Highly customizable Drupal module allowing creation and positioning multiple table galleries of quality-scaled images uploaded to physical folders.

>> Download the Brilliant Gallery Drupal module. <<

• Configurable image size, number of columns, background colour (uses Colorpicker), and more.

• High quality image re-sampling.

• Automatic re-sizing of both landscape and portrait images.

• Automatically recognizes and displays .png, .jpg and .jpeg, and .gif. Other media in the specified folder (e.g. .mpg) are displayed as links.

• Display and browsing through the images using slick Lightbox V2, Thickbox, or Greybox Redux.

• Has both a default page ( /brilliant_gallery ) and a block, for straightforward use, but any gallery can be entered into any page or custom block using a special tag.

• Thumbnails as well as any other images with decreased size are cached to reduce network load and loading speed.

• Possibility to choose from database (default) or file system caching (very fast!) (automatic removal of expired items implemented).

• brilliant in the title aims to imply clarity of both display and design - rather than something glorious or too intelligent

• Option to show captions in the overlay browser (based on the image file name (based on the image file name; dots and underscores are automatically replaced by spaces).

• Images in galleries can be either sorted or randomized.

• Possibility to limit the number of images shown in any gallery (a nifty feature if combined with the random selection option), and to set the first image that should start displaying. In combination with randomizer this can be a very attractive addition to your site.

• Works also on i18n-enabled sites.

Depends on: Lightbox V2 and Colorpicker.

Planned features:

• Option to show galleries as slideshows. (Please recommend the best slideshow module that could be used in combination with Brilliant Gallery for this purpose).

• Support for Flash/SWF media in the galleries.

• Hooks to allow other modules use the gallery.

• More ideas? Submit a feature request.

Known / possible problems:

• If your thumbnails do not show yet there is an image after you click them, it is likely that PHP on your server is not capable of converting images on the fly. See this post for more.

• Thickbox malfunctions when displaying generated images. The consequence is that if you upload large images (e.g. directly from your digital camera) (currently, 'large' means width greater than the maximum width set on the settings page), or if you simply want to be on the safe side for the time being, use the Lightbox V2 overlay browser for Brilliant Gallery. ( For more on the Thickbox bug, refer to the following thread: http://drupal.org/node/140371 ) This is also the reason why Brilliant Gallery is set to depend on Lightbox V2.

• If you upload extremely large images (say from a 12 Mpx camera), it is possible that they will not show in the gallery due to PHP memory restrictions you may have on your particular web server.

• If you change/delete/add your gallery images but the gallery does not refresh, you will need to clear Drupal's cache. I'd recommend clicking the 'empty cache' link provided by the Devel module. Depending on your browser (caching) you may need to clear the browser cache as well (or otherwise make sure you load a fresh page from the server).

Step-by-step installation:

1. Download the latest version of the Brilliant Gallery module from its Drupal home here.
2. Enable the module in your Drupal ( /admin/build/modules ).
3. Go to Input Formats in your Drupal ( /admin/settings/filters ) and via the "configure" link enable one of your input formats to recognize the Brilliant Gallery Tag.
4. Using FTP, create a main folder in your 'files' directory that will hold all your future gallery folders. E.g. albums. You do not have to do this if you prefer your gallery folders to be located directly in your 'files' folder.
5. Choose who can access to Brilliant Gallery in ( /admin/user/access ).
6. Change the default settings for Brilliant Gallery in the admin section of your Drupal ( /admin/settings/brilliant_gallery ).

• Path to the main gallery folder = Path to the main folder in which your individual gallery folders will be placed. This folder must exist under your 'files' folder. Exclude trailing trailing slashes. Example: albums. Specify nothing if you prefer your gallery folders to be located directly in your 'files' folder.
• Maximum number of table columns = The maximum number of columns displayed in the table.
• Maximum width of table images = The maximum width of thumbnails in the table (height calculated automatically).
• Table background colour = Colour on the background of the table that holds the images.
• Table cell padding = Cell padding (around each image) in pixels.
• Overlay browser = Select the overlay image browser (must be installed, of course). Currently Lightbox V2 and Thickbox are supported.

7. Using FTP, create your gallery directory, e.g. 2007_Tomas, in the main folder you have created above. Still using FTP, upload all images into that directory. (Make sure the uploaded file names do not contain characters that are likely forbidden in your server's file system, such as "#" or ":")

Use:

There are several ways in which you can display your picture gallery.

• Anywhere in a node, using a special tag in the format [bg|path/to/your/gallery/folder/without/wrapping/slashes]. You only need to specify path within the main folder. You also can override many of the default settings using the full tag

[bg|path/to/your/gallery/folder/without/wrapping/slashes |columncountoverride|widthoverride|sortorrandomoverride|maximumnumbertoshow|colouroverride|beginfromoverride|caption-yes-no-text]

The little gallery below shows first 10 images from folder called '2007_Tomas' that resides in the main folder 'albums', so it uses the following tag: [bg|2007_Tomas|10|45|random|10|#000000]

To show just one image, say the 13th from the beginning (when sorted!), showing the caption, you use something like: [bg|2007_Tomas|1|200|sort|1|#bbbbbb|13|What an image!]

• As a default block (only settings set forth in /admin/settings/brilliant_gallery apply).

• As a custom block. Create a block with a Brilliant Gallery Tag in it - e.g. the one in the right column here was created simply using the following tag: [bg|2007_Tomas|3|44|sort]

If you use this module, find it useful, post a link to a gallery of yours at http://www.vacilando.eu/gbg or send me a message via http://www.vacilando.eu/contact

The author can also be contacted for paid customizations of this and other modules.

All comments and patches providing or leading to improvements are most welcome here!

Development of this module is sponsored by Vacilando.org

Installation and configuration instructions, demonstration and other information about this module are here.

	Tomáš J. Fülöpp
Wednesday 29. August 2007, Colombo, Sri Lanka