TTG Shadowbox Gallery
Michael J. I. Jackson’s Shadowbox sets new standards for lightbox media viewers. Cross-browser, cross-platform, web standards compliant, fully documented and completely awesome, Shadowbox is a no-brainer for a Lightroom gallery template.
Gallery features include:
- Customizable color scheme and thumbnail grid.
- Customizable Shadowbox behavior and appearance.
- Optional Selection Gallery features.
- Customizable BoxOver tooltips for thumbnails.
- Optional, automatic detection of color labeling from the Library module.
- Form-To-Email powered response form for selection galleries.
- Optional CoolIris support.
- Web-standards compliant, including valid XHTML and CSS.
- Auto detected by TTG Auto Index.
And for those who like to get under the hood, Shadowbox is bursting with features of its own.
TTG Shadowbox Gallery
Download Demo * Sample Gallery Installation
* The Demo is fully functional, but will export only 10 images.
About Your Purchase
Upon purchasing TTG Shadowbox Gallery, you will receive a download URL valid for nine uses or 352 days (1 year) — whichever comes first. After nine uses or one year, your URL will expire and a new purchase will be necessary to continue with updates. Gallery updates will always be available from that same URL. Thus, the URL can be used for the initial download, plus eight updates within a year of your purchase. Be sure to save your URL in a safe place, as it cannot be retrieved if lost. If you have trouble receiving your URL after purchase, please ensure 1) that your payment has cleared with PayPal, and 2) that messages from E-Junkie.com are not being caught in your spam filter.
Licensing Shadowbox
Shadowbox is licensed under the terms of the Shadowbox.js License. This license grants personal, non-commercial users the right to use Shadowbox without paying a fee. It also provides an option for users who wish to use Shadowbox for commercial purposes. You are encouraged to review the terms of the license before using Shadowbox.
If you would like to use Shadowbox for commercial purposes, you can purchase a license that allows you to use it on an unlimited number of commercial domains. Commercial licenses are available in two flavors: one for a single developer and one for any number of developers at a single agency or company. The form below will let you purchase both types of licenses securely via PayPal.
System Requirements
This gallery requires Adobe Lightroom 2.0.
Some Technical Blather
A cross-platform Javascript application, Shadowbox will run on nearly any major Javascript library, including Yahoo! User Interface Library, Ext, Prototype + Scriptaculous, jQuery, Mootools and Dojo Toolkit. TTG Shadowbox Gallery utiltizes JQuery by default.
Creating a Selection Gallery
From version 2.6, TTG Shadowbox Gallery includes Form-to-Email functions previously featured in the now discontinued TTG Selection Gallery. To use these features, check Enable Selection Gallery, found in the Appearance pane in the Web module. For additional instructions on setting up your selection gallery, read the selection gallery documentation.
Changelog
- v3.3 ( 2010-06-12 )
- Added support for LR3 watermarking.
- Updated to Shadowbox-JS 3.0.3 and JQuery 1.4.2.
- v3.2 ( 2009-12-23 )
- By request, increased maximum large-size image dimensions to 15,000. Bear in mind, however, that Lightroom’s web export will not upscale images, making native dimensions the maximum for any particular image.
- Updated Shadowbox JS to version 3.0rc1.
- v3.1 (2009-10-20)
- Added Windows Safe-Mode and safe-mode versions of all template presets.
- Fixed a bug that prevented users from customizing their Shadowbox titles.
- v3.0 (2009-09-26)
- Completely redesigned and updated to match up with current TTG releases.
- Improvements to the selection gallery and contact form.
- Updated to Shadowbox 3b.
- New template presets.
- v2.87 (2009-03-15)
- Moved FormToEmail.php into the /resources/ folder.
- v2.86 (2009-01-20)
- Fixed a language selection bug.
- v2.85 (2008-10-27)
- Text alignment for Collection Description can now be set to left, right, center or justify.
- v2.84 (2008-10-27)
- Updated FormToEmail.php.
- Updated PicLens support and PicLens Lite.
- Image ID plates are now limited to a single line for layout stability.
- v2.83 (2008-09-24)
- Options are now initialized properly when deploying Shadowbox in standalone mode.
- v2.82 (2008-09-17)
- Fixed a bug in the header colors.
- v2.81 (2008-08-18)
- Mootools is now disabled and Shadowbox set to run in standalone mode by default. Added a toggle whether to use Mootools or not; it’s still best to have it on for selection galleries. I’m hoping this will remedy some of the preview generation issues being experienced by Windows users since v2.7.
- v2.8 (2008-08-18)
- Updated the gallery to LR 2.0 Lua syntax.
- v2.7 (2008-08-10)
- Now requires Lightroom 2.0.
- Upgraded to Shadowbox 2.0 and Mootools 1.2.
- Shadowbox GUI now supports 29 languages.
- Implemented BoxOver hovers on thumbnails, color labels and selection checkboxes.
- Automatically reads Color Labels and Color Label Sets from the Library module.
- Revamped the selection gallery.
- Added optional thumbnail ID plates.
- Added Output Sharpening.
- Ratings are out in favor of the improved color label support.
- v2.6 (2008-04-01)
- Integrated TTG Selection Gallery features; TTG Selection Gallery discontinued.
- v2.56 (2008-04-01)
- Support for cell numbering.
- Option to disable right-click menu.
- v2.55 (2008-03-22)
- ID Plate alignment bug fix.
- v2.54 (2008-03-21)
- Added footer w/ options.
- Added choice of ID Plate alignment.
- Added a security check and warning to Remove Live_Update.js.
- v2.53 (2008-03-15)
- Header Height minimum value has been adjusted from 0 to 1 due to rendering problems in Firefox when set to 0.
- v2.52 (2008-03-12)
- Javascript fix; Shadowbox now loads before thumbnails, preventing a problem where the images would load into a new page if a visitor started clicking things before the page finished loading. Visitors can now click any thumbnail, loaded or not, and the image will be launched properly in the shadowbox.
- v2.51 (2008-03-08)
- Minor tweaks to onImage Navigation appearance.
- v2.5 (2008-03-08)
- Width of Collection Description now adjustable.
- If unused, Collection Description, Annotations and Ratings code can now be removed from gallery to reduce overall gallery size.
- v2.49 (2008-03-04)
- Bug fix.
- v2.48 (2008-03-04)
- Added option to remove live_update.js from exported galleries, reducing overall page load by 16KB.
- Additional code cleanup to marginally improve performance and load times by roughly 4KB.
- v2.47 (2008-03-03)
- A menu! Five customizable menu items + slideshow + contact.
- Improved support for Piclens, and now supports PicLens Lite. Support for custom logo and MP3 audio using PicLens Lite; logo and audio support will be supported in a future version of the PicLens client.
- Shadowbox: dropped themes, added controls for colors and borders; additional changes.
- Reorganized Web module controls and panels; lots of additions and relocations for ease of use.
- A major overhaul of code, in places both HTML and Lua. Cleaner, leaner, better!
- Bug fixes (and hopefully no new bugs introduced).
- v2.46 (2008-02-26)
- onImage Navigation can now be toggled on/off.
- v2.45 (2008-02-25)
- Vertically centered thumbnails!
- v2.44 (2008-02-24)
- More options.
- Added onImage Navigation.
- v2.43 (2008-02-22)
- Updated to Shadowbox 1.0.
- Added new Shadowbox options and themes.
- v2.42 (2008-02-21)
- Live Update fix for Windows users.
- v2.41 (2008-02-20)
- Added XML Auto Index input fields for Album Thumbnail and Album URL.
- Added controls for Shadowbox options.
- v2.4 (2008-02-19)
- Initial release. Feature parity with TTG Slimbox Gallery 2.31; additionally, supports TTG XML Auto Index.
{ 57 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello,
I’m a happy registred user of TTG Shadowbox.
I’ve just unfortunatly update Internet Explorer to 8…
Now large pictures in the gallerie dont comme anymore!
(now you have to make “Tools” and “Display compatibility”, or something around this, I’m French to make it works)
Are you going to fix that, or is there something I can do with HTML or CSS files ?
Best Regards
I will need to look into it. It may be that Shadowbox 2.0 is incompatible with IE8. I would expect Shadowbox 3 to remedy this, however. It’s in beta now, and I’ll have to check it out.
Any update on fixing the IE8 issues? It seems more people are now using IE8. Is there a specific tag I need to change? Thanks, Zach
Not yet. I’m at the end of the school year, and school and the recent Highslide Gallery release have been keeping me busy. I’d like to tackle it soon, though. I know it’s something users are waiting for.
Thanks for looking into this! I came here looking for a solution to the IE8 bug(?) too. (Page with thumbnails is dimmed, but no box appears with the larger image.)
The workaround for now is to right-click thumbnail and “Open link in new tab”.
Unfortunately, I still haven’t gotten around to this beyond confirming that there is a newer version of Shadowbox having been released. I attribute this to end-of-the-year doings with the photography school. I’m in the midst of portfolio review, presently. My group was scheduled for today and tomorrow. My review ended up not happening today, and so will definitely be tomorrow. After that, it’s graduation and all of the stuff that goes into that, and this coming weekend I’m a volunteer photographer for Relay for Life, which is a 24-hour ordeal, after which I will be sleeeeeeeeping probably lots and, and, and … I swear, I’ll get this updated at some point. :-/
Shadowbox has options for language. You should be able to set German as your choice in Lightroom.
May be in the newer Version but I only use Lightroom 1 so I can´t Update, but I want to changt the language too.
Michael
In that case, you’ll need to install a newer version of Shadowbox manually. Visit the Shadowbox website for details on how to do that.
Could yoz pleas explain me how I can do that?
Michael,
I try to keep the templates up-to-date so that I won’t have to explain such things. I will not go into great detail on it, as Shadowbox installation is well-documented on the Shadowbox website.
If brief, you will need to replace the Shadowbox Javascript files with the latest versions and follow the Shadowbox installation and setup procedures.
The best way to go about this is to work first on an exported gallery so that you can test your changes as you go. Once you have a functional gallery, you can try editing the actual template resources and HTML to get it working in Lightroom.
Cheers,
Matt
Hi,
So far I bought three TTG webalbums
Shadowbox is the latest and I like it very much, although the differences with Slimbox are quit minimal. The greatest difference is that Shadowbox has the resize option.
I few questions I have are:
- How do I get music to work with Shadowbox? Do I need to install 3th party sofware, to make this work?
- I use w3c validator to check the albums, but I get errors. These are the albums I checked, http://fotoshoots.raymondmouthaan.nl/ and http://bailinho.raymondmouthaan.nl/. Both give 7 errors.
Regards,
Ray
You will need to install some type of third-party player to handle music. As for the errors, I will look into them for a future update to the gallery. At one time, there were none. The errors you’re finding have probably been introduced in updates, or may have something to do with feature support. In some cases, scripts require code that is invalid, and the gallery validates in all ways otherwise. If you disable the offending feature, you would have a valid gallery according to w3c.
Regarding audio, I succeeded to add audio to PicLens. The mistake I make is that the path is the path on the server side instead of local. I was expecting to give the local path to the audio file and while exporting the album, it would create/copy the audio file. However after playing with the template I found out that it is a manual action to perform
Regarding the errors, no problems with sofar, so I’ll wait for you to have it fixed in a next release
Thx,
Ray
Dear Matt,
The images from the exported album do not contain any metadata. Is there a setting to enable this? I would like to use the capture time of an image to indicate whether my album contains new images. I use php to scan the photos dir and detect the highest capture time, if it is less than 10 days old then my page indicates that the album has new images. The current version of my scripts scans the same dir, but does not check the capture time, but the creation date, but this date is for all images in the photos dir the same, because all files are created during the export.
It might be a nice feature to your templates to have such feature. Each thumbnail with a label “New”, indicating whether the capture time of the image is newer than predefined number of days.
Best regards,
Ray
Sorry, I overlooked the metadata option … it was set to “Copyright Only”. Now I have changed it into “All” and the images do have all metadata.
Gr Ray
Hi Matt,
Is there a way to go directly to slideshow mode from a clickable image or link from a separate page? I have a “portfolios” page and when a thumbnail is clicked, I’d like the slideshow to start on that page rather than going to a gallery page first.
I’m hoping it’s a easy as copying some bit of the code from what the gallery lightroom generates, pasting it into my portfolios page and then modifying the paths in that code to indicate the folder that lightroom generates and uploads to my server.
Thanks,
Curtis
Hi Matt,
we just downloaded Shadowbox V3.0 and installed it on XP SP2 an LR 2.5.
Unfortunately LR hangs just after selecting Shadowbox as engine in the web module. No error message appears, LR does not respond any more an can only by terminated via task manager.
Do you have any idea about this?
Thanks,
Thomas and Olli
LR/Win embeds Internet Explorer (IE) in order to render the web gallery preview in the Web module. When embedded, IE exhibits strange compatibility issues not seen when being used to browse the web. I don’t know why this is, but there seems to be some compatibility issues between the embedded IE and the Shadowbox JS. This problem effects some systems, and not others. I am currently working on an update to include a Windows Safe-Mode that will allow the gallery to run on affected systems. You can expect the release to be made sometime during the coming week.
Hi Matt, this is Olli,
I’m working with Mozilla usually, not IE. Does this affect the situation? I expect, I also have to wait for the update to run Shadowbox JS?
Regards,
Olli
@Thomas
Regardless of your preferred or primary browser, Lightroom utilizes your system’s native browser to render previews in the Web module. Therefore, LR/Win uses Internet Explorer and LR/Mac uses Safari.
If you have a Mac, you can start using TTG Shadowbox Gallery now without issue. Likewise, you can try it out on a different Windows PC; the problem doesn’t affect all systems, but only some. I have no explanation for that, but you might find that it works on another computer.
Regarding the update, I have a build out now with a tester that I believe should work by implementing a Windows Safe-Mode. As soon as I hear back from my tester with positive results, I will be able to post the update. If this build behaves as expected, that should be very soon.
Hello !
I´ve downloaded an installed Shadowgallery 3.1. to my Lightroom 2.4.
I can find the new gallery in the webengine list too.
When I take a photo (or a lot of photos) and choose the new gallery it takes about 10 seconds till an error comes and the debbuging window opens.
[3744] D:\Programme\Adobe\LR2\lightroom.exe (htmlfile:unknown error)
I have not found any solution für this error.
Thanks for help.
Best regards
Joachim Baader
That’s a new one. Does this happen with any other TTG web galleries? Does it happen when you try to load the gallery using one of the safe-mode templates?
Hello !
O.K. I have imported the safe-mode templates. (right klick on usertemplates and import). I think the template directory can be different to the webengine directory!?
After choosing a safe-mode template the debugging windows opened with the following error message. “Microsoft JScript runtime error. Shadowbox is undefind”. After some clicks on “No i dont wont to debugg” the template works. When i am changeing sizes of borders for example, it also occurs an error? “Microsoft JScript runtime error. Object expected. This error occurs to each safe-mode template. Other galleries except the shadowgallery work without any problems.
Many thanks
Best regards
Joachim
@Joachim
That’s weird. Script error boxes were supposed to have disappeared with LR2. What version of IE are you running?
My IE Version is 7.0.5730.11
Now I have checked other TTG Galleries exactly and there was no problem during starting or foto imports but sometimes when i am doing customizing (changing sizes) there are script errors too. So there is not a problem only to the shadowgallery (there i don´t works from the beginning). It´s seems to be a global problem???
Do you have any idea`?
Many thanks, Joachim!
@Joachim
There are some articles in the Troubleshooting category here that discuss script errors. You might check them out.
I’ve just bought TTG Shadowbox Gallery 3.1 , and I use it with Lightromm 2.4. Everything is fine in the building of my galleries , but when I export it to my web server , there are “several gaps” in the thumbnails . All of them are in the page but there are some gaps between them . Just check here : http://www.photos-de-voyages.fr/Essais2/galleries/05_guadeloupe/
I really don’t understand what may happen …
Do you have any idea ?
It’s because you are using the image tags beneath your thumbnails; some images have titles there, while others are blank, and so the total grid height varies from image-to-image, causing the layout to break. You need to provide titles for all images, or remove the image ID plates from the grid.
Matt, I have a little disappointment with the latest release. Before, I was able to open the galleryInfo.lrweb file in order to increase the image maximum dimensions. 1500px is really not enough for me as I have a lot of scrolling panos. With this latest release I see you have compiled the file and it’s not longer editable. Could you implement a checkbox to disable to resizing of the images? This will allow me to upload some new pano, right now I’m stuck!
Thank you.
I cannot disable resizing, but I can increase the maximum image size. How large is large enough?
@theturninggate
Matt, good question. When I had access to the parameter I was just going crazy high to be good, such as 99999 but that’s not suitable for a release. I think adding a 0 to make it 15,000 would be fine. Thanks!
Hi Matt, Scratching around in the code for what I think should be so simple. I’ve build a Shadowbox gallery in Lightroom, and now want to disable the onclick, from thumbnail image to the larger image … such that the viewer only sees the thumbnails as the page. I’ve looked through their documentation but it must be so simple they haven’t bothered to list it. Any ideas?
Regards
Sam
@Sam
I’m unclear on what you’re trying to accomplish. Can you explain it in greater detail?
Hi Matt, I’ve built a Shadowbox gallery with my thumbnail selection, which when clicked on open up into the larger renditions of the image. I’m trying to disable that process (stopping the thumbnail from opening into the larger image format), such that the thumbnail is the only visible page (no onclick capability). Hope I’ve been a little clearer.
@Sam
So then the Shadowbox gallery isn’t really a Shadowbox gallery anymore … You can perform a batch Find & Replace in the index.html file to remove all instances of rel=”shadowbox”, which will prevent Shadowbox from launching. Or you can remove the Shadowbox Javascript calls from the head of the document. Or both.
Many thanks Matt … Shadowbox has become a shadow of itself. All working.
Mstt,
I would appreciate a response to my concerns about the removal of the Page title and Page Description lines at the top of the page. As it stand now, all you can put at the top of the page is an image file.
Also, Captions Down is still a requirement. I worked this out for you last year on SB2 but do not have the time to mess with it again.
The new shadowbox is a bit of a disappointment. I had hoped it would at least allow us to solve the IE8 problem without having to redesign all our pages.
Thanks,
Paul
@Paul Eggermann
Sorry, I thought I had responded already. I guess it didn’t happen, or didn’t process. :-/
Title and description now reside in the Gallery Description, which I think makes more sense in the overall scheme of a website, and which has opened up many more design possibilities for users’ page headers. In this case, I think that the gains outweigh the trade-off, though I realize that not every user will be happy with the decision.
The current version of TTG Shadowbox Gallery is built on Shadowbox 3B, which is still a beta version of the Javascripts. I’ve just noticed that Shadowbox 3 RC1 is now available, so I guess I need start working on another update.
From what I’ve seen in Shadowbox 3B, however, skins are no longer supported, making the “captions down” option an impossibility. I have no idea whether skins support will return for the final version of SB3.
As for IE8 issues, you can’t really fault the developer for not being able to anticipate and make allowances for a product that was not out when Shadowbox was released. No one knew anything about IE8 at the time.
One of the great things about Shadowbox 3, though, is that it’s far more intuitive to setup than its predecessors. That alone makes it awesome.
Hi Matt,
I’ve been building a website for a client (TTG Pages, etc) and they have commented they are having problems; can’t scroll down a page (‘Services’ page to be more specific) to read the text. Also, the gallery index php was elongating images, squeezing them. My guess is that they are using something like an old browser like Internet Explorer 6 (would this cause problems?). If at all possible, could you have a quick look to see if it’s displaying OK on your machine. Many Thanks
@Sam
Looks okay to me. IE6 could be the problem; I don’t actively support it.
Hi Matt,
Hi Matt,
On the contact page (TTG Pages) I’ve set-up the formtoemail PHP script. I’ve been testing with my e-mail addresses and all has been working fine.
When I put the client’s e-mail address in the script they don’t receive anything. Any ideas? I know their e-mail is valid.
Could it be a Spam folder issue at their end? Or is there something that can be put in the script to make it more user friendly for e-mail programmes? What e-mail address does the form send from when we click send…maybe I can tell them to look for this in there Spam folder. All the best.
@Sam
The Form-to-Email script only sends messages to the photographer, not to the client.
Hi Matt,
In this case the photographer is the client, but they can’t get responses (comments) from the Form-to-Email script (because of e-mail issues as per above) Any ideas?
@Sam
You’ll need to visit the support section at http://www.formtoemail.com for more information.
Hi Matt, when do you think a new version will be released including the request I made on November 7th? You seemed quite receptive to this request. This was about increasing the maximum image dimension to 15,000 px instead of the current 1,500 px. Thank you.
I am enjoying this app. Well done!
Can captions be added and viewed to full size (i.e. expanded) images?
Shadowbox does not support captions, but supports titles instead. The difference there is that captions usually fall beneath an image, while titles go on top. Also, the length of titles is limited to a single line. This is an unfortunately limitation of the Shadowbox script.
If captions are preferred, then the Highslide gallery is a good choice. It’s caption area resizes to accommodate captions of any length.
Dows this work with Windows 7? I can’t click the box to agree to the license. Everytime I try LR locks up. I’m using Windows 7 and LR 2.6
Some users suffer a scripting conflict between Shadowbox and Internet Explorer as embedded into Lightroom. The exported gallery will work just fine in IE, but not in IE in Lightroom. Load the gallery using one of the included Safe-mode templates. Shadowbox won’t work, but you’ll be able to setup the gallery. To see Shadowbox in action, you will need to use the Preview in Browser command.
I see that TTG shadowbox is free for personal, non-commercial users.
Where can i download this free version?
Shadowbox JS is free to use for personal, non-commercial users, so you won’t be expected to pay a licensing fee to the Shadowbox creator. I still charge for my Lightroom engine, though.
Hello Matt, I finally made my site to run ok, I’ve got a question that you may or may not answer but I read the usage documentation in the shadowbox js site and don’t understand a thing. I’m trying to upload multimedia projects but don’t know if I can use the shadowbox I’ve purchased from you to display videos through vimeo or quicktime? thanks a lot.
Shadowbox can be used to display videos, but this functionality is not supported by my Lightroom module. You will need to manually edit your exported pages to play video.
I have been using the 2.85 version of this gallery for a long time, and I am ready to upgrade to the new paid version if the copyright watermark feature works within lightroom 3.
Does this feature work in the current version? If not, will it be updated soon to work?
thanks very much.
It will be updated soon. Keep an eye on the news feed.
Just to let you know that your ‘Powered by TTG’ footnote link in the Shadowbox Gallery is linking to your old address.