Pixplug Help

About Microshows And Slideshows
Pixplug offers over 500 creative slideshows and microshows. You can assign an album a slideshow and a microshow so that whenever someone views the album they can choose to see your photos inside the creative presentation you've chosen for your pictures.

Microshows
Microshows are simply 'micro' slideshows and are designed to fit in smaller places than a normal slideshow. Microshows are perfect for placing on your Pixplug homepage, on MySpace, Facebook, eBay or even on your blogs or personal web site. We provide the embedding code you can copy and paste onto a web page that makes displaying the microshow very easy to do.

Microshows come in different styles and are available under the Album Manager > Presentation Controls > Select Microshow.

The example microshow above is an interactive rotating show. It shows a set of photos made up of the first six images in the album. The viewer can click the Next Set button to load up the next 6 images. When the viewer clicks on the photo it grows larger and the other photos are hidden from view. Clicking again on the large photo starts the show up again:

There are several different types of Microshows. When you are in the Album Managerrr > Presentation Controls > Select Microshow you will see a category menu that allows you to pick the style of Microshow you want to work with:

For many of the Microshows the show will pop-up a small control when the viewer moves their mouse over the show:

Using this control the viewer can control the speed of the show, can manually go forward, back or pause and play the show and can even control the type of transition using the built-in transition menu:

Setting up the Featured Microshow on your Homepage
When you are selecting a Microshow look at the top of the page and you will see a checkbox that lets you set the current album microshow as the Features Microshow that appears on your homepage:

When you check this box, the Microshow you have selected for the current album becomes the one that is shown in the Featured Microshow pod on your homepage.

Slideshows
Slideshows are larger interactive shows that vary widely in their style and interactive look and feel. Each album has a slideshow that can be assigned to it so that when your visitors are viewing your photos they can also choose to watch a slideshow that you have selected for your pictures.

To assign a slideshow to an album, first select the album using the Album Manager then go to the Album Manager > Presentation Controls > Select Slideshow:

Most slideshow styles will pop-up a control when the user moves their mouse over it:

The control allows the user to advance the show forward, go back, pause and play and define the style of transition that is applied when changing photos:

Selecting a Microshow or Slideshow
Each of your albums can have a different microshow or slideshow assigned to it so that when your visitors are looking at your photos, they are able to view the microshow and slideshow you've selected. If you have an album of photos taken while on vacation at the beach, for example, you could assign it a Scrapbook Style Microshow such as this one:

To assign a Microshow or slideshow to an album, all you have to do is click the Apply button located beneath the example. A gold star will appear and the white box around the example will turn gold indicating that this is the show that is assigned to your album:

Previewing a Microshow or Slideshow
To preview a microshow or slideshow all you have to do is click the Preview link below the example. This will open a new page that shows you the microshow or slideshow with your album photos playing inside of it.

When you click the preview button your album photos will begin to play inside the microshow:

You can also use the preview button to make sure your photos are Soft-Cropped to fit the show.

Using The Soft-Crop Feature
Each slideshow and microshow is different. Most microshows have been designed to fit photos using standard 1.33 and 1.5 ratios. You may find that you need to soft-crop your photos to make them fit, however. A soft-crop is a non-destructive cropping system developed by Pixplug to allow you to crop your photos for different slideshows and microshows and not alter the original image or take up extra space in your account. The images are virtually cropped to fit your needs.

At the top of the slideshow or microshow page you will find a button called Soft-Crop Photos:

When you click this button you are able to view all the photos in your album and crop them to fit the dimensions of the show you have selected. The crop tool is constrained where it will always scale up or down to fit the show you have selected. All you have to do is grab a corner handle on the crop tool and move it in or out and position it where you want it to be on your photo.

Step One: Select the photo by clicking on the small example of the picture.

Step Two: Adjust the crop by moving the corner handles

Step Three: Click the Apply button after cropping each photo. If you don't click the Apply button on each photo, the crop will not be applied to the photo you just worked with.

General Topics