Around the Carousel Again
You might recall the photo carousel feature we launched a few months ago. It has been incredibly popular with both bloggers and visitors, racking up over three quarters of a billion views since then. Today, we’re happy to announce we’re launching v2 of Carousel with significant improvements:
- Images are served double-resolution (Retina!) for visitors on capable devices, like the iPad 3 or Retina Macbook Pro. (Best, laptop, ever.)
- Comments! Visitors can now comment directly on each photo.
- Likewise, you can now like or reblog every individual image.
- You can now select a light or dark theme for your photos to be showcased on.
- If your camera includes EXIF metadata, like aperture, lens, and shutter speed, we now show that next to the photo. (You can toggle this off under Settings → Media if you prefer.)
- We’ve improved performance so it loads and moves faster on browsers old and new.
Want to see it in action? Here are some photos I’ve taken on recent travel, including some from a Nikon D3S, a Nikon D4, and a Sony NEX-7:
But wait, there’s more! This update is simultaneously being released for Jetpack users, our first time doing a release for both at the same time. WordPress.org users can download the latest Jetpack and try out Carousel right away. On stage at WordCamp San Francisco last year I said I wanted a world where there was feature parity between the WordPress.com service and WordPress.org installs, and I’m glad we’re taking this important first step in that direction, in the future we’ll have more and more of the simultaneous launches.
- July 12, 2012
- New Features
WordPress.com News 
Wow, love the new image gallery, great work!
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Cool! Though I don’t have one.
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We have 42 engineers working on that this very second. 😉 Also, all reblogs already link back and attribute the source, which is more than most people do when they blog, pin, or tumble images.
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This is going to do wonder to my galleries. I write a photography blog over at http://www.ledesmaphotography.com and I’ve always hesitated to show galleries because I’m always hacking the plugins and what not and in the end I’m not really happy with any of them. Carousel for Jetpack is awesome, awesome, thanks for making this happen Matt and team. Great photo set as well.
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Fantabuloso…how did I miss this first time round….I LOVE it!!!
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It works great, I just did a test post using some larger thumbnail sizes here: http://photokaz.com/2012/07/testing-jetpack-carousel/
Having a minor issue with fancybox but I will try to get that cleared up. Love the new features, well done.
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Those look great!
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I’ve just looked at this again on my blog. How do I change the background from light to dark?
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Settings, Media, there’s a link to the help page in the post as well.
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Brilhante!
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We should have the option to turn off re-blogging if we don’t like it done to our posts.
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It’s a user feature, not a publisher feature — people are going to blog your content regardless of whether there’s a button or not, assuming it’s any good, the button just makes them infinitely more likely to properly attribute you.
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Thank you for making it optional.
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Left-handed compliment. 😉
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Oke welcome… I like this post..
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Is it only me but is the bottom cut ? Is it because I’m using chrome ? The bottom area for commenting, the submit button and part of the exif are outside my viewing screen…
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You need to scroll down to see that part.
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Also, all reblogs already link back and attribute the source, which is more than most people do when they blog, pin, or tumble images.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t seemed to be the case if an entry/image is reblogged a second time. In that case, attribution and a link back to the original source has been stripped out. Will that be dealt with as well?
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Reblogs of reblogs should link back to the original, if you notice a problem you should contact support and they’ll try to recreate the issue and write it up for our developers — https://wordpress.com/support/
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Love this!
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Reblogged this on picturesandsame.
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Reblogged this on pravinchn.
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Hey Matt, great stuff you guys are ROCKING! I also want to echo Gabriel’s comments regarding image security; I love WP, I am a total junkie and evangelist, but I am also a pro shooter and I am very concerned about copyright infringement. I’d love to hear more about what you guys are working on.
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Thank you!
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Reblogged this on digudblajar.
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You nailed it this time! Well done to Matt and all the WP.com team. Great to see the same improvement being available on jetpack to use on the WP.org sites I manage.
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Reblogged this on cholilarifin and commented:
wawww….
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Love the idea, can’t wait to implement it! My favourite thing though is the phonestack – genius =D
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Great work.
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like it!
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In fact, the new Carousel feature, is an exciting, and a requirement, for every blogger. Most especially, the individually-downloadable photos, and an equality, in the WordPress.org/WordPress.com features, makes a commendable attraction, to the WordPress community. I give my appreciation, as a WordPress.com blogger. Thanks, for your intervention, and support, from time to time. It’s marvellous.
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Very nice and Welcome to you.
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Reblogged this on harmonylower and commented:
it is awsome
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Wouldn’t most users expect the close button to be in the upper right corner instead of the left one?
Scrolling down to realize you can comment every single picture isn’t very obvious if you ask me. Well maybe from an engineers/a developers point of view but a normal user would probably see the UI and the two left/right scroll buttons and never get the idea you can scroll down as well. How about a ‘Comment’ anchor link somewhere which jumps to the comment form? Best would probably right beside ‘Reblog’ and ‘Like’ but it looks like there’s not enough space. Even if it would fit in english what about the other languages which tend to have longer words.
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We’ll probably do a link or a call to scroll down as you suggest, will test some things next week.
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This is great, since it doesn’t load javascripts etc on pages it’s not needed. Can we also have option to turn off comments for images and also option to have single images in lighbox, as this only works in gallery, we need to keep two lightbox scripts and sometime. Thanks.
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Single images in a lightbox is something I’m very interested, not sure about comments yet because core WordPress doesn’t really provide a setting there.
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Sounds great. I don’t use images much presently, but a double offer like this is should make me want to give it a try
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H, Great idea! I/m using the Photography theme by The Theme Foundry and if I click on an image in the Gallery nothing seems to happen, any advice your can offer please? As I say, love the idea!
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You should make a support request in the premium theme forum, they can take a look at it.
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Thanks, will do, have a great day!
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I really would like to have the option to disable the reblog-button too. I know, that you can do it anyway but the button is inviting to do so even if it is not your intension.
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Awesome! Wish I had money to travel, just to get great photos. Will check it out.
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really amazing photos!
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Can I use custom galleries?
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Sure — but I’m not really clear from your question what you actually want to do.
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TOTAL Newbie here.. how do I get to see what you guys are talking about? Is it similiar to any other program that is out there? Instagram? etc?
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Just click on one of the images in the post, and you’ll see it.
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Great! Great photos by the way! As far as Re-blogging when I reblogg and it is posted on facebook it is posted as “No Title” which is not cool. Thanks I look forward to the reply! ♥
Hosanna in the Highest!!!
For His Love and Glory,
♥ Linda M
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We’ll take a look at that.
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Hi Matt, This is great information. I may just try the Carousel out. I usually don’t use the photo gallery feature but it does look like something I may try. Thanks again for this fantastic feature and clear description of the Carousel!
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this was such an awesome feature, and as a photographer, I use it all the time and I love it… especially now that it shows the exif data, this only makes it better, thanks.
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This is great!
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Reblogged this on noblek2k and commented:
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
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WOW! Makes me want it now now now, its great!
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If you enable it via Jetpack, is there any way to disable it (without turning off everything in Jetpack)?
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Yep, you can enable and disable most of the modules in Jetpack (like Carousel) individually.
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I don’t see how…? Once it’s enabled, I only have “learn more” and “configure”, and the configure option doesn’t give me any way to turn it off.
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It’s a little confusing in this version, but when you click the “learn more” button then configure turns into deactivate.
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Ahh, sweet. Thanks!
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@raxit you can invoke the Photo Carousel on a single image by simply inserting your image with the Gallery shortcode.
Really warming up to the Photo Carousel. Thanks for providing all the options, including the option to turn it off. Appreciated!
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Oops..missing a private word
“France Marseille city, you were by stranded in my town, maybe–But you’ve just caught the more interesting picture! ”
Bye
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Beautiful pictures! Amazing really…
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Awesome stuff Matt!
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wow amazing pictures!
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Hi! This sounds pretty cool. Is it an upgrade or anyone blogging on WordPress.com can use it?
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Totally free. Anyone on WordPress.com or with a Jetpack-enhanced self-hosted blog can use it. 🙂
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Love this. The re-blog every img feature is really cool. Thanks a lot.
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When I reblogged the phonestack image, i was unable to set it as a featured image. Due to which the post on the showcase page was not looking that great.
Could we add the featured image if we are reblogging it?
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Wonderful photos. Thanks for sharing.
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Hi. I *love* the gallery feature and I’m excited about the new changes, but I’m having a couple of issues with the new stuff. Any help would be appreciated.
1) Like MAO above, the items below the images (caption, description, comments, etc.) are cut-off. I get that you are supposed to scroll down to see them, but the scroll bar does not work in any of the browsers I have tried (Safari, Firefox, and Chrome). When I try to click and drag the scroll bar, it either does nothing (Firefox) or acts as though I have clicked on the image and advances to the next image in the slideshow (Safari and Chrome). (I can scroll with my fingers on a laptop track pad but actually trying to use the scroll bar does not work.)
2) When the carousel upgrade happened, it caused about two-thirds of the links I had in my galleries to malfunction. In the descriptions of many of my gallery images, I have coded links to pdf’s elsewhere on my WordPress site. I tested them all as I was building the galleries, and they all worked. Now when I click on many of the links to view the pdf’s, I get an error page. I have looked at the code for the href’s, and don’t see anything wrong with it–plus, they were working before and some still are. I noticed that when I click on one of the links that no longer works, it appends the url for the pdf to the end of the url for the image in the gallery. There is nothing I can do to fix it by hand.
3) Finally, I really miss being able to link the image to a larger version that is housed within a page styled in the site’s theme. The way the galleries used to work, you could set it so that the “permalink” link (which I guess has been replaced by “Click to View Full Size”) would lead to either the image by itself or to the image attachment page with the caption and description. Now I can’t find any way to set the images in the gallery to link to the attachment page. Is that possible?
Many thanks for any help and for all the great things WordPress does.
Christine
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A couple of comments on how the carousel works on the iPad:
1) Frame scrolling is a bit obscure for many tablet users. Lack of visible scrollbars and the need to use two fingers make it an elusive interface.
2) The close hit button area is too small. Right now it’s too easy to scroll backwards instead of closing–the button needs to be ~2x larger for touch screens.
3) Would love to see support for swipe.
And a bug in desktop Firefox 13/OS X: the next slide overlaps the browser chrome.
Nice work, looking forward to continued improvement!
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Wow…
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Thanks for bringing this to Jetpack, I like it better than the options in the theme I’m using on a self-hosted blog. The only things I would suggest have to do with how it resizes for a phone-sized display: When I try it on a 320×480 iPhone in either orientation, the photos are too small with too much space around them, the text under the photo is scrunched together, and it also doesn’t support touch swipes. I also observed this on a completely different blog I found on the Web that had implemented Carousel v2, so I don’t think it’s just my site.
I hope you can make it more mobile/touch friendly, but in the meantime, thanks for continuing to work on Carousel!
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Matt, you know what I would like along with tons of others: Like this: for the Jetpack Plugin for hosted sites. I mean, the comments system and share works like a fine tuned watch already why not add this missing link.
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I love these photos. All of them. They are all superb and captivating.
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I’m a bit on the late side but GREAT! they are awsome
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Best UX, in terms of photo galleries for blogs!
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cool, love it !
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Thanks for this wonderful feature! I’ve been thinking the other day, when can I put the EXIF info in my gallery pictures? and suddenly here it is! I’m glad WordPress has been perpetually improving and it makes my photo-centric blog easier to read and follow. Thanks!
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Very cool! I love it.
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Will you also soon make a feature where it is possiable to store geo tag / gps data / google map from where the picture has been taken?
I have Canon camera that stores gps location and it will be great if this was viewable in the carousel with a link to a map…
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That’s a good idea.
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