Backlight 6.3.2 is now available, adding support to Kookaburra templates for Backlight-native image watermarks, downloads, and more.
Watermarks
Backlight-native watermarking finally makes its way from Pangolin to Kookaburra, allowing watermarks to be configured in your album template, and applied to images during upload to Backlight. This is a fantastic feature, and one that we are very happy to finally have in Kookaburra! See our Image Watermarking for more information.
Image downloads
Image download sounds simple enough on its face, but is a multi-faceted feature. It's also still work-in-progress, as I will explain. Let's break it down.
In Kookaburra Album templates, find the new options under Advanced => Downloads. Things work basically as described in our documentation for Image Downloads, except that documentation needs some updating for Kookaburra.
There are a few scenarios to consider.
Kookaburra utilizes the srcset attribute for images, meaning that, if you're uploading appropriately sized images to your album, then you will have a 1x and 2x rendition for each image. When using the "Use photos rendition" option, the album will offer the 2x version for download, if available, and the 1x version as a fallback.
If you migrated a Pangolin album to Kookaburra, then it is possible that pre-existing images in the album will not have a 2x image, hence the need for the 1x fallback.
Similarly, if you now enable downloads for an existing album, using the "Create custom download rendition ..." option, pre-existing images that you've not re-uploaded will not have that downloadable rendition. The album will offer the 2x version, then the 1x version as a fallback where the download rendition is unavailable.
You can opt out of the cascading fallback behavior by disabling the option, "If download rendition unavailable, use photos rendition as fallback". Come to think of it, I'm not sure the download button in the slideshow respects this preference; I'll look more into it.
So, that's all I have to say about configuring image downloads. But there's more to discuss, about the UI for downloads.
In the Kookaburra Page template config, you will find a new control group, Presentation Actions. Enabling the "Action Overlay", a menu icon will appear on images in the Grid and Masonry-type presentations; mousing over this icon will expand the action overlay atop the image thumbnail.
Two actions are currently available in the overlay, Download and Permalink. In the future, this overlay will also contain actions relating to the Cart and Client Response add-ons, as well as Fotomoto.
It is important to note, the action overlay is not keyboard accessible, and this is intentional. Keyboard users will need to access these actions from within the slideshow. Therefore, if offering downloads as an option, be sure to enable the Download icon in the slideshow options. Permalinks are not yet available in the slideshow, but will be added in a future update.
Also in a future update, for ensured keyboard accessibility, I will ensure that if actions are enabled for the grid, they will be automatically enabled and required in the slideshow.
And finally, as implied above, you should dip into the Slideshow control group to ensure that the Download button is enabled.
That's a lot of information, and my feeling at the moment is that it's a bit too many things in too many different places. The image rendition preferences need to live in the album template, while the UI preferences need to live in the page template; but I will be looking for opportunities to simplify as the feature set evolves.
I plan to also add download support for other image presentations where it makes sense to do so, for example, the carousel, single images, etc. There is work yet to be done.
Any and all feedback is welcome, particularly as the image download features continues to evolve. It's a complicated thing in Kookaburra, which is why it's taken this long to arrive, and I'd like to get it right.
Changelog
v6.3.2 (2025-06-23)
- Kookaburra Album + Essay: Adds Backlight-native watermarking support.
- Kookaburra Album: Adds new designer option, "Template copy appears on all pages".
- Kookaburra Album: Adds image download feature, and optional, additional image rendition for downloads.
- Kookaburra Page: Adds image download UI to the slideshow.
- Kookaburra Page: Adds "actions overlay" for the Grid and Masonry presentation types, supporting Download and Permalink actions.
- Kookaburra Page: Improves form and table styling.
- Hides Access code for Album Sets when logged in as admin
- Fixes issue of Search Posts results being shown even when disabled in settings
- Fixes issue of incorrect localisation key for SEARCH_TEXT_NO_FOUND_POSTS