Choosing Favorites for Events – Observations and Suggestions

Rob Greer Photography

This latest SmugMug Pro feature (Events) will eventually be very helpful for my business. I offer my thanks to SmugMug for making this initial effort! However, right now there are several issues with this feature that prevent me from including it in my client interaction workflow. In no particular order they are:

1) Right now we have to Tools - > Control Panel -> Pro tab -> Events -> Manage -> New Event if we want to create a new sharable event. Wouldn’t it be better to simply include a “Add as New Event” link to the Tools menu within the gallery pages?

2) Instead of only providing us with a gallery showing our clients’ favorites, I’d like to be provided with a a list of file names of their favorite image selections. In my current workflow, my clients send me a list of filenames that match their favorite photos. I take that list, select those files on my local computer, and then copy those selected images to a Favorites folder on my local computer. I realize that I could simply download all of the files in my clients’ SmugMug favorites folder from SmugMug to my computer but that seems like it might be slower and a bandwidth hog for both me and SmugMug.

3) We need a “friendly URL” feature for favorite capable galleries just as we have now in our standard galleries. Ideally, I’d like to see that the path for “everyone” remain as it is today (i.e. DOMAIN.EXT/GALLERY/FRIENDLY-NAME) and the path for “favorites” be something like DOMAIN.EXT/GALLERY-share/FRIENDLY-NAME. This model provides the additional benefit of allowing me to quickly jump to the share gallery without having to go to my control panel or look up the special URL sent to my clients.

4) I’d like to have a separate password for the favorites gallery that is different from the regular gallery. I don’t want my clients to mistakenly share their favorites gallery URL with guests as that could really screw with my clients’ favorites selections.


That's all for now. I'm sure I'll come up with more later ...

Rob Greer Photography

I just noticed another thing. When I create a Favorites gallery, I want to send it to both the bride and groom's e-mail address. And I want their favorites to be collected as a single list, with both parties being able to add to it. Now I can do that by sending them the same URL but in the SmugMug interface, I can only select a single person for the sharing. At the very least, I'd like to be able to enter multiple e-mail addresses in the e-mail field so when I click the Share button, a message is sent to both parties.

As an additional feature note, I'd like to be able to change and SAVE the message (and check box settings) on the e-mail tool.

Frederique

Rob,

Glad you like the event feature!! These are great suggestions, and we are actually working on implementing a few for our next rev. Stay tune!!

Thanks, and have a great weekend,

Frederique

smurfy

Well, after three tries at using the events option and no clients using it to tag favorites, I finally had an engagement session where the bride - to - be tagged 54 files. The files were moved into another gallery by default, and when checking to see what she picked, I checked the settings for that gallery created by Smugmug also. That new gallery was not right click protected nor watermarked. Further, it allowed all her choices to be displayed at original size.

The engagement gallery I created last week allowed a max of "extra large" size, was right click protected, and watermarked. The copies the bride tagged were completely up for grabs by the client, as well as anyone she may have shared a link with. So unfortunately, though the idea of events was great, I won't be using this feature again unless Smugmug makes the files as secure as they were in the gallery they were copied from.

Andy

smurfy wrote: »

Well, after three tries at using the events option and no clients using it to tag favorites, I finally had an engagement session where the bride - to - be tagged 54 files. The files were moved into another gallery by default, and when checking to see what she picked, I checked the settings for that gallery created by Smugmug also. That new gallery was not right click protected nor watermarked. Further, it allowed all her choices to be displayed at original size.

The engagement gallery I created last week allowed a max of "extra large" size, was right click protected, and watermarked. The copies the bride tagged were completely up for grabs by the client, as well as anyone she may have shared a link with. So unfortunately, though the idea of events was great, I won't be using this feature again unless Smugmug makes the files as secure as they were in the gallery they were copied from.

Hi, the favorites galleries do respect the settings of the original gallery - we designed it that way. If yours did not, the only explanation I can give is that the source gallery didn't have those settings. Can I see the source and favorites gallery?

smurfy

Sure. Thanks for responding.

http://godburnphotos.smugmug.com/Weddings/Engagements-and-Couples/Jessie-Jeovanny/14392277_rgaip#1066660532_GRqWG

The settings are as they were when I created the gallery.

Andy

I just created a test for me, as part of that event. You can see my gallery here
http://godburnphotos.smugmug.com/Event-Favorites/Jessie-Jeovannys-Engagement/AndySmugMugTests-Favorites/14451592_bJcgL#1066660532_GRqWG

The gallery is Xlarge and right click protected just like your original.

smurfy

Ok, Thanks. Maybe it's my own little cyber twilight zone going on.

Gir

Export List of Filenames from Event Favorites

Rob Greer Photography wrote: »

2) Instead of only providing us with a gallery showing our clients’ favorites, I’d like to be provided with a a list of file names of their favorite image selections. In my current workflow, my clients send me a list of filenames that match their favorite photos. I take that list, select those files on my local computer, and then copy those selected images to a Favorites folder on my local computer. I realize that I could simply download all of the files in my clients’ SmugMug favorites folder from SmugMug to my computer but that seems like it might be slower and a bandwidth hog for both me and SmugMug.

I would love this suggestion to be a reality! Our clients already love the Event Favorite galleries and I'm excited to utilize it's potential more! I too thought about downloading all the pictures but I'd prefer to work with the files I already have and a readily available list of filenames either as part of the interface, or even just an "export list of filenames" feature. I hope this is workable, as I think many professional photographers who are making photo gifts, albums, etc. for their clients, would find this very useful!

Thanks!

juliank

I am looking for the same, i.e. an export with a list of filenames. Any new ideas for this?

Gir wrote: »

I would love this suggestion to be a reality! Our clients already love the Event Favorite galleries and I'm excited to utilize it's potential more! I too thought about downloading all the pictures but I'd prefer to work with the files I already have and a readily available list of filenames either as part of the interface, or even just an "export list of filenames" feature. I hope this is workable, as I think many professional photographers who are making photo gifts, albums, etc. for their clients, would find this very useful!

Thanks!