Using Adobe Media Gallery 1.2.0 with Bridge CS3
After we released the 1.2.0 version of Adobe Media Gallery to SourceForge, we received many question about how to install the new gallery in Bridge CS3, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. Well, we heard you! and are planning to write some posts, as time permits, about just how to do that.
Since by the far the greatest number of request were for Bridge on Windows that is where we will start. And although the specific steps below are for that product/platform they should help anyone trying to get AMG 1.2.0 running with menu commands.
The steps outlined in this article assume that you have installed the Adobe Media Gallery Extension for Bridge CS3. For those of you that do not already have this extension it is available from Adobe Labs here:
Adobe Media Gallery Extension for Bridge CS3
Jeff Tranberry’s blog has some good information concerning this extension:
Jeff Tranberry’s Photoshop Crawlspace
Step One, Getting AMG 1.2.0
The source code and compiled swf file for AMG 1.20 are available from the Adobe Media Gallery page on SourceForge.net: AMG at SourceForge.net
Go to the download tab and get the amg_1.2.zip file. Extract the contents of the zip. The swf file that makes the gallery work can be found at:
amg1.2/release/gallery/resources/gallery.swf
Step Two, Installing AMG 1.2.0 into Bridge CS 3
Assuming you have the Adobe Media Gallery Extension for Bridge CS3 already installed, you can find the swf that Bridge uses for previews and exported galleries here:
Windows XP and Windows Vista
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Bridge CS3 Extensions\MediaGallery\resources\flashgallery\gallery.swf
Rename gallery.swf to something like galleryOLD.swf and swap in the new 1.2.0 version of gallery.swf. Bridge will now preview and export the 1.2.0 gallery
Step Three, creating the 1.2.0-style menu commands
Create an amg1.2.0 gallery from Bridge CS3 and save it somewhere to your hard drive.
Find and rename resources/localText.xml in the directory that Bridge created for your gallery. Rename it to something like localTextOLD.xml
In the amg.1.2 directory from SourceForge, find
amg1.2/release/gallery/resources/localization/localText.xml
Copy this as resources/localText.xml in the Bridge-created directory. This is the file that has the menu commands in it. Open this file with a text editor (like wordpad) or your favorite xml editor (like Dreamweaver). Notice that the each menu is in a menuitem xml node. Find the node for label="Layout"
This is the menu we try and get working in the Bridge gallery.
In the Layout menu node, notice that prevNode has a style attribute. This causes the gallery to reload with a new style. You can do many things with different style files, in fact every UI element in the gallery gets its color and alpha values from the style file. In addition, you can specify the layout in the style file. This is what we are interested in.
Notice that the first prevNode value points to: styles/style.xml -this is a Lightroom gallery directory structure convention. Bridge puts the style files in the same directory as the .swf (why? I dunno) so you can remove the styles/ part of each prevNode in the Layout menu info to make it more “Bridgey”. The first one would then look like: style=’style.xml’ instead of style=’styles/style.xml’
Change the ones pointing to style_scrolling_bottom.xml and style_paged.xml too and then get these files from
amg1.2/release/gallery/resources/styles
Copy them to the Bridge-created resources directory. Now that the menu command is pointing to the right spot, the layout menu in your Bridge gallery will work.
You should be able to experiment with the other settings in localText.xml and come up with your own menu options.
Have fun!
September 9th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Thanks for all the good work you do. Would there be any way to get a copy of the source files that control the AMG 1.2 sample site referenced on this page. I’m a real beginner with this entire process and I think it might be a lot easier to delete the menus I don’t need as opposed to trying to figure out how to do one that I do need. It would also help me just to see one with lots of different things implemented.
Thanks for any help you can provide!
Bruce
September 9th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Thanks for all the good work you do. Would there be any way to get a copy of the source files that control the AMG 1.2 sample site referenced on this page. I’m a real beginner with this entire process and I think it might be a lot easier to delete the menus I don’t need as opposed to trying to figure out how to do one that I do need. It would also help me just to see one with lots of different things implemented.
Thanks for any help you can provide!
September 10th, 2007 at 10:27 am
If you follow the instructions above for downloading 1.2 from the SourceForge site, you’ll find that a sample gallery is included in that download package and you can pull files out of that gallery to build your own. It also has the actual source code of the gallery swf file itself in that package , but unless you are an advanced AS 2.0 developer, that code will be of no use to you. If you are simply looking for an example of the LocalText file that creates the menus you can find that here: http://www.bluefire.tv/blog/FlashGalleries/LivePreview_Gallery/resources/localization/LocalText.xml
However, you’ll need the 1.2 gallery swf from the download pakcage anyway for that to work.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Thanks for this! do you know of any plans to do a real integration of 1.2 into Cs3? While everything you suggested works, is there any mechanism to generate the 4 level photo and group.xml files that Light Room (and the 1.2 sourceforge gallery) provides? (I downloaded an eval and it works pretty well) It seems amazing to me that the flagship product from adobe for web dev doesn’t do what its $299 Lightroom product does.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
… I meant to say 4 levels of photo sizes and the companion group.xml file, which give the handy browser resize behaviours in the 1.2 and Lightroom galleries.
December 1st, 2007 at 12:01 am
What about playing Video? How do you do it?
December 1st, 2007 at 9:46 am
Since you can’t add video to LR library, you add videos to your gallery by editing the group.xml file. There have been some posts on that on our blog..
December 1st, 2007 at 9:54 am
Harry, we used that “flagship product” quite a bit while making this gallery web app, which is what DW is designed for - developers doing web dev. There does seem to be a need for something along the lines of DW “Express” to enable normal people to make cool websites (not that the homologicus are abnormal…)
December 1st, 2007 at 9:57 am
Harry,
If we knew anything about future integration plans, it would not be cool to be talking about it here.
December 4th, 2007 at 4:48 am
Can AMG galleries use query URLs as the src arguments for gallery images. I want to link to files either contained (as BLOB data) in a DAM database or whose location is a path accessed via said database. I should add all data will be on the same server/domain so x-domain issues shouldn’t apply.
I’ve tried and failed with the default Photoshop CS3 flash galleries and SlideShowPro.
It’s just unclear whether this issue is an ecoding one or whether there is a fundamental reason a Flash gallery can’t call assets whose location is a GET query that returns a JPEG image.
TIA if anyone can set me straight.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Thanx very much for that guide! It was very helpful!
Though, do await further updates on this?
Thanks guys!
January 18th, 2008 at 11:07 am
No AMG updates coming anytime soon from us. Don’t know if anyone else is working on this.