Creating a "Stacked" style gallery in Squarespace that can use the Lightbox
This is a quick tip for any fellow Squarespace users out there. If you're a photo blogger and you use Squarespace you may have come across the following problem: You want to add a series of images to your blog post and you want them all to appear in a single column, one after the other. The simplest way to do this is to add a gallery block to your post, and use the stacked mode for the gallery. This will add any images in the gallery one after the other in a "stacked" fashion, but for some reason known only to the folks at Squarespace, this method doesn't allow you to use the Lightbox functionality (so that when you click on an image it will apear large in an overlay)
The most obvous alternative is to add images individually using separate image blocks, but this is very tedious, and you can't go from one image to the next inside the lightbox using this method. There is an alternative, and it's quite simple to use although it does have a couple of limitations.
The method I use to get around this issue is to use a gallery block, but set the mode to "Grid". I then set it to only display one column and set the thumbnail type to 3:2. Here are the settings I typically use:
Because most images that I post are 3:2 anyway, this has the same look as a stacked galery, but, it allows you to use the Lightbox. The only downside to this method is that vertical or portraitorientation images will be cropped, but I get around this by preparing a horizontal image with two vertical images side by side in a "two up" formation, and add these to the gallery instead of individual vertical images. I do this in Photoshop and I created a handy Photoshop action for creating these two up images.
Here's an example of this style of gallery in use:
Of course the obvious solution would be for Squarespace to just allow stacked galleries to use the ligthbox function in the first place (and while you're at it, allow us to adjust the spacing in a stacked gallery too). If you're a Squarespace user and this has bothered you, send them some feedback so that maybe if they hear from enough of us they migth add this and save us having to do these kind of workarounds.
Please Help Support the Blog
I am a fine art Photographer and do not shoot commercial projects. I do my best to keep this site regularly updated with lots of tips, reviews, news and photography advice, all for free. If you like what you read here and want more, then sign up for our newsletter to get regular site updates and occasional special offers. You can also follow my photographic exploits on Facebook and Twitter
If you're a Lightroom user check out my original Lightroom Presets
