editing the PHP file for each exported gallery, users might prefer to edit the FormToEmail.php in the template archive. Then, each exported gallery will already be configured for your address.

Isolating Selections in Lightroom

Submitted selections are easy to isolate in Lightroom’s Library module, provided you’ve been savvy in naming your source files.

When Lightroom generates a web gallery, it renames the image files, replacing spaces and special characters with underscores. To get the most out of the selection gallery, Your source files and the web gallery image files should have identical names.

To accomplish this, avoid spaces and special characters when naming your files; use underscores where separation is necessary. Example filenames might look like 20070108Identifier001.jpg or 20070108_Identifier_001.jpg.

If your files are named correctly, the filenames of the exported web gallery images will not be changed. These filenames will then be submitted to your email by the FormToEmail script in a comma separated list.

In the Lightroom Library module, access the Find pane. Set Text to either “Anywhere” or “Filename”. Set Rule to “Contains Any”. Copy and paste the filenames from the email into the search field. The selected images will be isolated in the grid, allowing your to color code them, create a collection, or otherwise separate them for further consideration, processing or output.

The podcast demonstrates this visually.

FormToEmail Pro

If you find yourself using TTG Selection Gallery and/or TTG Client Response Gallery regularly, you might want to consider purchasing FormToEmail Pro.

FormToEmail Pro is a more robust version of the FormToEmail script already being used by these galleries, and adds a number of features to the script including the ability to sort form responses (the free version sorts form responses in the order they are submitted, which can get messy with complicated forms such as those employed by the Client Response Gallery), spam protection, auto responding, no branding and more. For a full run-down of features, visit the FormToEmail Pro page.

FormToEmail Pro costs less than $20.

Changelog


(2008-04-01)

Template discontinued. Features integrated into TTG Shadowbox Gallery and TTG Slimbox Gallery versions 2.6 and above.

v2.14 (2008-02-26)

Enabled automatic detection for TTG XML Auto Index.

Vertically centered thumbnails, without tables.

v2.12 (2008-01-20)

By request, the title in the web browser title bar can now be set separately from the “Site Title” of the gallery.

v2.11 (2008-01-17)

Bug fix.

v2.1 (2008-01-15)

Complete German translation by Juergen Ritter.

Juergen also fixed a bug in Windows wherein some sliders would fail to update the gallery preview.

v2.0 (2008-01-07)

Rewritten in Lua; requires Lightroom 1.3 or higher.

Added a wealth of customization options, including ID plate, colors, thumbnail cells, etc.

Support for annotations from IPTC data.

Support for color labels and numerical ratings.

Dependencies upgraded to Slimbox 1.41 and Mootools 1.11.

v1.1 (2007-08-30)

Additional customization options implemented.

v1.0 (2007-08-22)

Initial release.

Make a Donation

If you enjoy my work and would like to pay for it, I accept donations via PayPal. Donations are wholly unnecessary, but would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

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Comment »

Jason
23 August 07 / permalink

I know you know…but I really enjoy all the galleries that you’re making. You make Lightroom imminently more usable!

-jason

Alex
26 August 07 / permalink

Great App!

Much more productive for both me and the customer.

I have one suggestion. It would be even more convenient if it were possible to make a selection while the image was enlarged. It would be less cumbersome than having to close it, find the image you wanted, check it, enlarge the next one. Would also help if they had captions aside from in the slimbox. Easier to match up that way. When you have several similar shots it can be hard for the client to realize which one it was they liked.

Please consider it.

Alex
26 August 07 / permalink

Couple of more ideas.

-Option to add a comment/image (ex: remove blemish, sharpen, etc..)
-Option to see the image in B&W, and inform whether colour or bw was chosen.
-Number of selected images (ex: total: 76/200). A long list of filenames alone gets confusing when trying to check if I’ve matched up the same amount.

Matthew
26 August 07 / permalink

Alex,
These are all excellent suggestions, but I’m afraid they’re beyond the scope of what I can do with this gallery. What you’re suggestion would probably require a lot of PHP scripting, or some type of complicated Flash applet. I’ll try to address the ideas point-by-point.

Large image checkboxes: All of the form code must be contained within the same page. The moment you close a large image and return focus to the thumbnail gallery, the information in the overlay is lost. The overlays cannot function as a form component.

Comments for each image: This is an interesting idea, and one that could feasibly be implemented, albeit with a much different type of page layout. I have no intention of adding the feature to this gallery, but will keep it in mind as a possibility for a secondary variation of the gallery at a later time.

View image in b&w or color: Again, beyond the scope of what I can do. If you’d like to show multiple images of an image, however, you might create virtual copies and include them in the gallery alongside the original.

Number of Selected Images: This could probably be done with PHP, but it’s beyond my capabilities. I’m good with HTML and CSS, and I’ve picked up the little XML and XSLT required to produce these galleries through experimentation. I don’t know the first thing about PHP, though.

“A long list of filenames alone gets confusing when trying to check if I’ve matched up the same amount.”

Understandable. Perhaps not a total solution, but Version 1.1 will allow users to choose which IPTC field(s) to use for image identification. It will still be a list, but you might find some identification scheme that’s more to your liking.

Finally, if clients are having difficulty recognizing which large image corresponds to which thumbnail, there are two solutions:

1) Increase the size of your thumbnails.

2) Rather than using the Next/Previous buttons to navigate images in the overlay, tell them to close each image and click on each thumbnail in turn.

Matthew
27 August 07 / permalink

Alex,

I’ve just released version 1.01.

Regarding your statement, “A long list of filenames alone gets confusing when trying to check if I’ve matched up the same amount.”

Version 1.01 makes measures to ease this. See the “Isolating images in LR Library” above.

Shane Woodcock
23 September 07 / permalink

Matt,

Good stuff.

Kuna stays up to date on Korean music, culture, movies, etc. from her sister (mailings) and the internet. On the other hand, I only know how to tune into present Korea from your webpage and the Korean soundWave thing you have going on. It’s good to keep up and gives Kuna and I a base to talk from… sometimes she hears me playing music from your webpage or browsing other Korean content, and almost shits her pants. “How did you….”

Kayla Jade Woodcock will be born this coming Thursday if Kuna does not go before then. Kuna will be getting induced on that day. (long story of why… but everything cool)

Hope you and Hye Neung are doing well.

FYI… I have bought tickets! Kuna, our 2 girls, and I will be coming to Seoul for 2 weeks Jan. 26th- Feb. 10th. The flight will be a pain, but it will be the cheapest we will ever be able to come with both under 2 years old. (barely) Let Ray and any other folk at PSA know, as I would like to catch up!

Take care and stay in touch, Shane

Mike
8 October 07 / permalink

Is there a way to lock out right click? Or do you know any Lightroom gallery that can be right click locked?

Matthew
8 October 07 / permalink

There are Javascript solutions to eliminating the right-click menu, but I’ve never experimented with them. I’m not certain whether they could be implemented in a Lightbox, but you might give it a try. If you Google for the scripts, you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding them. Try adding the Javascript to the slimbox.js file and see what happens.

Fabio
11 October 07 / permalink

Hi, wonderfull templates… but does it work with lightroom v. 1.2?
Thanks a lot
Fabio

Matthew
11 October 07 / permalink

Yes!!

Morten
27 October 07 / permalink

Fantastic gallery, however it would be nice to be able to set the label color for the form… the default (black) is hard to see on a black background :-)

Elkie
5 November 07 / permalink

I posted here earlier but seems the comment has disappeared … anyway …

This is a great LR gallery! It certainly is very useful for me to do client proofing etc but I do have one problem …

I have 500+ photos in this gallery, so it is just painfully long to load … are there any way to split it in multipage?

Other thing I just came across is the enlarge photo only appaer on the top of the page — so let say you click on a thumbnail at the bottom of the page (of 500+ photos), you have to scroll back up to view the enlarged photo, which is a bit inconvenience.

Otherwise, it’s a great gallery, thank you.

Matthew
5 November 07 / permalink

The large image should appear wherever you are on the page. Did you remove the XML prog? What browser are you using?

As for multiple pages, impossible. You cannot split a form over multiple pages. If you made selections on page one, then jumped to page two and submitted the form, any selections on page one would be lost. If gallery size is a problem, then you’ll have to break your collection into smaller groups and produce separate galleries for each.

Elkie
5 November 07 / permalink

Hi Matthew

Thanks for the speedy reply! Yeah now think about it I was using IE6 this morning … I think it was ok while I used FF, IE7 etc before.

Yes I can imagine it would be hard to do multipage as well. I guess next time I have to do split page myself.

thanks first!

Diego
16 November 07 / permalink

Hallo Matthew!
You’re doin’ a GREAT job! Thanks a LOT! I like this gallery, and find it’s very useful too: is there a simple way to add more options, beside the check box, say a scrolling menu with optional choices (i.e. print sizes, five stars selections as in iTunes, number of copies, etc) for each image? I understand one can implement on these functions in GoLive or Dreamweaver, but finding them already included from LR would be a boost!
I still haven’t found what you mean by deleting the first line of code for the darn <exploder> browser [To wit, delete the first line, which reads .], since my first line is the <head>: maybe they have already corrected it in LR…
Regards.

Matthew
16 November 07 / permalink

Hi Diego,

No plans to add such features at the moment. This one is next on my Lua list, though; I’ll be upgrading the gallery relatively soon. At the very least, it will eliminate the need for deleting that first line of XML for IE6.

Diego
17 November 07 / permalink

Yep, GREAT!
So I have to check in the source the lines regarding the XML and delete the first line, ‘till you’re able to make version 1.2… ;)
I also have another question about the inclusion of the form fetching PHP script: I’m thinking to add a couple of pull-down buttons beside or replacing the selection button; one button can contain an array of numbers (number of copies), while the other may contain an array of sizes for the prints: do you think the script will fetch them anyway? Perhaps I have to modify the PHP as well, or maybe they will already be ‘nested’ in the html form…?
Many Thanks for your work again, and TIA for any hint you’ll give!

Matthew
17 November 07 / permalink

The form fetching script to grab any form field on the page. There’s no need to modify the script.

Charlie
19 November 07 / permalink

Matt, this seems like a great gallery. When I tried it, however, I was unable to get it to send me an e-mail. I checked with my webhost and they support PHP scripts using the mail() function. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

Matthew
19 November 07 / permalink

You followed the setup instructions and configured the PHP file correctly?

It sometimes takes some time for the message to show up, depending on the server. If you’re certain you’ve set it up correctly, give it 24 hours and see whether the message doesn’t show up eventually. On two servers I’ve tested the script on, the email came immediately on one, and took several hours on the other.

Charlie
19 November 07 / permalink

I hate being a dummy!

Which PHP file?

Charlie
19 November 07 / permalink

OK…I got it figured out. I’m not a dummy, I just can’t read (the Setup section)…

clare
30 November 07 / permalink

Hi Mathew,

You opened a whole new world for me with selection gallery!
It has honed down the whole process of proofing with clients and
I want to say… THANK YOU!!!

I have one question….
When I receive a form to email order there isn’t any indication
in the mail regarding the name of the gallery.
Some clients require a few different galleries and I have to get
back to the buyer to ask them which gallery did they order from.
How can this be incorporated in the selction gallery?
Also….. where do you find the time?
Thanks in advance,
clare

Matthew
30 November 07 / permalink

Hi Clare,

I’m glad you’re putting the galleries to good use. I hadn’t thought about the gallery name issue, but I’m glad you’ve brought it to my attention. I’ll try to do something about it in the next version.

As for finding the time, I’m not really sure. I do a lot of work between my kindergarten classes, when the kids are with another teacher. I also ignore my girlfriend a lot, but she understands. ;)

Wade Heninger
8 January 08 / permalink

This is great. I’m loving these new galleries for LR, and this selection gallery is getting the most use (besides maybe the paypal galleries) on my site.

Keep up the great work…

Ziggie
8 January 08 / permalink

Hi Matthew,
Like your Selection Gallery a lot. One question though. I may be missing something but can the thumbnails be split into several pages? If I have many hundreds of images for clients to select from do the thumbnails all have to be on the same opening page? I suspect that would make the page quite heavy and slow loading on the client’s side.

Keep up the great work.

Matthew
8 January 08 / permalink

An email submission form cannot be split across multiple pages, so no. If galleries get to be large, I’d advise splitting your photos into groups and generating multiple galleries to lighten the load.

Craig
9 January 08 / permalink

I just downloaded the selection gallery and love it. However, I haven’t been able to get the E-mails. I followed the instructions for editing the php file, and have checked my spam folders. Nothing. Am I missiing something?

You can see my test gallery at www.craigstocksarts.com/christmas

Thanks.

Craig

Matthew
9 January 08 / permalink

Craig,

If you put your email address into the FormToEmail.php file, and if your web-server supports PHP (most do), then it should work. I’ve noticed, however, that different web-servers take different amounts of time to push the emails through. My current server, with SiteGround, sends the emails almost instantly. My previous host often took several hours to send the messages.

Check your email address in the php file, verify your server supports PHP, and if all seems to be in order, then give it a few hours and see whether it shows up.

Andrew
10 January 08 / permalink

Matthew,

I love the galleries and have a query with the selction gallery. Is it possible to add extra tick boxes so that clients could choose say different image sizes with prices shown?

Matthew
10 January 08 / permalink

Theoretically, yes. Though it would be a difficult thing to implement with any kind of flexibility. It’s something I could probably sort out for you on a for-hire basis. I’d need some clear idea of your needs – pricing scheme, how many selections to allow for, how you’d like the gallery to look, etc. If you’d like to discuss the job, please contact me via the contact form.

Craig
11 January 08 / permalink

Thanks for the response. It turns out the problem was with my hosting service. I’m hosted through GoDaddy, and they offer the choice of Windows or Linux based hosting. I had Windows, which does not support PHP. Once I switched to Linux, it works fine.

Anton
16 January 08 / permalink

Hello, i am using the TTG selection gallery.
It is working, but i have one question.
In your sample gallery, i see colors and a number at the top of the thumbnail. How can i make these to.
Has it something to do with the Rating/color option.

Moi Anton

Matthew
16 January 08 / permalink

It’s everything to do with the Rating/Color option. See the “Applying Colors and Ratings” section above for details.

Anton
17 January 08 / permalink

Yes stupid me.
I just saw the section above.

Lisah
18 January 08 / permalink

any chance of having the selection gallery with the paypal feature?

Luc
28 April 08 / permalink

Hi,

Is there any chance your galeries could support French caracters such as: é, ç, ê, à… you know, charset=ISO-8859-1… My other Lr galeries do it… I update galeries often for clients and doing it myself would be slightly risky on a busy day.

Thanks!

Luc

Matthew
28 April 08 / permalink

Hi Luc,

Do the galleries not support those characters by default? I’m not very knowledgeable about character sets, but if you can tell me how to setup support, I can see about getting it done.

keith
3 June 08 / permalink

I found these on a recoomendation and just love the way that this works, it is a great addition to my site’s for both my personal photos.
I did have one query, when setting up the menu items, i tried to set it up so that it would go back to the main gallery index page but it seems to just embed it into the same window.
IS there a way to close the current gallery and then go back to the main index page?

Matthew
4 June 08 / permalink

Keith, I tried to see your website, but couldn’t connect to the address you’ve provided. How are you launching the galleries that they need be closed? I’m a little confused about your site configuration. Please drop me an email from the contact form and I’ll try to help you.

Jim
9 June 08 / permalink

This is a great gallery thanks very much for sharing it

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