Adobe Lightroom has a nice web gallery option for posting to online photo sites. You can edit your photos in a really great adobe application and just upload (by Ftp) to straight to your site. In the updated version of Lightroom 1.3, they have included some neat Flash-based templates, namely: Airtight Auto Viewer, Airtight Postcard Viewer, and Airtight Simple Viewer along with Lightroom Flash Gallery.

Airtight Auto Viewer presents the photos like an old 35mm film roll where each picture is side by side. You have to scroll laterally to view each. You can view them as a slideshow. After a while however, the slideshow dazzles the eye with the lateral sliding.

Airtight Postcard Viewer presents the thumbnails on one page and when you click the large image zooms towards you. It is very similar to Pic Lens. The problem I find with this is that the large images are almost always leaning to one side. It would be perfect for someone wanting to showcase some family photos.

Airtight Simple Viewer shows the thumbnails on the left and the large picture on the right. Clicking on the thumbnail will simply bring up the respective large image on the right. No slideshow included.

Lightroom Flash Gallery presents thumbnails as a vertical scrollbar on the left and clicking on them brings up the large image on the right. You may view a slideshow with or without the thumbnails showing.

In addition, Lightroom still carries several html web gallery templates.

Lightroom Web Gallery is perfect for persons who just want to put up a site with no hassle and who don’t want additional work after spending their precious time editing the images. The only thing you will have to know is how to upload your gallery using the included Ftp option (server name, username, password, etc.). However, there are a couple of things missing that would make it more acceptable to demanding users.

1. There is no option for comments.
2. No RSS feed option
3. No option for plugins or add-ons.

If these options aren’t important and you already have Lightroom as your photo editing software, then this is for you. If not, try one of the many open source photo blog/gallery software.

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MyBlogLog (now owned by yahoo) is a good place to start getting your website links to increase traffic to your site.

It is essentially an online portal that allows you to form and join communities built around your blog’s tags. On joining (for free) you will be able to add tags about your personal interests, and then you can add your website and tags for what your site is all about. It is essentially a blog version of flickr. When you add your website tags, they are used to place your site in different communities with other similar sites. You now have the choice to join their communities and they can join yours. Incidentaly, you may join with your yahoo id.

Installation involves adding a small html script to your main page, but if I can do it, anyone can. This script allows them to place your homepage as an icon on their site. MyBlogLog users can then click on this icon to access your site.

Think about starting a business with a phone number that no one knows and you have no way of getting people to know the number. You have no money for advertising. Your target market is not close to you for word of mouth to be effective. MyBlogLog is like getting that number listed in the Yellow Pages for free so the world can see you.

I got my first hit less than a minute after joining! Highly recommended!

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The Nikon D40 is a great camera. Why do I regret buying it? Lens limitation.

The D40 will only auto focus on the newer AF-S or AF-I lenses that have built in motors. Most dslr’s have a motor built onto the body so the camera itself will move the lens mechanism for focusing, but the D40 relies on the lens to do the work.

Fig.1 D40 has no manual focus pin Fig.2 D80 with Focus Pin on the body

The internal focusing lenses theoretically should actually give better performance. Focusing is smoother, quicker and more accurate than with external focusing.

The big drawback is that the lens set is limited and more expensive. I wish I could order some of those old auto focus lenses on ebay and have them work effectively on my camera. Some will work, but only in Manual program. I actually own an old 50mm prime lens I picked up on ebay.

Here’s the bad news, Nikon seems set on continuing the trend as the D40x and the new D60 both have the same feature. The good news is that other lens manufacturers are now producing more internal focusing glass.

In the meantime however I need to upgrade and am caught in a dilemma. Do I go back to my former love Canon and lose my 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 ED II AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6 and 50mm f/1.8 AF lenses or stay Nikon and get a D80? Hmm. Wish I could afford a D300.

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Themes

Word Press themes,widgets and plugins are all over the internet. WordPress.org has a vast resource of freebies.

To use themes:

Ø Download and unzip theme.

Ø Extract to a folder of choice.

Ø Using an ftp client, upload theme folder to wp-content\themes folder. For example if you extracted the theme named ‘pretty blue’ to a folder named ‘themes’ then you would upload the folder ‘pretty blue’ to \wp-content\themes directory on your server.

Ø Go to WordPress 2.5 admin panel and choose design—-themes. You will find the uploaded theme there. Click on it and it will become the active theme.

Widgets and Plugins

The install procedure is the same for widgets and themes except they will be uploaded to the \wp-content\plugins directory.

Next, go to Plugins in the WordPress Administrator Panel and there you can activate or de-activate plugins and widgets.

After you have activated widgets, you will need to go to design——widgets to use the widgets.

Check out the next post for installing WordPress 2.5

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