Restrict sale of "cropped" images

Redneck

Hi there, I have a problem that's bothering me.
It happens pretty often that a customer orders a print format that needs to be cropped. I would like to see a way to restrict the sale of cropped images. I know about the pricing opportunities (too much work to price single images differently) and I know about the "Hide products that need to be cropped" (no customer will find or use that) option. But what I basically would like to see is that the pro can force his gallery to only show print sizes to the customer that would not need cropping. This way I could upload different format ratios like 2:3 or 4:5 and I wouldn't have to worry about that the customer orders a 4x6 print of an original format ratio of 4:5.
Again, I know I can do that by setting prices to 0 for the formats I don't want to sell but that can be a lot more work than necessary. I think a gallery setting option like "don't make cropped formats available for sale" would be a lot easier (at least for the pro).

du8die

Set it once for a gallery - then you can copy the pricing from a gallery that's already set...

d8

Redneck

du8die wrote: »

Set it once for a gallery - then you can copy the pricing from a gallery that's already set...

d8

No you can't. If my gallery consists of 2x3s, 5x7s and 4x3s format images, how is the "gallery pricing" supposed to know which one to sell at a specific format?

jfriend

If you want to file a feature request, they get more attention here: http://feedback.smugmug.com.

If you want to work-around the issue you have now, the best you can do is to set proof delay and then preview the crops on all ordered images fixing any that need changing by either replacing a new version of the image that can be cropped that way or by tweaking the crops appropriately. It is clear that there are many consumers ordering photos that really have no idea what to do with the crop settings (especially when ordering an 8x10 from a 3:2 image),

Since I assume your cameras are all a similar aspect ratio, you could also just zero out the pricing in your portfolio pricing for a lot of sizes that don't match well (that's what I do). Then, you at least minimize the issues that will come up.

Redneck

Thanks, John. I know all that but I was hoping to get an easy and comfortable solution. I mean this option "Hide products that need to be cropped" should be placed in the gallery settings where only the pro can switch it on or off. That can't be too hard to get done.
It is pretty useless for the customers, they usually won't find it and don't really know what it means or just don't care.

jwhaide

The problem I see is that no matter what you make available, customers can still crop before finalizing the order. For instance, you can have a great photo that you crop artistically well as an 8x10, you only make 8x10 or other 4x5 aspect ratio prints available and the customer can still crop out an 8x10 out of a smaller portion of that image. I guess we are just not allowed to be so vain as to think we know how our images should be cropped. The only way I can see around this is a way to selectively turn off the crop option in the ordering process.

jfriend

jwhaide wrote: »

The problem I see is that no matter what you make available, customers can still crop before finalizing the order. For instance, you can have a great photo that you crop artistically well as an 8x10, you only make 8x10 or other 4x5 aspect ratio prints available and the customer can still crop out an 8x10 out of a smaller portion of that image. I guess we are just not allowed to be so vain as to think we know how our images should be cropped. The only way I can see around this is a way to selectively turn off the crop option in the ordering process.

If you set proof delay, you can control/override/review everything before it goes to the printer. I agree with you that it would be nice to have an option to prevent the sale of cropped photos or sizes that require cropping and take all cropping out of the hands of the buyer (in some circumstances), but since you don't have that reviewing the crops in "proof delay" is your best option.

Redneck

jwhaide wrote: »

The only way I can see around this is a way to selectively turn off the crop option in the ordering process.

Perfect. Why not turn off the crop option for the entire gallery? I mean, I already do final composition and cropping in post processing. It should be possible for the pro to prohibit drastic changes to his images by the customer.

tatteberry

One solution is to upload to holding galleries based on the aspect ration of the image, 8x10, 8x12, square, etc. You can then set gallery level pricing with only sizes that don't require cropping offered for sale. Then use the smart galleries feature to place the images in the desired galleries. Once there, the images retain the product choices from the holding galleries - so no sizes requiring cropping are offered for sale. If you want to change pricing, you go back to the original galleries and change it there, and it updates all the images across the site which are originally in that gallery. Plus you can offer the same image in different galleries, and only have to upload and price once.

The only downside I see, is that Google indexes the image in the original gallery, so when they return your image as a result, rather than being in the Smart Galleries, the link takes them to the galleries based on aspect ratio. It's essential your site has a good navigation scheme, so if they want to find similar images, it's easy to find galleries which might contain them.

Or even better, SmugMug could allow us to hide any sizes which require cropping, which has been requested, but evidently not by enough people for them to make this happen. Which is a shame, because I can guarantee you that if clients are faced with "requires cropping in check," you are going to lose sales.

Pure Energy

tatteberry wrote: »

One solution is to upload to holding galleries based on the aspect ration of the image, 8x10, 8x12, square, etc. You can then set gallery level pricing with only sizes that don't require cropping offered for sale. Then use the smart galleries feature to place the images in the desired galleries. Once there, the images retain the product choices from the holding galleries - so no sizes requiring cropping are offered for sale. If you want to change pricing, you go back to the original galleries and change it there, and it updates all the images across the site which are originally in that gallery. Plus you can offer the same image in different galleries, and only have to upload and price once.

The only downside I see, is that Google indexes the image in the original gallery, so when they return your image as a result, rather than being in the Smart Galleries, the link takes them to the galleries based on aspect ratio. It's essential your site has a good navigation scheme, so if they want to find similar images, it's easy to find galleries which might contain them.

Or even better, SmugMug could allow us to hide any sizes which require cropping, which has been requested, but evidently not by enough people for them to make this happen. Which is a shame, because I can guarantee you that if clients are faced with "requires cropping in check," you are going to lose sales.

Ya got mah hed spinning wit da xtra work fo dis.

My main concern is for the customer that crops my image too much. If I drastically alter the crop on proof delay to bring it back to where it should or needs to be, then how does SmugMug handle the customer that notices the obvious difference and wants it reprinted for him or a refund? What about the person that notices I made a subtle difference?

Do we need to add some CSS code to let the customer's know as they're ordering that their cropping lines are requests and in some instances, may not be honored if the crop is too drastic?

Andy

Pure Energy wrote: »

Ya got mah hed spinning wit da xtra work fo dis.

My main concern is for the customer that crops my image too much. If I drastically alter the crop on proof delay to bring it back to where it should or needs to be, then how does SmugMug handle the customer that notices the obvious difference and wants it reprinted for him or a refund? What about the person that notices I made a subtle difference?

Do we need to add some CSS code to let the customer's know as they're ordering that their cropping lines are requests and in some instances, may not be honored if the crop is too drastic?

We contact you and the customer together.

You can put a notice in your gallery, if you like, in the gallery description.

tatteberry

Actually almost no extra work. You set your display galleries up to be smart galleries, which takes maybe 30 seconds per gallery. You add the relevant keywords to the image - and you should be key wording your images already. Then you upload as normal. In fact, it can be a real time saver, as I only have to upload to a handful of galleries, and the smart galleries can distribute them to the proper gallery automatically.

Smugmug is good at taking care of customer complaints, no questions asked. In this situation though - where you alter the client's crop, I can't say. Ideally there would be a place on the shopping cart where you could put a disclaimer, which would be good customer service, but that's not an option. Unless you add it to a graphic and use it as part of your shopping cart branding.

tatteberry

Andy wrote: »

We contact you and the customer together.

You can put a notice in your gallery, if you like, in the gallery description.

That would get a bit redundant on each gallery page I'd think, and too easy to miss for customers, particularly if you're already using the description for well, a description of the gallery.

Delbean

Actually, I also needed to put a little help message at the top of some galleries because people don't want 8x12s, they want 8x10s, and too much was getting cropped.
Here's what I did.

Delbean

try again...
http://www.rozinasmithphotography.com/Places/Longview-Farm/23854062_z2TvFT

HMBerger

Thanks, that is a very useful post for me Delbean. I am a commercial novice & I had just posted a request on how to offer different crop sizes to the customer. Your text & then testing via your link has cleared up a lot of my questions