It looks like the notice on this forum for version 1.1 being turned off was made only 10 days before-hand. To not get blind-sided by further changes to the API (like older versions being turned off), what methods do you have for developers to be updated, besides this forum? Such as an email list?
@Lukiss said:
It looks like the notice on this forum for version 1.1 being turned off was made only 10 days before-hand. To not get blind-sided by further changes to the API (like older versions being turned off), what methods do you have for developers to be updated, besides this forum? Such as an email list?
We did send an email to the API consumers of the old API and sent one of our Account Managers to follow up with a majority of the developers who still had active uses of the API, but we obviously missed some. The engineering team is reviewing why / how we missed getting the full list and will make sure we've got it fixed if / when we do something like this in the future. There are probably other things that we'll also do when the time comes again.
+1 for re-enabling 1.2.2. I’ve got a lot of customers down right now and I’ve been struggling to implement oAuth with 1.3. I am using the exact same oAuth library and code that I use to log users into Twitter, but the oAuth calls to Smugmug give me invalid signature errors.
A large reason for retiring API v1.2.2 was due to the improvements in the way we safegard our customers information via the API. Because we want to keep SmugMug a safe place for our customers photos, we’ll be sticking with our desire to keep 1.2.2 disabled. I know that’s not what y’all want to hear since you are working on moving over to v1.3 or v2beta but we want to stand by our belief in keeping everyones photos safe. I will, however, make sure that we get you all the help that you need in getting moved over as quickly and swiftly as possible.
@funkyavocado: would you like to be put in touch with one of our engineers to provide any assistance?
@Jeffrey Friedl: The engineering team has informed me that they’ve been on top of the API emails and on here — are you waiting on any other assistance?
@leftquark said:
A large reason for retiring API v1.2.2 was due to the improvements in the way we safegard our customers information via the API. Because we want to keep SmugMug a safe place for our customers photos, we’ll be sticking with our desire to keep 1.2.2 disabled. I know that’s not what y’all want to hear since you are working on moving over to v1.3 or v2beta but we want to stand by our belief in keeping everyones photos safe. I will, however, make sure that we get you all the help that you need in getting moved over as quickly and swiftly as possible.
I cannot believe that keeping 1.2.2 retired will improve the situation for the moment. As of now several of your customers are blocked. Providing the 1.2.2 for some more weeks would keep us going while @Jeffrey Friedl and others are adapting their applications. It would remove pressure from them and give them time to provide a proper quality.
@bwl said:
I cannot believe that keeping 1.2.2 retired will improve the situation for the moment. As of now several of your customers are blocked. Providing the 1.2.2 for some more weeks would keep us going while @Jeffrey Friedl and others are adapting their applications. It would remove pressure from them and give them time to provide a proper quality.
I'd love to better understand how you use these third party apps to do things that aren't currently possible to do within SmugMug itself. We're always looking to improve the product and if you've found something to be invaluable to you, it may be helpful to others too. What functionality are you currently blocked on?
I'd love to better understand how you use these third party apps to do things that aren't currently possible to do within SmugMug itself. We're always looking to improve the product and if you've found something to be invaluable to you, it may be helpful to others too. What functionality are you currently blocked on?
I am using Jeffrey's Plugin from the first day after I became a Smugmug Customer. To be honest this plugin was one of the reasons that I subscribed for Smugmug. The plugin synchronizes my LR-Archive with smugmug for public as well as for non public galleries. By this I have all my delivered photos in one publishing service in Lighthroom. This provides a consistent setting for size, watermark, sharpening, metadata etc. etc. but also the reference which photo was published to which gallery. Delivery of photos in simply on my fingertips.
If I now have to break this process either by manual upload or by another publishing service, I loose this reference mechanism. At least it is very tough to synchronize the settings. In best case I have to resynchronize later, but then the links will be different. It is cumbersome anyhow. So I asked my client for patience since I still hope, the problems will go away soon.
I do not say that there might be other ways to achieve the same. Jeffrey's Plugin served me for years so I did not even look for alternatives. And I would like to continue my consistent process. Jeffreys Plugin is feature rich, has an excellent quality. I do not want to give it up just because Smugmug does not support their supporters.
@bwl said:
If I now have to break this process either by manual upload or by another publishing service, I loose this reference mechanism.
That's understandable. We have an official Lightroom Plugin that's also pretty amazing and very similar to JFriedl's but you would have to install it as a separate plugin, yes.
@bwl said:
At least it is very tough to synchronize the settings. In best case I have to resynchronize later, but then the links will be different. It is cumbersome anyhow. So I asked my client for patience since I still hope, the problems will go away soon.
If you used our official LR plugin, one synchronization should cover everything and none of your links would change. All it does is look for the same photo between your computer and SmugMug and creates a pair (a "link") between the two. If you update it on your computer, our plugin also recognizes that it's changed and replaces the photo and updates any metadata changed. None of your links to your photos would change.
One thing you could do is to temporarily install our LR Plugin. While syncing your entire LR catalog wouldn't be horrible (if it's a few hundred photos it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes ... if it's a few thousand set it to run overnight for example) you could skip that and just use our plugin for your clients galleries. Our plugin lets you do syncing on your entire site, or on a folder or gallery by gallery level. So you'd just need to go to your "Event Favorites" folder, choose "Sync Folders and Galleries" and that would pull in their Event Favorites (I assume that's the feature your client was using?). Everything else would stay as you had it.
@bwl said:
I do not want to give it up just because Smugmug does not support their supporters.
That's a little unfair to say. We're here to support you (as our customers) and our developers. The decision to retire and then keep it retired was not because we don't want to do it. The decision was born out of not wanting to put the security of your photos at risk. The improvements made in the subsequent API versions are significant and enough to keep the old API retired. We'll do our best to help JFriedl get the plugin updated as quickly as possible.
That's a little unfair to say. We're here to support you (as our customers) and our developers. The decision to retire and then keep it retired was not because we don't want to do it. The decision was born out of not wanting to put the security of your photos at risk. The improvements made in the subsequent API versions are significant and enough to keep the old API retired. We'll do our best to help JFriedl get the plugin updated as quickly as possible.
Sorry, I agree it is a bit harsh. I apologize, since I see at least some traffic here since June 23. My statement comes from the fact that the current situation is not satisfying. If 1.2.2 had a security issue, it was there for longer time. So a few (e.g. 2) weeks more can hardly be a major problem, but it would help us up without forcing us to abandon Jeffrey's Plugin and migrate to somewhere else.
The SmugMug plugin doesn't compare to JFriedl's. It has been a valuable tool since I discovered it and I'm having a hell of time doing without it on SmugMug.. Luckily it still works on the other platforms that Jeffrey supports.
My Pictures : My Gear
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
@cjyphoto said:
The SmugMug plugin doesn't compare to JFriedl's
I'd love to know more about what you use in JFiedl's that the SmugMug plugin doesn't do.
Have you even looked at Jeffrey's plugin?? I use it to...
Create new galleries and apply Quick Settings on Smugmug from within the plugin.
Apply deeply granular metadata control to my uploads, including the ability to use template tokens to automatically populate data such as IPTC time, date and location (among many other possibilities) into the Smugmug caption and/or title fields upon publish - in my choice of plaintext or html.
Establish criteria to invoke a re-publish, such as changes to various user-slected metadata.
Re-publish various modified metadata, such as keywords, captions, and geolocation, without having to re-publish the corresponding image(s).
Automatically generate Develop snapshots in Lightroom upon publish & re-publish.
Set criteria determining if and when photos are deleted from Smugmug.
Export Lightroom Smart Previews to Smugmug when main image is offline.
Filter and sort in Lightroom’s Library Filter with an ‘Uploaded to Smugmug’ yes/no metadata toggle.
None of this functionality appears to be available in the official Smugmug plugin.
Any developers out there capable of creating a command line uploader for me? My current program can authenticate the user and get the access token, let them select an album etc.... but no matter what I try, the API returns an authentication error when trying to upload to the selected album. I’m basically out of ideas so I’m looking for a command line tool I can pass the oAuth token, file name and album ID to and it just handles the uploading process in the background.
@DJDigitalDave said:
Have you even looked at Jeffrey's plugin?? I use it to...
Of course! JFriedl's plugin is extremely powerful so I was curious to understand specifically which features are important, since some of these features are used by many, and some features are used by few.
@DJDigitalDave said:
1. Create new galleries and apply Quick Settings on Smugmug from within the plugin.
This is available from within our plugin as well. You can create new folders or galleries just by right clicking:
You can apply quick settings:
And you can manage your quick settings:
If you want to refresh the folders / galleries that are within SM you can just choose to "Sync" them from within the Folder or Gallery settings, and it'll requery SmugMug to see what's there and match it to your LR catalog:
I use this constantly with clients and their Event Favorites. I'll ask them to favorite their photos, then once they've done that, I go in and do a Sync in my "Events Favorites" folder and it automatically pulls in the photos they favorited. I re-edit those and re-publish all from within LR!
@DJDigitalDave said:
2. Apply deeply granular metadata control to my uploads, including the ability to use template tokens to automatically populate data such as IPTC time, date and location (among many other possibilities) into the Smugmug caption and/or title fields upon publish - in my choice of plaintext or html.
We do have some ability, though probably not as granular as you're looking:
I'd love to know more about how JFriedl's can automatically populate metadata into the caption/title. That sounds neat
@DJDigitalDave said:
3. Establish criteria to invoke a re-publish, such as changes to various user-slected metadata.
See screenshot above. We offer the options to republish on caption, location, keywords, or title. Are there others that you update frequently?
@DJDigitalDave said:
4. Re-publish various modified metadata, such as keywords, captions, and geolocation, without having to re-publish the corresponding image(s).
We do this as well. The first republish updates metadata. If you republish again it'll reupload the actual pixels of the image.
@DJDigitalDave said:
5. Automatically generate Develop snapshots in Lightroom upon publish & re-publish.
This is another neat feature we can investigate.
@DJDigitalDave said:
6. Set criteria determining if and when photos are deleted from Smugmug.
There are no specific options to configure it, but we ask what you'd like to do every time (whether to keep it or delete it).
@DJDigitalDave said:
7. Export Lightroom Smart Previews to Smugmug when main image is offline.
8. Filter and sort in Lightroom’s Library Filter with an ‘Uploaded to Smugmug’ yes/no metadata toggle.
These both seem super useful and we can investigate.
Overall, JFreidl does a great job with the plugin and there's definitely some things it does that we don't.
@DJDigitalDave said:
Have you even looked at Jeffrey's plugin?? I use it to...
Of course! JFriedl's plugin is extremely powerful so I was curious to understand specifically which features are important, since some of these features are used by many, and some features are used by few.
@DJDigitalDave said:
1. Create new galleries and apply Quick Settings on Smugmug from within the plugin.
This is available from within our plugin as well. You can create new folders or galleries just by right clicking:
You can apply quick settings:
And you can manage your quick settings:
If you want to refresh the folders / galleries that are within SM you can just choose to "Sync" them from within the Folder or Gallery settings, and it'll requery SmugMug to see what's there and match it to your LR catalog:
I use this constantly with clients and their Event Favorites. I'll ask them to favorite their photos, then once they've done that, I go in and do a Sync in my "Events Favorites" folder and it automatically pulls in the photos they favorited. I re-edit those and re-publish all from within LR!
@DJDigitalDave said:
2. Apply deeply granular metadata control to my uploads, including the ability to use template tokens to automatically populate data such as IPTC time, date and location (among many other possibilities) into the Smugmug caption and/or title fields upon publish - in my choice of plaintext or html.
We do have some ability, though probably not as granular as you're looking:
I'd love to know more about how JFriedl's can automatically populate metadata into the caption/title. That sounds neat
@DJDigitalDave said:
3. Establish criteria to invoke a re-publish, such as changes to various user-slected metadata.
See screenshot above. We offer the options to republish on caption, location, keywords, or title. Are there others that you update frequently?
@DJDigitalDave said:
4. Re-publish various modified metadata, such as keywords, captions, and geolocation, without having to re-publish the corresponding image(s).
We do this as well. The first republish updates metadata. If you republish again it'll reupload the actual pixels of the image.
@DJDigitalDave said:
5. Automatically generate Develop snapshots in Lightroom upon publish & re-publish.
This is another neat feature we can investigate.
@DJDigitalDave said:
6. Set criteria determining if and when photos are deleted from Smugmug.
There are no specific options to configure it, but we ask what you'd like to do every time (whether to keep it or delete it).
@DJDigitalDave said:
7. Export Lightroom Smart Previews to Smugmug when main image is offline.
8. Filter and sort in Lightroom’s Library Filter with an ‘Uploaded to Smugmug’ yes/no metadata toggle.
These both seem super useful and we can investigate.
Overall, JFreidl does a great job with the plugin and there's definitely some things it does that we don't.
The point of my post was not really to nitpick over differences between the two plugins; I was responding to what came off as a dismissive attitude toward users of Jeffry's plugin. If that was not your intention, please forgive my misperception. I remain annoyed, however, that Smugmug has been unwilling to temporarily reinstate the deprecated api so that your customers with workflows dependent upon Jeffery's plugin would not be disrupted. In a prior post you intimated that your decision was at least partially based on whether or not there are sufficient numbers of your customers that use Jeffrey's plugin. Seems to me that unnecessarily impeding even just one of your customers would be enough to result in a different decision, particularly when the solution would be a very short-term compromise.
@DJDigitalDave said:
The point of my post was not really to nitpick over differences between the two plugins; I was responding to what came off as a dismissive attitude toward users of Jeffry's plugin. If that was not your intention, please forgive my misperception. I remain annoyed, however, that Smugmug has been unwilling to temporarily reinstate the deprecated api so that your customers with workflows dependent upon Jeffery's plugin would not be disrupted. In a prior post you intimated that your decision was at least partially based on whether or not there are sufficient numbers of your customers that use Jeffrey's plugin. Seems to me that unnecessarily impeding even just one of your customers would be enough to result in a different decision, particularly when the solution would be a very short-term compromise.
Then I must apologize as well -- since your workflow is currently broken, my intention was to offer (and educate on) an alternate solution that would re-enable some of your workflows until Jeffrey is able to get his plugin updated.
Everything is a balancing act and in some ways, we have to acknowledge that we can't solve every users needs and desires. If we tried, we'd end up creating a product that's so hard for anyone to use that it wouldn't work well. While its always been our goal to take care of each and every one of you, we also have to be honest and acknowledge that at some point we'll disappoint some of you. We try to limit these situations and offer alternate solutions in those instances and then get better so we can avoid that from happening again. In the past we have been more willing to build features because one person wanted it and that's resulted in a massive product that can be very difficult to maintain, support and grow. We're in the process of removing features that are only used by a small minority so that we can focus our attention back on improving SmugMug.
In this situation, there was a much larger driving factor into the decision not to re-enable the older API: the security and privacy improvements in the newer APIs are significant. We don't want to make any decisions, even temporary, that might put the security of your photos at risk. Because of that, the older API will remain disabled. It may be easy to say "well, it was enabled for so long, why not go a little longer?" That's a poor argument and one that we won't accept as a company that respects the privacy of your photos.
Because of that, the older API will remain disabled. It may be easy to say "well, it was enabled for so long, why not go a little longer?" That's a poor argument and one that we won't accept as a company that respects the privacy of your photos.
To be honest, I find this argument poor as well. Could you say more about the risks in the previous api? Does it mean that Smugmug was vulnerable for years?
Using your Plugin as a temporary solution requires changes in the workflow and it is not likely that users would switch back. Therefore I feel that you welcome the chance to kick out Jfriedl's Plugin. Please respect that Jfriedl is a strong supporter for Smugmug for years. I guess I am not the only customer using Smugmug because of HIS Plugin.
It is my interest, that Jfriedl has enough time to migrate his plugin in the same level of quality as he did the last 10 years.
BTW: If I were in his situation, I would not even know which API to migrate to. V 1.3 will be replaced as well (soon?). V 2 is still beta. So we have the risk of running into the same situation again.
@cjyphoto said:
The SmugMug plugin doesn't compare to JFriedl's
I'd love to know more about what you use in JFiedl's that the SmugMug plugin doesn't do.
Have you even looked at Jeffrey's plugin?? I use it to...
Create new galleries and apply Quick Settings on Smugmug from within the plugin.
Apply deeply granular metadata control to my uploads, including the ability to use template tokens to automatically populate data such as IPTC time, date and location (among many other possibilities) into the Smugmug caption and/or title fields upon publish - in my choice of plaintext or html.
Establish criteria to invoke a re-publish, such as changes to various user-slected metadata.
Re-publish various modified metadata, such as keywords, captions, and geolocation, without having to re-publish the corresponding image(s).
Automatically generate Develop snapshots in Lightroom upon publish & re-publish.
Set criteria determining if and when photos are deleted from Smugmug.
Export Lightroom Smart Previews to Smugmug when main image is offline.
Filter and sort in Lightroom’s Library Filter with an ‘Uploaded to Smugmug’ yes/no metadata toggle.
None of this functionality appears to be available in the official Smugmug plugin.
Any more questions?
What DJDD said and the ability to export from the develop module to SmugMug, Facebook, and Flickr quickly and easily. i guess I should make sure the Flickr uploading still works now.
My Pictures : My Gear
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
@Jeffrey Friedl: The engineering team has informed me that they’ve been on top of the API emails and on here — are you waiting on any other assistance?
My biggest worry at this point is that I don't have a way to test the version-update conversion that has to happen. The new API inexplicably doesn't allow lookup of objects (users, albums, photos) via the ids used in the previous API (this is so very inexcusable that I don't even know where to start, so I'll just leave it at that), so I've got to cobble something the combines 1.3 with 2.0 to do a one-time (one-time per SmugMug account per catalog) conversion. But in order to test this deep conversion, I need a Lightroom catalog with a deep history of interaction via the plugin with SmugMug, and I don't have that.
If I could get private access to 1.2 servers, I could make such a catalog, then test my conversion stuff. I've done this in the past, working with SmugMug engineers to have the plugin work with your development servers, to debug some issues some years ago. I asked the api@ guy before we both went on vacation, but I guess he's still out because other than an initial "we'll look into it", I've got no further response.
The idea is that the Smart Preview can mean lower quality, and so you probably don't want to have them used silently... you want to use them when you want, but not when you don't.
@Jeffrey Friedl said:
If I could get private access to 1.2 servers, I could make such a catalog, then test my conversion stuff. I've done this in the past, working with SmugMug engineers to have the plugin work with your development servers, to debug some issues some years ago. I asked the api@ guy before we both went on vacation, but I guess he's still out because other than an initial "we'll look into it", I've got no further response.
@Jeffrey Friedl, I'm sorry we didn't get back to you last week, I didn't realize you were waiting for a response. It sounds like you're actually asking for two things to finish your modifications:
1) Access to our development environment. I chatted with @leftquark and we'll get you access to a development server for testing your migration. I'll be in touch directly with details once I have something setup. Likely in the next few hours.
2) New endpoints to map from Image, Album, and UserID to their APIv2 equivalents. If it's easier for you to only talk to APIv2; we can certainly implement this. Obviously we'd suggest you make OAuth calls to the 1.3 endpoints for your migration, since the only significant difference between 1.2 and 1.3 is the authentication model. It will take a few days before we have the new lookup endpoints ready.
Is there another answer you're waiting for?
APIv2 and OAuth are your friend! Having issues? Just ask, I can help!
But in order to test this deep conversion, I need a Lightroom catalog with a deep history of interaction via the plugin with SmugMug, and I don't have that.
Jeffrey, I’d be happy to send you a copy of my LR catalog if it would be of any help to you. I’m pretty sure it meets your criteria of a “deep history of interaction with your plugin.” (Presumably, you wouldn’t be needing the ~200,000 images associated with the catalog...
Just an update for those who are following along, we're continuing to work with Jeffery to provide him with the support he needs to make the changes to his Lightroom plugin.
APIv2 and OAuth are your friend! Having issues? Just ask, I can help!
@giberti said:
Just an update for those who are following along, we're continuing to work with Jeffery to provide him with the support he needs to make the changes to his Lightroom plugin.
Yes, I should have chimed in here earlier, sorry. My being in a timezone halfway around the world doesn't help speed things up much, but I'm appreciative of the direct help they're giving. Things are moving along.
Comments
Indeed it does, thanks!
We did send an email to the API consumers of the old API and sent one of our Account Managers to follow up with a majority of the developers who still had active uses of the API, but we obviously missed some. The engineering team is reviewing why / how we missed getting the full list and will make sure we've got it fixed if / when we do something like this in the future. There are probably other things that we'll also do when the time comes again.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
A large reason for retiring API v1.2.2 was due to the improvements in the way we safegard our customers information via the API. Because we want to keep SmugMug a safe place for our customers photos, we’ll be sticking with our desire to keep 1.2.2 disabled. I know that’s not what y’all want to hear since you are working on moving over to v1.3 or v2beta but we want to stand by our belief in keeping everyones photos safe. I will, however, make sure that we get you all the help that you need in getting moved over as quickly and swiftly as possible.
@funkyavocado: would you like to be put in touch with one of our engineers to provide any assistance?
@Jeffrey Friedl: The engineering team has informed me that they’ve been on top of the API emails and on here — are you waiting on any other assistance?
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I cannot believe that keeping 1.2.2 retired will improve the situation for the moment. As of now several of your customers are blocked. Providing the 1.2.2 for some more weeks would keep us going while @Jeffrey Friedl and others are adapting their applications. It would remove pressure from them and give them time to provide a proper quality.
http://blog.weichel21.de
http://bwl.smugmug.com
@angsmug should have reached out to you. Let me know if you didn't get his message.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I'd love to better understand how you use these third party apps to do things that aren't currently possible to do within SmugMug itself. We're always looking to improve the product and if you've found something to be invaluable to you, it may be helpful to others too. What functionality are you currently blocked on?
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I am using Jeffrey's Plugin from the first day after I became a Smugmug Customer. To be honest this plugin was one of the reasons that I subscribed for Smugmug. The plugin synchronizes my LR-Archive with smugmug for public as well as for non public galleries. By this I have all my delivered photos in one publishing service in Lighthroom. This provides a consistent setting for size, watermark, sharpening, metadata etc. etc. but also the reference which photo was published to which gallery. Delivery of photos in simply on my fingertips.
If I now have to break this process either by manual upload or by another publishing service, I loose this reference mechanism. At least it is very tough to synchronize the settings. In best case I have to resynchronize later, but then the links will be different. It is cumbersome anyhow. So I asked my client for patience since I still hope, the problems will go away soon.
I do not say that there might be other ways to achieve the same. Jeffrey's Plugin served me for years so I did not even look for alternatives. And I would like to continue my consistent process. Jeffreys Plugin is feature rich, has an excellent quality. I do not want to give it up just because Smugmug does not support their supporters.
http://blog.weichel21.de
http://bwl.smugmug.com
That's understandable. We have an official Lightroom Plugin that's also pretty amazing and very similar to JFriedl's but you would have to install it as a separate plugin, yes.
If you used our official LR plugin, one synchronization should cover everything and none of your links would change. All it does is look for the same photo between your computer and SmugMug and creates a pair (a "link") between the two. If you update it on your computer, our plugin also recognizes that it's changed and replaces the photo and updates any metadata changed. None of your links to your photos would change.
One thing you could do is to temporarily install our LR Plugin. While syncing your entire LR catalog wouldn't be horrible (if it's a few hundred photos it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes ... if it's a few thousand set it to run overnight for example) you could skip that and just use our plugin for your clients galleries. Our plugin lets you do syncing on your entire site, or on a folder or gallery by gallery level. So you'd just need to go to your "Event Favorites" folder, choose "Sync Folders and Galleries" and that would pull in their Event Favorites (I assume that's the feature your client was using?). Everything else would stay as you had it.
That's a little unfair to say. We're here to support you (as our customers) and our developers. The decision to retire and then keep it retired was not because we don't want to do it. The decision was born out of not wanting to put the security of your photos at risk. The improvements made in the subsequent API versions are significant and enough to keep the old API retired. We'll do our best to help JFriedl get the plugin updated as quickly as possible.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Sorry, I agree it is a bit harsh. I apologize, since I see at least some traffic here since June 23. My statement comes from the fact that the current situation is not satisfying. If 1.2.2 had a security issue, it was there for longer time. So a few (e.g. 2) weeks more can hardly be a major problem, but it would help us up without forcing us to abandon Jeffrey's Plugin and migrate to somewhere else.
http://blog.weichel21.de
http://bwl.smugmug.com
The SmugMug plugin doesn't compare to JFriedl's. It has been a valuable tool since I discovered it and I'm having a hell of time doing without it on SmugMug.. Luckily it still works on the other platforms that Jeffrey supports.
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
I'd love to know more about what you use in JFiedl's that the SmugMug plugin doesn't do.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Have you even looked at Jeffrey's plugin?? I use it to...
None of this functionality appears to be available in the official Smugmug plugin.
Any more questions?
www.djdigitaldave.net
I've sent @leftquark screenshots of the plugin settings
Of course! JFriedl's plugin is extremely powerful so I was curious to understand specifically which features are important, since some of these features are used by many, and some features are used by few.
This is available from within our plugin as well. You can create new folders or galleries just by right clicking:
You can apply quick settings:
And you can manage your quick settings:
If you want to refresh the folders / galleries that are within SM you can just choose to "Sync" them from within the Folder or Gallery settings, and it'll requery SmugMug to see what's there and match it to your LR catalog:
I use this constantly with clients and their Event Favorites. I'll ask them to favorite their photos, then once they've done that, I go in and do a Sync in my "Events Favorites" folder and it automatically pulls in the photos they favorited. I re-edit those and re-publish all from within LR!
We do have some ability, though probably not as granular as you're looking:
I'd love to know more about how JFriedl's can automatically populate metadata into the caption/title. That sounds neat
See screenshot above. We offer the options to republish on caption, location, keywords, or title. Are there others that you update frequently?
We do this as well. The first republish updates metadata. If you republish again it'll reupload the actual pixels of the image.
This is another neat feature we can investigate.
There are no specific options to configure it, but we ask what you'd like to do every time (whether to keep it or delete it).
These both seem super useful and we can investigate.
Overall, JFreidl does a great job with the plugin and there's definitely some things it does that we don't.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
The point of my post was not really to nitpick over differences between the two plugins; I was responding to what came off as a dismissive attitude toward users of Jeffry's plugin. If that was not your intention, please forgive my misperception. I remain annoyed, however, that Smugmug has been unwilling to temporarily reinstate the deprecated api so that your customers with workflows dependent upon Jeffery's plugin would not be disrupted. In a prior post you intimated that your decision was at least partially based on whether or not there are sufficient numbers of your customers that use Jeffrey's plugin. Seems to me that unnecessarily impeding even just one of your customers would be enough to result in a different decision, particularly when the solution would be a very short-term compromise.
www.djdigitaldave.net
Then I must apologize as well -- since your workflow is currently broken, my intention was to offer (and educate on) an alternate solution that would re-enable some of your workflows until Jeffrey is able to get his plugin updated.
Everything is a balancing act and in some ways, we have to acknowledge that we can't solve every users needs and desires. If we tried, we'd end up creating a product that's so hard for anyone to use that it wouldn't work well. While its always been our goal to take care of each and every one of you, we also have to be honest and acknowledge that at some point we'll disappoint some of you. We try to limit these situations and offer alternate solutions in those instances and then get better so we can avoid that from happening again. In the past we have been more willing to build features because one person wanted it and that's resulted in a massive product that can be very difficult to maintain, support and grow. We're in the process of removing features that are only used by a small minority so that we can focus our attention back on improving SmugMug.
In this situation, there was a much larger driving factor into the decision not to re-enable the older API: the security and privacy improvements in the newer APIs are significant. We don't want to make any decisions, even temporary, that might put the security of your photos at risk. Because of that, the older API will remain disabled. It may be easy to say "well, it was enabled for so long, why not go a little longer?" That's a poor argument and one that we won't accept as a company that respects the privacy of your photos.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Sorry I delete this post. It was posted twice ...
http://blog.weichel21.de
http://bwl.smugmug.com
To be honest, I find this argument poor as well. Could you say more about the risks in the previous api? Does it mean that Smugmug was vulnerable for years?
Using your Plugin as a temporary solution requires changes in the workflow and it is not likely that users would switch back. Therefore I feel that you welcome the chance to kick out Jfriedl's Plugin. Please respect that Jfriedl is a strong supporter for Smugmug for years. I guess I am not the only customer using Smugmug because of HIS Plugin.
It is my interest, that Jfriedl has enough time to migrate his plugin in the same level of quality as he did the last 10 years.
BTW: If I were in his situation, I would not even know which API to migrate to. V 1.3 will be replaced as well (soon?). V 2 is still beta. So we have the risk of running into the same situation again.
http://blog.weichel21.de
http://bwl.smugmug.com
What DJDD said and the ability to export from the develop module to SmugMug, Facebook, and Flickr quickly and easily. i guess I should make sure the Flickr uploading still works now.
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
My biggest worry at this point is that I don't have a way to test the version-update conversion that has to happen. The new API inexplicably doesn't allow lookup of objects (users, albums, photos) via the ids used in the previous API (this is so very inexcusable that I don't even know where to start, so I'll just leave it at that), so I've got to cobble something the combines 1.3 with 2.0 to do a one-time (one-time per SmugMug account per catalog) conversion. But in order to test this deep conversion, I need a Lightroom catalog with a deep history of interaction via the plugin with SmugMug, and I don't have that.
If I could get private access to 1.2 servers, I could make such a catalog, then test my conversion stuff. I've done this in the past, working with SmugMug engineers to have the plugin work with your development servers, to debug some issues some years ago. I asked the api@ guy before we both went on vacation, but I guess he's still out because other than an initial "we'll look into it", I've got no further response.
FWIW, this can be added to any export/publish operation via a standalone plugin:
http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/snapshot-on-export
Lightroom uses Smart Previews when the master image is offline, and to avoid that a plugin would have make a special effort.
FWIW, this plugin lets you be notified if a Smart Preview will be used, giving you a chance to abort the export/publish if you want:
http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/smart-preview-support
The idea is that the Smart Preview can mean lower quality, and so you probably don't want to have them used silently... you want to use them when you want, but not when you don't.
Let me get on that
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
@Jeffrey Friedl, I'm sorry we didn't get back to you last week, I didn't realize you were waiting for a response. It sounds like you're actually asking for two things to finish your modifications:
1) Access to our development environment. I chatted with @leftquark and we'll get you access to a development server for testing your migration. I'll be in touch directly with details once I have something setup. Likely in the next few hours.
2) New endpoints to map from Image, Album, and UserID to their APIv2 equivalents. If it's easier for you to only talk to APIv2; we can certainly implement this. Obviously we'd suggest you make OAuth calls to the 1.3 endpoints for your migration, since the only significant difference between 1.2 and 1.3 is the authentication model. It will take a few days before we have the new lookup endpoints ready.
Is there another answer you're waiting for?
Jeffrey, I’d be happy to send you a copy of my LR catalog if it would be of any help to you. I’m pretty sure it meets your criteria of a “deep history of interaction with your plugin.” (Presumably, you wouldn’t be needing the ~200,000 images associated with the catalog...
www.djdigitaldave.net
Just an update for those who are following along, we're continuing to work with Jeffery to provide him with the support he needs to make the changes to his Lightroom plugin.
Yes, I should have chimed in here earlier, sorry. My being in a timezone halfway around the world doesn't help speed things up much, but I'm appreciative of the direct help they're giving. Things are moving along.