Impact! – A new Web Engine for Lightroom

Emotion. That’s what my brand new web engine for Lightroom is all about.

When casually browsing the work of other photographers on the web I’ve long noted that my biggest emotional response to a collection of images is often provoked by two things:

  • Great photography
  • Big images

Impact creates web galleries that are designed to provoke such a response from your viewers. It’s all about the image.

Impact scales each image to fill the width of the browser window so that your visitors will be treated to a “wow” experience that will help to separate your work from the crowd. Moreover, the slideshow and the transitions are handled using Javascript so your site will be visible on devices that don’t support Flash, such as the iPhone and iPad.

Impact won’t be right for everyone. The nature of this sort of gallery means that images get cropped by the browser window – landscape format images will be more appropriate than portrait format. However, in terms of delivering a powerful message about your work I believe that an Impact powered gallery will be a powerful asset, whether used alone or in combination with a gallery such as Elegance.

Update: Version 1.10 of Impact now includes lots of scaling options, including the ability to scale each image to fill the window without cropping it.

Peter Karlsson has graciously allowed me to use his spectacular avionics images to produce a demonstration gallery.

Here are the goodies:

  • Impressive and memorable viewing experience thanks to full browser width images and sliding transitions.
  • The first image in the gallery is displayed as quickly as possible, and the others are preloaded one by one in the background. The waiting times are therefore reduced to a minimum.
  • Multiple image resolutions are exported and the most appropriate resolution is used when displaying the images. This ensures fast loading on mobile devices without penalising the image quality on desktop machines.
  • Very configurable interface – the colours of all on screen elements may be changed.
  • Users can bookmark images and return directly to them (the URL changes as the slideshow advances).
  • Designed for iPhone. The iPhone will be served with low resolution images to increase download speed. When viewed in landscape mode the navigation bar is automatically moved out of way to leave more room for the images. Finally, users may then swipe between images.
  • Pure HTML/Javascript – no Flash.
  • Image scaling is handled using some clever HTML rather than relying on Javascript. This results in a more fluid user experience when resizing the browser.
  • The gallery will fall back very gracefully if Javascript is disabled. Users will continue to see the full width images; only the image preloading and the automatic slideshow will be unavailable.
  • Support for The Turning Gate’s TTG XML Auto Index and TTG Pages galleries for creating entire websites.
  • “Right-click and save” is disabled to discourage casual theft.
  • Automatic update checking.

Impact is available from the Photographer’s Toolbox.

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24 Responses to Impact! – A new Web Engine for Lightroom

  1. Michael Perlov says:

    Great gallery indeed.

    What do you think about enabling an option to scale to fit window, not only width or is this impossible?

  2. John Lamont says:

    Tim,

    Slam Dunkin’ AGAIN ! You got my cash AGAIN !! Excellent work AGAIN !!!
    (flash free is twice as nice)

    ~ John

  3. Hey Tim!~

    I can’t wait to try out the new template. You always seem to know what I’m looking for in a web gallery, and somehow make it work just right. But please, don’t create any more new galleries this year, because it just means more work for me updating my website to your latest concept;)

    All the best,

    Steven

  4. Eric says:

    Great template! The 1.10 upgrade is welcome when we want not to crop the images. Two suggestions :
    an option to show the menu/control bar only when mouse hovers
    a full screen option (for… a bigger Impact!)

    Great job anyway

    Eric

    • Hi,

      I have a couple of plans for the menu bar. Guaranteed full screen coverage isn’t yet possible, however forcing all images to fill the browser will will achieve something very similar in most cases.

      Tim

      • Eric says:

        Hum, I didn’t mean a full screen coverage, I was thinking of the default Impact images display but in full screen, without the browser frames.

        and nice to read that you have some plan for the menu bar!!

        Eric

  5. One thing I would suggest, or request, is a make the logo/id plate a solid color all the way across, as it is on the navigation tab. At present, the logo looks sort of slapped on there. Would be nice to have a thin line running along the top to frame the images.

  6. Jason Smith says:

    Would it be possible to be able to advance to the next picture by clicking on the current image?

  7. Eric says:

    Yes, Impact is getting better and better. The 1.20 runs now smoothly for me, even in lightroom (on W7) and the changes you’ve made are very welcome! I jsut don’t know what feature I miss… Maybe the choice between differents arrows to start the slide, and a refresh preview button, because each time I make a change in the panels in LR the gallery reloads. But it’s more a LR feature I think!

    I’d like some of the Impact features to be shared with Elegance (I’dlike to have elegance starting before it has load the whole gallery, as Impact is doing, for instance).

  8. oktay says:

    looking at the sample site, I don’t see the images full browser width, is it supposed to be?

    • There are now quite a few scaling options, and filling up the browser width is one of them.

      The demo site uses the non-cropping option, so the image is as large as possible without cropping.

      Tim

  9. Pingback: Photography Blog » Blog Archive » Watermarking the future – how people look at pictures.

  10. Ian says:

    Great piece of software that I’m using for my own website. Any chance of password protecting some of the links for client-only use?

    Ian

  11. Great ! But would be even better if we could have thumbnails as an indicator type in the position indicator menu. Is feasible, isn’t it ? :-)

  12. Great work on this gallery. I love it and I’m using it in the portfolio sections of my website, as well as for client slideshows. Although a password-protect option would be useful, I can also manually protect the galleries with a script I use for my “client response” galleries.

    The only thing I’m missing at the moment is a custom CSS option in Lightroom. I’ve manually added a background image to better match with the rest of my site but it would be great to be able to insert a link to the custom CSS sheet in the gallery header (one of my other galleries has this option). Not a huge issue but it would be a great feature.

    I’ve been able to preview the galleries on both an iPhone and iPad and both looked amazing. I love being Flash-free.

  13. Erik says:

    Very happy with Impact web generator! I agree with Julien to have an option for the thumbnails to serve as indicator.
    The quick integration (for the time being) with my intro and contact page was easy to handle.

  14. Robert says:

    I like Impact, but can we have the ability to top and centre the Identity Plate in 1.61 like we can in Impact WSPP, please? At the moment, you can only make the ID Plate top right, top left, bottom right or bottom left. There’s no top centre…

  15. Joel Snobonm says:

    Are you still actively working on this web album and doing updated? Looks awesome but if there is now ongoing development I’m not sure i’ll buy