Design web album and deployment using Adobe and Macromedia- Part 1

Here's my mission:
Completely install a customer example photo gallery found here http://www.cardprinting.net/. The basic process starts from Adobe Illustrator CS or Corel Draw 12. This is the format we save all our customer's work. There are aprrox. 300 files I need to access, export and create a fully navigatable photo album.

Here's how I did it. Instead of opening each file in its native program I tried opening CDR and AI files in Adobe Photoshop. Guess what? It works with the ai files but not the cdr files. Why is this important? Because 90% of my files are in ai format! Illustrator only allows you to open 1 file at a time, Photoshop allows you to open as many as your computer's resources can handle. At the same time Photoshop converts each vector based image to a bitmap, which is required for the web. Now, you could create a course of 'actions' to complete this more efficiently, but I want to remove or retouch some undesirable from each image. I am a 'perfectionist' so I want these images looken good AND loading fast for the web. Personally I find Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks offer the best export filters for the web.

So now I have 300 images looken good, properly cropped and optimized for the web. What is the best way to create a Photo Album from so many images? Again let's refer to my favorites for this, Macro Media or Adobe? I work with both for different projects and really can't pick a favorite here! They are both excellent applications for this. Macromedia Dreamweaver has a function found under commands>create photo album, shown here http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo.htm. You will need Fireworks installed for this to work. Go ahead and fill in all the text fields that are required information shown here http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo_menu.htm.

It is important you take the time to craft your words carefully, especially in the first field as this text is written into every html file generated. Check the appropriate format, rows and columns etc. Check the box for file names on or off and check the box on for, 'create navigation page for each photo'.

OK that's it you're ready to fire away, click OK. Amazing, eh?

Well I am kind of busy right now working on my next project. In my next post I will talk about the same process of creating a web based photo album using Adobe Photoshop for the entire process.