Gallery: From Darkness to Light
I recently mentioned that I was looking for gallery software. Well, it looks like our recent upgrade may just be the solution. In a way, this post is a test of WordPress 2.5’s muti-file upload and built-in galleries. Considering the number of images, it’s also going to test our servers, not to mention your connection.
If everything goes well, you’re going to see 600 images from a recent concert shoot below. Less than half of them are mine though – Claire, another member of the LightChasers team, shot most of the close-ups. I snuck in a few photos with my 85mm, but I pretty much stuck with my wide lens for most of the concert.
Anyway, if you think the number seems pretty large, don’t worry – we think so too. We were quite reluctant to trim down too much, and besides, we were feeling pretty generous. What we’re worried about now is the amount of bandwidth all these images will consume. If you think things will be fine, follow the jump.
Quite an eyeful, isn’t it? I still don’t quite believe we shot so much (over 12GB combined), but hey, can you blame us? Shooting concerts is a whole lot of fun.
• Luis • 31 March 2008 •
Wow! Look like it worked. What do you think about the new 2.5 features? Will you keep using them?
Matt:
It definitely worked, but it wasn’t quite as smooth as I would’ve liked. For one thing, I don’t think I’ll ever post this many images for one gallery unless the upload system get more reliable. I’d also like to see a few other features for the gallery – I’ve emailed you some other comments.
That’s quite an upload. How long did the upload take? Did you have to resize the pictures first before you uploaded them? Do you know of any software that can do batch resize and keep the EXIF data intact? Anyway, keep up the good work.
Will:
I’ve tried to forget the whole thing, but as far as I can remember, it took me around 4 hours on and off. I had trouble uploading large batches because the upload would hang and force me to restart my browser. At one point though, I got over 100 images uploaded in the time between commercial breaks on TV.
As for resizing, I made a Photoshop action that resizes large batches of pictures to a max width or height of 900px. As long as you don’t use the Save for Web option, your EXIF should remain intact. If you run Windows, you can use one of the XP PowerToys available from Microsoft. This also keeps your EXIF untouched.
The gallery function also makes two other sizes for your image: a 300px hight or wide (medium) image, and a 150px square thumbnail. You can change the thumbnail size in your WP settings (I can’t remember exactly where), but this only applies to images that you haven’t uploaded yet.
I hope I was able to answer all your questions!
Wow, I am impressed you got it working. All of my 2.5 installs have errors with the media uploader.
Thanks, Luis. and Yes you did.
Rostyslave:
Well, I did have problems when I first installed 2.5, but re-uploading all 2.5 files fixed the problem for me.
Will:
I’m glad I did. I hope to see you ’round here again.
Wow, this is the first WP2.5 blog post entry I’ve seen with a lot of photos using the built in gallery uploader. Good to hear everything seemed to have worked out well for you. I can also see you’ve already updated to 2.5.1.
I’ve got plan 1mbps DSL connection and it took this page around 5min to load. I’m not kidding!!! Nice Pilita Corrales shots…
Marc:
Like I mentioned in the post, I part of the reason I was posting such a large gallery was to see how well the WP2.5 gallery feature worked. It wasn’t the smoothest process, but it obviously worked. As for my WP version – you found out by checking the source code, right? I’m actually installing a plugin soon to hide my WP version.
Anyway, I hope you’re not paying per kilobyte charges for your data connection. If you are, I apologize.
I probably can’t take credit for the close up shots of Pilita though. I used my wide lens for most of the concert.