By the beginning of this year I started to take landscape photos of our village chalet surrounding. To share photos with family and friends I started webpage.
I quickly realised it was good opportunity to practise different ways of photos presentation and a good field to practise/examine Sparkle tools.
Finally I ended up with one huge page containing over 100 photos with a lot of effects (Sparkle file is 2.84 GB).
I am very happy with Sparkle, it worked seamlessly on my 2009 Mac Mini with 16 GB memory. The only drawback was prolonged preview display time(due to poor Mini’s graphic card).
If you want to visit the site https://zbr.info.pl/npk please use cable connexion and Safari.
You might want to use a Photo editing app, or even in Preview you can do it, to limit the size of your photos. Now one example picture was 3.7MB 6200x4200 pixels, which is highly unnecessary for web photos. I was able to limit the size of that picture to 173 Kb 2000 x 1355 pixels as a JPEG, with 50% quality and it still looks exactly the same. Limiting the size of your photos will make your computer also to deal with them much faster.
A fast way of decreasing the size of a folder of photos is done with Automator, a free automation app on your Mac. It is very easy to create a drop folder to resize a bunch of photos.
Also, it is your design choice, so if you are happy with it, ignore this comment, but in my eyes, the website is chaotic and overwhelming. Why not divide the photos in different themes or moods? Serve it in bite size sections.
Photo size - as I understand Sparkle resizes photos accordingly to display size (each photo is represented on server in as many versions as were set in Device Layouts). Thus, browser loads only appropriate size.
In your example you downloaded the photo and in this case you get full size (hope it did not take too long). I like to have big resolution photo when downloading and I let others to have this pleasure too.
Yes, it takes more time when publishing but fortunately I have very good internet connexion and do not bother if publishing takes few minutes more.
I am sorry you did not enjoy aesthetic pleasure. Yes, you are right, this design is chaotic just because I took the chance to try different patterns of presentation. There are quite classical parts with slideshow and on the other extreme compositions made of photos.
This page is a diary of photos I liked most grouped by months. Place which I used as a playground for Sparkle usage (including that long single page).
I did want to look at all the great photo work but the downloads of the individual pics was so large I could not. A very good representation of what Sparkle can do with photographs. Well done all round. Excellent use of parallax as well.
Yes, certainly agree. I have a number of raw photos, converted to jpeg, all in a slideshow. Melfortmuseum.org
Many of the photos were originally in the 20 meg range originally. Downsized with Affinity.
I used Graphic Converter to adjust the levels in this lovely photo. It brought out the color in the shadows and shows off the green grass. Is this how the original looked, or did I overdo it?
Dave
Thank you all for the interest and drawing my attention to image size problem.
I thought that Sparkle prepares all the needed for display image resolutions.
Each image is present on server in several resolutions (please see attached screenshot of the server single image representation), starting from 200 px up to 1000 px wide and there is original resolution as well (which I thought was for extra download). But now I run a test and it went out that when original resolution image is removed from server zoom in lightbox stops working, thus it means that lightbox image is created on the fly.
Sometimes it is hard for me to tell which given photo version I like the most. Those editors give such power to manipulate visual aspects that one can be quite easily lost. Additionally displays differ very much.
Much better speeds now! Hardly any lag on an iPad in landscape.
I think your site should be bookmarked (I did) to show the many representations that can be used in Sparkle for photos. Many thanks for the lesson and happy new year.
I actually imported the site to see the many iterations that you used.
Very original to present your photos like this. I looked at the already corrected site. It gives new ideas to use maybe a bit in a future site.
Your photos are very nice and interesting, but (there is always a but ) many photos are still in my opinion too dark and could be much better by simply lighten the shadows. That will elevate them from nice to splendid I presume. Furthermore, dividing your photos in pages/groups, as suggested earlier, with a main subject will make your nice work more accessible. Have for instance a look at berwers.org.
I am glad to hear your remarks on my photos. However I do not consider this forum the right place to discuss complex problem of photos manipulation issues.
I visited your site and liked it (and maybe you would like some of my works to be there). You can also have a look at https://kd.zbr.info.pl where are flowers from our garden are presented.
Let’s go back to Sparkle. I wanted to test some possibilities and identify problems. Thanks do Community I realised photo size issue, I am obliged and thank you.
I noticed that only with Safari my page ends/stops where expected (nobody reported this so maybe it is only me). Other browsers (tested Firefox, Opera and Brave) scroll endlessly. Probably the source for this lies in one of the photos by the very end of the page which is configured with negative vertical motion.
Another irritating me issue is that “hand” pointing possible action (opening a photo in Lightbox) remains on the screen prolonged time even after being removed from active area, so when clicked nothing happens. Again, is it only me? Is it sparkle related?
I’ve just “discovered” my big mistake. While working on another project I accidentally paid attention to options available after choosing Zoom Image in Lightbox. The default is “unlimited” what means that full resolution photo is loaded into Lightbox . This was the case with my original page with downloading problems. But there are other options allowing limitation to 800 px, 1000 px and 1600 px in which case chosen resolution is loaded.
Thus, it means that there is no need to care about photo resolution (except for being big enough) since its working size can be limited.
Hi ZbR,
My comments were not meant as remarks (sorry), but as tips to make your work better.
You are right, this forum is not the place for photo-issues. Please send me your email address via my site and we can continue that conversation from there.
Concerning your site, on Safari I got something strange, see the attached picture, the page ends with the same blocs.
And in Chrome, Firefox and Opera it is almost an endless page.
My experience: if I will make something special (what you did) then I made it sometimes too complicated and got into trouble. But I am sure you will find out. Success!
Ben
I noticed the length of page issue zbr. You may want to test one page by adding a wide box bar just below your slideshow, then cinching up the bottom boundary. Upload and test. Report what happens. I wonder if sparkle generated all your pages from one page. If one adds a page it’s a duplicate of another in relation to size. You may have to adjust page length on each page.
I’m viewing on an iPad and your site is a labor of love. Great work.
I’m new to the program, but I would suggest fooling with the forward and backward arrows and making them larger, or perhaps solid. I almost missed them. Granted this is a very large site. Work on one page and see if some of these things work. Enjoyed the pics.
) many photos are still in my opinion too dark and could be much better by simply lighten the shadows. That will elevate them from nice to splendid I presume. Furthermore, dividing your photos in pages/groups, as suggested earlier, with a main subject will make your nice work more accessible. Have for instance a look at 