Problem with sharing.

Dna

Hi,

I have a slight problem with displaying and allowing original downloads.

I shoot for a school and am paid by the school for my time. In return they get a copy of all the original photos. I am also allowed to sell to the parents of the boys at the school.

My problem is that I get requests from different departments for copies of the photos and so I have moved from sending a cd or dvd of the photos to making them available online via a passworded gallery with originals open. This creates the problem that the parents then request the password so they can see the photos and hopefully buy some.

I am trying to figure out a way to allow the parents access and also allow the originals to be downloaded by the school without uploading them twice.

My current solution is to request photos number that the school wants accesss to and move them to a separate gallery.

What would be nice is allowing XL size and not allowing saving for anyone who wanders in and allowing anyone with a password to save originals.

Any other thoughts ?

Thanks

Andrew

richW

Dna wrote:

Hi,

I have a slight problem with displaying and allowing original downloads.

I shoot for a school and am paid by the school for my time. In return they get a copy of all the original photos. I am also allowed to sell to the parents of the boys at the school.

My problem is that I get requests from different departments for copies of the photos and so I have moved from sending a cd or dvd of the photos to making them available online via a passworded gallery with originals open. This creates the problem that the parents then request the password so they can see the photos and hopefully buy some.

I am trying to figure out a way to allow the parents access and also allow the originals to be downloaded by the school without uploading them twice.

My current solution is to request photos number that the school wants accesss to and move them to a separate gallery.

What would be nice is allowing XL size and not allowing saving for anyone who wanders in and allowing anyone with a password to save originals.

Any other thoughts ?

Thanks

Andrew

Wow Andrew, a complex issue.
About the only thing I could think of ( I'm sure you've know already ) is making a copy of the image, then moving the copy to another gallery that's p/w'd and has the 'save photo' option enabled.

Dgrinners, any other ideas?

photokandy

That was pretty much my only thought too; maybe something else will pop into my mind, but right now I don't see any other way other than to have two galleries; one pwd protected, one not, and have copies of the images in both.

timk519

I'd guess -

1) Upload to a temporary gallery
2) Make all the target galleries you need
3) Use the "move to multiple galleries" to make all the copies you want (under many photos)
4) Delete the temp gallery

Dna

Thanks for all the comments and feedback.

First, I do know about making a copy, it's a little hard when you have 450 photos for an event and the school wants to choose and download immediately. That would take far too long to copy and move.

Second, Smugmug also takes a while to index and open the page for Moving to multiple galleries and again it takes a long time to sort through the photos and put them into the required galleries. Especially as I have 200 or so categories and several thousand galleries.

Lastly, whilst I realise that Smugmug is unlimited uploads and there is no technical reason why I shouldn't duplicate the photos, there is a cost to Smugmug and that cost has to be borne by someone, somewhere. And duplication is inefficient.

What would be nice is to either password a gallery for originals and let the pblic browse and pay, or some way of making a shortcut virtual gallery for the public and then passwording the real one.

I'm open to any other suggestions.

cheers

Andrew

photokandy

Andrew -

At the moment I don't think there's any other way, unfortunately. Virtual Galleries would be ideal, and SM is working on them, but they're not here yet.

I don't know what you use to manage and upload your photos, but perhaps a program that uploaded to SM for you would be the ticket? I use Lightroom ($299) and it makes uploading photos a breeze; easy enough that you could conceivably upload to one gallery and then to another that was password protected. You have to use a plugin to do the upload, but at least you wouldn't have to do the copy & move inside of SM.

There are other tools out there that would surely accomplish the same thing; I use Lr as an example only because that's what I use to manage my SM galleries.

Yes, it's not ideal, but it may be the best solution given SM's current capabilities.

Dna

photokandy wrote:

Andrew -
At the moment I don't think there's any other way, unfortunately. Virtual Galleries would be ideal, and SM is working on them, but they're not here yet.

Thanks for your comments. I invested in Star Explorer very early on when I realised how well it handled the uploads.
The other problem with multiple uploading is that my ISP in Australia sets a limit for uploads and downloads combiined. So the extra uploading and downloading would have an additional cost associated with it which is why a Smugmug solution would be ideal.

cheers

Andrew