Grey Bar Across Image In Lightbox

wyndham

The Situation:
I have a gallery of 300 images that my Photographic Group has to view and vote on this week. Here's the link

1. I'm using the default collage landscape layout so members can quickly find an image to check or resume from where they left off, but the principal way the reviewing is done is to select an image to display (usually at "Fill" size to get the best detail) and then using the arrow keys work through the gallery noting their scores by hand on a printed sheet. FYI, the scores are subsequently entered on a Google form with low res "reminder" images that then collates the data.
2. To do this, the filename (in particular the first three characters) needs to be visible for each image while viewing.

The Problem:
1. The auto hide behaviour of the information section/toolbar is disabled, so the filename is showing all the time in the lower left which is fine, but the grey bar with the size selector and tools on the right runs across the image obscuring a significant portion of the picture and changing the aspect ratio of the crop.
2. Viewing the images at smaller size to reveal the missing part or reverting to auto hide both mean using a mouse or trackpad which is very tedious when making notes and almost everyone complains about it!
3. Viewing a smaller size by default is not much better than using the Google form so Smugmug is skipped by many, allowing images with issues to pass without proper scrutiny and devaluing the whole process.

Ideally:
1. The customising control for the toolbar in the Lightbox section should have an option "Outside the Image" added to the two existing ones "Full Width" and "Image Width".
2. Even better, being able to select what button or information field appears on each side.

I realise the last section above is really a feature request (and I'll post one shortly), but I'm on a deadline of a couple of days and would be hugely grateful if anyone could suggest a solution that I can implement right away. Might changing the background colour transparency of the caption and toolbar boxes do the trick? Unfortunately, I've never used CSS.

Allen

Notice also as you go up sizes in lightbox, especially for a portrait, when the photo gets larger then the window, the top of the photo is above the window/scroll bar so you can't see the top part or get to it.

wyndham

The Fill viewing option seems to generally work well - it's the grey area at the bottom I'm trying to lose.