Advanced Dreamweaver

Web Photo Albums

Dreamweaver/Macromedia Studio includes a utility to create a web-based photo album. It will take a folder of images and:

• Create thumbnails for the images
• Create separate pages for each image if you choose to
• Make websafe copies of the images (starting from .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .psd, .tif, or .tiff files), rescaling them if you choose
• Create an index page with the thumbnails arranged in table form, each linking to the page/full size image it refers to.

To make a photo album,

1. Put all the pictures you wish to put in the photo album in a separate folder.
2. If you wish to have Macromedia change the size of the 'full size images', decide by what percentage to change the size.
3. Open Dreamweaver. [If necessary, define a 'site' in Dreamweaver.]
4. Open a new blank HTML page in Dreamweaver. (File -> New -> Basic Page -> HTML ->Create)
5. Go the Commands menu and choose 'Create Web Photo Album'.
6. The fill in form will come up:

7. Fill in the title and subheading you want for your Album. (You can change this later)
8. Select the Source folder where the images are currently kept.
9. Then create/select the Destination folder where you want the photo album to be put.
10. Choose the size for the thumbnail images and the number of columns for the table on the main page.
11. If you don't want the filenames of the images displayed on the main page, uncheck 'Show Filenames'
12. For the thumbnails and the copies of the photos, choose the format. You can have GIF or JPEG files; it will offer the option of smaller files or better display for JPEG files.
13. Set the scale for the copies of the photos, compared to the originals. If they started out full size digital camera photos, 50% is probably a good setting.
14. Unless you uncheck the 'Create Navigation page for each photo' box, a separate web page will be created for each (copied) image, with the image on it, and the thumbnails will be linked to the page. If you uncheck the box, the thumbnails will be linked directly to the photo file.
15. Click Ok. The photo album with be generated-- Macromedia Fireworks will open and process the images, and the destination folder will have subfolders for the (copies of) the images, the thumbnails, and the pages for each photo.
16. Save the new photo index page.

Next

Last updated: April 7, 2005

For more information, contact Jennifer Heise