Making Web Galleries in Bridge CS4
After you waste time looking for the Web Photo gallery in CS4 you come to accept that its modified capabilities have been moved to Bridge in the form of creating Web Galleries in the Output workspace. If you truly need it back copy the plug in from CS3 plug-in automate folder into CS4 plug-in Automate folder and your back to “Old School.”
CS3’s Web Photo Gallery “Old and Busted”
If you are willing to stick with the new Web Gallery capabilities you may find some things to your liking. There are different templates, the ability to see live preview within Bridge, as well as the ability to upload to an FTP site directly from Bridge. The new gifts come at a cost. You do lose the ability to save and reuse custom templates and settings having to input the desired modifications every time.
So now that a proper warning and work around has been addresses let’s look at the Web Gallery closer.
CS4 Web Gallery Output Panel “Shiny New and Busted?”
Once the Output workspace is open the Web Gallery must be selected to get the relevant options. At the top are the templates that Adobe provides for Flash and HTML based Photo Displays.
Template Presets 
Each Template configures the Web page to that particular layout. Depending on what is selected you may have some style to choose from. Standard gives a choice between Medium or Small thumbnails, Left Filmstrip provides Medium or large thumbnails. Only the Darkroom Style is available for Filmstrip, Slideshow, and the Journal templates. HTML provides the Lightroom style. The largest number of styles, ten different presets, is available for the Lightroom Flash Gallery.
Presets for Lightroom Flash Gallery
If all that is need is to create and visualize a standard Web Gallery you can quickly see an interactive version within Bridges Preview Output Panel by pressing the Refresh Preview Button. In you would like to see what it looks like in your Default browser use Preview in Browser.
Images Selected for the Web Gallery
Inj the Output Preview window all parts of the Web page is interactive. The slider to see thumbnails, the ability to switch to full screen, you can start a slide show or manually go forward or backwards. Since we have not added any custom information the Default text has been automatically added to the layout.
Web Gallery Preview Default Settings
To customize the text and colors we must use some of the additional Web gallery options. Site Info is the first input group to add custom information. Here you add the Site Title, A collection title, a description of the images or other text you want associated with the site, and contact and copyright info.
Site Info Input Fields
Once the text information is added to your site you can us the Color palette group to pick the color for your sites attributes. Click on the color box next to the text label and a color picker is displayed for the selection of the desired color.
Color Pallette Options and Color Picker
Below the Color Palette are the appearance options. Here you control the selected templates overall layout. This varies depending on the Template selected. For example the Lightroom Flash Gallery gives options to select from four addition layout styles: Scrolling, Left, Pagination, Slideshow only. In addition preview size and thumbnail size can be customized. Below is an example of the Lightroom Flash Gallery, Earl Grey as the foundation, some customization of color attributes, Custom text added and Pagination layout.
I like this layout to provide the viewer with all thumbnails concurrently with full images and if desired a slideshow. The controls are red so they stand out but the background color is a neutral grey to minimize adverse image perception.
Example of Customized Web Gallery
Each template has different appearance options. Journal with slideshow has additional controls, slide show customization and the choice to display image metadata.
Appearance Controls for Journal with Slideshow Template
So if the Appearance options that you want aren’t available check the other templates to find out if what you want is available.
Once you have constructed and checked in preview mode your Web gallery you have the choice of saving it to a specific folder to place into your web site or FTP upload it directly to you host server. If you are still tweaking the Gallery your want to use the save to disk option. If you are ready to publish or put it into your host directory you can add the FTP server info, Username and password and specify a folder. Here is the only place in the Output workspace you can save custom information. Next to the Custom drop down menu are the icons to save or delete different FTP settings.
Saving your Web Gallery
Overall this is a great way to quickly add Professional looking custom picture galleries to you web site quickly and relatively easily.