New X4 & X5 display sizes

Baldy

Hey everyone,

With the adoption of high-res displays, even on tablets and laptops, we're getting set to roll out two new display sizes: X4 & X5. They will make your photos look better on devices like iPads with Retina displays, and let us turbocharge your full-screen slideshows. That's because we currently generate custom sizes on-the-fly from your originals for the slideshow. Having instant access to the larger X4s and X5s will allow us to load full-screen slideshows much faster.

I wanted to post this before we ship in case you catch something about the rollout that we're not thinking of.

For customers who don't have watermarks and don't limit display sizes, the new sizes will happen automatically.

For customers with watermarks, or who limit display sizes to X2 or below, we don't plan to enable X4s & X5s until you ask us to by choosing them in gallery settings.



If the only size you limit is original and you have no watermarks, we plan to automatically roll out X4s and X5s to save you the hassle of changing your settings.

X4s are up to 2048x1536; X5s are up to 2560x1920.

One concern we have is for people who have uploaded watermarks with an ultimate size in mind that's less than X4 & X5. For example, suppose they uploaded a 1600 pixel png. If they choose the larger display sizes without uploading a higher res watermark, we'll upres their watermarks for the larger sizes. We've tested this on several photos and while it's not as sharp as a watermark that's higher res, the ones we tested looked pretty good. I can upload examples if people want to see.

Thanks!
Baldy

beardedgit

Hi Baldy,

The introduction of X4 and X5 sounds good, but only really useful to me if we get links to them in Share > Get a Link > Photo Links. Will that happen too?

Regards,

Beardedgit.

Andy

MakeMeShutter wrote: »

I wouldn't mind seeing an example,

Why don't you just do it yourself? Pretty simple to do, just use a custom URL on an image that you allow originals to be seen. http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93264

and am wondering if the blacked out slideshow button issue has been fixed.
Thanks in advance,
--Shawn

There's another thread for that, I'm sure.

Baldy

MakeMeShutter wrote: »

Thanks for this Andy


I thought this would be relevant here because Baldy mentioned turbo charged slideshows and I wasn't sure if this issue had been fixed or not.
According to my stats, the majority of my viewers use IE and if the button is still blacked out, I will wait to implement this.

--Shawn

Hi Shawn,

My understanding is this is an issue with IE10 on Windows 8 only, which if I'm not mistaken, is less than 1% of IE users:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/01/ie10-steals-market-share-from-ie9-and-ie8-after-landing-on-windows-7-firefox-and-chrome-make-minor-gains/

We'd like to see it fixed and Microsoft has softened its stance on Flash on IE10 in the last few weeks with its latest patch, which has helped us immensely in other places we use Flash.

I'm really sorry you're still seeing this issue.

Thanks,
Baldy

Baldy

beardedgit wrote: »

Hi Baldy,

The introduction of X4 and X5 sounds good, but only really useful to me if we get links to them in Share > Get a Link > Photo Links. Will that happen too?

Regards,

Beardedgit.

Hi Beardedgit,

Yes, we're planning to add them but the X4 & X5 sizes will beat the get a link UI to market. It's an interesting use case. I'd love some more info if you wouldn't mind sharing about how you fetch and use the links, especially linking to images of that size.

Thanks,
Baldy

beardedgit

Baldy wrote: »

Hi Beardedgit,

Yes, we're planning to add them but the X4 & X5 sizes will beat the get a link UI to market. It's an interesting use case. I'd love some more info if you wouldn't mind sharing about how you fetch and use the links, especially linking to images of that size.

Thanks,
Baldy

Well, I do astrophotography as well as the usual daytime stuff. I usually embed, say, the "L" size in an astro forum or on my blog and then link the image to a bigger version so that the astro-critics out there can scroll around the thing to examine the tiniest detail ('cos we're sad). Some targets such as supernovae might be only a couple of pixels across, so displaying a near-full-res or full-res version is understandably necessary or the dots don't show!!!

As for how I fetch the links, usually I grab the "L" version code from "Share > Get a Link > Photo Links", embed that, create a link, paste in the "L" code and manually edit the "L"s to "O"s to get the original (and you've no idea how many times I've edited it to "0" instead of "O" by mistake, doesn't help that the 2 keys are next to each other!!!).

Having "X4" and "X5" links available for easy copying in "Share > Get a Link > Photo Links" would be useful for when those sizes would be acceptable for the size of detail in some pics, but "Share > Get a Link > Photo Links > Link to Original Size" would be better for those pics with detail on the 1-3 pixel scale.

It's also worth mentioning that some astro pics are way bigger than standard dSLR frames because we stack and stitch them to make mosaics. Often these have to be downsized so that they slip under the max limit allowed by SM. Ideally we'd keep them at the size that we create (and in TIFF or FITS format) but that's a different kettle of fish, we appreciate that SM isn't set up for that sort of thing and so we make other arrangements as necessary.

So, in short, display of "X4" and "X5" would be nice, copyable links to "X4" and "X5" would be better, copyable links to "O" would be best.

Does that make sense?

Thanks for showing your interest in this matter, it's a real pleasure to get a reply that has some substance to it instead of the recent "I don't know, and I'm not really willing to find out" replies from others that have been winding up the users lately.

If you want more info, please don't hesitate to ask.

Beardedgit.

Baldy

beardedgit wrote: »

Does that make sense?

Yes, thanks, very useful. You really had me when you mentioned astrophotography, one of my weaknesses. We have a 96-inch high print in a lightbox here that I downloaded from Nasa's site that is too unbelievable to be true.

The get a link UI for X4s and X5s will not be ready when we roll out the X4 & X5 sizes, but it will happen.

Thanks,
Baldy

Baldy

MakeMeShutter wrote: »

Hi Baldy,
Thanks for getting back to me.

I am currently running IE10 with Windows 7.
The problem is not just with Windows 8 users.
IE10 was part of a recent automatic "Windows Update".
This would lead me to believe it affects far more than just 1%.

Below is what I am currently seeing.

The optional update shown is just the Bing tool bar.
This shows the date of the most recent Windows Update on my computer.



This shows I have the latest flash update.



And this shows my slideshow button not displaying properly.

--Shawn

Thanks, Shawn, especially for the screen shots and all the detail.

AceCo55

Whilst these two new sizes will provide a great viewing experience, it also makes it more attractive for people to steal your images.
x5 has pixel dimensions of up to 2560x1920. That's a pretty good resolution to do 10x8 print and probably 11x14.
People - you might want to rethink whether images should be watermarked (and its size/placement) if you are going to allow visitors access to these sizes.

pilotdave

Baldy wrote: »

Hey everyone,

With the adoption of high-res displays, even on tablets and laptops, we're getting set to roll out two new display sizes: X4 & X5. They will make your photos look better on devices like iPads with Retina displays, and let us turbocharge your full-screen slideshows. That's because we currently generate custom sizes on-the-fly from your originals for the slideshow. Having instant access to the larger X4s and X5s will allow us to load full-screen slideshows much faster.

I wanted to post this before we ship in case you catch something about the rollout that we're not thinking of.

For customers who don't have watermarks and don't limit display sizes, the new sizes will happen automatically.

For customers with watermarks, or who limit display sizes to X2 or below, we don't plan to enable X4s & X5s until you ask us to by choosing them in gallery settings.



If the only size you limit is original and you have no watermarks, we plan to automatically roll out X4s and X5s to save you the hassle of changing your settings.

X4s are up to 2048x1536; X5s are up to 2560x1920.

One concern we have is for people who have uploaded watermarks with an ultimate size in mind that's less than X4 & X5. For example, suppose they uploaded a 1600 pixel png. If they choose the larger display sizes without uploading a higher res watermark, we'll upres their watermarks for the larger sizes. We've tested this on several photos and while it's not as sharp as a watermark that's higher res, the ones we tested looked pretty good. I can upload examples if people want to see.

Thanks!
Baldy

Any news on this?

Dave

beardedgit

pilotdave wrote: »

Any news on this?

Dave

Yeah, 2.5 months since this was announced, I wonder what REABS we'll be given for the delay to this one.

G-Force

AceCo55 wrote: »

Whilst these two new sizes will provide a great viewing experience, it also makes it more attractive for people to steal your images.
x5 has pixel dimensions of up to 2560x1920. That's a pretty good resolution to do 10x8 print and probably 11x14.
People - you might want to rethink whether images should be watermarked (and its size/placement) if you are going to allow visitors access to these sizes.

What do you think is the safest size to allow people to view? Is the current X3 of 1600px still small enough to allow minimal printing potential?

AceCo55

G-Force wrote: »

What do you think is the safest size to allow people to view? Is the current X3 of 1600px still small enough to allow minimal printing potential?

It is definitely a matter of personal taste. You are trying to strike a balance between viewer experience and protecting you image. No matter what size you allow, just remember it can be downloaded (even if you have right click disabled).
I use XL size as my maximum. I have seen some Smuggers use a maximum of L, some M and others X2Large.

These are Smugmug's display sizes:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93250#displaysizes

mbonocore

Dave and Beard,

This is still in the QA phase. The addition of X-4 and X-5 display sizes touches many aspects of SmugMug, so thorough testing is needed to make sure every piece still works as desired.

I apologize for the delay, but we are working hard on getting these new display sizes out for you.

I will keep you posted.

Michael

Baldy

Hey everyone,

Not long after we posted this we figured out a better way to make & store these which required a pretty big change. What I didn't post at the time is we silently rolled out a huge overhaul to our backend. I don't want to curse us all, but....you should be noticing that for most people the site is snappier than it has ever been and...this is where we hold our breath and knock on wood like every other website in the world....we should all see continued high uptime like we have since we rolled out the changes.

For many years we've had split functionality: some jobs like storage and image processing happened in Amazon's datacenters and others happened in ours. Generally Amazon has very good uptime but when they do go down, everyone hears about it because so many sites have a big dependency on them. In our case we had dependencies with them, our own data centers and the links between them and Amazon.

Now our dependency is just on Amazon, so uptime, speed, and the ability to scale for big spikes in load should be much higher.

What does this have to do with X4 & X5 display sizes and why did I go on that tangent? Because now that we're completely hosted at Amazon and they surprise us with new functionality, it opens all kinds of possibilities to get smarter about how we handle new display sizes. BTW, just like it frustrates you that we don't often pre-announce things anymore, Amazon frustrates us the same way even though we love them, so we feel your pain. We, ehem, bought a half million dollars worth of server equipment last year that they rendered obsolete with an announcement they made a month later.

Anyway, we haven't forgotten new display sizes and this won't be a forever re-work.

Thanks,
Baldy

mbonocore

Baldy wrote: »

Hey everyone,

Not long after we posted this we figured out a better way to make & store these which required a pretty big change. What I didn't post at the time is we silently rolled out a huge overhaul to our backend. I don't want to curse us all, but....you should be noticing that for most people the site is snappier than it has ever been and...this is where we hold our breath and knock on wood like every other website in the world....we should all see continued high uptime like we have since we rolled out the changes.

For many years we've had split functionality: some jobs like storage and image processing happened in Amazon's datacenters and others happened in ours. Generally Amazon has very good uptime but when they do go down, everyone hears about it because so many sites have a big dependency on them. In our case we had dependencies with them, our own data centers and the links between them and Amazon.

Now our dependency is just on Amazon, so uptime, speed, and the ability to scale for big spikes in load should be much higher.

What does this have to do with X4 & X5 display sizes and why did I go on that tangent? Because now that we're completely hosted at Amazon and they surprise us with new functionality, it opens all kinds of possibilities to get smarter about how we handle new display sizes. BTW, just like it frustrates you that we don't often pre-announce things anymore, Amazon frustrates us the same way even though we love them, so we feel your pain. We, ehem, bought a half million dollars worth of server equipment last year that they rendered obsolete with an announcement they made a month later.

Anyway, we haven't forgotten new display sizes and this won't be a forever re-work.

Thanks,
Baldy

Thanks for chiming in Baldy!

Happy 4th Of July to Everyone!

AceCo55

mbonocore wrote: »

Thanks for chiming in Baldy!

Happy 4th Of July to Everyone!

Happy 4th July / Independence Day to the American Smuggers.

beardedgit

Was hoping that this x4 and x5 matter would be incorporated into the new SM, but no sign of it unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

:bash

bkrodgers

I'm extremely disappointed too. I can't believe that the relaunched this site and we still can't do a full screen slideshow. My photos are all windowboxed, and the originals are plenty big to show in full screen. This drove me nuts on the old SM, and I'm floored that they didn't fix it.

mbonocore

bkrodgers wrote: »

I'm extremely disappointed too. I can't believe that the relaunched this site and we still can't do a full screen slideshow. My photos are all windowboxed, and the originals are plenty big to show in full screen. This drove me nuts on the old SM, and I'm floored that they didn't fix it.

We are currently working on a Full screen slideshow.

bkrodgers

mbonocore wrote: »

We are currently working on a Full screen slideshow.

That's great news! So even on a high res screen (1080 or higher), when I click the slideshow button, pictures will fill the screen completely if the aspect ratio matches, or if it doesn't, at least fill one dimension, right?

beardedgit

beardedgit wrote: »

Was hoping that this x4 and x5 matter would be incorporated into the new SM, but no sign of it unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

:bash

Bump!

LPC

I just came across this thread and thought - great, I'd love to see x4 and x5 options, then I saw that there has been no further news whatsoever and thought ah, it's one of those Smugmug announcements

kenn3d

We're still tinkering with our not yet unveiled Preview site here... But our Legacy site has included an HD Gallery which plays full-screen 1920x1080 slideshows for a long time now. What technology is preventing this in the new SM?

Kenn

thenickdude

There is no technology preventing it, it's the fact that the vast majority of Original images are still way too large to display, so would have to be scaled down. And on the new Retina displays and other large monitors which have come out in recent years, that would require every image to have a custom scale applied on the server before it could be sent to the browser for the slideshow, which is not really feasible when it comes to load times and stress on the SmugMug servers. SmugMug need to introduce standardised display sizes for these new large monitors so that they can generate and store images for screen-filling slideshows efficiently, which takes a lot of work to ready their code & infrastructure to support the new sizes.

kenn3d

Lamah wrote: »

There is no technology preventing it, it's the fact that the vast majority of Original images are still way too large to display, so would have to be scaled down. And on the new Retina displays and other large monitors which have come out in recent years, that would require every image to have a custom scale applied on the server before it could be sent to the browser for the slideshow, which is not really feasible when it comes to load times and stress on the SmugMug servers. SmugMug need to introduce standardised display sizes for these new large monitors so that they can generate and store images for screen-filling slideshows efficiently, which takes a lot of work to ready their code & infrastructure to support the new sizes.

Thanks. I understand the challenge with regard to larger than X3 slideshows on Retina displays and such, and look forward to higher resolution display standards for many reasons.

But my question was.... our Legacy site has included an HD Gallery which plays full-screen 1920x1080 slideshows for a long time now. What technology is preventing this in the new SM?
This HD Gallery does not present 1920x1080 full-screen slideshows in the New SM and I can't see why it doesn't.



Kenn

thenickdude

That would require showing Original size photos, and since the vast majority of Original size photos aren't suitable for display (due to being too large), SmugMug haven't bothered to build that feature in yet.

WinsomeWorks

Lamah wrote: »

That would require showing Original size photos, and since the vast majority of Original size photos aren't suitable for display (due to being too large), SmugMug haven't bothered to build that feature in yet.

1920x1080 sure doesn't sound like an original size, does it?

kenn3d

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

1920x1080 sure doesn't sound like an original size, does it?

We never upload original full-size camera images. All our gallery images are processed and re-sized for web presentation before they go up on our site. But SM considers whatever resolution is uploaded as the "Original" size. In the case of our HD Gallery our uploaded originals are all 1920x1080 which the Legacy site can display as a full-screen slideshow without any scaling by the host servers. Sadly this functionality is currently not provided in the New SM, and thus renders all our "HD" images as X3 size rather than as the full-screen "High Definition Slideshow" described in our blog and in various other back-links around the web.

Lamah's point is nevertheless well taken as many users do upload images at full camera resolutions, and I can understand the potential scaling issues this could cause for such users. We can only hope that Baldy's X4+ sizes will become available soon.

Kenn

kenn3d

kenn3d wrote: »

...In the case of our HD Gallery our uploaded originals are all 1920x1080 which the Legacy site can display as a full-screen slideshow without any scaling by the host servers. Sadly this functionality is currently not provided in the New SM, and thus renders all our "HD" images as X3 size rather than as the full-screen "High Definition Slideshow" described in our blog ...
Kenn

Ok, I'm kinda talking to myself here... but maybe someone will hear me and help me understand what I thought I knew.
I was testing our above mentioned HD Gallery (New SM version but not yet unveiled) on my Nexus 7 tablet using Chrome for Android this afternoon. This tablet has a high-res display of 1920x1200 pixels and to my great delight and surprise, the HD slideshow does indeed display full-screen 1920x1080!?!
So now I must believe there is some other reason why it doesn't do so on our 2 Chrome/Windows7 PCs.

Lamah? or Anyone?

Kenn

beardedgit

beardedgit wrote: »

Hi Baldy,

The introduction of X4 and X5 sounds good, but only really useful to me if we get links to them in Share > Get a Link > Photo Links. Will that happen too?

Baldy wrote: »

Hi Beardedgit,

Yes, we're planning to add them but the X4 & X5 sizes will beat the get a link UI to market.

beardedgit wrote: »

Was hoping that this x4 and x5 matter would be incorporated into the new SM, but no sign of it unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

:bash

So, where are we on this?