Click Any Photo to Open It Full Size, on Every Design
Every design in the catalog now has the same photo viewer. Click a thumbnail, the image opens over the page at full size, and you can move through the gallery with arrow keys, a swipe or the on-screen controls.
Why this needed doing
Some designs had a viewer. Some opened the raw image file in a new tab, which dumps the visitor onto a white page with a picture on it and no way back except the browser's back button. Some did nothing at all, so the thumbnail was the only size available.
That inconsistency meant we could not honestly answer the question "what happens when somebody clicks a photo on my site", because it depended on which template you had picked, and nobody chooses a template based on that.
What the viewer does
- Opens over the page. The site stays behind it, so closing returns you exactly where you were.
- Arrow keys and swipe move between images in the same gallery.
- Escape closes it. So does clicking outside the image, which is what most people try first.
- The image shown is sized for your screen rather than being the full original, so opening a photo on a phone does not download a print-resolution file.
- Captions and alt text are shown where you have set them.
Alt text is worth thirty seconds per image
The caption field also feeds the alt text, which is what a screen reader announces and what a search engine reads. "Jane Okafor headshot, commercial look, 2025" is a better answer than a filename, both for a visitor using assistive technology and for image search. It is one of the least glamorous and most reliable SEO improvements available on a photo-heavy site.
Print resolution is a separate decision
The viewer deliberately does not serve your original file. If you want casting to be able to download a print-quality headshot, that is an explicit setting, covered in print-ready headshot downloads. Making every photo downloadable at full size by default is a choice most actors would not make if asked.
Related
This sits alongside faster galleries and photo categories. For the wider case about presenting images well, see the professional photo gallery guide.
Pick a design in the template catalog or create your free actor website and try it.
