Hello, we have a client whose proposed site will consist largely of different photo galleries of resort destinations. As such, she wants a fairly feature-rich photo gallery, which doesn't appear to be possible "out of the box" on any of photo gallery-type modules. The main enhancement she would like is:
The ability to see the number of the current photo within the gallery, and to be able to go to specific numbered photos by clicking into a box/field... ex.--> http://msn.foxsports.com/tennis/pgStory?contentId=6417980&pageNumber=1
It seems like the closest module overall is Flash Gallery ( http://www.endymios.com/flash-gallery-module#why ), though it doesn't have the numbered photo feature and warns that it gets bogged down by galleries over 50 images. This might be a problem as many of the resorts have more photos than that.
So, I'm wondering if anyone has any advice about which module would be best to go with considering the above. Would customizing Flash Gallery be possible in this way, or would we be better off choosing a non-flash gallery and customizing that instead... Thanks,
Jim
Comments
consider the
consider the gallery.menalto.com gallery2 software, which can be bridged with Drupal using the gallery.module. IMO this is the most feature rich photo software in the Open Source Area.
If you want it all "directly" tied to Drupal, your choices are as follows:
the image.module with the included gallery.module
CCK with the imagefield addon, imagecache.module, to displaying images, views.module for listing images, and contemplate module for templating the views put out with the views.module.
the gallery bridge fits in nicely and if you link you can PM and ill show you my demo I've tested with on my demo site. The project page may also have a demo of this. The gallery.menalto.com website is actually a demo of this bridging as well. They use drupal as their CMS.
Thanks (and a few follow-up questions)
Thanks for that reply! This Gallery 2 looks to have pretty much everything we're looking for. The only question is that the features didn't say anything about being able to jump between numbered photos in a gallery like the example. But I think you implied that would be handled within Drupal from one of the existing modules (not sure which one, tho). Also, I would like (if possible) to hear a little bit more about how to bridge this application to Drupal, as I've never done this before.... And, finally, what did you mean about "if you link you can PM and i'll show you my demo..."? I would definitely like to see a working demo of this.
Thanks,
Jim
The only question is that
Your example would have to be themed in gallery2 to do it with gallery2, or you would have to use one of the "other two methods" which are entirely different and done in drupal modules.
The implication was that you can use the views.module to create a db querry, and then use the contemplate.module to theme the view. (NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART) if you don't understand how a db querry is built, views can be hard to understand, as well as if you don't understand the way forms are built in Drupa, contemplate can be a bit intimidating.
the gallery.module available in the downloads area does the bridging, you would do nothing more then install gallery2, install the gallery.module in drupal, enable the module, and set the proper settings. more information about how this is done is on the gallery project page, and in the downloads readme.txt file. The project page also has a link to the documentation wiki set up for the module.
my brain was moving faster than my fingers I suppose. If you want I can provide a link to my own demo of this integretion of these two seperate pieces of software which will only give you an end user perspective. but a perspective none the less. It would be a far greater experience and would provide more insight if you tested on your own, to get a greater understanding.
my demo site is as follows demo.verymisunderstood.com/drupal5/gallery : There is only one album there, but should give you some insight on how it wraps into drupal. I've noticed a few 500 server errors on my site today, they are not the result of the software but a result of my host having some problems. Please don't let any 500 errors result in characterizing the integretion as "not working"
this is what I have found out so far
image.module
- image gallery for making albums based on taxonomy
- image import to import more than one picture at a time
- image publish for uploading using gallery remote - not sure if it works on OS X
- image assist to put album pictures in the body of nodes
- taxonomy access for securing albums
- gallery_addon for making the album display nicer
- postcard to send emails of your pictures
- there is a flash gallery, but have not tried it
- there is a slideshow module, not sure if it works with image gallery
pros
part of drupal - can use view module
taxonomy
less setup
less time to learn, not as many features as gallery
seems faster than gallery2
cons
not as many features as gallery2
you might not like images as nodes
puts all the gallery images into one folder (directory)
gallery2
- gallery.module to make gallery2 seem like it is apart of drupal
- gallery remote for your desktop computer
- g2image to put album pictures in the body of nodes
pros
organizes originals into separate folders
allows you to do many things and the kitchen sink
huge amount of plugins included
if you want a shopping cart for your images
you might like images in a different system than drupal
each album can be themed
each album can have different thumbnail and preview image sizes
cons
very difficult to figure out
takes much more time to configure (just as big as drupal)
full install with all plugins takes 58MB on your server
puts preview and thumbnail images into the database (more overhead for DB)
gallery2 does not work well with i18n international module (links might break, language will not match)
php memory limit issues - must have at least 24MB set in php.ini, or your host has to set it up
languages totally different design than drupal, won't work unless you have access your apache conf file
have to hack code to remove languages from pulldown list (if activated)
webdav (new feature) does not work unless you have access your apache conf file
certain themes may crash your browser when embedded in drupal
could not get slider theme to work within drupal
there can be G2ID sync errors when drupal syncs it's users into gallery2 mixing up users
gallery remote may not work right all the time( ie. if resize before upload "album default" is checked, it may not use the correct image size and will not include original and preview sizes.) v1.5b30
test: drupal 5.7, php 5.2.4, apache 1.3.33,
production: drupal 5.7, php 5.2.5, apache 1.3.37
modules: i18n, cck, views, emfield, image, invite, smtp, bad behavior, forward, gallery, xml sitemap, logintoboggan, nice menus, meta tags, paging, user points
Very informative
Thanks for this excellent post! It's good to see such a helpful breakdown of pros and cons.... I think that we'll be forced to use Gallery2 as it seems to offer everything we need, albeit with a lot of cons to consider. I am unsure, not being a programmer, how all of this is going to work together to make the gallery we need to have. If anyone knows of any tutorials about bridging Gallery 2 in Drupal, or how to add the ability to see a number for each photo ( say, between the forward and backward buttons) so you can jump quickly to another number, that would be helpful.
At least Gallery 2 looks like it will be faster than Flash Gallery, considering some of these galleries will have upwards of 200 photos in them (we will probably break them down into sub-galleries, though). Anyway, I didn't realize this would be such an invovled undertaking -- but as long as the client is happy then it will be worth it! It's possible, also, that we might need a little outside help for getting some of this together. If anyone wants to contact me personally to offer their Gallery2 expertise, I would be happy to hear from you. Thanks,
Jim
updated info to my post above
image publish and gallery remote works fine on a os x, you just need to make sure and use the correct path.
ie. http://example.com/?q=en/gallery_remote2.php/ on a multi-lang site.
- add watermark to one of the image.module additions.
IMPORTANT for multiple languages: the USER must change the language in their account to see the language in Gallery2. The anonymous user, drupal language switching or gallery2 language selector (embedded) will not work. not sure if is this a bug or if there is there a fix.
no need for access to apache conf file for languages.
if users select the correct language when signing up, then you should not need a language selector in gallery.
test: drupal 5.7, php 5.2.4, apache 1.3.33,
production: drupal 5.7, php 5.2.5, apache 1.3.37
modules: i18n, cck, views, emfield, image, invite, smtp, bad behavior, forward, gallery, xml sitemap, logintoboggan, nice menus, meta tags, paging, user points
Image Magick
Another feature our client wants is to have something that, upon upload, improves the image quality. It seems like the Image Advanced Scaling module's stated ability of "applying a sharpness filter to the image derivatives and converting them to a suitable color profile" would do the trick. I looked in the Gallery2 modules, and it seemed the closest possibility was ImageMagick. I wonder if the ImageMagick module could do this sharpening and color correcting automatically, or if it would be more a Photoshop-type thing that you would manually adjust on each photo prior to uploading. If it *is* the latter, does anyone know of anything else that can do this if it can't be done with Gallery2? None of the other Drupal image-related modules seem to be geared for this.... Thanks
Jim
that would be a gallery2
that would be a gallery2 specific question better answered on their forums. G2 does have the ability to use Imagemagik, tools that alter images on a server are typically server intensive.
Image Advanced Scaling integration
Well, it turns out that ImageMagick can't do automatic color correction and sharpening on upload. So it looks like the only option is integrating the Image Advanced Scaling module. It is possible to use Gallery2 along with this non-gallery2 module to add this kind of functionality? Am I correct that the Image Advanced Scaling module even provides this kind of solution?? And, if not, does anyone know of any other way to accomplish this. Thanks again,
Jim
---
No, Drupal modules will not work with G2. A module would have to be written specifically for G2. You may want to look into the netpbm grahics binaries that work with Gallery2 to see if these binaries rather than imagemagik will suit your needs. G2 has built in support for this as well as GD & imagemagik, though you may have to compile the binaries on your server as they may not already be there as in the case of FFMPEG on most servers.
Below quoted from netpbm:
there are many ways to do it
search the web for image or photo workflow's. you can use software like Lightroom, Aperture, or iPhoto.
it's best to do color correction on the desktop.
test: drupal 5.7, php 5.2.4, apache 1.3.33,
production: drupal 5.7, php 5.2.5, apache 1.3.37
modules: i18n, cck, views, emfield, image, invite, smtp, bad behavior, forward, gallery, xml sitemap, logintoboggan, nice menus, meta tags, paging, user points
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