i'm not sure if this can be done, but a lot of times i'm jumping
back and forth between my gallery and editing that gallery.

after editing the gallery, is there a way to jump directly to that
gallery instead of clicking on visit my home page and it takes
me to the top level page and i have to navigate down to the
gallery?

i know if i am viewing the gallery, there's a link at the top that
says edit this gallery, which is great because it takes me directly
to editing that gallery. but i need a way to jump back to
the gallery view going the opposite way. 

I think, when you are editing a gallery you can choose "preview" from the "Show Visitor View" drop down menu.

Anyway what I often do is I edit the gallery in a Firefox window and open a second window for viewing the gallery. When I want to view the gallery while logged in I open the second window in Firefox. If I want to see the real visitor view while not logged in I open the gallery in IE, where I'm not logged in. After I've done some edits simple press the refresh button on the browser window showing the gallery view.

ah yes thank you! i didn't realize there was a preview under the show visitor view drop down.