"Copy To" Function?

jevidon

One thing that has been missing for me is the ability to choose a photo and say what gallery I would like to copy it to. The process of duplicating a file and then moving has become tedious and I would imagine implementing this type of functionality would not be overly difficult.

jfriend

jevidon wrote:

One thing that has been missing for me is the ability to choose a photo and say what gallery I would like to copy it to. The process of duplicating a file and then moving has become tedious and I would imagine implementing this type of functionality would not be overly difficult.

It's been asked for many, many times. Many of us would like this feature. You can add your request to the "feature request" thread if you want.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

It's been asked for many, many times. Many of us would like this feature. You can add your request to the "feature request" thread if you want.

Perhaps since we offer unlimited uploading, bandwidth, and photo storage already, maybe the best way to make sure this doesn't get abused is to leave things as they are.

Food for thought.

jfriend

Andy wrote:

Perhaps since we offer unlimited uploading, bandwidth, and photo storage already, maybe the best way to make sure this doesn't get abused is to leave things as they are.

Food for thought.

That would have been my guess why you don't offer it - though that has never been offered as an answer before.

Instead, you make me go through more pain to accomplish the same task (and use the same storage) by uploading multiple independent copies.

You also don't offer virtual galleries (though I saw a reference that maybe it was being worked on) so you don't make it easy for us to offer the same image in multiple views. That's why people keep asking for it. Until you offer some solution that is easier than re-uploading, people will keep asking. Surely you can understand that. There is a customer pain point that currently has no pleasant solution. Meanwhile, some competitors offer collections or virtual galleries which makes this problem go away (if it's done right).

For me to offer soccer game photos in password protected galleries where I have a view of a game, a given player's photos in that game and a given player's photos for the season to date, I have to upload three copies of every photo. Quite a pain to get the viewer experience I'm looking for.

Surely, you could solve the user problem and not open yourself up to storage abuse if you felt that was important to do.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

You also don't offer virtual galleries (though I saw a reference that maybe it was being worked on)

It was discussed in a thread where our CEO and Chief Geek and our President both said we wanted it and we'd have 'em one day

We don't have them yet though, but we're working on other things in the meantime.

jfriend wrote:

Surely, you could solve the user problem and not open yourself up to storage abuse if you felt that was important to do.

We think lots of things are important - but as always, it comes down to resources and priorities. This is sure one of the things nearer to the top of our list than the bottom.

darryl

Andy wrote:

We think lots of things are important - but as always, it comes down to resources and priorities. This is sure one of the things nearer to the top of our list than the bottom.

Woot for it being closer to the top! ;-}

Erick L

Virtual galleries or "copy to" would be great and I know many would love it too. From my perspective, the current solution is like the worst of both worlds.

If you make it happen, make sure that deleting a photo in one gallery doesn't delete the virtual photos in other galleries, or add an option to delete them all (some might prefer that). Even if it's virtual, a "copy to" interface like the current "move to" would be nice. "upload to many galleries" would be nice too.

Andy

Erick L wrote:

Virtual galleries or "copy to" would be great and I know many would love it too. From my perspective, the current solution is like the worst of both worlds.

If you make it happen, make sure that deleting a photo in one gallery doesn't delete the virtual photos in other galleries, or add an option to delete them all (some might prefer that). Even if it's virtual, a "copy to" interface like the current "move to" would be nice. "upload to many galleries" would be nice too.

thanks Erick

chuckinsocal

A cheap solution to this is NitroDesk which will copy or move images between galleries with a simple drag and drop. It's a little dis-intuitive at first but after working with it once or twice it's a piece of cake. I think it's like $20.00.

I have no connection to this company. I'm just a happy user so I pass the info on to people who may find it useful.

darryl

chuckinsocal wrote:

A cheap solution to this is NitroDesk which will copy or move images between galleries with a simple drag and drop. It's a little dis-intuitive at first but after working with it once or twice it's a piece of cake. I think it's like $20.00.

I have no connection to this company. I'm just a happy user so I pass the info on to people who may find it useful.

Hi Chuck:

I could've sworn I tried to do this with Nitrodesk a few weeks ago, and could not get the thing to actually Copy. I tried holding down Ctrl while dragging, and the icon changed to a [+] symbol as I dragged, but the photo actually got moved, not copied. (Same symbol showed when I dragged w/o holding down Ctrl, so I think they just got the UI wrong.)

Are you sure you did a Copy and not a Move?

Thanks!

chuckinsocal

OK ... now I'm confused. I swore that I copied photos from one gallery into another just last week. In fact, when I look at the galleries, I see the same photo in multiple galleries so I'm assuming it worked out ok.

But now, when I try to copy a photo from one gallery to another, I am actually moving the photo. I've followed the help instructions line by line several times but it still just moves the photos.

I'm pretty sure I'm overlooking the obvious so I sent the NitroDesk people a note asking them what's up with this thing. What am I missing?

I'll post their answer here as soon as I hear from them. Unless another NitroDesk user wants to chime in here to clear the fog.

chuckinsocal

OK ... It looks like I was totally wrong. Here's the response from NitroDesk:

Chuck,
This is an oversight on our side, both in terms of documentation as well as the drag cursor.

SmugMug does not allow copying images easily. Hence it is actually a move if you use the method you mentioned. Any reference or indication that we are doing a copy is wrong, and we shall fix that in the docs and UI.

However, what you are wishing to do might be possible through a round-about way.
Create a profile with two separate accounts with the same smugmug login credentials (a little tricky when managing, since the two accounts will be named the same in the program)
Use the transfer window to drag and drop images from a gallery in one SM account to the destination gallery in the OTHER SM account.
This should actually download the image to your local machine, then upload it to the other gallery.

However, this is valid feedback and I shall look to see if there is a better way to do this or to force a "download and upload" (slow) copy if you hold down the control key.

thanks!
-Goutham S

So, there ya go. My challenge now is to figure out what I thought I did last week .

I'm not sure about their little work around. I haven't tried it but it occurs to me that it would be just as easy to upload the photo to the target galleries or just do the Make Copy then Move thing.

Here's a strong case for Virtual Galleries but I'm not sure where that is on the priority list.

My apologies if I mislead anyone.

rynoshark

Two thumbs up on implementing Virtual Galleries or the "Copy To" feature (hopefully both!). Right now I can't get my wife to manage our photos at all since the process of copying is too hard...and I don't want her accidentally deleting our originals.

Between the two features I'd prefer to see Virtual Galleries. This way if one of us updates meta-data on a photo (regardless of which gallery) it is visible in ALL galleries. Keeping Virtual Galleries simple for the customer will probably take some serious thought (e.g. if I color correct in a virtual gallery should it permanently color correct in ALL virtual copies?).

darryl

Andy wrote:

Perhaps since we offer unlimited uploading, bandwidth, and photo storage already, maybe the best way to make sure this doesn't get abused is to leave things as they are.

Food for thought.

So I was chewing on this Andy, and it doesn't make sense. :-}

Even with unlimited uploading, bandwidth and storage, how would a bulk copy or even a single "copy to another gallery" function be subject to abuse?

1. To what end would a copy function be abused? I mean, let's look at why somebody would want to copy a single image to another gallery, or even all the images to another gallery: a) To create a subset of a gallery. b) To create a gallery with alternate effects (color vs. B&W). I can't think of anything else. Might people try to copy galleries by "mistake"? I'm doubtful of that. I mean, let's say you had a really popular gallery of photos that you sold a lot of prints from. What would you gain by duplicating it? Higher Google PageRank? I don't know. I'm just really having a hard time figuring out how a copy function could be *abused*. Feel free to enlighten me.

2. Right now, people get around this problem by: creating a single copy in gallery, and then moving. How would creating a "copy this photo to another gallery" be any more abusive? (I'm talking about a function for a single photo, not bulk.)

3. For a bulk copy, the workaround is to download and then reupload all the images for a given gallery. This actually uses *more* bandwidth and CPU resources (download + upload of originals you already have, creating various sizes and rotation) than a simple copy would. And as far as photo storage, you end up with the same amount of space used.

So by leaving things the way they are now, I posit that there are actually more resources are being "abused".

Andy

darryl wrote:

So I was chewing on this Andy, and it doesn't make sense. :-}

Even with unlimited uploading, bandwidth and storage, how would a bulk copy or even a single "copy to another gallery" function be subject to abuse?

1. To what end would a copy function be abused? I mean, let's look at why somebody would want to copy a single image to another gallery, or even all the images to another gallery: a) To create a subset of a gallery. b) To create a gallery with alternate effects (color vs. B&W). I can't think of anything else. Might people try to copy galleries by "mistake"? I'm doubtful of that. I mean, let's say you had a really popular gallery of photos that you sold a lot of prints from. What would you gain by duplicating it? Higher Google PageRank? I don't know. I'm just really having a hard time figuring out how a copy function could be *abused*. Feel free to enlighten me.

2. Right now, people get around this problem by: creating a single copy in gallery, and then moving. How would creating a "copy this photo to another gallery" be any more abusive? (I'm talking about a function for a single photo, not bulk.)

3. For a bulk copy, the workaround is to download and then reupload all the images for a given gallery. This actually uses *more* bandwidth and CPU resources (download + upload of originals you already have, creating various sizes and rotation) than a simple copy would. And as far as photo storage, you end up with the same amount of space used.

So by leaving things the way they are now, I posit that there are actually more resources are being "abused".

Good stuff, Darryl, thanks

sskoutas

Andy wrote:

Perhaps since we offer unlimited uploading, bandwidth, and photo storage already, maybe the best way to make sure this doesn't get abused is to leave things as they are.

Food for thought.

Andy, you know how much of a SmugMug fan I am (though I've been pretty quiet lately), so please take my comments as constructive. I agree with the OP - I would love an "easier" way to get a single image to appear in multiple galleries. Keeping your servers in mind, might in not be wise / possible to upload an image to your account, and then have a way to select which multiple galleries that image shows in? That way, you're only storing that one image and allowing it to show in multiple places???

I could upload a photo of my son at his first birthday, and, for example, ask SmugMug to display it "virtually" in his gallery, my "family events" gallery, and perhaps even the gallery that feeds the slideshow. Less space... more exposure. Cool.

Your thoughts?

[edit] - I've read the balance of this thread and see my redundancy. Please only count my post as another vote for virtual galleries.

cabinetbuff

sskoutas wrote:

... another vote for virtual galleries.

Ditto!

I also started a thread ( http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=108475 ) not realizing there was already a talk about the Virtual Galleries taking place here.

I guess it's on everyone's mind and people call it different names. The bottom line is that it makes sense to have it and it's long overdue.

I was even thinking of donating one of my online servers in a real data-center and getting together with some of SmugMug's technically talented customers (in UI) to create our own version of Virtual Gallery server via SmugMug API! It might sound absurd but I really need this functionality and I am willing to go that far. Any takers? SmugMug, are you guys anywhere close to giving us this functionality? Should I press on?

darryl

Uber-Thread for "Copy To Gallery" / "Virtual Gallery" Feature Request:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=110537