Lightroom plugin question re manual sort order

Ferguson

It appears that a custom sort order inside a published collection results in the same sort order on Smugmug (assuming that gallery is set to sort by position).

However, I'm struggling to figure out what exactly is necessary to make it take effect. The only time I've had complete success is to change something publishable in every image in the gallery in Lightroom (for example GPS position moved slightly). This causes a republish of all metadata and the Smugmug gallery ends up int he same order.

Changing the order of individual images in the gallery collection in Lightroom does not cause a publish.

Syncing the photos in the gallery doesn't appear to cause any changes.

Changing the location of individual images and publishing just them seems to cause erratic results; it may "work" in that they often move but it doesn't seem to get them to the right place. This may of course be because other images are out of sync in some way.

Can someone:

1) Confirm if the position in one should determine the position in the other?
2) Should rearranging the order in the LR side cause them to move on Smugmug, or is it necessary to manually republish?
3) How is the position identified, and/or what is necessary to keep them in sync as individual shots are added and rearranged? Should it be necessary to republish all each time?

Lindy

Hi Ferguson,

If you're using a custom sort order, two things need to happen.

1. The gallery "Sort By" parameter needs to be set to "Position", as shown in this screen capture: http://screencast.com/t/Jx9pYLId


2. In the LR publish folder, change the "Sort" parameter to "Custom Order", as shown in this screen capture:
http://screencast.com/t/AIHVPwxzPepr


Reordering of images occurs at the end of the publishing process. The published gallery on your site should retain the custom order set in Lightroom.

Lindy
SmugMug Support Hero

Ferguson

Thanks, Lindy, I get that (I even mentioned part of it). The issue is what ELSE is required for incremental changes.

When I do all that in one go and push up a whole gallery no issues.

It's when I then do the typical stuff -- add more images, publish, move them around in lightroom, move others around (not new), remove some images, add some images.... basic churn. With publish hit at various points when I think about it.

See, many of us doing a gallery for something like an event publish before everything is final, as we want the heavy lifting of pushing up the majority of images to be done while we are still editing other images. So you might publish a dozen times before all the images are there, much less in the right order. Metadata changes afterwards take a tiny fraction of the time image uploads do, so when I add captions and other stuff -- including getting the order right -- that stuff goes up fast.

What I can't seem to get a handle on is how to ensure the two galleries are in sync (LR and SM) after all that without forcing it to republish at least the metadata of all images.

Should changing the order in LR cause the position information to be sent on the next publish (with no other changes)?

Should a sync do put them back in order (and if so, which is the "master")?

Lindy

Hey Ferguson,

You will need to mark the image to be republished and publish the gallery again to retain the sort order. Whether you add new images, or just rearrange the images, that is what you'll need to do.

Sync does not affect the order. Sync hierarchy updates the folder structure of the site in the LR publish folders, Sync Photos, will match images on the site to images in the open Lightroom catalog. Syncing is not two way nor does it order images, publish is what will order the images. The only thing that is 2-way in the plugin are comments. Comments added on the site will appear in the Lightroom publisher.

Sorry I wasn't more clear the first time.

Thanks!
Lindy

Ferguson

Got it. Thanks. I may just do a plugin to "mark all for republish of metadata only". I don't often do manual sorted galleries, but its been a bit of a challenge keeping this last one right.

devbobo

Linwood,

Basically, if you have "Custom Order" set for a LR publish collection...at the end of a Publish phase, LR invokes a method that should reorder a gallery. This should happen regardless of whether the Publish action uploaded files or just modified the metadata.

Hope that helps.

David

Ferguson

devbobo wrote: »

Linwood,

Basically, if you have "Custom Order" set for a LR publish collection...at the end of a Publish phase, LR invokes a method that should reorder a gallery. This should happen regardless of whether the Publish action uploaded files or just modified the metadata.

Hope that helps.

David

That's a terrific answer but didn't seem to be working, however before you spend any time on it let me experiment again, plus this was LR6 and maybe it has issues.