TTG CE3 Is Out Into The World

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Since Lightroom 1 first came out the Web Module has been a place where the curious and the brave have ventured. Left on its own, the Web Module can help you build a basic website using your Lightroom catalog. But it has always been somewhat difficult. However, Adobe did build in a way to supplement the Web Module and third party developers were quick to answer the call.

One of the earliest to do so was The Turning Gate (TTG). Here is a some background info from their About page:

… Through the Turning Gate, Out into the World …

The Turning Gate is a small operation, primarily developed and maintained by Matthew Campagna, with considerable help from Ben Williams and smaller contributions from additional parties. We work hard to respond to every message received, and to continually improve TTG offerings in response to user feedback, issues and concerns. Matthew has training and several years of experience in the field of professional, commercial photography, and more than a decade of web-design experience; Ben is a professional web-developer serving international clientele and a hobby photographer. Our combined experiences in the disciplines of photography and web development give us rare perspective into the places where photography and the Internet collide: web galleries and portfolio websites. And as Lightroom users ourselves, we are intimately familiar with Lightroom-based workflows. TTG web engines draw upon our experiences as both photographers and web-developers, combined into tools that we would want to use in bringing our photography to the web. I strive to make The Turning Gate a valuable resource for photographers and Lightroom users, and sincerely hope you will like what you find here.

TTG is true to its mission with the release of the Core Elements 3 (CE3) bundle. Matt generously sent me a copy to try out. I ran it through its paces and I have to say I am impressed. This is how the Web Module should be!

The bundle includes:

TTG CE3 Auto Index

TTG CE3 Gallery

TTG CE3 Pages

TTG CE3 Publisher

TTG CE3 Viewport Sizer

To help you install everything and get you going, TTG has an extensive wiki full of step by step instructions. Now, I have to admit that I did have some trouble getting started. Although the instructions are pretty comprehensive I was a bit confused by them. But, TTG is really into customer service and a few emails back and forth solved the issues I had and I was off and running. Even with a time difference (Matt is in Korea and Ben is in Australia) I had my answer in a few hours.

As with anything you do in the Web Module, you will need to have some familiarity with FTP and where to put things on your server. The wiki will help you there as well. To create your website you start by creating one or more templates in the Web Module using the TTG web engines. Export these templates and drop them on your server in a templates folder.

Once that’s done the real magic begins. TTG CE3 takes advantage of Lightroom’s Publish Services. In the Publish Services panel of the Library Module you will find a new Publish Service called TTG CE3 Publisher. Create a new gallery as you would with any other service.

Next simply select your images and drop them on the gallery.

When you’re ready press the Publish button and Lightroom will push them up to your site using the template you chose.

After Lightroom is done you can open your browser and see your new site!

If you create multiple galleries then Auto Index has you covered. It will find the galleries and add them to your index page.

To make this process even easier, the TTG designs are responsive and will adapt to mobile devices making your site look great no matter what device it is viewed on!

You can create some pretty impressive sites with CE3! There are tons of design options in each of the TTG web engines. Linking to social media is a breeze with built in links and icons. Go ahead and visit the demo sites over at The Turning Gate (TTG) to get a feel for the flexibility.

You can save 15% when you buy the TTG CE3 components in a bundle so go and get your copy. This is well worth the price. I enjoyed creating galleries with CE3 and suspect you will too!

Copyright © — Gene McCullagh

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