Film, Scanning, Lightroom and ACR Presets

Have you made a web gallery in Lightroom recently? Been less than impressed with the quality of the built in gallery engines Adobe provides with Lightroom? If so, The Turning Gate has been hard at work producing a slew of great web engines ready to use with Lightroom. Of all that they provide, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro is the most elegant, versatile, and functional of their offerings. And The Turning Gate produces some of the best gallery tools for Lightroom, so that is no small statement.

There is no one reason to purchase TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, there are quite a few. First, the engine produces a simple, straightforward gallery page. It is the perfect canvas to present your work in an uncluttered and simple manner. Second, the Highslide features built in to the software transform your simple gallery into a beautiful slideshow, right in the web browser. Finally, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro integrates a few e-commerce options for you. Fotomoto integration allows you to have an order, print ship solution ready to go. And for those of you who prefer to print yourself, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro allows you to feature purchasing on your gallery via PayPal or Foxycart. From display to sale, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro is a complete solution for any photographer.

Once you follow the simple installation instructions, you are ready to get going. Once you are in Lightroom, you will want to start a collection to drop your photos into to generate the gallery. Select as many photos as you want to display on your gallery page. TTG Highslide Gallery Pro can generate a page with as many photos as you desire, but be selective, you want to keep as many photos as possible visible on your gallery without the need to scroll. I picked 15 photos for the sample gallery I generated for this review, and it took no time for TTG Highslide Gallery Pro to render the web page. Performance will depend on your system.

Once your selected photos are assembled, all you need to do is select the Web Module in Lightroom, and select TTG Highslide Gallery Pro from the Web Engine toolbox. Once you do so, step back for a moment and let TTG Highslide Gallery Pro go to work. All the images present in your selected collection or folder visible in the filmstrip at the bottom of your screen will be rendered into a TTG Highslide Web Gallery, visible right in the Lightroom preview window. Now to customize, you can choose from the premade templates provided with the software, or start customizing the default TTG template right inside Lightroom.

Basic web editing is allowed in TTG’s web engine, right from your right sidebar in Lightroom. Simply scroll through all the options presented to you and start filling in the applicable information. You preview is updated after every change so you can see your work as you go along. All of the basic editing of the gallery is easy and straightforward. As you work your way down the sidebar you will start to encounter the features that make this gallery software worthy of the name PRO.

The first big feature you encounter is the Highslide options. Here you configure the Highslide javascript settings which enable the beautiful slideshows that are at the heart of this gallery software. Of primary interest as you design your gallery is “Highslide Mode” option, which allows you to select which of the Highslide effects that best suits your needs.

• Proofing mode allows quick selection and enlargement of each image, with smooth animations from thumbnail to full preview allowing you to even compare two or more images at once enlarged on your screen. You can even move enlarged images on your screen by click+hold and moving your mouse. Click the image below to see a sample Proofing Gallery:

• Slideshow mode provides a slick darkbox style slideshow, over your gallery page which fades gently to black behind your enlarged images. Slideshow also features manual image browsing and automatic slideshow directly from the darkbox effect. Click the image below to see a sample Slideshow Gallery:

• Finally three different Inline Slideshow options are available, presenting your images with a single, large preview and a film strip effect with your thumbnails at the top, bottom or right side of the screen. TTG Highslide Gallery Pro offers you all three options, not forcing you into one style for all your projects, one piece of software with three different implementations built in. Click here to see an Inline Slideshow Gallery

All of the above sample galleries were thrown together in a matter of minutes. TTG Highslide Gallery Pro is capable of producing much nicer galleries, but I wanted to show what can be done fast. PayPal ordering is turned on, but left inactive, to show the capability without actually enabling the selling abilities.

The Highslide effect is the very soul of this web gallery plug-in and further options allow you to completely customize the experience, all with a few clicks. This allows you to alter the borders present around you images, loop the slideshow, set the image change interval and control the amount of dimming of the gallery that occurs in slideshow mode. The options are simple, but you can create entirely different looks with just a few changes.

Another nice feature is built in Cooliris integration. This option prepares your gallery to be viewed in the Firefox plug-in Cooliris right out of the box. By no means is this a necessity, but it is a nice option to include.

The big feature of the TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, the feature that differentiates it from the more basic TTG Highslide Gallery, is the integration of Paypay, Foxycart and Fotomoto for built in e-commerce. The Paypal and Foxycart options are virtually identical, allowing you to set prices for differing products based off of your images. Clients can then order prints directly from the website and submit payment to you via PayPal or Foxycart. These options are great for photographers who choose to self fulfill orders, either printing images themselves or outsourcing to their printer of choice.

I cannot emphasize this enough, as a wedding photographer, I have to say that this is a must have gallery plug-in. Any photographer who shoots weddings, events or any other situation where there could be dozens or hundreds of potential customers need to get TTG Highslide Gallery Pro. To be able to quickly get a gallery posted with e-commerce abilities built right in will ensure the way to quick sales after the event. As it has been said, the quicker you make the images available after a wedding, to mare sales you can convert.

TTG Highslide Gallery Pro enables you to get your images up to your clients quickly and start the ordering process almost immediately. Any wedding or event photographer who uses Lightroom and does not have TTG Highslide Gallery is simplymissing out on one of the best tools to improve their business.

TTG Highslide Gallery Pro implements the Paypal and Foxycart ordering through a basic dropbox under each image, listing available products. These can be dropped into the on-site cart and pay for the cart through the normal Paypal or Foxycart channels. This in effect allows you to get paid and sends you notification of the order with product information needed for order fulfillment.

Fotomoto integration is offered for those who do not want to deal with the hassle of self-fulfillment. You can upload high quality, print ready versions of your images to Fotomoto and then allow customers to order prints and cards of your images. Items ordered are printed and shipped for you by Fotomoto, per their user agreements, with no further intervention needed from you. As long as you upload print ready images to your Fotomoto account before you take your gallery live, order can be fulfilled as soon as your first visitor chooses to make an order.

Now before I give you my final thoughts, I do need to point out one caveat of using TTG Highslide Gallery PRO. If you are using the software for commercial purposes, including selling you images through the integrated features, you need to purchase a Highslide License. Non-commercial use of the Highslide software is free, but if you are buying TTG Highslide Gallery, you are probably looking to use the slick e-commerce features. You are going to need to buy a license. When you start using TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, you receive a warning about this, but I wanted to make this clear in my review.  Luckily Torstein Hønsi’s registration costs are not back breaking. $29 covers a single website license good for one domain. $179 buys you a commercial unlimited license allowing you to utilize these features on any of your domains or client’s domains. If you consider the earning potential you can unlock from TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, these registration costs are minimal. Find out more about Highslide JS by clicking on the image below.

All in all, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro is a great gallery solution for any photographer looking to preset their work and make a sale or two. The software generates slick, uncomplicated galleries with advance presentation modes that allow the viewer to engulf their monitor with your images. With e-commerce integration, you open your works to impulse purchases that you may have never gotten before, due to the ready to buy layout presented in TTG Highslide galleries. If you do not utilize a service like Zenfolio or SmugMug and like to control the printing of your images but still want to offer easy online ordering TTG Highslide Gallery Pro is your solution. For about half the price of one of the photo hosting services, you can purchase both TTG Highslide Gallery and a Highslide Single Website license and provide yourself with many of the options provided by these pay sites on your existing web server.

The Turning Gate has created a great tool for photographers here and offers their creation at a reasonable price. Galleries created will draw viewers in with a straight forward presentation, catch their interest with the slick Highslide Slideshow presentations and open their wallets with conveniently placed ordering options. All of this can be done without TTG’s software, however they have made it easy to use, configure and create. Best of all, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro endows Lightroom with the capability to produce these beautiful galleries. Being able to edit images, create galleries and upload them to the internet from Lightroom alone increases your productivity, getting more done in less time.

TTG Highslide Gallery is quite simply a rock solid product for Lightroom. The e-commerce integration of this product is second to none. It also appears that the plug-in was coded well enough that new features and vendors can be easliy added as the plug-in evolves. If you are in the market for a good gallery TTG Highslide Gallery Pro is an excellent option. If you are looking for a gallery that lets you sell you work, with little configuration required on your part, TTG Highslide Gallery is simply your best bet. Don’t underestimate the value of quick turnaround in your business, TTG Highslide Gallery helps you turn around your images to your customers quickly.

And that puts more money in your pocket, faster.

The Turning Gate Highslide Gallery Pro can be  purchased at the TTG website.

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