Apple Photos export to SmugMug - how?

Whippersnapper

Now that iPhoto is history, I no longer have an integrated way (via plugin) to export photos out of Apple's new Photos app to SmugMug. Does anything yet exist or on the drawing board somewhere?

I've been using Photos and just took a long vacation and uploaded a ton of pics. The sharing version built into Photos works well - with a couple of HUGE drawbacks. One, everyone you're sharing with must have an Apple ID - it won't simply provide a web link for someone not in the Apple ecosystem. WTH? Horrible decision by Apple.

Secondly, if you're displaying photos from the cloud on a device with very limited storage, you only get partial resolution - it won't download the complete pic you're trying to view. Again, what were they thinking? Just cache the dang thing and keep clearing as necessary.

Thanks to these limitations, and liking SmugMug for many reasons, I want to continue to export everything from Photos to SmugMug.. but need a new method. Thanks for any info/suggestions.

SmugMugHeroPamela

Instead of using drag and drop from apple, we recommend using File Export feature. The reason we recommend doing it that way is that it keeps information associated with your photo such as title and caption.

In Photo, select the images and go to file > export to export the photos to a folder on your computer. From there, you can use finder to drag and drop the photos into the uploader.

ShermanRick

2015 Update
Hi, there must be an easier way now...or one should be coming. Please???

leftquark

There's a number of items we'd love to implement now that Apple changed the way photos are shared with the new Photos app. Stay tuned.

photobugman

Hi there!

It's been nearly a year since the OP, is there any update on the integration between Apple Photos and SmugMug? I'm hoping for a slicker way than exporting, uploading and then cleaning up.

Thanks!

Teach

I am sorry but there is not an update in terms of how to get the images from Apple Photos to SmugMug at this time.

leftquark

As Heather pointed out, Apple still imposes strict limitations on what plugins can do with Apple Photos (like only export 10 photos at a time). If they do unrestrict these limitations we'd be more than happy to integrate SmugMug into Photos. We always want it to be a breeze to get your photos safely and easily onto SmugMug!

davimle

This is odd to me, since uploading to Flickr seems to be a "one click" operation. (I don't currently have a Flickr account so didn't test it.) It would seem to put SmugMug at a competitive disadvantage compared to "free" services that have worked this out with Apple. I am concerned that SmugMug seems to be taking such a "passive" approach. You can be guaranteed that when my Power account comes up for renewal next year that I will be taking a serious look at all of the services that have built-in support, if not before.

Hoping that SmugMug will be keeping up with the times. Thx.

leftquark

With such close proximity to Apple (they're just a few minutes away from our HQ) we do our best to take an active approach with integrating ourselves with Apple products; unfortunately we do not have the power that Flickr/Yahoo have. Apple has been unwilling to give us the kind of access that they've given Flickr and they still insist on imposing the 10 photo per upload rule on Apple Photos integrations. We'd love to build an Apple Photos integration if they do get rid of this rule, in the same way that we're currently investigating building an AppleTV app.

davimle

Hmmm... that is really unfortunate. So somehow you were able to convince Apple to include SmugMug integration in Aperture, but not not going forward in Photos. Perhaps it is time to get users to submit requests on their feedback page! Thx.

Phyxius

Hi Davimle,

Have you used the media option to access your photos? In a gallery click UPLOAD then, use BROWSE and select Photos under Media as shown here:

leftquark

davimle wrote: »

So somehow you were able to convince Apple to include SmugMug integration in Aperture, but not not going forward in Photos. Perhaps it is time to get users to submit requests on their feedback page!

Apple allows integrations for "Photos", similar to what they allowed with "Aperture" except there's a few limitations that they imposed on "Photos" that they didn't impose on "Aperture". Within Photos, any integration can only upload 10 photos at a time. They want people to use iCloud and not other services, so they don't allow other services to operate well. Can you imagine how annoying it would be if there was a SmugMug Plugin for "Photos" that only allowed you to upload 10 photos at a time? Because of this we haven't invested effort into building a Photos integration, however, if they remove this restriction (would love for you all to request it with Apple), we'd be more than happy to build an export extension. We want to make it as easy as possible to get your photos to SmugMug.

Christina's suggestion should also work well, though it requires you to open your SmugMug page first, then browse to the photos in "Photos".

TimmerB

leftquark wrote: »

Apple allows integrations for "Photos", similar to what they allowed with "Aperture" except there's a few limitations that they imposed on "Photos" that they didn't impose on "Aperture". Within Photos, any integration can only upload 10 photos at a time. They want people to use iCloud and not other services, so they don't allow other services to operate well. Can you imagine how annoying it would be if there was a SmugMug Plugin for "Photos" that only allowed you to upload 10 photos at a time? Because of this we haven't invested effort into building a Photos integration, however, if they remove this restriction (would love for you all to request it with Apple), we'd be more than happy to build an export extension. We want to make it as easy as possible to get your photos to SmugMug.

Christina's suggestion should also work well, though it requires you to open your SmugMug page first, then browse to the photos in "Photos".

Actually, I would be ok with 10 photos at a time... isnt there a smart way you could cycle 10 at a time?

Tim

BorisMD

Here's what I did -- still cumbersome, but less so.

Create an empty folder on my desktop (named is "Photos to export"

Select my photos to upload in "Photos"

Drag the selected photos to the new folder

Open new folder and select all then drag into SmugMug.

Still an easy drag and drop, just have to do it twice.

Boris

Jenuine

Hello Boris, et al,

You are correct to use that work around. It appears Apple has disallowed the ability to drag & drop photos from their new Photos app. And there doesn't seems to be any third-party plug-ins available for it at this time.

As you mentioned one can still export photos from Photos to a temporary folder on your desktop, then upload them using our web-based HTML5 uploader. Information and instructions can be found in this help page: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1386737

Thanks for sharing.

Best,

epetti

I've been using the previously described method of Browse Computer and then choose Photos and selecting. It worked great and was very easy, however, just realized that no information from the photos is preserved -- keyword, title, description, location, etc. That was a pretty big bummer as I don't know of anyway of syncing those up after the fact and it'll be a huge pain to either manually enter the info or delete and reimport all of those photos.

Does the export method or any other method support that? If I choose Export IPTC as XMP does that import them into Smugmug?

Teach

Epetti,

Are you selecting the images in "Photos" and then placing them in a folder on your desktop and from there uploading them to SmugMug? If so the metadata should be staying with the images.

epetti

I had been directly selecting them from the Browse option in smugmug without exporting them manually first.

Teach

Export them first to a folder and then upload them and they should retain the metadata.

MerryB

SmugMugHeroPamela wrote: »

Instead of using drag and drop from apple, we recommend using File Export feature. The reason we recommend doing it that way is that it keeps information associated with your photo such as title and caption.

In Photo, select the images and go to file > export to export the photos to a folder on your computer. From there, you can use finder to drag and drop the photos into the uploader.

Hi - I am having this issue too. The PROBLEM with file export is that is makes what used to be really easy a two-three step process (find photos, give command to export, find exported photos and upload - this is so cumbersome!! Does anyone think there is a workaround from photos to be able to drag and drop directly?
thanks!

MikeLaurel

It's good to run across this thread. What senseless decisions from Apple. I just submitted feedback to Apple about this.

Whippersnapper

Why is there no SmugMug uploader tool to run automatically in the background for MacOS, such as Google Photos & Flickr have offered forever? They both work seamlessly in the background, uploading every single picture that hits your iPhoto library, to their respective services. SmugMug sorely needs such a utility.

leftquark

@MikeLaurel said:
It's good to run across this thread. What senseless decisions from Apple. I just submitted feedback to Apple about this.

@Whippersnapper said:
Why is there no SmugMug uploader tool to run automatically in the background for MacOS, such as Google Photos & Flickr have offered forever? They both work seamlessly in the background, uploading every single picture that hits your iPhoto library, to their respective services. SmugMug sorely needs such a utility.

We did recently launch a SmugMug Mac Uploader application, which you can download from https://www.smugmug.com/features/photo-apps#desktop. Since it's our first macOS app we'll be adding features to it over time. We wanted to make sure manual uploads were working well before moving on to watching a folder and automatically uploading.

I would like to dive into a few questions around the background uploading that you were discussing. Since SmugMug has a focus on beautiful, sharable galleries, what is your expectation if you move folders around on your computer and how it would be reflected automatically on SmugMug? Would you expect that it also gets moved around on SM? What happens if you had shared a URL with a family, then move the folder on your computer, if we automatically moved it on SM, the link you had shared would break. Is that acceptable?

BorisMD

Downloaded the app for Mac. It will be easier to use than the way I've been uploading, but not as nice as when we were allowed to export directly from photos to SmugMug.

leftquark

I can neither confirm nor deny if we're working on an extension for the Photos app but I'd lean towards the side that starts with a "C" :P

Allen

Why does Smug still promote the Camera Awesome app when it's broken?

Whippersnapper

I tried the uploader app a few weeks ago - pretty useless in its current state. What I would like to see is a Google Photos-like background applet that uploads everything to my SmugMug library automagically every time a photo gets added to iPhoto. It would go to a "camera roll"-type location, where I can either leave them, or move to new galleries/albums as desired. This all works extremely well in Google Photos, and it's completely free and without ads - albeit at slightly reduced resolution in the free version.

leftquark

@Whippersnapper said:
I tried the uploader app a few weeks ago - pretty useless in its current state. What I would like to see is a Google Photos-like background applet that uploads everything to my SmugMug library automagically every time a photo gets added to iPhoto. It would go to a "camera roll"-type location, where I can either leave them, or move to new galleries/albums as desired. This all works extremely well in Google Photos, and it's completely free and without ads - albeit at slightly reduced resolution in the free version.

So you don't want it to try to maintain your folder hierarchy on your computer, if your photos had already been organized on your computer?

Whippersnapper

Hmm not seing a way to reply with quote?

Regarding maintaining folders on my own computer - no, I don't need/want any uploader to do this for me. Play around with the Google uploader - that's the exact functionality I'm looking for. Part of what both Google & Flickr have that SmugMug doesn't is the concept of a "camera roll" where everything resides when initially uploaded. Would like to see that too.

Aaron, thanks for showing so much interest in this. Would be great to get more feedback from other users to see if they would agree with my suggestions, or perhaps have some better ideas.

leftquark

@Whippersnapper said:
Hmm not seing a way to reply with quote?

There's a tiny little blue chat bubble icon underneath every post. Clicking on that will quote a post. It may not be enabled until you've posted a few times (we have some limitations on dgrin until we "verify" a user).

@Whippersnapper said:
Regarding maintaining folders on my own computer - no, I don't need/want any uploader to do this for me. Play around with the Google uploader - that's the exact functionality I'm looking for. Part of what both Google & Flickr have that SmugMug doesn't is the concept of a "camera roll" where everything resides when initially uploaded. Would like to see that too.
Aaron, thanks for showing so much interest in this. Would be great to get more feedback from other users to see if they would agree with my suggestions, or perhaps have some better ideas.

As a Product Manager it's my job to make sure to understand the needs of our customers, what their problems are, and think through solutions on how to fix them! I always love diving in and getting feedback so we can have more information as we brainstorm and iterate on solutions and new features for SmugMug. It's probably my favorite part of the job!

I've used a number of the other services (including Google Photos and Flickr) and there's certainly Pro's and Con's of each of them. As a more professional photographer, all of my photos are carefully curated and organized on my computer and I'd want that structure to be maintained on SmugMug without having to re-create it once they were automatically uploaded. I take a lot of photos and dumping it into one big "Camera Roll" can sometimes lead to an intimidating mess. Of course we could help auto-organize those photos for you. The demographic of who uses SmugMug can be very different of who uses GPhoto and Flickr and we have to keep that in mind as we try to develop solutions for everyone here at SmugMug. Keeping things to just a "Camera Roll" interface is certainly easier but it might not satisfy those that pre-organized the photos into Folders on their computer.

Our approach is generally to start small, learn, and iterate to the ultimate solution. We want to start delivering functionality to you faster, rather than hoarding it as we add features to it, especially if there's some unclear pieces that we might need to improve upon after it gets released.

epetti

Pretty excited about this new app. Downloaded it but haven't had a chance to actually try it out yet. Personally for my usage, I tend to agree with you about being concerned about the organization. My general workflow tends to be:

Download and organize photos in Apple Photos into Albums.
Often these are adding to existing albums rather than creating new albums.
Tag them all and give descriptions, etc.
Then, upload the photos to their corresponding folders in Smugmug.

Anything that could be done to make that more straightforward would be a big win, but I don't want to have to organize twice, once in Photos and once in Smugmug. So I'd rather if it could sync up the albums I select with the new photos and tags that I've added. And maintain tags, descriptions, and geolocation info as well, of course.

Ernie