The move has been made. The Turning Gate is now officially located at http://lr.theturninggate.net. Please be sure to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds. For the time being, accessing the old address should still work, and clicking to read any articles should case visitors to be sent to the desired content at the new address.

Now I just need to update my connected services … If you find anything on the site that’s not working as expected or which sends you to http://lightroom.theturninggate.net instead of http://lr.theturninggate.net, please let me know.

I was recently contacted by the fine folks of Adobe’s legal department, which is not as frightening as it sounds. They love my site and they love what I’m doing for Lightroom, but they’ve asked that I change my site address, as Adobe has a trademark on the use of the word “lightroom” in domain names. In order to comply with their request, I will be changing the address of The Turning Gate to the Adobe approved: http://lr.theturninggate.net.

The new location is active now and will redirect visitors to the proper pages on the “lightroom” subdomain. I’m going to wait a couple of days for this notification to propagate to RSS subscribers, then I will be changing things up so that links from the “lightroom” subdomain will instead redirect to the new “lr” subdomain.

At this time, please update your bookmarks for this site to http://lr.theturninggate.net.

I will post again to the new subdomain when I switch the redirect status. Users should at that time also update their RSS feeds (don’t do it now, or you will still be subscribing to the old address).

The old subdomain will then continue to be active as a redirect portal for some time. After time has passed, the “lightroom” subdomain will go offline in favor of the new “lr” subdomain.

All of this is intended to make this transitional process as easy as possible on visitors. I’m hoping no one gets lost in the process. I will hopefully begin to release new product updates sometime shortly after switching over to the new domain.

Questions? Comment below.

TTG Pages has been updated to version 3.4.2. This release fixes several bugs related to the implementation of Simpleviewer-2 Flash galleries, and a few other minor bugs.

TTG Highslide Gallery Pro 2.0, codenamed “Hellcat” for internal purposes, is nearly ready for wider testing. There’s more coding to be done and a few lingering bugs I need to squash, but I have begun field testing locally generated galleries on the web. I will be adding, removing and replacing test galleries here as necessary; you are welcome to view them. The test galleries show off several features new and old, and should give you a good idea of what Hellcat holds in store.

Also, I could use some volunteers to test release candidate builds of Hellcat. If you’re interested in being on the test list, please comment below. I need to know what versions of TTG Highslide Gallery Pro you’re already using, your system type (Mac or Windows), and which version(s) of Lightroom you are currently running. Please submit a valid email address at which I can reach you, and also post a URL to your website. Your job as a tester would basically be to break Hellcat; my job is to make sure that you can’t. You would be expected to push the controls to see what works and what doesn’t, in hopes that it will all work. You will be expected to test generated galleries of various configurations both within Lightroom and on the web in a “live” environment. I will ask you to post these test galleries to your own web-space, though you do not need to make them public. I will select testers based upon my own needs for testing, and ask that volunteers not be offended if not selected. It may just be that your system specs are already covered by other testers, and I don’t need any more input on that setup.

TTG Pages creates a Home page, About page, Contact page and Gallery Index. But what if that’s not enough? What if you need additional pages for pricing info, press statements or psychobabble?! In this tutorial, I show you how to leverage TTG Pages to create extra pages for your TTG-made website.

Fotomoto today announced the availability of new image licensing and download features on their blog. The announcement has been a long time coming, and I am confident Fotomoto users are going to love these new features.

Since the company got started last year, The Turning Gate has been working together with Fotomoto to bring their services to Lightroom users via the Web module. We have been in discussions for some time now regarding implementation of the download features and API in TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, and I am happy to tell you that these features will be forthcoming in version 2.0 of the engine, coming soon along with a great many other improvements and new features.

Develop presets can save you a lot of time processing images in Lightroom. Seim Effects’ Power Workflow 2.5 is a popular and comprehensive collection of presets including exposure and color corrections, and special effects like cross-processing, black and white, vintage effects and more. A recent sponsor on The Turning Gate, Seim Effects is offering a 20% discount to TTG users. To take advantage of the offer, access the presets using the Power Workflow 2.5 badge in my sponsors palette, located in the sidebar; look for the discount code on that page.

In this video, the developer shows off the ease with which Power Workflow 2.5 can be used to enhance your images:

I receive questions on a fairly regular basis from users misunderstanding or misinterpreting my terms of use for TTG web engines. To reduce the chances of misinterpretation, I am rewriting the terms of use to (hopefully) be more clear and more complete. I’m looking for feedback here. Please have a look at my draft of new terms, and let me know whether you think it leaves any questions unanswered, or any answers unclear.

Here are the new terms:

Upon purchasing a TTG web engine, you will receive a download link via email. This link should be kept and used to download future product updates. The link can be used nine times within one year of purchase, after which it will expire. After one year or nine downloads, a new purchase will be necessary to access additional product updates. Please file your download link in a safe place, as it cannot be retrieved if lost.

Your usage of downloaded TTG web engines is unrestricted by time or number of exports. Subscription limitations only apply to the download of product updates. You are free to use TTG web engines on any number of computers in a single household, or place of business that have Lightroom installed. Exported galleries and other assets may be published on any domain for which you are the owner. For publishing galleries and assets on additional sites not owned by you, a new purchase is required by or on the behalf of the domain owner.

You are not licensed to redistribute TTG web engines in any way, shape or form.

Please note that some third-party accessories, such as Highslide JS, may have different terms of use specified in their own licensing agreements. Users will be expected to comply with those terms of use in addition to the terms stated above.

If you have trouble receiving your download link 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.

And for the sake of comparison, here are the old terms being replaced:

Upon purchasing TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, 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.

I will look forward to your feedback. Thanks for reading.

The new Liquid Stage in TTG Stage.

Took some respite today from intense projects-in-progress, and channeled my energies to inject new awesomeness into TTG Stage. Adopting some magic from TTG Viewport Sizer and with some advice from my Jedi friend, TTG Stage has received a new, super cool liquid layout mode.

Enabling this check-box changes EVERYTHING.

Some small sacrifice is required when using the liquid stage. Your gallery description and page footer become sacraments upon the alter of the Liquid gods, and your frame styling becomes irrelevant. Well worth the trade-off, though.

If you can abide my scruffiness, I’ve posted two Stage + Simpleviewer galleries demonstrating the two layout modes now available. The images are recent self-portraits of the not-very-serious variety; I’ve been playing with multiple off-camera speed-lites when boredom strikes me during the wee hours of the night. Be sure to resize your browser window while viewing the liquid stage, just so you can see how utterly cool it is.

In addition, the 2.2 update includes the new Google analytics and custom script/CSS features recently introduced to TTG Pages and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, as well as other improvements and fixes. The changelog tells all.

v2.2 ( 2010-02-08 )

Cool new full-viewport liquid layout mode!

Important bug fix regarding duplicate <body> tags.

Fixed a bug when embedding Simpleviewer-2 galleries.

Changed handling of Google Analytics. Now requires only your Web Property ID (UA-xxxxxx-x), rather than the entire block of Javascript.

Because scripts can no longer be cheated into the Google Analytics entry field as before, I’ve added a new Advanced Options control group to the Output Settings control pane. There are three input fields: Add CSS rules in , Add script to and Add script before . CSS rules are visible in preview, while the scripts are only added when the gallery is published (exported, or previewed in browser) to prevent any possible Lightroom tantrums.

Added a new #wrapper DIV to the source code that allows for new custom styling possibilities.

Gallery Description can now be edited by clicking on headings and paragraphs in the preview.

Contact menu item can now be disabled.

Some tweaks under the hood.

Michael Gray has written a good review of TTG Pages for LifeInDigitalFilm. Of the engine, Gray writes, “Overall, I found TTG Pages to be a well-rounded piece of software. It is fast, simple and creates a fine website.” Read the full review.

Gray has previously written a review of TTG Highslide Gallery Pro.