Hello!
I've been working with wordpress building sites for clients for a couple of years, and I have a lot of experience with tweaking layouts and their css for the most part. I can code html and css comfortably enough, though I usually use Adobe Muse for non-CMS related projects, and I'm somewhat familiar with php and jquery. I've gotten through a few projects heavily modifying the php of a couple of different layouts, so my confidence in my ability to get the end result is pretty strong.
Now that you know about me, what I'm trying to do is a rather unique image gallery setup. The layout is a fixed sidebar on the left and a responsive gallery to the right. This gallery would be several dozens/hundreds of thumbnails all at a fixed height but varying widths, and all images would be aligned to the left and covered with a 50% black overlay. This would be like an infinite gallery so it loads quickly. There will be a list of several categories on the left hand sidebar, and when you hover over the category the overlay will be removed from those thumbnails in the gallery on the right hand side, giving it a 'highlight' effect. When the category is clicked, it will open a gallery page of just those images on a carousel type setting. This second carousel gallery is not a problem for me to make, but the hover-over-category-name-to-highlight-those-images seems difficult.
I've done a lot of research and found some portfolio gallery plugins I would be glad to purchase that do almost what I want, but none have the "trigger/category name" on the left hand side, always at the top. Most of these plugins require a fixed image width as well. I would like the rows of images to be responsive.
I'm thinking this may be able to be achieved by having a page of posts that are all floated left with no borders or spacing between, but the last piece of the puzzle is that highlight-hover feature. Could somebody please point me in the right direction for this? I know it may be a lot of work, but I've got to get it done and I'll learn anything I need to. I just want the most effective way of doing what I'm talking about. I know this can be done, I just need to have a good idea of how to execute it.
Thanks in advance, and I'm sorry if I'm being super vague. I can make a design mockup if you wish. I could even make the pages from scratch with all the functionality I need, I just need the content to be able to be changed without changing the whole site, so that's why I've come here. Please let me know!