LR or SmugMug for captions?

allanrubé

I have used LR but without adding any captions. I am going to place about 6000 images onto my SmugMug site. Since I am new to this I would like advise - should I enter the captions in LR or Smug?

I plan to use the plugin if that makes a difference.

leftquark

I posted my recommendation (which is to use LR) to your other thread: https://dgrin.com/discussion/261557/lr-plugin-opinions-wanted

Djm3006

Use Lightroom

colourbox

I’m not very experienced with the plug-in but from what I’ve read, it has an option for bidirectional sync. If that works flawlessly, then it means if you are using the plug-in you should be able to edit captions in either Smugmug or Lightroom and the changes will sync to the other place (somebody correct me if I am wrong). If I’m right, if you are using the plug-in with bidirectional sync enabled, you can enter captions on either end, so just choose the way you think is easier and faster for you.

But if you are not using the plug-in, the choice is very clear: Enter captions, keywords, and other metadata in Lightroom. That way, they always stay under your control, with your local library of master photos, and independent of any online service. That’s important because any online service can change or go out of business, as many have in the last 10 years, and you don’t want them to be the only place where your captions live. To their credit, Smugmug has been a long term survivor and I don’t worry about them too much, but the principle is sound: Maintain local control of your photos and metadata.

Suppose in 9 months you want to upload some of the same photos to Facebook, Instagram, and a new service we haven't even heard of yet. Or you want to export some copies to disk for family and friends. If the captions are only in Smugmug and not Lightroom, you won’t have the captions when exporting from Lightroom to those other destinations with the captions. The only way to get your captions back is to download the Smugmug versions and export form those, not your actual originals. But if the captions are in Lightroom at your computer, attached to the originals, they always go with the photos anywhere you export them. Lightroom is your home base so that is where the captions should originate.

Also, there is the question of speed. While Smugmug has one of the better interfaces for editing captions and keywords in bulk, it’s still happening through a web browser over the internet and fully dependent on that connection. It should be much faster to make bulk edits in Lightroom, which lives on your own computer and is not dependent on the speed of the Internet or the limitations of doing work in a web browser.

BigRed

@colourbox said:
[SNIP]
If the captions are only in Smugmug and not Lightroom, you won’t have the captions when exporting from Lightroom to those other destinations with the captions. The only way to get your captions back is to download the Smugmug versions and export form those, not your actual originals. But if the captions are in Lightroom at your computer, attached to the originals, they always go with the photos anywhere you export them. Lightroom is your home base so that is where the captions should originate.

Actually, any captions & keywords maintained within Smugmug are NOT embedded in the JPG files. They are stored separately, and not downloadable AFAIK.

colourbox

You're right @BigRed, I forgot that metadata changes made to images on Smugmug are not merged back into the uploaded files.

That's another big reason I try to get the metadata as complete as possible on my computer before uploading, so that the images up on Smugmug have all the metadata I want them to contain when they are downloaded from my galleries.

allanrubé

I am working on captions right now in LR.