New Flash gallery hook-up for Photoshop

I’m delighted to report that Felix Turner’s slick PostcardViewer (see example) is now compatible with Photoshop CS2. A simple Photoshop script pops an interface for setting gallery parameters, then cranks out the JPEGs and XML needed to display your photos through Flash. Sweet.
It was largely Felix’s work that inspired us to add Flash support to Photoshop’s built-in Web Photo Gallery (example). We’re now building upon that start with Project Lightroom (example), and we’d like to standardize on an XML flavor that will let gallery templates developed for one app be used by others.
[Update: D’oh–I inadvertently attributed PostcardViewer to Felix Nelson (a very talented Photoshop artist from the NAPP). Felix Turner is the author of PostcardViewer. Sorry, guys; I will keep my Felices straight from now on.]

0 thoughts on “New Flash gallery hook-up for Photoshop

  1. Script has two major faults. It will not copy the viewer.swf to the destination folder (has to be copied manually)which makes it impossible to view the gallery
    [I haven’t seen this problem reported elsewhere. Did you leave the SWF and GIF at the same level as the script? They need to remain side by side. –J.]
    and it is very unstable under Netscape 8.1. When a gallery is viewed and a photo enlarged it will default to the center picture after a few seconds, very annoying.
    [Again, I haven’t seen this, but I don’t use Netscape. If there’s a problem, I think it’s in the SWF, not in the gallery itself. –J.]

  2. I absolutely adore the Flash XML photo galleries, but the white flash is blinding.
    I wold use it more if I could modify the transition white flash, change the background to a darker nuetral or something.
    Any ideas?
    [It may or may not suit your needs, but the .FLA source files are posted in the Photoshop downloads area. You could modify those, then re-export SWF files to be used with Photoshop. –J.]

  3. Could someone be so kind in helping me set the ‘Photoshop Flash web glallery 3’ to transparent.
    I have added the following line to the html page but with no luck on IE6 or any other browsers.
    ” myFlashObject.addParam(“wmode”, “transparent”); ”
    var myFlashObject = new FlashObject(“gallery.swf”, “gallery”, “100%”, “100%”, 6, “#ffffff”);
    myFlashObject.addParam(“scale”, “noscale”);
    myFlashObject.addParam(“wmode”, “transparent”);
    myFlashObject.addVariable(“request”, getQueryParamValue(“image”));
    myFlashObject.addVariable(“photosXmlFile”, “photos.xml”);
    myFlashObject.addVariable(“configXmlFile”, “galleryconfig.xml”);
    myFlashObject.write();
    Do I need to add something to the javascript file as well?
    Any help would be most appreciated.

  4. Anyone know how to load photoshop flash galleries into other swf’s? It appears to be a common problem but i can’t seem to find an answer.
    ps. Love the postcard viewer
    [Let me see what I can find out from the gallery authors. –J.]

  5. Just got it to go. Had some trouble with my container movie being flash 8 and the swf flash 6. Having some trouble sorting out pulling in the text from the xml file, but i am sure i can work that one out. Thanks

  6. Hi, I wan’t to load the flash gallery ( the swf) in my flash site using an empty conatiner, but when I click on the button to load him I get errors that he can’t find “.jpg”. Can you help me?
    [Hmm–I’m not really sure as the gallery isn’t made by Adobe. I’d make sure that you’re preserving the same relative arrangement between the SWF and the images when you incorporate them into your site. That is, if the SWF is in a directory and the images are in an “Images” subdirectory, you’ll need to preserve that arrangement. –J.]

  7. Hi,
    The issue I’m having is not being able to see thumbnails that extend below the bottom of the browser when rolled over – there doesn’t seem to be a way to make the browser scrollbars appear.
    Tried removing:
    overflow: hidden;
    from the indexPage.htm file, but no luck.
    Any ideas on how to solve this?
    Thanks!
    [I think that for these questions you’ll need to contact the developer of the gallery. Sorry that I don’t have the answers myself. –J.]

  8. I’ve incorporated a Flash Web Gallery into a web page. It works fine on Safari and IE7, but not so much in Firefox. The main image gets cut in half from the bottom, hiding the thumbnails, and pushing the control buttons into whats left of the main image. Any thoughts?
    [Bob, I suggest directing this to Felix, the developer. He’s at <a href="Bob, I suggest directing this to Felix, the developer. He's at airtightinteractive.com”>http://www.airtightinteractive.com“>airtightinteractive.com. –J.]

  9. I’m having the same problem with loading a swf from a CS2 flash web gallery into another swf file as Kurt Strong had back in October last year ….
    “Anyone know how to load photoshop flash galleries into other swf’s? “.
    All i’m getting is an “undefined.jpg” error message in Flash 8.
    Any help with this would be much appreciated.
    Thanks.
    [Hmm–I’m not sure about this one. One challenge would be to deal with the fact that the SWF essentially takes over your browser window, making it hard to load into another SWF. I’d suggest grabbing the source files from Adobe.com and editing them and/or using the code to make your own SWF gallery. Frankly I know that none of that is trivial, at least for a non-coder like me, but that’s all I can suggest offhand. –J.]

  10. Hi,
    I just found this site while trieng to find an answer for not being able to embed the web flash galleries from PhotoshopCS2 into a different flash file..it relly seems that this is a very common problem. I f anyone found out smthing please share your solutions!
    thanks a lot

  11. I would like to integrate one of the Photoshop web photo galleries into an already constructed page in Dreamweaver, but I can’t figure out how to do it. Can someone please enlighten me.
    Thank you.

  12. John, I am desperately looking for either source code or a tutorial on how to create a gallery like the one you showed as the barbeque-wedding example. Is that possible out of the box w/ the adobe plugin? I’m on a PC. 🙁 Thanks much!
    [Sure: You can create this kind of gallery by selecting images in Bridge and choosing Tools->Photoshop->Web Photo Gallery, or in Photoshop by choosing File->Automate->Web Photo Gallery, then selecting the images. Select one of the Flash gallery templates, set up your color & info, and let ‘er rip. Note that I edited the gallery.xmp file in the output folder to change the size of the nav bar. As for the source code, go here. –J.]

  13. John, Is it possible to somehow center flash gallery 2 instead of having it in the default position? I tried fiddling with the div tags that surround the flash object but with no luck.
    [Laura, I’ll check, but offhand I don’t know. –J.]

  14. “I would like to integrate one of the Photoshop web photo galleries into an already constructed page in Dreamweaver, but I can’t figure out how to do it. Can someone please enlighten me.”
    You’ll have to do it manually:
    For a Flash Gallery, copy the Javascript stuff and the CSS stuff (between the style tags)from the index.html and paste it between the head tags of your HTML document.
    Copy the Flash stuff (from the DIV style=”display:none” to the end DIV tag) into your HTML file wherever you want the slideshow to appear. Then be sure that your pathnames in your HTML file and in the base section in the second line of the photos.xml file are all correctly pointing to the right location for the slideshow files IF your HTML file is NOT in the same directory as the generated index.html file for the slideshow.
    You are probably going to put the slideshow into a container (either a DIV or a table) in your HTML document. So you might also have to tweak the size of the container to make sure that the slideshow fits and the controller menu is visible.

  15. Dear All,
    i’ve generated a webgallery with cs2 and all works fine but i’m opening the index.htm into a frame which is about the lower 80% of the screen, but i cannot get it centered, it’s also impossible to get any scrollbars..
    i’ve already tried :
    and took out : overflow: hidden;
    but nothing helps, it seems that the leftbordermargin from galleryconfig.xml is overruling all this.. but even disabling that line doesn’t help..
    please help me, thanks in advance!
    Mark.

  16. I have embedded the Flash gallery in an iframe but want the slideshow to start automatically. Anyone know of a way to set this either by editing the flash source or via the xml?
    thanks

  17. Laura, and anyone else trying to integrate the flash gallery into your own html design, it’s a border that has been created in flash. It’s silly that a .fla file is not generated at the same time. So no, you can not tweak the “centering” of the flash. It’s a bummer. This would have made it so easy to create slide shows.
    jorge
    [I hear you, though I wouldn’t use the word “silly,” as only one application besides Flash itself (namely, the PSD2FLA plug-in) has managed to generate an FLA file–and it’s a very simple one at that. I think the right answer is to develop a Flash authoring format that’s much more useful for interchange, so that apps like Photoshop could hand off something that Flash and other authoring tools could consume/edit/export. We don’t have a solution in hand at the moment, but the need is clear. (Hey, I’ve been asking for it since 1999!) –J.]

  18. Hi, I used an automated web photo gallery (flash1) for an artist’s portfolio website and it works perfectly fine when tested locally — but once uploaded onto the server, two question marks show in the top left corner of the browser, pushing the whole design down and making the right corner menu icons disappear from the window. Those two “??” question marks add themselves to the HTML code right in front of the Ԫ�

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