Portfolio Image Gallery solutions

SyncViewS

Hi guys, I'm thinking to put together a new online personal portfolio. My current one is quite old and almost empty, but the worst of it is that is entirely in Flash. I love(d) it, as I coded every single ActionScript line by hand, everything is dynamic, and so on... But I get it's not so smart for the task, because I'm not going to look for a Web Designer position, and can show my coding abilities elsewhere.

While I love renderhjs' portfolio (man... That's astonishing!), I think every Flashy less-cool-than-that solution would look just lame. On the other hand I cannot stand bare html folios with postage stamp like thumbs and "click to enlarge" which opens another browser window with a single image top left.

Coming to the question: what solution do you adopt for your online portfolio? There are a lot of free pre-coded solutions, in dhtml (html + ajax) as well as in Flash (ActionScript), what do you prefer and why, or why not?

I'm looking for something that doesn't require crazy things to run, meaning it should work on almost every browser/system, and still have some degrees of freedom for customization, to make it look less evident: "oh, well, another (your plug here) gallery"

Synthesizer

The new standard seems to be lightbox, where you click an image and it shows up in the same browser window, with next/previous navigation. I use that with Wordpress for my portfolio. It's not super flashy, but it shouldn't be for a portfolio of still images.

SimonT

My theory: if you have kick-ass art in your portfolio, you can print it to toilettpaper - changes nothing on the awesomeness of your skill

To be serious: i go with Synthesizer: Lightbox is standard. BUT i never found a free lightbox gallery which is able to do that:

• Works with Dokuwiki
• Descriptions for thumbnails
• Descriptions for the opened picture
• Show FULLSIZE image link for the opened but resized picture
• Download this picture link for the opened picture
• Resize the opened picture instantly while the browserwindow is resized by user (some lightbox plugins do just check the size of the browser window once, and when you change it later, the opened picture isn't completely visible)

funshark

You can try that : http://highslide.com

Better than lightbox IMHO but you still need a few coding skills.

Jeremy Lindstrom

think the standard is lightbox, but if you talk to lots of folks here, lightbox is a turn off to prospective employers due to load times for the images, they'd rather them just load in a new window rather then load up in lightbox.

martinszeme

Not exactly an answer to your question, but I've been using squarespace.com for couple of months and it's been great. No downtimes, glitches etc. It's a hosting + website creation in one. And it has lightbox, but if I remember correctly you can adjust it or just disable.
It's not for free, but if you use codes from revision3 you can get 10% off. Not advertising it, just seams a great platform for those who don't know much about web design.

poopinmymouth

I hate flash. Plain old html for me. If you only have a few images and don't need a more advanced navigation, I love the photography trend of a basic horizontal scroll.

like so: http://www.mr-chompers.com

SyncViewS

Thanks guys, let's more come, so I can get a better idea.

I don't like Lightbox so much, as someone said, seems quite heavy and obtrusive, the popup with obscuring background is just too much for me.

I was looking at SimpleViewer which looks lighter, allows to see the image in a new window, but way less customizable, and is Flash based (thumb down). Anyway it definitely fits for Ryan Church.

Highslide JS is really nice, but as Lightbox a bit bossy. I think a could make use of it for a different purpose, like showing programming code, or highlight descriptions, but that's a different subject.

I'm fine with hosting, anyway Squarespace seems a good solution for those who don't want to get dirty with web design.

Ben, believe it or not, I was looking at your photo gallery (impressive) a few days ago, and was considering to go for the same design, the only issue is the time to load the whole page, or if I want to group images of different topics, I'd need more pages to scroll, and don't know if it's a good design navigation-wise.

poopinmymouth

SyncViewS wrote: »

Thanks guys, let's more come, so I can get a better idea.
Ben, believe it or not, I was looking at your photo gallery (impressive) a few days ago, and was considering to go for the same design, the only issue is the time to load the whole page, or if I want to group images of different topics, I'd need more pages to scroll, and don't know if it's a good design navigation-wise.

Just save them all around 80 quality using Adobe's save for web (not save as) feature. Any HR department not on a high speed connection is hiring for a company that you don't want to work for.

SyncViewS

poopinmymouth wrote: »

[...] Any HR department not on a high speed connection is hiring for a company that you don't want to work for.

Well, that's amazingly true!

And "target, target, target..." is a mantra every developer, in every circumstance, should keep repeating. The same goes for screen size, in example, do you ever consider 800x600 or even 1024x768 these days? (Polycount barely fits it) If a company has such old junk, I really don't wanna see it!

SimonT

poopinmymouth

I grabbed one of your photos (a guy i standing in front of a door/wall with grafitti) and saved it as JPG (quality: 8, size: 124kb) and also for web (quaiity: 80%, size: 166kb).

Can you explain how you did it? In my case the photo for web was bigger than the "save as" oicture...

poopinmymouth

Because save as uses a 1-12 metric, and 8 is not 80% of 12.

SimonT

Hm ok, 80% of 12 is 9,6 - let's say 10 for PS. Now i get 192kb - so i saved 30kb.

Richard Kain

Lightbox is a good solution, but it has fallen out of favor somewhat in recent years. This is largely because of the advent of tab-based browsing. I understand it is a common practice for someone hiring artists to open up various entries in their on-line portfolio in different tabs. This allows them to move quickly between the various entries, and keep some of their favorites open.

Due to the nature of lightbox, this practice isn't possible when using it. The load times aren't really an issue. You get load times with regular web pages as well, they just don't always tell you about them. (no loading status bar or animation thingie) The real issue is that lightbox doesn't allow for persistent browsing.

SyncViewS

Good point Richard, the user behaviour is another strong concept to keep in mind, and it's against Lightbox-like solutions.

In your opinion is better to have a single "3D" gallery page with images from all works with "behind the scene" images mixed, like maps, or is it better to subdivide on more pages/galleries/groups according to single work?

I'm with the idea that good work reach the point anyway, but it is a pity making it awkward to browse.

Jeremy Lindstrom

Date Higher 1024x768 800x600 640x480 Unknown January 2009 57% 36% 4% 0% 3%
How much higher they don't say though..

Swizzle

Am I the only one who absolutely fucking hates Lightbox? Whenever I go to a site that has Lightbox, no matter what kind of site it is, I always have to talk myself into staying on the page.

Lightbox is bad web design. It gets in your face, it covers the rest of the page and increases the number of clicks required for navigation, it often has stupidly long load times for images with NO PROGRESS BAR... god, the list goes on. It's almost as bad as straight Flash galleries.

If you're going to use Lightbox, make your page work like the screenshots pages on the Diablo 3 website. It lists all the images with thumbnails and it also lets you navigate in a variant of Lightbox.

martinszeme

Because of this thread changed settings for my squarespace website:
http://www.martinszeme.com/3d/work-in-progress/2151255

A LOT nicer now. Thanks for the tips. And yes, its a shameless plug. :P

Will keep adjusting some of the stuff and see what it does. But now it looks much better than Lightbox.

SyncViewS

For the sake of completeness, Dekard's source is w3schools.com. It is based on their website which is quite frequented as being a reference in web design. Anyway, as they state, those stats are biased on their target audience:

W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. This fact indicates that the figures below might not be 100% realistic. The average user might have display screens with a lower resolution.

As personal opinion I feel right to think the same: those who work in CG field might have higher resolution screens than the average web designer.

@ Swizzle: I don't like that Lightbox too

@ martinszeme: glad to hear this thread has been already useful

ChaosEidolon

Swizzle wrote: »

Am I the only one who absolutely fucking hates Lightbox?

Lightbox is the new flash Splash screen, decended from the Lensflare...

EVERY new kid with a few folio picks has lightbox on their site and it's getting to the point that it makes your site look cut and paste and generic. Everyones seen the fancy scrolly effect...it's not impressive anymore. Not only that but it adds unnecessary lag time to your images, and loads it by default at a size thats too small to distinguish anything from.

Just...no...

As for "build for target", our AD gripes about lightbox and he's viewing portfolios on a T1 connection. It lags video, not bandwidth.


dont use it, it's lame.



I will also say, that while the first portfolio you linked is awesome for an interactive web portfolio, it's a really really bad way to present your work for game art. Seriously, the simpler the better, your 3d should do the talking, not your flash/design skillz.

StJoris

for me this is WIN, might be for you as well?

http://www.indexhibit.org/

Peris

I used to like lightbox and think it was an elegant solution for showing images, but after seeing it so much it really started to irritate me. Waiting for the image to load and the window change size every time, usually in slow fps. Especially with large images lightbox is really annoying. clicking and clicking and clicking waiting for stuff to happen

Honestly nothing beats just a page with images you can scroll through. You don't need to click all the time and you can just scroll through.. very relaxing , like reading forums. That's why I decided to go this way on my current portfolio and get rid of lightbox.

SyncViewS

Hey Bram, your work is so awesome, that you could publish it whatever way you like, it won't be spoiled anyway. I hope it brings you a new job in a blink of an eye, as you deserve.

Peris

ha! Well most of those rocks and vegetation and other organic surfaces I modelled with your tools though ! IC.shape is really nice to work with and can be such a time saver too! I Should probably mention that somewhere

SyncViewS

<off_topic>
I'm glad to hear you like it and helped you to create those wonders. That really gives meaning to my effort. I'm currently writing a new IC.Shape version, with rewritten old tools and new features, and plan to publish it here as soon as is next to completion, to keep it open to modifications and additions. I still keep in mind your request to make it work without any interface open, it's on my to do list
</off_topic>