cropped thumbs OK in smugmug style not in thumbnails style

Groflo

Hi everyone,

First of all, excuse me for my bad english, i'm French.

Croping thumbnails the way I want is one of the big problems I had that made me first reluctant to register Smugmug. But finaly I registered and am happy to see that it's possible.

But in fact, I've just tried and met a problem : it does work when my gallery style is set to « Smugmug (default) » but the old and strange crop still appears when my gallery style is set to « Thumbnails ».

Do you know why is that so ? That's really annoying.

Thanks in advance.

rainforest1155

Hi Groflo and welcome to DGrin!

Thumbnails are used in only very few places on the New SmugMug, basically just SmugMug style and in the organize screen. The rest of the site uses the new photo tiles, which are no longer fixed in size or format. They can be displayed in lots of different aspect ratios and sizes to give you flexibility on your site on how you present photos. Due to the flexible sizes and formats, it's not possible to crop photo tiles.

So any thumbnails you crop, would only be visible to visitors if you set your galleries to SmugMug style. There's not a way to use your cropped thumbnails in other gallery styles.

denisegoldberg

rainforest1155 wrote: »

So any thumbnails you crop, would only be visible to visitors if you set your galleries to SmugMug style. There's not a way to use your cropped thumbnails in other gallery styles.

If that is the case shouldn't the crop thumbnail option be limited to being used when the photo is in a gallery locked into smugmug style? Or shouldn't there be a warning message on the Crop Thumbnail image tool?

It seems that since Thumbnail style shows the photos as square thumbnails that the owner-cropped images should be used. Without allowing selection of the piece of the photo shown by the square thumbnail it is likely that a gallery locked into Thumbnail style will not do a good job of showcasing photos.

--- Denise

rainforest1155

denisegoldberg wrote: »

If that is the case shouldn't the crop thumbnail option be limited to being used when the photo is in a gallery locked into smugmug style? Or shouldn't there be a warning message on the Crop Thumbnail image tool?

It seems that since Thumbnail style shows the photos as square thumbnails that the owner-cropped images should be used. Without allowing selection of the piece of the photo shown by the square thumbnail it is likely that a gallery locked into Thumbnail style will not do a good job of showcasing photos.

--- Denise

Hi Denise,
If I recall correctly, the adjust thumbnails tool was only brought back on request of customers, including some DGrinners. It wasn't originally included in the New SmugMug and I don't think much work went into it as its use on the New SmugMug is only very limited.

The thumbnails style does not use the old thumbnails. By default it uses photo tiles with the small size cropped to 1:1 ratio. You can customize that via the customize site screen > wrench button for gallery content. So by no means, is the thumbnails style limited to 1:1 ratio or even the default size. It's up to you which size and format you select, which the old thumbnail size isn't usable on that style and thus the crop thumbnail tool doesn't apply to it.

denisegoldberg

rainforest1155 wrote: »

Hi Denise,
If I recall correctly, the adjust thumbnails tool was only brought back on request of customers, including some DGrinners. It wasn't originally included in the New SmugMug and I don't think much work went into it as its use on the New SmugMug is only very limited.

The thumbnails style does not use the old thumbnails. By default it uses photo tiles with the small size cropped to 1:1 ratio. You can customize that via the customize site screen > wrench button for gallery content. So by no means, is the thumbnails style limited to 1:1 ratio or even the default size. It's up to you which size and format you select, which the old thumbnail size isn't usable on that style and thus the crop thumbnail tool doesn't apply to it.

Thanks very much for the explanation. It sounds like the new thumbs are more flexible from a sizing standpoint but if the site owner chooses a 1:1 ratio they get a square thumbnail without the ability to choose which piece of the photo shows. Also, I suspect the OP doesn't realize that the thumbnail ratio can be changed - that's well hidden.

It sounds like it would be a good thing to add a warning to the crop thumbnail tool to tell the user that the specified crops will only be used in SmugMug-styled galleries.

--- Denise

rainforest1155

While it would be nice to have such a notice within the tool, I don't think the tool will be touched until we have a better solution available as the usefulness of the tool is very limited.

I forget to mention that the help page for the tool does indicate that it's only for the SmugMug style.

Groflo

denisegoldberg wrote: »

Thanks very much for the explanation. It sounds like the new thumbs are more flexible from a sizing standpoint but if the site owner chooses a 1:1 ratio they get a square thumbnail without the ability to choose which piece of the photo shows. Also, I suspect the OP doesn't realize that the thumbnail ratio can be changed - that's well hidden.

It sounds like it would be a good thing to add a warning to the crop thumbnail tool to tell the user that the specified crops will only be used in SmugMug-styled galleries.

--- Denise

Thanks Rainforest. Nevertheless, I do agree with Denise : to me, 1:1 ratio is like useless when you are not using Smugmug default thumbnails, as default crops are frequently really bad.

The same applies with image showed on a homepage for example, in 3:1 ratio. It nevers appears with the crop i'd like and I found no solutions but to upload twice the photo and crop it manually the way I want it to be display (in this case, crop it really in a 3:1 ratio).
That's really annoying and I'm really surprise that something that appears to me so basic is not included in Smugmug.

But I'll live with it Thank you all for your answers and help.

rainforest1155

Groflo wrote: »

Thanks Rainforest. Nevertheless, I do agree with Denise : to me, 1:1 ratio is like useless when you are not using Smugmug default thumbnails, as default crops are frequently really bad.

I understand, however there's currently not a way to specifically crop photo tiles for other styles. Though, you can change the ratio that's used in other gallery styles, like thumbnails. Go to a gallery, click on customize > customize site and hold your mouse over the gallery content. Click on the wrench button that shows and in the dialog that comes up, you can customize settings for the different gallery styles. In the thumbnails style, you could select a different ratio.

Allen

If you want specific crops to represent folder and gallery "thumbnails/tiles" pick out the photo you want
to use and download it. Crop it and then upload to an unlisted gallery. For each of these folders and galleries
point to that cropped photo for its featured photo.