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Mike Lopez
6-Oct-2003, 07:49
Can anyone recommend any good books on web site development geared toward an online gallery? I'm looking for info about scanning, file format, file size, print sizes that can be scanned well, uploading, etc. Any input would be appreciated.

Mike

Ralph Barker
6-Oct-2003, 09:25
I haven't seen any web development books oriented toward photographers or online galleries. All of the web books I've looked at focus strictly on the HTML coding, and don't address scanning and image-format or editing issues to any depth. Thus, you may be better served by considering each as a separate science (or, art).

Ted Harris
6-Oct-2003, 09:33
There is one book that is specifically oriented toward scanning for the photographer but that is ALL it does, nothing on the web management side of the world beyond discussions of scanning for print v. scanning for the web.





If that is of interest I will see if I can dig out my copy for the title.

Frank Petronio
6-Oct-2003, 10:08
I do a fair amount of web development in my business, Cleanpage. By far the most important books to me are the two titles by Jeffery Zeldman. "Taking You Talent To the Web" came out two years ago and is a good primer for web designers and developers at any level. His latest book, "Designing With Web Standards" will bring you up to speed with the state of the art. His website (http://www.zeldman.com) is updated daily with lots of web design info, advice and commentary.

Of course there are thousands of other useful sites and way too many books out there. And almost all are very geeky and hard to "get into" (like photography is I guess). But Zeldman's first book is fun to read and pretty easy. Beware of older books - like Dave Siegals - or books written by programmers. If you really want to get into think it through, I'd suggest anything by Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert. You might not agree with everything he says but he always makes a good point.

I struggle with the photo gallery format myself. I don't like most of the galleries out there, and I think photographers often make a big mistake in assuming that people have endless patience and are web-saavy. I rather err on the side of making the site faster and simplier. You might like http://www.frankpetronio.com. For a counterpoints that have some interesting details see http://www.quarlo.com/; http://a.lifeuncommon.org/; http://americanexit.com/test/index.html; and http://marktucker.com/

Good luck. You don't need Flash or Java Script to make a great site. Don't rely on Front Page or Dreamweaver to do the work for you (besides, you can smell a Front Page site from miles away) - dig in and study for a bit and you can be in control.

Frank Petronio
6-Oct-2003, 10:20
As for scanning and general Photoshop workflow, I think that Bruce Fraser's "Really World Photoshop" version XXX series is by far the best. Some of the other Photoshop books are outright wrong! He knows his stuff though and he is also a good writer. Too many of the PS books are more like recipe books that fail to teach the principals.

As a rule of thumb, aim for 4-500 pixel wide medium to high quality jpgs for your portfolio images and 100-125 pixel wide thumbnails in gif format. Smaller images are better saved as gif as the jpg header size makes a small jpg larger than a small gif. However larger gif of photos are almost always larger than the equal jpg, unless there is a lot of flat, pure color in you image.

Here are a few friend's websites that I don't agree with how they built them - however you guys will probably like them, and I agree they are pretty: http://www.woodypackard.com/; http://jameystillings.com/

This guy is a very good photog but kinda nuts: http://yopedro.com/

It is good to trash around as many different sites as possible to define what you want. If you really want to learn, check them out on various browsers and both Macs and PCs.

David R Munson
6-Oct-2003, 16:09
In addition to looking at various books on web design, PhotoShop work flow, etc, when it comes time to actually design your site I recommend looking at as many good web sites as you can and seeing what you like, why you like it, and how the effect is achieved. Knowing what you want ahead of time goes a long way towards contributing to a successful effort when it comes time to actually build your site.

wfwhitaker
6-Oct-2003, 18:43
Mike,



I'm not a web developer, nor do I play one on TV or any other medium. However, in my limited experience of putting a couple of web pages together, I've found the most difficult part of it to be the aesthetics. What do you want the web page to look like? What is appealing to you visually? Does it complement your work? Does it speak as well for you as your photographs do? A very effective web site can be constructed using fairly simple coding. It's all in the presentation.



My philosophy is that a photographic gallery-type web page functions much as does the frame surrounding a photograph. Make the frame too ornate and you will draw attention to the framing job itself and not to the photograph(s) you wish to present. Simplicity can be a virtue. A [technically] simple web site also has the advantage of being accessible by people with older systems/browsers.



David's suggestion above is sound. Just as you would look at other photographers' work to guide and inspire you, look at other people's web sites and determine what is attractive to you, both functionally and aesthetically. Let that be your guide. And besides, if you find something you really like, you can go to "view/source" on your browser to see just how the coding works. It's a very effective way of learning something about the way web pages are actually constructed. It's not cheating; it's just like looking at a Beethoven score to see how Ludwig van might have orchestrated a certain passage.



Learn where you can. But don't let it distract you from being a photographer.



Regards,

David R Munson
6-Oct-2003, 21:40
Here are some more thoughts.

Don't forget about a logical site architecture. I find that if I'm designing a new site, it helps a lot to make a flow chart illustrating how people will navigate through the site. This helps you discover any problems with getting around before you go through the trouble of building the site. Getting this figured out ahead of time is important, as it's none too pleasant to finish your site and only then discover that it's difficult to navigate. Using a program like OmniGraffle (Mac-only, as far as I know) streamlines this process and lets you quickly experiment with a number of different architectures, though a pad of paper and a pencil do the same job handily.

Another thing to consider is the purpose of the site itself. Are you marketing your skills as a commercial photographer? Are you selling fine art prints? Do you want to have a site that acts as an informational resource? All of these things can impact the ideal esthetics and layout of your site. I wanted my site (http://www.davidrmunson.com/) to be clean and simple in design, utilizing specific typefaces and color schemes. Its purpose was to be a public interface for my photography and for my assisting services. I designed also designed the site to fit into the design concept I had established for my portfolio, letterhead, business cards, etc. The idea was to create a comprehensive group of elements comprised of my site, book, etc that would maintain a clean, professional image however it was presented. In order to accomplish much of what I wanted to do, design-wise, I had to do a lot of image-based design - that is, use text and design elements in the form of .gif, .png, and .jpg files instead of plain html text. While this approach has its disadvantages, it helped me overcome certain obstacles that would have otherwise prevented me from implementing the design I had devised.

How to go about establishing a design concept? Well, this is how I do it: First, figure out what you want the site's purpose to be. Then, try to figure out some aspect of what you want your design concept to be. This can be anything from color choices to typefaces to graphic elements. It can also just be ideas - a list of words that have some feel to them that you want to have in your final site. Brainstorm and build on these until you have a good idea of what you want, visually, and only then start building the actual site. Of course, you may try something and find you don't like it or it doesn't work like you thought it would. Experimentation is good. If one thing doesn't work, tweak it. If it still doesn't work, try something else and possibly come back again later. Just don't let it get you too frustrated or bogged-down. When things are not going as you want, you find yourself in a gumption-trap of sorts. Keep pounding away on something that isn't working and you'll find yourself drained of enthusiasm and energy before long. Take a step back, do something else for a while. It will make the whole process far easier, enjoyable, and more successful.

My two, nay, three cents.

Paul Butzi
7-Oct-2003, 08:29
I thought I posted a reply yesterday but I guess I botched it.

Two useful resources for web site design which haven't been mentioned yet:

* The Yale Web style guide (http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html)

* The web site www.webpagesthatsuck.com - ignor the rude name, there's lots of useful info on what *not* to do there.

Scanning: you can scan prints, or you can scan negatives. I do the latter, but used to do the former. Why? Because my previous scanner didn't have a transparency adapter, and the current one does.

file format: jpg is the defacto standard for web display.

File size: too small, and the images are either too small to view well or so compressed they look horrible. Too large, and they take so long to download that people give up. In the middle is a happy medium. I'd suggest that your image files be 400-500 pixels along the long dimension and lightly compressed.

print sizes for scanning - As long as the print fits in your scanner, the bigger the better, in theory. If you print to a standard size that fits on your scanner, I'd use that.

The big issue about setting up a web site is this: build one to throw away. That is, you should expect to put together a web site, and learn so much from doing it that you more or less immediately go and replace it with a better one. The good news is that you can learn fairly quickly from making mistakes. The bad news is that those mistakes are public.

My personal advice for web design is this: there's a lot of technology out there to get spiffy effects - flash animations, dhtml, etc. Ignore all of it. Yes, all of it. It all frustrates viewers, takes a long time to download, makes the site run slowly, and generally wastes your time. If you find yourself wanting to do that sort of stuff, ask yourself what your goal is.

I have written up my 'lessons learned' from building my web site; you might find it at least humorous if not helpful. The article is at www.butzi.net/articles/website.htm. If nothing else, you can take a look and sneer at my very simple web site design. I routinely get offers from web site designers to 'build me a real web site with a great look', and routinely get comments from viewers that it's a relief to view a website that just displays the content on their screen without a lot of animation, eye candy, etc. It appears that you can either please the web site designers or your viewers, but not both simultaneously. I recommend pleasing the viewers!

Asher Galloway
7-Oct-2003, 09:39
There are two other books you might find helpful. Photographer's Handbook of the Internet by:Joe Farace Sellphotos.com by Rohn Engh (this is a book and an internet site) Both are available at Anazon.com Asher Galloway