Replace Feature Replaces Image But Not Metadata, For Some Bizarre Reason
NY2LA
Registered Users Posts: 62 Big grins
I've discovered, through trial and error, SmugMug's Replace feature works as follows, with respect to edited image data, edited metadata (i.e., the caption), and the assorted display sizes that SmugMug creates (thumbnails to X3L):
1.) Uploading a replacement image file with only edited metadata, no change to the image data, replaces only the original file. The assorted display sizes continue to contain the original metadata. (Bad.)
2.) Uploading a replacement image file with edited image data replaces the original file, and also results in assorted display sizes with the edited image. (Good.)
2.) Uploading a replacement image file with both edited image data and edited metadata replaces the original file, results in assorted display sizes with the edited image, which continue to contain the original metadata. (Bad, and bizarre.)
I don't know about anybody else, but this is a big problem for me.
1.) Uploading a replacement image file with only edited metadata, no change to the image data, replaces only the original file. The assorted display sizes continue to contain the original metadata. (Bad.)
2.) Uploading a replacement image file with edited image data replaces the original file, and also results in assorted display sizes with the edited image. (Good.)
2.) Uploading a replacement image file with both edited image data and edited metadata replaces the original file, results in assorted display sizes with the edited image, which continue to contain the original metadata. (Bad, and bizarre.)
I don't know about anybody else, but this is a big problem for me.
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Comments
Replacing a photo does not update its metadata. There are a few reasons but one of the main reasons this is because titles, keywords, and captions can be updated within SmugMug and can conflict with the replaced metadata. We can definitely be smarter about this and after bringing it up with the team it looks like we're going to file this as a bug and do a better job (or start, rather) replacing some or all of the metadata as well.
If you'd like to replace the metadata, the best way is to delete and replace the photo. Additionally, if you happen to use Lightroom, you can use the Publish Plugin to update the title, caption and keyword.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Yes, it does. I tested this.
I can't do something that results in changing a URL, though, including a URL for a specific image. My SmugMug site is a documentary, and describing my photos remains a work in progress after uploading them. In particular, I get other peoples' help identifying people in the shots, and add their names to the captions. In fact, having the photos online on SmugMug is the ideal way to get people to help with this. But it won't work if I break links as I improve the captions.
I hope other SmugMug users understand the implication of how it works now. If they want to do a simple thing such as correct an error in a caption, currently they cannot correct the caption in the JPEG's at miscellaneous display sizes available for downloading, without changing the URL for that image.
I am glad that you are considering this a bug, and will look into improving how it works.
When you add names to the captions, do you do it Lightroom? Some other photo editor? In SmugMug?
If you updated a caption in SmugMug but forgot to update the caption metadata, then replaced the photo, would you expect us to replace the caption in SM (which was update) with the metadata caption? Or would you want us to leave the caption? What happens if you updated the caption in SM and updated the caption metadata differently? Should we take whichever is newer?
Keep in mind that simple solution are much more likely to get implemented, especially if the vehicle for it already exists. For example, someone could say "well you could pop up a message showing me the conflict ask which to keep." Since this is more complicated and Involves totally new items that are longer to develop, the odds of a quick fix go down.
Definitely curious on your thoughts so we can make sure to proceed in a way that solves this for you and the rest of the SM community
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
When I add names to a caption, I do it manually in three places (or intend to):
1.) my locally stored master image files, which are uncompressed TIFF files
2.) the caption on the SmugMug interface
3.) my locally stored copy of the originally uploaded JPEG, which I will then upload using the Replace feature (this way, I am sure to replace the image with exactly the same image, as intended.)
To edit the caption in my image files, I use Photoshop's File Info, or Adobe Bridge, while offline. I don't use Lightroom at all. To edit the caption on the SmugMug interface, I use the browser, either Safari or Chrome, while logged on.
Sometimes I do step number 2 before the other steps. (I keep a handwritten chart for keeping track of which steps I've done.) The reason is that it is the easiest thing to do; I simply log in and edit the caption in the browser. It is also the place where the change matters the most on an immediate basis. (People will see it there first; and Google, in fact, is finally nicely crawling the text of my captions on SmugMug.)
I don't expect you to keep track of this at all. I am keeping track of it with my handwritten chart. I am not against you coming up with a system that keeps track of it, but it is beyond my expectation. Basically, all I want is to be able to trust that when I use Replace, the new caption will be embedded in the JPEG of any display size that someone may chose to download.
To me, it seems the simple solution would be to update the metadata the same way that you update the image data, when the Replace feature is used, in all the generated display sizes. I am not suggesting that you try to maintain consistency between the caption on the SmugMug interface, and the metadata embedded in the JPEG image files, after the original upload.
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Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
This is an incredibly bizarre suggestion. I am trying to have a website with photos that are indexed by Google, reviewed by blogs, that I am promoting on Facebook, etc. I cannot be changing URL's or breaking links. Please don't make such a ridiculous suggestion.
This should be a priority thing to fix.
I'm not 100% sure I agree that anything is even broken (in many cases I'd prefer metadata to stay during a replacement), but I'd really recommend simplifying your workflow by using Lightroom or something else compatible with smugmug. Reading your repetitive process, I'm very thankful I don't need to go through all of that. With Lightroom you wouldn't replace images when you make an update to them, you just republish them. None of the side effects you're getting with your replacement process.
Dave
But everyone who replaces images, for any purpose, needs to be able to see the correct and up-to-date "Date Modified" field. With the current bug (discussed elsewhere), seeing the original Date Modified is very confusing (e.g., I meant to update that one, do I need to do it again? which version is that?).
1.) You've uploaded an image with the caption "Marcia had a little lamb".
2.) You realize it should be "Mary had a little lamb". You edit the caption in the image file accordingly, and use Replace because you want the corrected caption in the files that can be downloaded.
3.) After you've used Replace, all of the SmugMug generated image files (assorted sizes X3 Large to Small) still have "Marcia had a little lamb" embedded in the files when downloaded.
Ironically, I like the fact that the Date Modified does not get updated. The public looking at my SmugMug website doesn't need to know when I've replaced an image. I am not using SmugMug to keep track of my versions of image files. I do all of that locally on my computer.
I don't use Lightroom, and have no reason to use it. Every single one of my images benefits from unique work in Photoshop, and that is what I do. I do not batch process anything, which I understand is one of the things Lightroom is good for. Also, I don't need Lightroom for organization. Apple's Finder in List View (rather than Icon view) works just fine for that purpose. Perhaps SmugMug prioritizing Lightroom users is part of the problem?
It's just data. Keep track of where it came from. Let manual edits always supersede image metadata.
I just want to add the Lightroom Plugin to this discussion, as it introduces a different dimension, I think (unless it has changed).
In Lightroom if I change a caption or keyword (but not the image itself), the plugin will go to Smugmug (on the next publish) and update the metadata. I do not need to delete and replace the image, nor even send the image at all. Good job that.
HOWEVER... the image itself on Smugmug then lacks the metadata. So this scenario:
- Have caption "Stuff" in photo A
- Publish photo A
- Change caption in lightroom to "Nonsense" in photo A (do not edit image)
- Publish - automatically updates A's metadata on Smugmug, users see "nonsense" on the web
However, it has NOT updated the image. If a user now downloads the image, it sees the caption "Stuff" in the image's metadata.
To fix this, what I have been doing is:
- Upload all images (people want them fast)
- Publish as needed as I update captions, keywords, etc.
- WHen all done, I MARK TO REPUBLISH all photos
- Publish
This sends a new copy of the image up so the image, and the metadata shown for the image, are in synch. This works for anything but capture time I think, which you have to delete and re-add. Of course it is a complete new upload cycle using my time and bandwidth as well as yours. And 80% of the shots probably didn't change, but I can't mentally keep up with them and the LR plugin doesn't (because it's happy to just send metadata).
The bottom line is that all this is highly confusing to your users, and to their viewers. People need to explore all these diverse paths and what happens in what order to make it work correctly. Web uploads do not work the same was a publish in Lightroom, in fact it is somewhat the opposite. Workarounds like deleting the image and uploading again introduce LOTS of side effects, in my case the gallery content disappears while it is happening, which is unacceptable.
To me the answer is simple -- KEEP EVERYTHING IN SYNCH THAT YOU CAN. And give priority to manual updates.
If an image is uploaded with different metadata and the prior metadata was from the image, replace it. ALL of it.
If LR's plugin uploads metadata, DO NOT TREAT IT AS MANUALLY ENTERED, from a user perspective it's part of the image.
If LR's plugin uploads metadata only without image, UPDATE THE IMAGES THEMSELVES WITH IT.
If the new metadata contains a new capture time - UPDATE IT. Don't make us treat that differently than other metadata.
Seriously, you guys have kludged this with so many exceptions and rules that made sense out of context that none of it makes sense to users any more as a whole.
There should be one version of the truth. If you must have two versions (manually entered metadata) fine, but then be completely consistent how you do that.
I have been on SM for at least 9 years and the Metadata has never been replaced when replacing an image.. IT is working as designed.. I found out the hard way as well..
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About the "Date Modified" field, I beg to differ. The replacement image file's actual metadata used to be reflected in the SM Info view, until a code update around 2Q 2013 that introduced the bug that stopped updating it. I have copies of messages exchanged with the Helpdesk from May-July 2013, ending with:
"We are still working on this bug, and we are so sorry for the inconvenience!"
ONLY if you do it from the web interface as opposed to the Smugmug plugin. Then it is replaced on Smugmug but not in the image itself.
I think people have found their own path for what tools they use. But the overall process is inconsistent and confusing if one tries to use a different path, and gets different results.
You lost me. When you do this, aren't you breaking your original links?
Background:
- SmugMug sucks in whatever metadata is uploaded with the original file. That includes capture time, title, caption, keywords, lens info, camera info, etc etc etc.
- There are 4 metadata fields that are editable within SmugMug: Title, Caption, Keyword, and Location (geolocation or GPS).
At SmugMug, we are not going to edit your original files by dumping those 4 metadata edits back into your file. It breaks sync'ing, it breaks duplicate detection, and it would mean we could no longer give you back the exact file you gave us (something we want to be able to do). Since pretty much anything is possible, we could generate a copy of the original that had the metadata updates in it, but the interest in that to date has been very low and we haven't pursued it.
If anything changes in LR (metadata or the pixels themselves), upload the new image and the metadata. This mostly makes sense except, instead of just updating the metadata like we do today, which is very quick, we'd be exporting and uploading a new image. This could take longer, but the actual bytes have changed, so perhaps it does make sense to re-upload the entire image.
I've proposed the following update to the team, though we've been working through some higher priority items and haven't had a chance to implement them yet:
- For all metadata except Title, Caption, and Keyword, replace the original metadata with the metadata from the new version.
- For Title, Caption and Keyword, only update these if they have not been updated on SmugMug.
- This can be accomplished by comparing the SmugMug Title, Caption, and Keyword to the Original Metadata. If they are the same, then they were not updated in SM and we can accept the Title, Caption, and Keywords from the new file. If they are not the same, ignore the Title, Caption, and Keyword from the new file and keep the version that was in SmugMug.
We do have plans to change that.
No, republishing is the same thing as "replacing" on SmugMug. The same URL's still work, it's just a different file.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
If I understand this correctly, this is good news. Hopefully, you mean that you will fix what happens when simply using Replace with a browser.
I'll leave the nightmarish aspects of "syncing" to all of you.
Sounds good to me. Thank you!
Two different thoughts...
Smugmug does modify the EXIF in the resized images it serves up from Smugmug, removing some fields (probably for space reasons). But I get the issue with "Original" not being changed. And that's probably not a bad philosophy, though it is significant in this sense.
If you are suggesting that the user upload the new image in lightroom, that is what I do, and it is awkward because you have to remember. So I'm going to pretend that's not your suggestion.
If you are suggesting that the LR plugin will, on metadata change, automatically in the future mark the image data to upload again not just the metadata, I'm fine with that. But I should note I have a fast internet connection and I might see others who would complain. It might be appropriate to offer an option in the plugin setup for whether to replace the image or just the metadata.
Following that thread, if you do replace just the metadata here's the issue -- if someone later decides (for example for editing reasons) to replace the image, what happens? Will it treat the Plugin-update-metadata-only data as though it was user entered on Smugmug? I offer the suggestion it should not, it should be treated just as though it did come from the image (even if if it was a metadata-only update from the pluigin) otherwise a subsequent upload of the image with new metadata would no longer be in sync, e.g. this is a bad scenario:
- With flag set to update metadata only on metadata-only change
- Upload photo with caption A
- Change caption to B
- Publish, uploads "B" as a caption only (image is unchanged and contains A)
- Change caption to C in lightroom (flags for metadata upload)
- Edit image (changes flag to full image upload)
- Publish, uploads image with caption C, but caption says "B" on Smugmug
So I think the handling int he plugin if it continues to do metadata only updates is crucial, it can't let the metadata-only update become somehow authoritative and supersede subsequent real updates with the image (for for that matter web uploads).
Note that all presumes that in a image-replace in the plugin it does not also, separately and in addition, update the metadata. I would offer that it should not, at least not to become "authoritative", since subsequent image replacement might not actually come from the plugin.
Basically I suggest:
- Web metdata update - becomes authoritative until replaced on the web or image deleted
Always replaces any existing data, whether from image or web.
- Metadata (only) update from plugin - is not authoritative, can be replaced by image data, and
can be replaced by image data later
can be replaced by plugin data later
Will not replace prior web updated data.
- Image (plus metdata) update from plugin - is not authoritative,
can be replaced by image data later
can be replaced by plugin data later
Will not replace prior web updated data.
This requires flaging each metdata field the web can update as whether it came from the web.
simply is that? Original EXIF is retained including date taken.
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I wrote in my original post that SmugMug's Replace feature works as follows:
1.) Uploading a replacement image file with only edited metadata, no change to the image data, replaces only the original file. The assorted display sizes continue to contain the original metadata.
So why would you use Replace in the first place, if you haven't edited the image, and don't want to replace the metadata. You simply wouldn't use it. And I am referring primarily to IPTC metadata, not EXIF metadata. What happens now is obviously a bug.
Of course, perhaps I need to clarify again, I am talking about using Replace with a browser. As for syncing with a Lightroom plug in, good luck all of you.
I used to only edit my captions and keywords in smugmug (I do it in Lightroom now and don't particularly care that they often don't get embedded in the images). So the way I used to do it, if I edited a picture and replaced it, the metadata would also be replaced by a blank caption and keywords field. If you edit metadata offline, I understand you'd want the opposite. But one isn't necessarily more right than the other. Just depends how you use it.
Dave
I need to edit IPTC metadata, rather EXIF metadata. Nevertheless, I think sometimes one would want to edit EXIF metadata as well. For example, I have heard about photographers who have traveled to a different part of the world, shot photos, and the EXIF timestamp ends up reflecting the wrong time zone. Therefore, they may use software like A Better Finder Attributes to correct the EXIF timestamp. Well, suppose the photographer didn't think of making the correction until after uploading the image to SmugMug?
If you shot a photo of a sunset, you don't want the EXIF timestamp to say that it was shot at noon, do you? If you belatedly corrected it, you would want the metadata in all sizes of the image to contain the corrected EXIF timestamp, wouldn't you? No need for SmugMug to keep the "original" with the incorrect EXIF timestamp.
Considering that I don't use Lightroom now, I am not clear on whether using it would be a workaround to my problem. My material is a documentary, and I need to be able to edit captions, and for the edited captions to be embedded in all sizes available for download. Would Lightroom be a workaround for me? Or do I need to stop using SmugMug, and hire somebody to design my own website?
It makes no sense to me, to be able to replace image data, but not metadata, in the SmugMug generated sizes. In fact, SmugMug is not keeping the "original" in that case.
I don't see why lightroom wouldn't solve your issues. The problem that was brought up is that the lightroom plugin doesn't upload edited images with embedded metadata if nothing other than the metadata was updated (in that case it only uploads the metadata to the proper smugmug fields). But that's an easy fix... there's an option to mark the files for republishing (re-uploading the images with the new metadata embedded).
Dave
If Lightroom is storing all kinds of metadata only in its own "library" (i.e., XMP files), and not always embedding edited metadata in image files, that I am not really interested in using it. I look at embedded metadata in my image files with many different applications. I use Mac O.S., but also look at the metadata in my image files in Windows, for example. The idea is future proofing the image files as user friendly, cross platform image files (independent their use on SmugMug), not limiting them to requiring Lightroom.
It stores it in XMP files only if it is editing raw files (which generally speaking no application is going to edit, except maybe the manufacturer's software).
Lightroom applies the metadata to every exported photo (unless you tell it not to), so if you edit then export to a file or publish via a plugin, it includes the metadata exactly as you would expect it to. Also, if you edit in Photoshop (or similar) it produces a TIFF as a result (by default) and that TIFF will have all the metadata embedded as well (unless you tell it otherwise).