Hey again! It’s Monday and we’re back with another Open Studio design preview. This time, we’re going to take a look at a highly-requested feature from our visual art creators — image galleries in posts!
We’ve heard you: Uploading multiple images to a post on Patreon can be frustrating. You have to upload each file one by one, which takes up a ton of time and effort, and the viewing experience for your patrons is limited. We want to provide a better way to show off your art and make your posting workflow as quick and painless as possible.
Creating an image gallery
This is how it might look when you make a post. You’ll be able to bulk upload images and drag and drop to reorder them.
Viewing an image gallery
I have a couple ideas I’m considering for how to show the image gallery to patrons viewing your post. Which arrangement would work best for the type of images you upload to Patreon?
Viewing a single image
When you click into an thumbnail, you’ll see an expanded lightbox view and can use the arrows or your keyboard to view each image.
Feedback we’re looking for:
Please keep in mind that this is still a work-in-progress and doesn’t necessarily represent what will be launched in the future. We’re still pretty early in the design and development process, so while I can’t guarantee that it will end up exactly like this, your feedback can drive the decisions we make as we’re working on this feature.
How would you want your images to be arranged in a gallery?
How would this feature affect your workflow?
Do you typically upload from your computer, phone, URL, or some other method? How many images would you typically add to a set?
OK, the creating an image gallery/upload option
The viewing an image gallery: my preferred option is 4, followed by 1.
2 and 3 reminds me of Instagram and I don’t like it tbh.
6 is not attractive
I have concerns about viewing a simple image for the following reason: not all the uploaded images are singre images, for comic artists strips reading is vital.
Not all the strips can be short or the artist cropping the image to fit it so the viewer can read it on a certain platform. I mean, for cómics many uses webtoon or tapas formating and gives their patrons an early reading for new chapters before they publish them on tapas/webtoon.
preferred option is 4
positively. I have just 2 hours at day to work on my art and don’t want to waste my time on fixing things to adjust them unnecessarily to a single platform.
i upload from computer and phone
stated above (sorry, I forgot to answer before ranting because I’m at work and way to excited for these ideas)
I typically upload anywhere from 10-60 images in single posts so something like this is extremely useful to me.
Personally of the options presented I would prefer option 4 - a nice preview image for everyone to look at, then a set of images below that. Alternatively, 6 and 5 both seem like great alternatives - I would prefer a preview image, but if the bar below 5 scrolls to show all the images, that’s still an acceptable alternative to 4.
This feature would make me less reliant on outside resources for putting my content up for everyone to see, more importantly, even if I kept using the old option as a backup, this would be the primary method my users used to view my content. I think that’s very important because it keeps users on patreon and keeps them in the page interacting with content right on the site.
It also has a nice bonus that people can finally consume large quantities of content in easy to read batches. I’m very much on board with this gallery experiment you’re trying out.
I typically upload all of my images from my computer, as said above, 10-60 images are typical when I upload.
I do have a couple questions:
In the single image view section, do you have wide image support? Does it support zooming/panning? I find this is often not included in gallery viewing, but a way to zoom out and zoom in and pan makes for some of the best viewing when looking at images like this. I work with a variety of canvas sizes and sometimes I do tall images and wide images (extreme ratios). Imagine a single image with 3 comics stacked on top of each other, and turn that sideways for other images.
Do you support full resolutions? I find currently there are some issues with images as they are uploaded to Patreon, sometimes they get resized to be made bigger, sometimes they are resized to be made smaller. Will people be seeing the image exactly as I uploaded it or are the images going to be forced into resolutions to fit peoples screens? I have high resolution tiers that people always ask for, I’m just wondering if they will have the ability to view or download those resolutions through this gallery.
Lastly, my biggest question, this is a great implementation of galleries in a post, but could there be a section of our patreon where we could view our galleries exploded out from posts into a single page.
So if we have say, a years worth of gallery posts, with hundreds of images, just a section of patreon that will show thumbnails of all of the images within all of the galleries in one convenient location for newcomers to the site - so they don’t have to go digging through each gallery post individually. Sort of an image archive, maybe even make it optional. I’ve included a little edit of what I’m imagining.
This would also make it much easier to read a comic on Patreon, right now reading comics is very difficult because of the way posts are formatted, and since people tend to release comics 1 page at a time, this feature which would be very useful, could be underutilized because a new post would have to be made for each comic page.
All in all, looks great so far, this will make it so much better for my audience to view images as I post them.
Edit: One more thought, assuming you have no plans for a gallery tab or allowing people to curate galleries, will we be able to edit posts to add images? We could make archive posts this way to basically add multiple pages in their intended viewing order and link them in welcome/rewards posts at the very least, if it’s possible. If the galleries had a very large limit on number of images it could replace the gallery tab idea as well, I could just curate a smaller number of galleries with lots of images in them and link to them in indexing posts.
This looks GREAT! And even though our primary product on patreon isn’t images, we have a lot of BTS images that would benefit from image galleries.
How would you want your images to be arranged in a gallery?
How would this feature affect your workflow?
Do you typically upload from your computer, phone, URL, or some other method? How many images would you typically add to a set?
Do you have any questions or concerns?
I personally like option 1 and 5 the best, with options 2 and 3 also being good. I do agree with an earlier commenter that #6 looks really cluttered.
Having this feature would make uploading images so much easier! Right now, when we do BTS images, we put them all inline on a text post which doesn’t look that great.
We normally upload from a computer though this might make uploading from a phone easier. Usually it’s ~5 images, sometimes as many as 10. Anything fewer than 5 we can usually cut down to be a single image, but we’ve only been doing that because of the shortcomings of image posts.
Right away I like Option 4 or Option 6 best. I want people to be able to see at least several images at a time (as thumbnails).
I generally upload from my phone. I’d say probably 90% of the time. Occasionally I use my laptop.
This would be amazing for me! I shoot almost everything in sets of 30 to 100+ images so finally having a way to show more than just one at a time would be incredibly helpful. Because of how I share photos I’d probably choose a few to several (say 3 to 7ish) to include in the gallery and still link to the bulk via DropBox so I don’t have to delete posts every month (I archive my photos monthly). But being able to share more than one would be great to give a better idea of the content and maybe encourage Patrons to upgrade to see more.
First - YEEESSSSSS. I know it’s for the future (and please don’t be behind a paywall) but I’m super excited to see progress on this feature request!
How would you want your images to be arranged in a gallery?
All the options? All the options! (except 4- it just looks busy (however, I see we are all different and can like different things!)) But really, it all depends on what kind of project I want to showcase. Thumbnails - def 6, Art progress - 5 or 2, mini comic exclusive - 1, 2, or 5. I’m not sure what 3 is doing, but it looks sleek. Being able to upload lots of images (all at once! that’s nice!) and select a gallery option would be ideal.
How would this feature affect your workflow?
It’s not really workflow, it’s helping presentation. Being able to showcase and have ONE post that I can point to and say “hey, here’s all the images to that project I’ve been working on all in one place!”… <3 Right now - I can’t even “workflow” a multiple image post.
Do you typically upload from your computer, phone, URL, or some other method? How many images would you typically add to a set?
For me, computer, because that’s where I work from the most. And the app didn’t have save to draft back when I last tried to use it, so I lost a WHOLE post when life happened and I had to close my phone and it didn’t save… So I haven’t gone back to the app in a bit. URL would be a nice alternative too.
Again - different projects, different things. Sometimes it’s only showing a bit of progress like 3-5 images. Or a mini/teaser shots so like 10-25? Or a full blown chapter/thumbnails - 50-100!
Do you have any questions or concerns?
Love the drag, drop, reorder going on for uploads. That’s nice!
Also concerned about the resize/crop of the “cover/title” image to the gallery. Not sure what would work better because I can think of instances where I would use both a cropped teaser to go to the gallery AND wanting to showcase a full image as the cover to a gallery instead. But I like the lightbox, I hope it would be mobile friendly.
Glad you’re excited and thanks for the feedback! Can you elaborate more on how this might work better for comic artists’ strips? Are you looking for more of a vertical scrolling experience like Webtoons/Tapas instead of the left/right arrows?
As someone who dabbles in comics I think there’s two issues:
The lightbox, comics these days aren’t always in traditional comic page aspect ratios, somtimes they are much longer and sometimes they are much taller. A lightbox that could pan/zoom would solve that issue if it’s not already implemented. I do very long images and very tall images sometimes myself, and if forced into a single screen they would be too small to view.
The second issue I see with comics is that comics tend to update on a schedule (weekly for instance) and these gallery posts only display a group of images at a time, unless there’s a place to consolidate your view of a bunch of image posts at once in a gallery format, comic artists will have to use workarounds like posting a comic page, and then having an archival post separately where patrons can actually read the post in a more reader friendly way.
This concept definitely gives options to work around the issue though, where as before the solution was to host comics on other sites.
I personally find being able to see all the images right from the get go, more attractive as i can see how much content there is and get excited about it!
I would much prefer Option 4. This would allow sequential art or bundles to have a cover/first image as a clear jumping point and then still be able to see all there is in that post all at once at a glance. (Great for chapter recaps for sequential art and LOOOTS of other things too.)
Option 6 and Option 1 are also acceptable as they show everything or most all at once. Option 1 is very “Facebook” ish, so i know lots of folks will be familiar with it but i don’t like that if you have more than 5 images, that you have to click through to know there is more. Options 6 is great but i feel having that big/main piece in Option 4 is a great jumping point visually and gives people the option of seeing something bigger right from the get go than potentially hard to see/understand rows of thumbnails.
Option 2 and 3 will likely get glanced at and folks not really realize there is more. I find a lot of people do this on multi image posts on instagram (which the design is similar to) a LOT because you only see one image at a time and folks just skim and move on. Being able to see -all- in the gallery is clear that there is more and entices folks to actually go through them.
Lightbox is great.
I upload from both PC and Phone and this would allow me to condense some posts, as well as give a better overview in my monthly recaps and has me thinking about ideas for more things honestly. Bare min, each piece i do has at least 3 stages that i post, however this would allow me to make a bundle post with detail shots, show more behind the scenes process like references and more!
I definitely recommend that creators should be able to select how the thumbnails show up for each image. As some folks have said, not all images are the same size and it’d be nice to showcase the thumbnails in whatever way best showcases the work in that post (or have the option for it to automatically do it since sometimes it doesn’t super matter.)
It would also be great for there to be more than one option as well. One size doesn’t fit all for all image posts.
I’m currently not a web comic content creator (fingers crossed that will change soon), but I would love to see a variable size lightbox with scrolling/zoom capability. Especially if a whole gallery could be linked so patrons would be able to read through without having to close/reopen.
In fact, I’d love a gallery feature for posts as well, since it can be frustrating for people who want to read my novels. As is, they have to open each post, one at a time. It would be sweet if I could organize it for them and they could read each page and then click to the next post.
Thanks for all the thoughtful feedback and great questions:
In the single image view section, do you have wide image support? Does it support zooming/panning?
Do you support full resolutions?
We haven’t started building this yet, so I’ll need to check in with the engineering team to know what we can do for the single image view in regards to zooming/panning/resolution. It’s really helpful to hear how important this is for you (and I’m sure many other creators as well), and it’s something I’ll take into consideration as we’re working on this project.
Lastly, my biggest question, this is a great implementation of galleries in a post, but could there be a section of our patreon where we could view our galleries exploded out from posts into a single page.
I totally agree! Something like a gallery tab outside of a post isn’t part of this specific project, but I know post organization is really challenging. It’s something my team and I are extremely passionate about improving and we’re hoping to tackle it in the near future.
One more thought, assuming you have no plans for a gallery tab or allowing people to curate galleries, will we be able to edit posts to add images?
Again, I’ll have to verify with the engineers since we haven’t started building yet, but I would imagine that you would be able to edit posts to add additional images. I’ll have more solid answers as we start working!
My concerns are more like @Watsup Watsup one in the wide image support(zooming).
I do not think it’s necessary to design a vertical scrolling feature since not all creators here uses the image post option, but for comic artists or general art creators, a zooming option is necessary and an easy solution that t doesn’t affect the ideas you proposed today for image gallery.
Thanks for answering the questions, if you need lightbox design ideas there are quite a few lightboxes out there that support both panning and zooming as well as paging to images in a sequence and I could dm them examples if they are needed.
Personally I really like how tumblr does image posts. You can display all images in full size (or specifically, the container width for their layout but the full size is viewable when you click on the pic) or have some pics displayed full size and others as thumbnails - which you can customize. It’s very flexible.
I post comics and I often have the problem that whenever I post multiple images then after the first image, there’s the post title. I’d like the post title to appear either at the very top of the post, or after I’ve posted all my images (or not at all) because it breaks the flow of my comic pages when someone’s reading it. :’) It’s not that big of a deal but it does annoy me.
I post on desktop and usually have about 3 images per post, sometimes more but usually not more than 10 at once.
Most users have an intuition for the way galleries work and I think graphical arrows or overlays will get in the way more often than they’ll help. I think 4 is the way to go here. I do think we need a ‘cover image’ that dominates the post and 4 fits nicely. I know this isn’t something you can show in image form, but an expand on hover option would be nice as well.
My galleries would contain anywhere from 8-70 images. As a comic artists I have both short pitches and full issues, so being able to support dozens of images is a big deal for me, otherwise I’ll have to separate them into chapters making it harder for patrons to navigate.
I typically upload files direct from my harddrive.
I saved workflow and concerns for last because I have a lot to say here. My workflow involves time separated uploads that all belong to a singular gallery. Your proposal is great for photographers, but narrowly misses the needs of comic artists. I’m very worried this gallery feature could turn into a normal feed post, only with multiple images.
I just want to be clear on what comic artists have been asking for this whole time. Galleries need to be easily visible on our front pages so patrons can find them without looking through the feed. Something like Watsup’s suggestion of a Gallery tab is actually perfect. Galleries need to be less ‘posts’ and more ‘categories’ that can be added to regularly. Something like this would be ideal.
In other words, if I draw superman and get the first 2 pages done, Patrons should be able to see those. If I later complete pages 3-5, I should be able to add them to the gallery and the gallery shouldn’t get buried in my post feed.
I prefer 4 or 5, but the only one I’m not fond of is 6.
One (serious) concern – I currently put image descriptions (alt-text) in the text body underneath the image. Is there a plan for alt-text with the image gallery?
And related: will each image have it’s own caption? (It looks like it but I’d like to confirm).
Also, would I be able to go back and add additional images to the gallery? Or is this just a one-post-and-done thing?
I asked my patrons what they do/don’t like about galleries they’ve used on other websites and these are the responses that came up very frequently. Hopefully these help as well.
Being able to use arrow keys to move between pages in fullscreen view
Clicking inside the image on the right or left to go to the next/previous image
System that makes the page as wide as the screen youre viewing it on / a zoom function where you can drag the image around
Thanks @Corablue for going the extra mile to ask your patrons! And HUGE thank you to everyone for all your incredible feedback so far This is so incredibly helpful and we cannot thank you enough for taking the time to look at these and help shape the future of Patreon.
I like how Tumblr handles their image posts too, though I wish they didn’t limit each set to only 10 photos. But their drag & drop re-ordering interaction is really fun and easy to use. Thanks for the suggestion.
I’m sorry to hear about the post title placement being annoying and why it doesn’t work for you. That’s helpful for me to know, since the team is thinking a lot about posting this year. I’ll note your feedback and see if that can be improved down the line.
This is so incredibly helpful and we cannot thank you enough for taking the time to look at these and help shape the future of Patreon.