Anyway to hide photos?

dominik · January 4, 2006

Hi,

Today's my first day with smugmug -- and I'm already hooked

A quick question that I searching these forums and the site itself didn't turn up an answer to:

Is there an easy way to hide/password protect a photo to the public, while keeping it in its own gallery?

E.g. suppose I have a bunch of photos from a trip in a Travel/Forest/Day 5 gallery. Picture 7 is blurry and appears bad at first pass; I'd like to be able to hide it from being displayed, but (as I'm a digital packrat), I'm reluctant to delete it in case since who knows, it might be useful another day.

Or: Picture 9 is a picture of someone who's considered about online privacy and doesn't want her picture publicly online; is there a way to password protect that photo while keeping its place in the gallery for when someone with permissions is logged in? (e.g. myself or folks who know the guest password).

It seems a workaround is to have a set of shadow galleries that are password protected/hidden and contain the photos originally; while doable, this seems like a lot of extra "shadow galleries" and also breaks continuity for those with permission to view the photos (guest or admin).

Hopefully my examples clarified my explanation enough!

Andy · January 4, 2006

dominik wrote:

Hi,
Today's my first day with smugmug -- and I'm already hooked
A quick question that I searching these forums and the site itself didn't turn up an answer to:
Is there an easy way to hide/password protect a photo to the public, while keeping it in its own gallery?
E.g. suppose I have a bunch of photos from a trip in a Travel/Forest/Day 5 gallery. Picture 7 is blurry and appears bad at first pass; I'd like to be able to hide it from being displayed, but (as I'm a digital packrat), I'm reluctant to delete it in case since who knows, it might be useful another day.
Or: Picture 9 is a picture of someone who's considered about online privacy and doesn't want her picture publicly online; is there a way to password protect that photo while keeping its place in the gallery for when someone with permissions is logged in? (e.g. myself or folks who know the guest password).
It seems a workaround is to have a set of shadow galleries that are password protected/hidden and contain the photos originally; while doable, this seems like a lot of extra "shadow galleries" and also breaks continuity for those with permission to view the photos (guest or admin).
Hopefully my examples clarified my explanation enough!

Welcome to Dgrin, and SmugMug!

I'm sorry, there's not a way to password protect a single photo in a gallery. I wish that I had a better answer to your first question posted

http://www.smugmug.com/help/private-albums

All the best,

dominik · January 4, 2006

Andy wrote:

Welcome to Dgrin, and SmugMug!

I'm sorry, there's not a way to password protect a single photo in a gallery. I wish that I had a better answer to your first question posted

http://www.smugmug.com/help/private-albums

All the best,

Many thanks

Andy · January 4, 2006

dominik wrote:

Many thanks

It's our pleasure. Holler with any other questions you might have. See link in my sig for how things work 'round here at Dgrin

sith_kicker · February 11, 2007

Single Photo Privacy

dominik wrote:

...

Or: Picture 9 is a picture of someone who's considered about online privacy and doesn't want her picture publicly online; is there a way to password protect that photo while keeping its place in the gallery for when someone with permissions is logged in? (e.g. myself or folks who know the guest password).
...

I was hoping for something like this as well. For example, on Flickr, I can set some photos public while others private or only for friends and family - the only other Flickr settings. I did this for my niece's recent birthday album for photos I wanted to share with the public:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/janella/sets/72157594529122787/

If you are a browsing visitor to that album you can't tell there are 128 photos in there.

This is point that has me pinging between Smugmug and Flickr. I like that functionality on Flickr, but half of my family members and friends like the layout of Smugmug. I thought Zenfolio was a middle ground solution. Though they offer single photo privacy, their implementation is cumbersome and doesn't mask the fact that there are other photos in the gallery, such as Flickr does.

Andy · February 11, 2007

sith_kicker wrote:

I was hoping for something like this as well. For example, on Flickr, I can set some photos public while others private or only for friends and family - the only other Flickr settings. I did this for my niece's recent birthday album for photos I wanted to share with the public:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/janella/sets/72157594529122787/

If you are a browsing visitor to that album you can't tell there are 128 photos in there.

This is point that has me pinging between Smugmug and Flickr. I like that functionality on Flickr, but half of my family members and friends like the layout of Smugmug. I thought Zenfolio was a middle ground solution. Though they offer single photo privacy, their implementation is cumbersome and doesn't mask the fact that there are other photos in the gallery, such as Flickr does.

Thanks for letting us know how important this is to you!

TheDuck · February 12, 2007

Zenfolio

sith_kicker wrote:

I thought Zenfolio was a middle ground solution. Though they offer single photo privacy, their implementation is cumbersome and doesn't mask the fact that there are other photos in the gallery, such as Flickr does.

One person's "cumbersome" is another person's "powerful" - the same could be said of Smugmug's incredibly complex, tedious, frustrating, and yet very very wonderful end-result display customization features.

Regarding your comment that Zen doesn't "mask" photos, though...take another look. Passworded photos reveal that they exist, which does make sense since anyone could enter a password. But....Zen does dynamically change the total photo count displayed and the display of actual photos based on non-password security settings. You can have 10,000 photos in a gallery, and you can set it so that I and other strangers might only see two public photos and one available if we know a password. Your family, however, could see all 10,000 photos. Plus, you can specify how you want search engines to handle the gallery or the photo independantly of how you want your approved or unapproved viewers to see the photo(s). Very very very powerful. Email Zen with q's - they've been responding without evading any questions at all within an hour or so - even at 2am!

Be seeing you,
The Duck

dogwood · February 12, 2007

dominik wrote:

It seems a workaround is to have a set of shadow galleries that are password protected/hidden and contain the photos originally; while doable, this seems like a lot of extra "shadow galleries" and also breaks continuity for those with permission to view the photos (guest or admin).

This is the way I do it. Yeah, it's more work but it's also useful for limiting the amount of time prints are available and lets me load both a web res gallery (which stays up for permanant viewing by anyone) and a print/download gallery which is only available for 30 days after an event. I also have MANY private password protected galleries for individual clients. In order to limit my "work" on this, I start uploads late at night just before bed-- by morning everything is loaded and ready to go.

Hope this helps. There's always a new or cool feature to be found with other services, but I'll bet you'll find SM actually gets a lot of their new features from suggestions like yours. You never know... they just might take you up on your idea. They've used one of mine (the wording when the site is down).

mkress65 · February 12, 2007

TheDuck wrote:

<snip> Email Zen with q's - they've been responding without evading any questions at all within an hour or so - even at 2am!

Be seeing you,
The Duck

<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/15524779-Ti.gif" border="0" alt="" > they are very fast to respond and quite open about what is on their roadmap in the short term, mid term, long term or that they either haven't considered or just don't think should be done.

Andy · February 12, 2007

TheDuck wrote:

Very very very powerful. Email Zen with q's - they've been responding without evading any questions at all within an hour or so - even at 2am!

Be seeing you,
The Duck

I agree. They've answered my questions (I have a paid-for Zenfolio pro account) on weekends and late nights. Seems they've "seen the light" about what we've known all along, that customer service is oh-so-important. They're doing a good job with it, glad to see that.

darryl · December 3, 2007

Hiya... coming from [post=693117]another thread[/post] that I kind of hijacked with this topic.

Basically, I want to be able to hide photos in SmugMug like I can in Phanfare.

Let me frame the issue. I'm an amateur shooter, and proud of it. I'm not selling the photos. I don't do touch-up. I don't color-correct. I'm lazy, and I take way to many pictures of my kid to deal with that stuff.

But I *do* want to backup all of my photos. I also want to share them.

But I sometimes take too many pictures of my kid when I'm at a birthday party for one of his friends. When other people are looking at the gallery, they don't need to see all 10 shots I got of my son going down the big inflatable slide. 1 will do. However I want all 10 to be backed up oh SmugMug's distributed and mirrored hard drives.

Ideally I could simply tag those extra photos of my son as "hidden". Leave them in the gallery because that's where they were taken, and that's where they belong. Let me see them when I'm logged in. But let me spare others from my fatherly pride. :-}

*This* is why I use Phanfare for personal photos. Laziness, and because it lets me back up *everything*. Even the "bad" or "redundant" photos. (Because you never know -- maybe you'll need the bad/redundant photo for something -- to help ID somebody who's head is turned in another frame. To help you remember what happened just before the "good" shot. Or for blackmail purposes. :-)

Andy · December 3, 2007

darryl wrote:

Hiya... coming from [post=693117]another thread[/post] that I kind of hijacked with this topic.

Basically, I want to be able to hide photos in SmugMug like I can in Phanfare.

Let me frame the issue. I'm an amateur shooter, and proud of it. I'm not selling the photos. I don't do touch-up. I don't color-correct. I'm lazy, and I take way to many pictures of my kid to deal with that stuff.

But I *do* want to backup all of my photos. I also want to share them.

But I sometimes take too many pictures of my kid when I'm at a birthday party for one of his friends. When other people are looking at the gallery, they don't need to see all 10 shots I got of my son going down the big inflatable slide. 1 will do. However I want all 10 to be backed up oh SmugMug's distributed and mirrored hard drives.

Ideally I could simply tag those extra photos of my son as "hidden". Leave them in the gallery because that's where they were taken, and that's where they belong. Let me see them when I'm logged in. But let me spare others from my fatherly pride. :-}

*This* is why I use Phanfare for personal photos. Laziness, and because it lets me back up *everything*. Even the "bad" or "redundant" photos. (Because you never know -- maybe you'll need the bad/redundant photo for something -- to help ID somebody who's head is turned in another frame. To help you remember what happened just before the "good" shot. Or for blackmail purposes. :-)

I don't understand your point, we allow unlimited storage, you can "hide" all the photos you like, put them in a private and / or passworded album, keyworded, titled, etc, and you've got 'em.

darryl · December 3, 2007

Andy wrote:

I don't understand your point, we allow unlimited storage, you can "hide" all the photos you like, put them in a private and / or passworded album, keyworded, titled, etc, and you've got 'em.

Hi Andy -- It's the lazy/convenience factor.

Again, with my example above, to accomplish "shoeboxing" all of the birthday photos (with the extra bad/redundant ones), but also maintain a public gallery, I would have to create a "shadow gallery" as previously discussed in this thread. Or, move just the extra ones to a gallery with a similar name.

Either way, it's a bit of an inconvenience, with either a double-upload, or time spent in the bulk move tool. (And don't get me started on there being no "Create 2nd Copy of this Photo and Move" function, much less a bulk function for that.)

Phanfare has really made my workflow as simple as
1) dump them all to the Phanfare client (which starts uploading in the background immediately)
2) double-click on the first photo to bring it up large
3) move forward/backwards through photos with arrow keys
4) hit Ctrl-H if there's a photo I want to hide.

But again, I'm lazy and an amateur. My photos are archived locally in a simple hierarchy of ~/photos/2007/2007.10.15-SomebodysBirthday

Again, I don't do any Photoshopping of photos. I just want them all backed up, and to share some of them.

So for me (and probably lots of other amateurs), Phanfare makes this really easy.

Of course you'll find complaints on Phanfare forums that they need more organization options (categories and subcategories), tags (keywords), more control over layout (customizations).

So heh, it's funny how the grass is always greener. Even if you own both sides of the fence.

I've often dreamt of a SmugMug/Phanfare merger, but I don't think it's in the cards. Phanfare just got 2.5mil in a 3rd round of VC funding and has yet to turn a profit. SmugMug has been profitable for years...

Shizam · December 14, 2007

darryl wrote:

Hi Andy -- It's the lazy/convenience factor.

Again, with my example above, to accomplish "shoeboxing" all of the birthday photos (with the extra bad/redundant ones), but also maintain a public gallery, I would have to create a "shadow gallery" as previously discussed in this thread. Or, move just the extra ones to a gallery with a similar name.

Either way, it's a bit of an inconvenience, with either a double-upload, or time spent in the bulk move tool. (And don't get me started on there being no "Create 2nd Copy of this Photo and Move" function, much less a bulk function for that.)

Phanfare has really made my workflow as simple as
1) dump them all to the Phanfare client (which starts uploading in the background immediately)
2) double-click on the first photo to bring it up large
3) move forward/backwards through photos with arrow keys
4) hit Ctrl-H if there's a photo I want to hide.

But again, I'm lazy and an amateur. My photos are archived locally in a simple hierarchy of ~/photos/2007/2007.10.15-SomebodysBirthday

Again, I don't do any Photoshopping of photos. I just want them all backed up, and to share some of them.

So for me (and probably lots of other amateurs), Phanfare makes this really easy.

Of course you'll find complaints on Phanfare forums that they need more organization options (categories and subcategories), tags (keywords), more control over layout (customizations).

So heh, it's funny how the grass is always greener. Even if you own both sides of the fence.

I've often dreamt of a SmugMug/Phanfare merger, but I don't think it's in the cards. Phanfare just got 2.5mil in a 3rd round of VC funding and has yet to turn a profit. SmugMug has been profitable for years...

I'm w/Darryl on this one. The ability to set images to private/invisible on a image-by-image basis is essentially what it comes down to. I very much want this.

Sam

Andy · December 28, 2007

Soooooooooo have a look here

You can now hide individual photos in a gallery, making them "for your eyes only."

http://www.smugmug.com/help/hide-photos

clap

Shizam · December 28, 2007

Andy wrote:

Soooooooooo have a look here
You can now hide individual photos in a gallery, making them "for your eyes only."

http://www.smugmug.com/help/hide-photos

clap

And don't forget:

smugmug.images.changeSettings&Hidden=1

So so hawt.

Sam

darryl · December 28, 2007

Woot! Now I guess we just need to get Nikolai to support it in Star*Explorer. I suppose I should actually buy a copy of this app that I'm always suggesting features for. :-}

Runtscal · December 28, 2007

Doesn't the hide photo option now on smugmug do this?
I just looked at one of my galleries (public with locked password). It has an option at the bottom for hide photo.

The hide photo? descriptor says:

Check this box to hide this photo from your visitors. You'll still see it when you're logged in.

http://ads-n-ash.smugmug.com/gallery/4064054#236620806

mlm

Runtscal · December 28, 2007

Runtscal wrote:

I just looked at one of my galleries (public with locked password). It has an option at the bottom for hide photo.

The hide photo? descriptor says:

Check this box to hide this photo from your visitors. You'll still see it when you're logged in.

http://ads-n-ash.smugmug.com/gallery/4064054#236620806

mlm

Yay! Andy -- looks like we were all typing at once - great new feature.

mhofmann · December 29, 2007

Brilliant! Thanks a lot for implementing this great new feature!

It's one I've been anticipating for a while...

Just one quick question though. Is it possible in some way to get quick visual feedback which photos in a gallery I have hidden? It would be ideal to have some sort of small mark next to or overlayed on the thumbnail when logged in. Otherwise I'd have to manually go through the whole gallery and look at the checkbox status for each photo which can be a bit tedious for large or many galleries.

Cheers,
Michael

Andy · December 29, 2007

mhofmann wrote:

Brilliant! Thanks a lot for implementing this great new feature! It's one I've been anticipating for a while...

Just one quick question though. Is it possible in some way to get quick visual feedback which photos in a gallery I have hidden? It would be ideal to have some sort of small mark next to or overlayed on the thumbnail when logged in. Otherwise I'd have to manually go through the whole gallery and look at the checkbox status for each photo which can be a bit tedious for large or many galleries.

Cheers,
Michael

Notice the way the words hide photo change once you've checked the checkbox

But I do hope that we can come up with some easy way for folks to see what photos are hidden, at a glance. Stay Tuned.....

jfriend · December 29, 2007

mhofmann wrote:

Brilliant! Thanks a lot for implementing this great new feature! It's one I've been anticipating for a while...

Just one quick question though. Is it possible in some way to get quick visual feedback which photos in a gallery I have hidden? It would be ideal to have some sort of small mark next to or overlayed on the thumbnail when logged in. Otherwise I'd have to manually go through the whole gallery and look at the checkbox status for each photo which can be a bit tedious for large or many galleries.

Cheers,
Michael

That's a cool idea, but in the meantime, your best bet is probably to open a second browser that is not logged in (Safari or Firefox whichever you're not already using) and then you can see the thumbs exactly as your viewers will see them and you can bop back and forth between that view and the logged in view in your other browser.

Allen · December 29, 2007

Andy wrote:

Notice the way the words hide photo change once you've checked the checkbox But I do hope that we can come up with some easy way for folks to see what photos are hidden, at a glance. Stay Tuned.....

Be cool if all the thumbs of hidden photos would get a red border color or
better still if the thumb was regenerated to show a "hidden" watermark.

Although the added border could mess with individuals formating and not work.

digitalities · December 29, 2007

Andy wrote:

Soooooooooo have a look here
You can now hide individual photos in a gallery, making them "for your eyes only."

another sign of "SmugMug listens to customers"

.

Just played with it. Great work.

For giving more evidence to the hidden pictures, an alternative to playing with borders is to use some javascript which adds a shadow/opacity effect on the thumbnails of hidden pics.

Cheers, Sergio

TexasFamily · December 29, 2007

Sorry if someone already suggested this...

Can we also have a (Bulk) hide photos for all those galleries I have already uploaded? (pretty please...with sugar on top)

Thanks!!!

darryl · December 30, 2007

TexasFamily wrote:

Sorry if someone already suggested this...

Can we also have a (Bulk) hide photos for all those galleries I have already uploaded? (pretty please...with sugar on top)

Thanks!!!

Yeah, because oof, I've started trying to manually hide a bunch of photos, and boy is it a pain.

Maybe you could pay DevBobo to devote some time to expanding SmugBrowser into a full-fledged photo manager that would provide an easier interface to that ever-expanding and horribly outdated (sorry) interface of the "photo tools" drop-down menu.

I mean, yes, Star*Explorer is great stuff, but c'mon, Mac market share is all the way up to a whopping... 6%! And what about the substantial Linux base? Hahahaha....

But seriously. A better on-line organizer would go a long way to growing your non-professional customer base that may not be inclined to shell out more money (sorry Nikolai) for a service they're already paying for.

Sure, Flickr's Organizr is slick and full of AJAXy goodness, but hey, Firefox is free, so why not just build on SmugBrowser?

darryl · December 30, 2007

Allen wrote:

Be cool if all the thumbs of hidden photos would get a red border color or
better still if the thumb was regenerated to show a "hidden" watermark.

Although the added border could mess with individuals formating and not work.

Nah -- they just need to use the same "overlay" trick they used to put a "Play" button on top of the video thumbnails to show you that they're videos (try loading one of those thumbs -- see, they didn't actually regenerate the image. That'd be a pain).

The trick is what icon would make sense? The universal red circle with a line through it? And maybe a red border as well, as Allen suggests.

Yeah, a peek at the new Phanfare 2.0 desktop organizer shows that working pretty well:

Allen · December 30, 2007

darryl wrote:

Nah -- they just need to use the same "overlay" trick they used to put a "Play" button on top of the video thumbnails to show you that they're videos (try loading one of those thumbs -- see, they didn't actually regenerate the image. That'd be a pain).

The trick is what icon would make sense? The universal red circle with a line through it? And maybe a red border as well, as Allen suggests.

Yeah, a peek at the new Phanfare 2.0 desktop organizer shows that working pretty well:

I cancelled the red border from my thoughts.

Two reasons, my active
thumbs already have the red border and on the move photos page for one, all
the selections have red borders. How 'bout just a big "H" watermark on them?

darryl · December 30, 2007

Allen wrote:

I cancelled the red border from my thoughts. Two reasons, my active
thumbs already have the red border and on the move photos page for one, all
the selections have red borders. How 'bout just a big "H" watermark on them?

Gah -- yet more reasons for there to be a separate online "organizer" that separates album and photo management from display, and has a more sensible (and consistent) interface for individual and bulk actions.

--Darryl

mhofmann · December 30, 2007

darryl wrote:

Gah -- yet more reasons for there to be a separate online "organizer" that separates album and photo management from display, and has a more sensible (and consistent) interface for individual and bulk actions

I guess so. But that's some major implementation work, and we don't know what the folks at SmugMug will have in store for us in the future anyway.

Besides, this "organizer" capability should be orthogonal to the functions we have already.
I was thinking more along the lines of a quick fix, so that you can immediately see what's hidden and what's not. Like an overlay of a circle with a line through it -- something that doesn't mess with customizations (too much).
And bulk hiding/unhiding with the already proven bulk delete interface would be great, too! Hidden pictures could be already marked directly after accessing the list.

Allen · December 31, 2007

Hidden Photo keywords

Andy wrote:

Soooooooooo have a look here
You can now hide individual photos in a gallery, making them "for your eyes only."

http://www.smugmug.com/help/hide-photos

clap

I just tested adding a keyword like "hidden" to a photo before hiding it. The
new keyword shows up in the keyword list logged in. It does not show logged
out. So add a special keyword to the photo before hiding it and then from
your keyword listing you'll be able to find all the hidden photos where ever
they are.

For direct link use this, insert your user name.
http://username.smugmug.com/keyword/hidden

Anyway to hide photos?

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