blog.gallerama.com

As promised, we’ve added a new, simpler and faster way to upload your photos to Gallerama. The new method supports simpler browsing of image and zip files, multi-file selecting and makes upload file-size limits virtually a non-isssue for PRO members as they now only apply to the size of each file rather than a single upload. To clarify, the size limit for a single file remains 200MBs, but you can select as many files as you’d like that are under that limit and they’ll be processed in sequence! For Gallerama members of the Standard kind, if Unlimited storage was not reason enough to upgrade to a Pro membership, then this certainly must be it.

And just in case you liked our old (now referred to as “Basic”) Uploader or if you don’t have Flash installed, its still available. Just follow the link in the sub-header and its back.

For those of you who are techies, the new tool is using the great new open source tool called: SWFUpload, which supports extensive customization and configuring both of which we’ve taken serious advantage of. In fact, our dev team likes SWFUpload so much that we’d be happy to contribute to the project.

Oh, and when you log into “My Gallerama”, you’ll notice a few other improvements and niceties. We’ve enhanced the speed and experience of various operations such as moving photos and galleries around, creating archives (there was a bug with opening generated zip files on Macs - now resolved!).

Enjoy!

Whether you are managing your photos or viewing galleries, our new updates will make your galleries look better and load faster, while making your workflow simpler. Enjoy!

Some of the new features:
- We’ve redesigned the photo “zoom” view slightly, bringing more focus to the photo itself.
- New toolbars on MY GALLERIES and MY PHOTOS screens.
- Editing photo information on MY GALLERIES screen just got a lot easier.
- Gallerama now uses the latest version of the jQuery library (1.3.2) which provides various performance improvements.

Our print partner AdoramaPix just announced their awesome new application for creating high-quality hardcover photo books. Unlike most other print labs, their app is web-based so there is nothing to install. And with your photos stored on Gallerama, you can make your photo books anytime and from anywhere.

Visit http://www.adoramapix.com/photobooks.aspx for complete info and pricing. (Btw, prices start at just $19.99 for a 26 page 8×5.5 book!)

Our friends at Adorama did an objective report of the new breed of full frame DSLRs. Check it out at: http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?op=academy_new&article=012609

We’re happy to report that we’ve made a number of key enhancements to Gallerama aimed at simplifying and streamlining the management of your photos, galleries and gallery groups. The improvements are not only functional but also visual. In fact, we feel that the interface enhancements do as much to help usability as do the performance enhancements.

To give these updates a try just log into Gallerama and create, edit, assign, re-assign your photos, galleries and gallery groups. And let us know what you think!

We’d like to wish all Gallerama members and visitors a Happy New 2009!

As we reflect on 2008, we’re thrilled with the updates we’ve rolled out, such as our partnership with AdoramaPix for offering our members professional quality prints. We’ve made various tweaks to our site to make management of your photos simpler and more intuitive. We’ve also extended our presentation options making your galleries and profile pages more elegant and unique. And we’ve seen our member base continue to grow!

We expect 2009 to be even more successful. As we continue to enhance our feature set, we look forward to hearing from as well. Let us know what you like or dislike, and what features you’d like to see on Gallerama.

Major News! Gallerama members can now order prints of their photos stored on Gallerama.com directly through AdoramaPix. If you are not familiar with AdoramaPix, it is the professional print lab of one of New York City’s oldest and most trusted photography stores - Adorama Camera. Many of us here at Gallerama have used their print lab for years and have always been thrilled with the quality of both their service and the results. (Oh, and most of our photo gear is bought there as well.) Offering a great selection of print products at affordable prices, AdoramaPix was our first choice when selecting a print lab for Gallerama and we’re excited to be joining forces. Once you check out their large variety of sizes, paper types, and other print products, as well as their super easy to use and streamlined interface we’re sure you’ll agree.

Please visit AdoramaPix.com to learn more about all their print sizes and prices and to find out about some of the fantastic features of their setup flow, including manual per-photo crop adjustment and access to their color profiles for each paper type.

Shipping or Local Pickup

If you’re in New York and don’t like waiting for the mailman, why not swing by the store and pick up your prints as soon as they’re ready? AdoramaPix offers local pickup which means that you get your photos sooner and don’t have to pay for shipping. In addition to being able to track your order via the AdoramaPix website, you will also receive an email notification as soon as your prints become available for pickup. And if you’re opted to have them personally delivered, you’ll be notified as soon as they’re on the way.

While AdoramaPix presently only ships to United States, support for international shipping is on the way and slated for early next year.

Extending the Print Option to Your Visitors

Each Gallerama member can by default order prints only of their own photos, but they have the option to extend this to all of their visitors as well. By turning on this option on either the My Galleries or My Photos screen, you are enabling all of your visitors to order prints of your photos as well. Keep in mind that any of your galleries can be password protected, so you can enable printing yet expose that to only those to whom you’ll provide the password you select for a particular gallery. And enabling or disabling either of these settings takes no time so you can get creative with how you’d like to manage your print and security settings and when.

A few exciting updates have been made to the Gallerama application. We’ve increased upload limits from 100Mbs to 200Mbs (per upload), allowing you to upload more photos at once. Again, we encourage uploading zipped files containing multiple photos since that also helps speed things up.

In addition, we’ve also improved the My Photos section to allow in-place editing of photo titles and descriptions. We find that this allows much faster and more intuitive editing of photo information. Just click on the current title or description to go into edit more. Click “Save” (or just hit ENTER for the photo Title) and your update is instantly stored.

Other improvements:

• Rotating photos is now faster and more easily accessible.
• Comments can now be posted without leaving the gallery or photo page.
• Emailing gallery and photo links has been optimized and received a face-lift.
• Changing your email address and password is also simplified and optimized.
• Loading time for all Gallerama pages and member galleries has been improved.
• Loading of galleries using Brick Wall layout has been greatly improved.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for further updates.

We have spend the last couple of months enhancing and optimizing various components of Gallerama, in particular the upload flow, all gallery templates and our SlideShow. While some of the updates are can only be seen as under-the-hood performance improvements, many visual embellishments have been scattered about as well.

For our tech savvy readers…
Gallerama is now using the brilliant jQuery JavaScript library. We’ve been impressed by John Resig’s amazing library for quite some time and were itching to bring it into Gallerama space. With this new set of updates our own libraries were re-written to rely on and extend jQuery and maximize its potential. Big thanks goes out to the jQuery team.

That’s right, another new gallery layout is now available to all Gallerama members. Featuring our new, large thumbnail size the Grid layout aims to deliver a more structured and modern look to your galleries, with the focus being on the presentation of the gallery as a uniform photo collection.

Once again, our Zoom feature is used to display the enlarged photo version which is automatically displayed in the largest available size which will fit in the user’s browser window. (Resizing the window will correctly adjust the image size.)

Displaying captions below the photos in the gallery view is entirely up to you, as is the number of photos you choose to display per page. When specifying this number please keep in mind that the first grid “cell” is reserved for the gallery name. To display all photos on the single (first) page, just enter a high number!

So, check it out and let us know how you like it.