How to keep a private and public version of my SmugMug site?

esac

I have asked this in various forms, but I still haven't found a solution that works for me. I want to keep everything organized in private galleries by date
2010-04
2010-03
2009-08
etc..

And from the photos within those, create public galleries:
Disneyland Trip 2010
Tulip Festival 2010
Daughters First Birthday

For the public galleries I want all of the feature set of typical public galleries (keywords, combining keywords, searches, etc..)

Here are the options I explored and the problem with each:

1. Create collections and/or smart galleries. PROBLEM: because the original file is in an unlisted gallery, the keywords are not available (I think they should be since I am now overriding this, but other people disagree)

2. Mark all folders as public and hide the ones I do not want visible. PROBLEM: you can only hide 1 photo at a time, so I would have to click through every single photo, click on 'hide' and wait for it to be hidden. Also, the dated galleries will now show in gallery listings which I do not want.

3. Upload 2 copies (or multiple if the same picture is in 3 or more galleries). PROBLEM: requires 2x or more space, 2x or more bandwidth, if I update the photo (keywords, crop, etc..) then I have to remember everywhere the photo is and also update it manually.

4. Copy the folder from the original private gallery to a new one. PROBLEM: again the same as #3, except it is not using my bandwidth.

Any other ideas appreciated. For some reason I thought this would be a common ask for people who want all of their photos online but don't want them all visible.

asd

esac wrote: »

I have asked this in various forms, but I still haven't found a solution that works for me. I want to keep everything organized in private galleries by date
2010-04
2010-03
2009-08
etc..

And from the photos within those, create public galleries:
Disneyland Trip 2010
Tulip Festival 2010
Daughters First Birthday

For the public galleries I want all of the feature set of typical public galleries (keywords, combining keywords, searches, etc..)

Here are the options I explored and the problem with each:

1. Create collections and/or smart galleries. PROBLEM: because the original file is in an unlisted gallery, the keywords are not available (I think they should be since I am now overriding this, but other people disagree)

2. Mark all folders as public and hide the ones I do not want visible. PROBLEM: you can only hide 1 photo at a time, so I would have to click through every single photo, click on 'hide' and wait for it to be hidden. Also, the dated galleries will now show in gallery listings which I do not want.

3. Upload 2 copies (or multiple if the same picture is in 3 or more galleries). PROBLEM: requires 2x or more space, 2x or more bandwidth, if I update the photo (keywords, crop, etc..) then I have to remember everywhere the photo is and also update it manually.

4. Copy the folder from the original private gallery to a new one. PROBLEM: again the same as #3, except it is not using my bandwidth.

Any other ideas appreciated. For some reason I thought this would be a common ask for people who want all of their photos online but don't want them all visible.

I think the way to look at it is as different sets of photos. One set are your originals that you want to archive and protect. The other set are display copies. Many photogs will spend time processing just the display copies (crop, touch up, tag, geotag, etc) and so they would be inherently different from the originals, making your situation inapplicable. It comes up for you because you just want to share a subset of your originals. And what if you decide you'd like to put more detailed (but private--say, about family) titles and tags on your originals but not have that show on the publicly visible view? If you upload copies, you're fine--just modify the public copy.

Folks suggested uploading copies in your other thread as well (and you note this in #3 above), but I thought I'd add my rationale for the utility of duplication.

I do agree that it feels wasteful to do this when the original and display photos are the same, but it's simpler and probably the easiest solution to your problem.

esac

asd wrote: »

I think the way to look at it is as different sets of photos. One set are your originals that you want to archive and protect. The other set are display copies. Many photogs will spend time processing just the display copies (crop, touch up, tag, geotag, etc) and so they would be inherently different from the originals, making your situation inapplicable. It comes up for you because you just want to share a subset of your originals. And what if you decide you'd like to put more detailed (but private--say, about family) titles and tags on your originals but not have that show on the publicly visible view? If you upload copies, you're fine--just modify the public copy.

Folks suggested uploading copies in your other thread as well (and you note this in #3 above), but I thought I'd add my rationale for the utility of duplication.

I do agree that it feels wasteful to do this when the original and display photos are the same, but it's simpler and probably the easiest solution to your problem.

It is the simplest solution only when I want 1 copy (2 photos, public and private) of the same photo. But when I want multiple, it becomes a lot harder to manage. Say I had a really good photo of my 2 daughters A & K from Disneyland. That photo will now probably be in at least 4 galleries:

1. Private
2. Best of Disneyland 2010
3. Best of A
4. Best of K.

In that situation, if I wanted to update the photo (crop, retouch, add a new tag), I would have to find every gallery it is in, make the same change (or copy it over). I can't even imagine the overhead of doing that.

I still don't see multiple copies as feasible. Your justification is that I might want to add 'private' tags to the photo. I will never want to do that, there is no reason for me to put tags that I don't want people to see on the photos.

I honestly don't understand why it is when I add a photo to a collection, it doesn't simply follow the rules of the gallery it is in. In essence, it is the same as having 2 copies (one in the unlisted folder, and now one in a public folder).

rsquared

esac wrote: »

I honestly don't understand why it is when I add a photo to a collection, it doesn't simply follow the rules of the gallery it is in. In essence, it is the same as having 2 copies (one in the unlisted folder, and now one in a public folder).

But it's not really the same as having two copies. It's more like you've got a 'Master' photo in the unlisted gallery and a pointer to that master in a public collection. The 'copy' in the public collection is just a pointer back to the master photo in the unlisted gallery, and therefore follows the rules of it's primary location.

Yes, what you want to happen here could feasibly be done but would require SM to do some major reprogramming. To be honest, I think the way they've got it now makes perfect sense, but if they get enough requests for a feature, it may eventually happen... They've got dozens of new feature requests, and hundreds of thousands of users. You are the first person I have seen wanting this feature, so in my opinion, it's in your best interest to try and make do with the way things are now. There is no chance that they're changing any time soon.

(I don't mean to offend by that last sentence. SM is slow to change features. Your request may get done eventually, but you'll save yourself a lot of grief if you don't count on it happening within the next year or two.)

esac

You are right, I think that it is pointless to wait for it to be fixed/implemented. I am not happy with any of the options still, so I have started exploring an offline solution, and I am thinking that I will just use Picasa to manage the "virtual" albums, which will allow me to keep a single copy so that if I update one, the other is automatically updated. I will still be able to upload both private and public galleries which is fine. The only cost is to smugmug for twice of the bandwidth and storage, so that should be incentive for them to provide this functionality in the future.

jfriend

esac wrote: »

You are right, I think that it is pointless to wait for it to be fixed/implemented. I am not happy with any of the options still, so I have started exploring an offline solution, and I am thinking that I will just use Picasa to manage the "virtual" albums, which will allow me to keep a single copy so that if I update one, the other is automatically updated. I will still be able to upload both private and public galleries which is fine. The only cost is to smugmug for twice of the bandwidth and storage, so that should be incentive for them to provide this functionality in the future.

Just one other option to consider. I decided that I wanted a fully automatic online backup for all my photos. Since uploading to Smugmug private galleries is not an automatic process, I decided to go with BackBlaze. It's an extra annual fee, but their backup process is completely automatic and all my photos (and other documents on my computer too) are automatically backed up online. I shoot a soccer game, transfer the images to my hard drive from the CF card and within a few hours, they are backed up online without me doing anything. BackBlaze has unlimited storage and I'm taking advantage of that with almost a terabyte of data backed up. I even have my Lightroom databases backed up automatically so I could reconstruct the entire photo structure at any time.

The BackBlaze solution obviously does not give you to ability to just decide which images go public with keywords, but it is a more comprehensive backup solution.

asd

As an aside, thanks for the Backblaze mention, jfriend. Looks better designed than Mozy (which has to re-backup everything if you use a private key for encryption and reinstall your OS).