Lightroom-News.com

Matthew Campagna has announced the release of TTG Highslide and Highslide Pro v1.8.

The 1.8 update addresses all known and newly discovered bugs, validation errors and sore points in TTG Highslide Gallery and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro. All gallery components now validate according to W3C XHTML/Strict specifications, except the PayPal shopping cart, which misses Strict validation by only two words forming an important string for which there are no Strict replacements; it validates perfectly well as XHTML/Transitional instead. Improvements include some new control sliders, fixed image border slider for the Gallery Description image border (broken since 1.6), fixed custom styling issues for Fotomoto buttons, PayPal shopping cart options can no longer overflow their container, Inline Slideshow optimizations and improvements, a new Inline Slideshow West layout option, increased maximum number of images, and other internal and structural improvements and optimizations.

With this release, the Highslide galleries are in the finest shape they’ve ever been. The 1.8 update is all about solidarity, and is recommended for all users. For a full list of changes, please visit The Turning Gate (http://lightroom.theturninggate.net).

Timothy Armes has today announced the public release of PLUS for Lightroom, a plug-in for embedded PLUS usage rights into images exported from Lightroom 2.

With publishers such as McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson adopting the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary and announcing their support, the international PLUS standard is rapidly becoming recognised as the definitive way to specify usage rights for digital works, and is the result of years of collaboration between the many and varied members of the PLUS coalition (http://www.useplus.com).

With PLUS for Lightroom it’s easier than ever for Lightroom users to create and embed PLUS licenses. You may read more about Timothy’s motivation and objectives on his blog (http://www.timothyarmes.com/blog/2009/10/plus-for-lightroom-manage-your-rights/), and you can download the trial version from the Photographer’s Toolbox (http://photographers-toolbox.com/products/plusforlightroom.php)

TTG Horizon 1.1 is now available. This update introduces a host of improvements and refinements, including better integration with TTG Pages and TTG Auto Index, new controls allowing for more flexibility in design, better font handling and font stack presets, and fixes for several bugs and validation errors.

The 1.1 update is free to subscribed users and can be downloaded using purchased download URLs. New users can purchase TTG Horizon for $15 from the product page.

Steve Sutherland, the creator of the Mapi Mailer export action has gone a step further and created a dedicated Export plugin for emailing from Windows Lightroom.

“Just thought I’d announce to any MapiMailer users out there, that I’ve finally created an Export plug-in version of MapiMailer. The main benefit to users of the old MapiMailer is that the Windows limitation on how many files could be attached to your email is now gone.

For those who have not heard of MapiMailer, it is a plug-in which allows Windows (only) users to export and attach multiple photos to their default email program. Without it, you can only attach a single photo. It is free for anyone to use (donations accepted). It has been submitted to the Adobe plug-in exchange, but you can also download and read about it now at my new website www.sbsutherland.com.

Spread the word.
Steve Sutherland”

Plugins in Lightroom
Lightroom has a plugin architecture that allows third parties to add to the functionality of Lightroom. Often these plugins add to Lightroom’s core functions, but more often they add entirely new features to the program. Plugins are a very different beast to Presets, and sometimes users can get the two confused. Presets are merely stored sets of instructions for Lightroom tools (and for plugins for that matter). Plugins, on the other hand, are additional programming, added to Lightroom.

Plugins for Lightroom originally came in one of two forms, Export and Web Gallery. But programmers being what they are have made much more of the available SDK to create even more than this, along with changes in the SDK. So we can broaden this view into more sections:

• Web Galleries
• Export Plugins
• Metadata Plugins
• Post Process Plugins
• External Editors
• Import
• Utilities

Timothy Armes has just released version 4.00 of LR2/Mogrify – his Lightroom plugin for adding watermarks, text annotations and borders to exported images (among lots of other things).

This version adds quite a few features that users have been asking him for:
There’s a new “Canvas” section for placing the (resized) image onto a fixed size canvas. Useful when images have to have a fixed size but you don’t wish to crop them (such as for sending them to photo labs or displaying them on a digital projector).
Multiple different watermarks may now be added to an image.
PNG watermarks may now be scaled proportionally.
Watermarks can now be specified as a percentage of the width or height of the image while preserving the aspect ratio.
Horizontal/Vertical insets now work in each of the nine watermark positions.
The limit of 3 text annotations has been removed – add as many as you want.
Fixed a recent bug that stopped TIFF’s being exported in 8-bit mode.
Fixed a recent bug that stopped borders having no width or height.

Matthew Campagna has launched TTG Pages 3.0. TTG Pages 3.0 is a spiritual successor to TTG LR Pages featuring many improvements, as well as integrating features from TTG Auto Index and TTG Stage. It’s more powerful, more flexible and easier to use than any of its predecessors. Features include:

- Creates Home page, About page, Contact page and self-populating Album Index.
- Much improved Contact form featuring flexible visual and positioning customization and input validation.
- Full integration of TTG Stage, supporting the following Flash galleries: Autoviewer, Postcardviewer, Simpleviewer, Monoslideshow 1.x and 2.x, Slideshow Pro, FlashNifties, Dimin Slideshow, Polaroid Gallery, the Lightroom Flash Gallery and Flickr.
- Pre-built site navigation menus.
- Six new site templates.
- Includes TTG MSS2 XMLer for creating Flash galleries with Monoslideshow 2.x.
- More user-friendly for novice and veteran Web module users alike!
- Longer subscription terms for updates.

The cost is $25. Those previously subscribed to TTG LR Pages have been sent discount codes for the upgrade.

More information is available at The Turning Gate.

And a live demonstration here: http://demo.theturninggate.net/

Portraiture 2 from Imagenomic is now available as a plugin for Lightroom. This retouching plugin is designed to reduce the time it takes to retouch a photo, and being a Lightroom plugin, means one less trip to Photoshop for retouching. This is an ‘Edit In’ or Export plugin and works on a generated image, rather than being Metadata based editing. Once an image is opened in Portraiture 2, it can be edited in the same way as in the Photoshop Plugin version (bar the ability to add the results as a new layer). All the processing and masking features are available in the Lightroom version also.

Portraiture 2 costs $199.95. A video tutorial explaining how the plugin operates is available also. For new users, Portraiture 2 can be used on a 15-Day Free Trial basis.

One feature sorely lacking in Lightroom is a good watermark on Export. Using the fabulous 3rd party plugin LR2/Mogrify from Timothy Armes solves this issue for a straight export, but unfortunately post process plugins are not available in the Web Module. So how can we do it?

Well for my recently launched music photography website Muso Foto, I wanted nice (i.e. not the normal Lightroom one) watermarks on my images. Nothing intrusive, but something that doesn’t take away from the image.

Here’s the steps I took:

TTG Highslide Gallery Pro has been updated to version 1.41. This release updates TTG Highslide Gallery Pro with support for Fotomoto’s new card products. Using Fotomoto, you can now sell greeting cards, flat cards and postcards directly from your web gallery.

A full list of changes follows:

v1.41 (2009-08-09)
Support for Fotomoto’s new card products — sell greeting cards, flat cards and postcards through Fotomoto!.
Improved form validation for Selection Gallery.
Fixed form compatibility for Form-to-Email Pro.
Improved handling/protection of Highslide license.
Fixed bug that prevented text customization for ‘Close’ button in Slideshow mode.
Added capability to enable/disable individually Fotomoto “Buy Print” and “Send E-card” buttons.
Fixed IE bug for View Cart button width.
Package includes a modified Form-to-Email script and readme file for use on Yahoo Small Business accounts.

In addition the non Pro version has also been updated.