New image sizes?

jfriend · October 15, 2007

Has this been announced yet? It's in the help system. By test, it seems to apply to newly uploaded or freshly rotated images.

BTW, this new functionality is very awesome!

Sheaf · October 15, 2007

It's just part of what we released last night. We will be making a full announcement soon detailing all the changes.

jfriend · October 15, 2007

Sheaf wrote:

It's just part of what we released last night. We will be making a full announcement soon detailing all the changes.

Is there any method for getting this to apply to existing galleries other than a double rotate of all images in the gallery?

Andy · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

BTW, this new functionality is very awesome!

Here we go, XL3 down to Tiny thumbnail

jfriend · October 15, 2007

Andy wrote:

Here we go, XL3 down to Tiny thumbnail

Awesome, awesome, awesome! Really changes the way Smugmug images look on bigger screens!

Andy · October 15, 2007

Sheaf · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Is there any method for getting this to apply to existing galleries other than a double rotate of all images in the gallery?

Currently, no. Sorry! If there was an easy way to do it in bulk, our servers would have some serious problems. But we don't want it to be a chore either for those set on getting full functionality of it on their site. I'm sure we will be discussing it at length this week at SmugMug HQ.

DavidTO · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

BTW, this new functionality is very awesome!

Jfriend, the master of understatement.

WTG, Smuggy!

jfriend · October 15, 2007

Sheaf wrote:

Currently, no. Sorry! If there was an easy way to do it in bulk, our servers would have some serious problems. But we don't want it to be a chore either for those set on getting full functionality of it on their site. I'm sure we will be discussing it at length this week at SmugMug HQ.

I understand and appreciate the server load issue. The work-around of double rotating is twice as bad on server load since it will regenerate all sizes twice. If you had a more efficient (for you) workaround, I'd use that.

I, for one, would be fine with an opt-in feature for the new sizes where you guys queue my request up and process it "when the servers have cycles" which is hopefully sometime in the next few days and probably in the middle of the night. I only need to do about 10% of my galleries.

AnneMcBean · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

I understand and appreciate the server load issue. The work-around of double rotating is twice as bad on server load since it will regenerate all sizes twice. If you had a more efficient (for you) workaround, I'd use that.

I, for one, would be fine with an opt-in feature for the new sizes where you guys queue my request up and process it "when the servers have cycles" which is hopefully sometime in the next few days and probably in the middle of the night. I only need to do about 10% of my galleries.

To be clear, anything that generates new display images or a new original image will generate the SmugMungous sizes as well. This includes adding/removing watermarks, cropping, color effects, replace this photo, or rotating. You're right though, seems like it would have twice the load of a simple opt-in.

-Anne

Sheaf · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

I understand and appreciate the server load issue. The work-around of double rotating is twice as bad on server load since it will regenerate all sizes twice.

That's true, but until we find an alternative solution this saves us from having the site bog down immensely when someone with 50,000 photos pulls the trigger.

Baldy · October 15, 2007

Hey John and David, who never miss a trick and catch things the moment we release 'em

:

We've only worked out the display of large sizes in lightbox so far, but the way it does it is pretty trick, we think. If you're viewing a gallery in SmugMug style and click on the medium image, lightbox auto chooses the size that fits your browser area. Expand your browser or shrink it and it selects a different image size. Send the URL you see in your address bar and notice that it ends in A-LB. Send that URL to someone and it will auto choose for them too.

Notice on the top of lightbox where you used to be able to choose S M L. Now you have the extra sizes (no surprise) but also Auto too.

On our biggest days we can get as many as a million photos now and so scaling this was a major concern. And we get 'em in spikes. And how to go back and make these larger sizes for the existing 210 million photos?

You'll wanna read Don's blog on how we process these now and plan to handle the Sunday night spikes.

Anne has a whole bunch of updated help sections about to go live.

jfriend · October 15, 2007

Baldy wrote:

Hey John and David, who never miss a trick and catch things the moment we release 'em :

We've only worked out the display of large sizes in lightbox so far, but the way it does it is pretty trick, we think. If you're viewing a gallery in SmugMug style and click on the medium image, lightbox auto chooses the size that fits your browser area. Expand your browser or shrink it and it selects a different image size. Send the URL you see in your address bar and notice that it ends in A-LB. Send that URL to someone and it will auto choose for them too.

Notice on the top of lightbox where you used to be able to choose S M L. Now you have the extra sizes (no surprise) but also Auto too.

On our biggest days we can get as many as a million photos now and so scaling this was a major concern. And we get 'em in spikes. And how to go back and make these larger sizes for the existing 210 million photos?

You'll wanna read Don's blog on how we process these now and plan to handle the Sunday night spikes.

Anne has a whole bunch of updated help sections about to go live.

Auto LB is great. I love it. I had noticed that it picked a larger size. I didn't realize you had a new "auto" URL. For folks with large screens, that's really, really cool and kind of a neat URL to share instead of a direct image link.

Will the "smugmug view" show larger than an "M" sized image on a large screen if those sizes are enabled? I don't have a large screen right now to try it on.

You are obviously right to protect the load of your systems.

At the same time, the double rotate work-around that is both inefficent (for your server load) and kind of a pain for your users doesn't seem like the best place to be either.

On the other hand, maybe the users who know about it and care will use the double rotate work-around and then the whole issue will just go away in a few weeks.

devbobo · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

At the same time, the double rotate work-around that is both inefficent (for your server load) and kind of a pain for your users doesn't seem like the best place to be either.

On the other hand, maybe the users who know about it and care will use the double rotate work-around and then the whole issue will just go away in a few weeks.

John,

For pro users, they can just reapply a watermark to achieve the same result.

David

marlof · October 15, 2007

Right now I can set the max image size to either X3Large or Original. Will there be a setting to allow nothing more than Large? I like to upload originals to my galleries (for safe keeping), but only allow large viewing by visitors. If this is not possible, I'll have to create double galleries, one with 800x800s and one private one with originals.

Andy · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Will the "smugmug view" show larger than an "M" sized image on a large screen if those sizes are enabled? I don't have a large screen right now to try it on.

Stay tuned, SmugMungous is in phase 1 now

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=32241

jfriend · October 15, 2007

devbobo wrote:

John,

For pro users, they can just reapply a watermark to achieve the same result.

David

I saw that in Anne's message. If you're pro and using a watermark, that is the easiest way because it is only one user operation rather than two. It also has the benefit that your galleries are never in a compromised state during the transition like they are when you do the double rotate.

I'm guessing that pro+watermark is only a minotiry portion of the overall galleries in your service though. Anyway, I don't mean to make a big deal out of this. It's in the "would be nice" category. I've already double rotated six of my galleries and will do a few more in the next few days.

jfriend · October 15, 2007

Andy wrote:

Stay tuned, SmugMungous is in phase 1 now

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=32241

This discussion was so long ago (April) that I'd forgotten what was discussed in Baldy's summary mid-thread. That stuff will be cool when it gets here. I'll be anxiously waiting for phase two I guess.

Andy · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

This discussion was so long ago (April) that I'd forgotten what was discussed in Baldy's summary mid-thread. That stuff will be cool when it gets here. I'll be anxiously waiting for phase two I guess.

Hey, we're 25 peeps doing the work of 50

we'll get there

AFAIK nobody has something like this. Nobody.

Baldy · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

This discussion was so long ago (April) that I'd forgotten what was discussed in Baldy's summary mid-thread. That stuff will be cool when it gets here. I'll be anxiously waiting for phase two I guess.

We're telliing ourselves here (well, maybe the UI and theme guys aren't) that the really gut-busting stuff that requires 200 extra terrabytes of storage :whew and a huge step-up in image processing is behind us.

It wasn't so difficult to make lightbox stretch as the image got larger, but there's a lot of work to do on the themes to make them stretch.

jfriend · October 15, 2007

Baldy wrote:

We're telling ourselves here (well, maybe the UI and theme guys aren't) that the really gut-busting stuff that requires 200 extra terrabytes of storage :whew and a huge step-up in image processing is behind us.

It wasn't so difficult to make lightbox stretch as the image got larger, but there's a lot of work to do on the themes to make them stretch.

I'm glad the heavy lifting is now behind you. The UI possibilities going forward are exciting. Ahh yes, the themes. That would be a bunch of work to adapt to a bunch of new image sizes.

From the day I first messed with Smugmug CSS, I found it a bit surprising that the CSS for the themes was just covered with hard coded widths. They aren't even use symbolic constants or variables just pure hard-coded numbers. It seems like such a giant step backwards in screen layout technology, particular in support of AJAX-capable dynamic screens.

I wish there was a more extensible way to solve this problem than just making separate hard-coded width versions of every single theme for every single discrete display image size. It feels to me like themes (and thus Smugmug) are slowly getting backed into a corner that will make even more dynamic screens (with other optional elements or dynamic layout elements in the main screen layout) more and more difficult in the future.

JenGrace · October 15, 2007

marlof wrote:

Right now I can set the max image size to either X3Large or Original. Will there be a setting to allow nothing more than Large? I like to upload originals to my galleries (for safe keeping), but only allow large viewing by visitors. If this is not possible, I'll have to create double galleries, one with 800x800s and one private one with originals.

I'd like an answer to this as well...

jfriend · October 15, 2007

JenW wrote:

I'd like an answer to this as well...

Hmmm, does your customize gallery dialog not look like this:

I wonder if this finer granularity is a "pro" only feature (I have a pro account)? I can't really tell if that's the case from this help page.

Andy · October 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Hmmm, does your customize gallery dialog not look like this:

I wonder if this finer granularity is a "pro" only feature (I have a pro account)? I can't really tell if that's the case from this help page.

It is indeed a pro-only feature right now.

AnneMcBean · October 15, 2007

Andy wrote:

It is indeed a pro-only feature right now.

Standard and power users can still block original viewing (and only original viewing) and pro users can still block everything down to, and including, the Large size.

-Anne

{JT} · October 15, 2007

You are correct, integrating the new image sizes into existing styles will be a challenge. Most of the CSS code you see is legacy code left there since our first days 5 years ago - when themes and cobranding (now customizing) were not in the game plan. There is a plan in motion to clean up a lot of current code, enabling the new larger sizes and themes to work, exciting times indeed.

jfriend wrote:

I'm glad the heavy lifting is now behind you. The UI possibilities going forward are exciting. Ahh yes, the themes. That would be a bunch of work to adapt to a bunch of new image sizes.

From the day I first messed with Smugmug CSS, I found it a bit surprising that the CSS for the themes was just covered with hard coded widths. They aren't even use symbolic constants or variables just pure hard-coded numbers. It seems like such a giant step backwards in screen layout technology, particular in support of AJAX-capable dynamic screens.

I wish there was a more extensible way to solve this problem than just making separate hard-coded width versions of every single theme for every single discrete display image size. It feels to me like themes (and thus Smugmug) are slowly getting backed into a corner that will make even more dynamic screens (with other optional elements or dynamic layout elements in the main screen layout) more and more difficult in the future.

Andy · October 15, 2007

{JT} wrote:

You are correct, integrating the new image sizes into existing styles will be a challenge. Most of the CSS code you see is legacy code left there since our first days 5 years ago - when themes and cobranding (now customizing) were not in the game plan. There is a plan in motion to clean up a lot of current code, enabling the new larger sizes and themes to work, exciting times indeed.

Get back to work :whip

seth · October 15, 2007

I don't know if the idea was to get more pro users, but the new sizes put me over the top. I just upgraded to a pro account. :-)

JenGrace · October 15, 2007

Andy wrote:

It is indeed a pro-only feature right now.

When you say "right now," does that mean it will be a power feature again soon?

Not that I think many people would want to lift my pictures, but I liked being able to block out the largest image. I know technically I can still block out the largest (original), but I'd like to block out anything larger than large. Seeing as how this was a power feature, why shouldn't it remain one? It's not that I don't appreciate the capability to show larger pics, but I just don't want to show them.

All in all I adore smugmug and the features...I mean, unlimited storage and bandwidth? (not that I use a lot of bandwidth, but still it's there...:D ) But becoming a pro user just so I can use a feature that I had as a power user doesn't really sit right with me.

SUBMONO · October 15, 2007

I'm also a bit alarmed about the new settings and the pro-only policy to finetune them. Even though I'm just using the standard account I don't want people to be able to view my pictures bigger than large or maybe xlarge at the most. Forcing me into x3large is, well, a little bit surprising to say the least.

Please reconsider your settings policy and also allow standard users (which I think make up the majority of all smugug accounts) to decide how big they want to present their photographs.

Thanks,
Sven

jogle · October 16, 2007

Like Sven, I'm a power user that is shocked that my site has suddenly changed from being able to restrict people to Large images to them having access to x3 sized images for any new galleries.

I was going to upload a bunch of recent shoots tonight to try it out, but there is no way I will do that until my larger then large sizes are protected.

New image sizes?

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