single link slideshows

Hi , I’ve been playing with this brief tutorial on single link slideshows –

https://archetyped.com/know/slb-single-link-slideshows/

Using the display none method as shown on the tutorial –

<a href="image_1.png" title="Slide 1">Slide 1</a>
<div style="display: none">
    <a href="image_2.png" title="Slide 2">Slide 2</a>
    <a href="image_3.png" title="Slide 3">Slide 3</a>
    <a href="image_4.png" title="Slide 4">Slide 4</a>
    <a href="image_5.png" title="Slide 5">Slide 5</a>
</div>

I’m trying to use an image as the link with ACF for the all images. like a gallery album cover that when clicked the slideshow opens the images contained in the display:none div.

i’m using this to get the first image as the cover –

$image  = $images[0]; // get first image in the gallery [1] for second, [2] for third, and so on.

It all works well .. apart from one thing , the image used for the album cover shows twice in the slideshow , one after the other. I guess simple lightbox is picking up ALL the images on the page.
I tried the [slb_exclude] but it didn’t work.

anyway to off-set the images so it skips the first in the slideshow?