Are you making the most of your published Lightboxes? They’re one of the methods in Asset Bank for sharing your assets externally. The benefit is that recipients don’t need to login in order to download your files.

In this article, I’ll show you how to configure the system to allow you to have various resize and watermarked options that you can choose from when publishing a Lightbox. For example, you may want to share original assets when sharing one Lightbox but only offer web versions of files for another.

Fig 1. Creating a Published Lightbox to share externally

If publishing is configured, then you will see the link as shown in Figure 1 above.

Fig 2. Presenting flexible options that allow the user to decide which sizes to include

When configured, you will have some ‘download size’ options to choose from when publishing a Lightbox, giving you greater flexibility.

Fig 3. In this example, let’s choose some download sizes.

In the example shown in Fig 3. above I have chosen to make Medium and Large download sizes of the assets available only.

Fig 4. The lightbox is then published and shared externally

Fig 5. shows a snapshot of this published Lightbox.

Fig 6. Looking at the detail of one of the assets, we see the download options

When we step into a particular asset, we now see the download options that were chosen at time of publish. The recipient can then choose to download the file in any of these formats.

Fig 7. To have these options we must first create a new usage type

To set something like this up, first we need to create a new download usage type via:

Admin > Download Options.

You can see this in Fig 6. above. Fig 7. (below) shows you the options to choose.

Fig 8. For this usage type set media type ‘image’, simple only download and ‘Download Original’

Once created, you need to click on [edit sizes] to define the individual download options that will then be on offer when publishing a Lightbox.

Fig 9. Creating a small watermarked download option

In the example above, I’ve created a small watermarked JPG. Here you create as many options as you’d like to be available. I prefer to have set up Original, some web sizes and a small watermarked version to cater for most eventualities.

Fig 10. Connecting the download option to the Publish Lightbox Template

Once created, you need to link this up with the Publish Lightbox Template to make the options available. You’d find this here:

Admin > Publishing > Lightbox Publish Actions

Then click “Edit Lightbox publishing template”.

You will then see a page as per Fig 10 above, where you select the “Usage type for resizing”.

The new options have now been set up and are available when publishing a Lightbox.

Finally, if you’d like to hide this new set of download options from  the standard asset download conversion list , you can do this via:

Admin > Groups > Usage Exclusions

As shown in Fig 11 below.

Fig 11. Hiding this option from standard downloads

Paul Mulvee, 19th August 2016 (Screenshots updated November 2017)