(Note: updated below with references to CE4 Gallery and Cart)
(Note 2: this method also works with Backlight)
TTG CE3/CE4 Cart, teamed with TTG CE3/CE4 Gallery, allows the photographer to offer digital downloads in TTG Cart for purchase. After a visitor purchases a digital download, they’re sent a link to where they can download the file. It works really well.
If you’re using Publisher, these downloadable files can be created and uploaded automatically without you needing to do anything other than click the Publish button.
If you’re not using Publisher, you’ll need to export these files from the Library Module and upload them manually to a folder within your gallery that you will need to also be created manually.
The details for doing that are found in the TTG documents here.
Often the question comes up about selling digital downloads of the same image at different sizes in the same gallery. Say you want to be able to offer a high-res version suitable for magazine publication as well as different low-resolution images more suited to web usage.
If you’re using Publisher, you should realize that Publisher is capable of creating only one rendition of an image for digital download. By default, these renditions are placed in a protected folder that’s named “photos-for-download”. As outlined in the document linked to above, if you’re not using Publisher then you need to manually create this folder, add the files that will protect it from unauthorized access, and upload your images.
So far it appears that you can only offer one size of digital download. But what if you want to offer more?
It’s actually rather easy to do this. It’s not really documented in the Wiki so I’ll outline the steps here.
First, you need to create the products in the Cart. So log in to your Cart’s Admin area and click on Products. The cart comes with two pre-made products: Digital Download and Print so you should already have a Digital Download product.
In the Products window, click on the Edit link next to Digital Downloads. Notice the Download Directory. It’s set by default as “photos-for-download.” Base Pricing is single price. You could also add Product Attributes if you like. These could be things like licensing rights. Later you would attach prices to those rights. But for our current purpose, let’s just leave all that empty. If you like, you can change the title of this product to be more descriptive, like “High-Res digital Downloads.” That’s up to you. I think I’ll make that change. Be sure to click Save Product.
So at this point you have one product for Hi-res Digital Downloads.
Now let’s create another product for web-resolution downloads.
Back in the main Products page, click on Add Product.
Give it a title. Here I’m going to use “web resolution.” Add a description if you like.
For Product Type, choose Digital Download.
For Quantity, choose “single item” and for Base Pricing, choose “single price.”
Again, if you wanted to add rights attributes, you could do so. I’m not going to do that here.
Have you noticed that something is missing? What about that Download Directory folder? We’ll get to that next.
Click the Add Product button in the lower right. This will take you back to the Products page and you’ll see that “web resolution” has been added.
Now click on the Edit link next to “web resolution.” You’ll see in the Edit Product dialog box that there is now a field for the Download Directory. Fill this in with the name of a folder. You’ll be adding this folder to your galleries/albums manually. Use only letters, numbers, dashes, or underscores in your name. Do not use spaces. The name of my folder is going to be “web-res-photos-purchase”.
Click on the Save Product button in the lower right.
Now let’s create a pricing scheme that will offer both digital download products.
From the Cart Admin page click on the Pricing menu item and choose Pricing Schemes. By default, the cart already had two schemes: “default” and “premium.” You could modify either of these if you like, but let’s create a new pricing scheme just for our digital download offerings.
Click the Add Pricing Scheme link.
Give your pricing scheme a name. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter if you include spaces in the name.
Check the products you wish to offer with this pricing scheme. In this case, I’m checking “Hi-res digital download” and “web resolution.” In CE4 Cart you’ll also have the option of placing items in the order you wish.
Click Add Pricing Scheme.
You’ll be taken back to the Pricing Schemes window. You should see your new pricing scheme along with the word ‘incomplete’ in red under Status. Follow the on-screen instructions and click the Manage Pricing link.
Now just fill in your prices and click Save Prices.
Ok, the Cart setup is ready. Now on to the Gallery set up.
In TTG CE3/CE4 Gallery, go to the Output Settings control pane and to the E-Commerce options section.
If this will be a Publisher template, then be sure to set the parameters for the download images Publisher will create. If this is going to be a regular gallery (you’re not using Publisher) then you don’t need worry about making these settings.
For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to assume that all images in the gallery will be available for digital download purchase only. If you want to have only some available for digital download, then use the Mixed Pricing option. More on that here.
Because I’m not using Mixed Pricing here, in the Uniform Pricing Profile Name field I’ll add the name of the pricing scheme just created. Keep in mind, this is for a gallery that will only offer these digital downloads for sale.
If this is a Publisher template, just finish up any design and other settings you need. Export it, giving it a name that will identify it as your digital download template. Upload it to the /publisher/templates/ folder on your server.
If this is a regular gallery, finish up any design and populate it with images. Then upload it to the /galleries/ folder on your server. (Or to any autoindex you want to assign it to)
If using Publisher, create an album as you normally would, choosing the template you just uploaded.
Click on the Features tab and check Enable Cart. Then write in the Cart Pricing Profile you just created. (CE4 Publisher dialog looks different, but the concept is still the same.)
Click Create. If you hadn’t already selected images for this Album add them now and click Publish. Publisher will upload the album and create the renditions for the high-res digital downloads.
For a regular gallery, uploaded via FTP, you still need to create the “photos-for-upload” folder inside the gallery and upload the high resolution files into it. These will need to be exported from the Library Module or processed using Photoshop. That’s up to you. The important thing is that the file names match exactly those that are already in your gallery.
You’ll also need to create the “web-res-photos-purchase” folder for the low-resolution images. When creating these two folders, don’t forget to add the files that protect the folder from unauthorized access. Again, the instructions for that are here.
(Backlight update: get the needed files from /backlight/modules/module-cart/application/skeleton)
For Publisher users, you now have the high-resolution images in the automatically created “photos-for-download” folder. But you still need to add the web resolution folder manually and upload those files via FTP. Just follow the same instructions as above.
Now when you go to your gallery and click on the Add-to-Cart button, there should be a drop-down for the product giving you the choice between ‘Hi-res download’ and “web resolution.”
Using this method, you can create as many digital download versions of an image as you want. You could have 5000 px hi-res, 3000 px hi-res, 1000 px medium-res, 600 px low-res, and 150px thumbnail-res if you so choose. You will need to create the extra folders and create and upload the extra renditions, but it’s possible. The important thing to remember is to name each file in all renditions exactly the same. You can’t name them, for example, image-name-001-5000px, image-name-001-3000px, etc. They all must be image-name-001 otherwise the download won’t work because the file will not be found.
Also remember to add the folder protection files to each folder you create.
Variation: Tiff downloads
Some of you may need to offer tiff files for download. If this is the case, Publisher cannot provide those images for you, it can only process out jpg images. So you’ll need to go the manual uploading route as described above. In fact, you could offer any file type as long as the base file names match those of the images in the gallery.
