Getting started: Uploading and organizing galleries

In this section, you will create your first galleries in such a way that they match your objectives and provide a solid foundation for the long term.

Galleries are groups of images shown on your website. (Services and applications other than PhotoDeck might also call them “albums”, “folders” or “categories”).

Images must be published in galleries to be visible on the website. You can publish an image to multiple galleries.

Like folders on a hard disk, Galleries are hierarchical: you can create up to 10 levels of sub-galleries.

With PhotoDeck, it is possible to create up to 1000 sub-galleries under any gallery, including the root gallery. Each gallery can contain up to 50000 media.

For maximum flexibility and ease of management, you should organize your galleries like you would organize folders on your computer, creating a “category” of galleries for each type of galleries you will create.

Even if you can change the structure later on, it is advisable to do it right initially, especially if search engines (Google) are important to you: changing the structure might affect individual galleries’ URLs.

If you plan to use PhotoDeck for a single purpose (for example, portfolio display or stock), you can skip this step. But if you feel you even might use PhotoDeck for multiple purposes in the future (e.g. public galleries AND protected client galleries), we recommend to create the proper structure upfront.

Gallery structure illustration

Create the first-level galleries on your site

Here are a few important examples - you don’t need to create them all at once:

• Portfolio (use the Portfolio gallery preset)
• Client galleries (use the Private gallery with general password preset. This section will be hidden on your website.)
• Archive / Stock / Fine-art prints… (use the Public gallery or gallery protected by a parent gallery preset)
• Blog (use the Blog preset)

Note that when a gallery is empty, it is not visible on your website.

A key promise of PhotoDeck is that your website can be multipurpose. You can combine a portfolio, a client proofing area, ecommerce archives, and even a blog on the same website. Naturally, the presentation of the images and features vary depending on the purpose.

So when you create a new gallery, we present you with a few presets to speed up your workflow. Pick the preset closest to what you need, and if required, you can subsequently adjust the settings once the gallery is created. (You can change all settings at any time).

After you have set up the basic structure for your galleries, you are ready to create your first “real” gallery, with images/videos.

Open the top-level gallery that is most important for your website (Portfolio, Client proofing…), then click on New sub‑gallery. This will nest the new gallery under that top-level gallery.

Name it (e.g. “Portfolio 1”, “X+Y Wedding”…) and choose a preset.

When the gallery is created, you are finally ready to upload images or videos into it! Upload via the Upload to this gallerybutton.

We recommend you upload full-resolution images/videos to benefit most from what PhotoDeck has to offer, as the system automatically generates the preview images on your website. If you are not planning to deliver the images digitally (e.g. if only for portfolio display), and if you don’t wish to upload high-res files, uploading 3000px-wide images will you the best long-term flexibility.

Supported formats

• Images: JPG, TIFF, PNG, HEIC/HEIF and GIF (including animated GIFs) ;
• Raw Images: most common RAW formats including DNG, CR2, CR3, CRW, NEF, NRW, ARW, RAF, 3FR, IIQ…
• Videos: all common video encodings ;
• Documents: PDF, PSD (PhotoShop), AI (Adobe Illustrator), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript).

Note: Your plan might restrict what formats are permitted, especially for documents. The max image file size allowed with your plan is indicated in the upload window.

Images

Images are best left not sharpened (or only very slightly sharpened as part of e.g. the RAW conversion process), so that your clients keep full flexibility in the printing process.

To save on disk space and upload times, we find that high-quality JPGs (rather than TIFF images) are suitable for most applications.

What image size do you provide to my clients?

In most cases, images are resized automatically. For license purchases that specify a size in pixels or a file size (e.g. Royalty-Free, Rights Managed Web uses), the buyer gets an image exactly the size purchased. For free low-res downloads, we deliver an 800x600 pixel image that has your watermark applied, if it was applied upon upload.

In all other cases where a digital file has to be delivered, we deliver the high-resolution image you have uploaded, without modification.

Image color profiles

All preview images are converted to the sRGB color space, so you can safely upload high-resolution images in the space of your choice (e.g. AdobeRGB), as long as you embed the profile.

Note that for performance reasons (page display speed), the sRGB profile is not embedded in the thumbnails, so the color will be accurate only on the larger previews (assuming the viewer’s browser is properly color-managed).

At this point, you have created galleries and uploaded images to at least one gallery. Time to go look at how your website looks!

Click on the top-right corner button with your website name on it. This will open your website in a new window.

For the time being, you will most likely see only a thumbnail for the top-level gallery you have created that contains images, and clicking on it, it will show you another thumbnail for the actual gallery that contains images.

Feel free to create a couple more galleries if you wish -- or move on to the next step.