Meta Data not fully supported?

Hpix

I'm a few days into a 14 day trial of SmugMug. I like 90% of it. Actually, I love 90%. But I have encountered what seems to be a No Go for me in how Meta Data, especially Keywords, is not accurately imported. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, so please set me straight.

Every photo in my 80,000 image (and growing) library has from 2 to 20 Keywords (most have 4 or 5). Keywords are formatted and punctuated to provide nested trees as used by my other image management apps, including my favorite JRiver Media Center, and others too.

But SmugMug mangles the keywords so they become gibberish. My carefully implemented Keywords, once the photos are in SmugMug, are not of any value. For example...

Actual Keywords in image files:
!People\Smith\Bob
!People\Smith\Betty
!People\Jones\Jack
!Places\US\CA\San Francisco
!Places\US\CA\Sacramento
!Places\DE\Berlin
...and hundreds more people, places, events, etc.

In my various apps these Keywords show up in a Tree type view, something like this:
EDIT: I tried to show a nested tree, but this forum removes leading spaces (and doesn't support Tab), so I added dots.

People
.....Smith
..........Bob
..........Betty
.....Jones
..........Jack

Places
.....US
..........CA
...............San Francisco
...............Sacramento
.....DE
..........Berlin

More practically, each of these top levels (including !Events, !Routes (travel) and others can simply be dynamically ("smart") included in separate view/galleries, further organized via the sub Keywords implemented via the backslashes. It's simple for a good database, but very powerful -- very cool, actually.

BUT, in SmugMug this is how I see the same Keywords after uploading photos:
PeopleSmithBob
PeopleSmithBetty
PeopleJonesJack
PlacesUSCASan Francisco
PlacesUSCASacramento
PlacesDEBerlin

What a mess. Searching for the real Keywords in SmugMug is hopeles. Try to create a Smart Gallery of the Smith family; their photos can't be found with the Keywords squished together.

Simple Solution: All SmugMug has to do is NOT mess with the original Meta Data, just store it accurately. Why are the backslashes removed? if there is a huge technical reason, at least they could be replaced by some other symbol character that would be compatible with a SmugMug search.

For context, my library structure is folders, Year\Year-Month, spanning mid-1800s to today and beyond. Almost 170 years of folders, with month subfolders in most years, is a lot of folders.

Aside from the rare viewing of a particular year and month, Year\Year-Month is mainly my internal organization method. User viewing is typically in a view/gallery of a situation, such as Place, Event, People or some combination. This should make Smart Galleries incredibly useful, IF the Keywords are accurate. This "smart" dynamic selection ability is a huge organization and viewing feature of JRiver Media Center, a big reason I adopted it 15 years ago (it also manages audio and video delightfully); however it is a local app with no online aspect. That's what I hope SmugMug can do.

Am I hoping for Meta Data support that Smug Mug doesn't provide? Confirmation, clarification and advice is greatly appreciated, before my Free Trial ends in 10 days or so and I go with Plan B.


PS: I have other issues that make things clumsy, but the Meta Data problem is the show-stopper for me. I can't manage tens of thousands of photos, to put in galleries, to share with large extended family (most of them are photographers who I believe would adopt SmugMug if I recommend it), etc.

Some other concerns:
Meta Data being a ONE-TIME action upon Upload/Import, replacing photos does not update their MetaData such as Captions and Keywords. To do that seems to require first deleting the photos in SmugMug, then uploading again as new files. Lots of hassle.
Quantity limit when using Smart Galleries.
Inability to search Captions text in Smart Galleries.
Lack of Upload/Import smarts (only upload Newer/Changed), bizarre to need third-party app to do this.

And, what's with light gray font in this forum, I can barely see what I'm typing! The forum is an important tool, not a style statement.

Before I pay for SmugMug I'd like to know if it anything more than what I'm forced to see as a one-way, limited, online photo album.

leftquark

@Hpix said:
My carefully implemented Keywords, once the photos are in SmugMug, are not of any value. For example...
Actual Keywords in image files:
!People\Smith\Bob
!People\Smith\Betty
...and hundreds more people, places, events, etc

In my various apps these Keywords show up in a Tree type view, something like this
People
Smith
Bob
Betty
Jones
Jack
BUT, in SmugMug this is how I see the same Keywords after uploading photos:
PeopleSmithBob
PeopleSmithBetty
PeopleJonesJack
PlacesUSCASan Francisco
PlacesUSCASacramento
PlacesDEBerlin

Interesting! I'm a landscape photographer myself and keyword my images very heavily but never thought of having a hierarchy. Let me investigate if that's part of the EXIF spec, and if so, then we should consider supporting it. So far we've assumed keywords are one level, whatever you type between commas or semicolons is what you get.

@Hpix said:
Simple Solution: All SmugMug has to do is NOT mess with the original Meta Data, just store it accurately. Why are the backslashes removed? if there is a huge technical reason, at least they could be replaced by some other symbol character that would be compatible with a SmugMug search.

I'd agree with your assessment - reformatting them sounds like a bug to me.

@Hpix said:
Am I hoping for Meta Data support that Smug Mug doesn't provide? Confirmation, clarification and advice is greatly appreciated, before my Free Trial ends in 10 days or so and I go with Plan B.

If it's part of the EXIF standard, then we'll definitely want to consider supporting it. I'm a little surprised because we have many many many photos from many many many photographers and this is the first time I've seen it used! But I know Lightroom supports it, so you're not wrong in wanting to use it. I'll try to find some time to investigate and get back to you. For now I would assume that we don't support it until you hear otherwise (trying to be honest with you).

@Hpix said:
Meta Data being a ONE-TIME action upon Upload/Import, replacing photos does not update their MetaData such as Captions and Keywords. To do that seems to require first deleting the photos in SmugMug, then uploading again as new files. Lots of hassle.

You are correct and it's something that's driven me nuts for years. I'm still working with the Engineering team to make it so the metadata gets updated on a replace (and am equally frustrated with how long its taking to prioritize it).

@Hpix said:
Lack of Upload/Import smarts (only upload Newer/Changed), bizarre to need third-party app to do this.

The web uploader should support some form of duplicate detection. It will make the duplicates as duplicates, and then only upload the new ones.

I'm not sure what tools you use, but our official Lightroom plugin can also be a great asset for determining which photos to upload. It knows which photos have been updated or are new since you last uploaded them and then lets you publish only those. IT's one of the tools I use every day!

Hpix

Thank you for replying. Fingers crossed that these "minor" aspects can be improved ASAP.

But now I wonder, if search (especially for Smart Gallery) can't read a substring such as "Smith" in "PeopleSmithBob", will it be able to read "Smith" in "!People\Smith\Bob" ?

I don't know how SmugMug search works, it needs to look at substrings (in Keywords AND Captions, please),

OR, SmugMug needs to further process nested-delimited keywords so that each part can be searched as discrete text. I suppose this need for processing also applies to folks who use flat keywords but multiple words such as "Bob Smith". They might also want to search for "Smith". Since SmugMug does not (per other posts) update Keywords already stored in image files, but instead sticks values into its database, it could store just about anything that would be helpful when searching. I don't want it trying to use my filenames, they don't have useful text, but it sure needs to do a thorough, appropriate job of extracting and storing Keywords, Caption, Description (and possibly other) standard meta data, processing as appropriate for SmugMug use.

Again (to be clear), I would use such meta data to build a bunch of Smart Galleries, though having SmugMug present Keywords as listed (nested would be cool) would be really useful, no need for a Smart Gallery for each family member if they can just click their family or full name in a list to see all the photos they are "tagged" in. Etc for other types of Keywords...

I don't use Lightroom because these days Adobe forces their Cloud onto it and almost everything else. Instead, I need everything stored locally, using online sites strictly for backup and publishing. I've been a database developer for decades and early-on realized how risky it is to assume any given product/app/site/technology will survive for long. I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of what were excellent, big, rich, famous names/brands/companies/file formats/code/methods arrive, succeed, then vanish, making extinct everything that relied on them. Totally controlling my own data is the only reason I still have all of it.

Hpix

Now I wonder if my wish for SmugMug to simply store my meta data without modification is sufficient. My real goal is to treat the words that are delimited or nested as discrete values that can be searched. But I don't see that SmugMug can search substrings, whether the backslashes are there or not. If it could, even the mashed-together keywords would be useful.

Ideally, SmugMug would preserve nested Keywords, show them as the tree they define, and allow each chunk of text, between the delimiters to be separately searched.

Perhaps this requires that SmugMug process the Keyword to break out and store the individual text values. Maybe this would happen if it handled backslashes as it likely handles semicolons? And/or, does it have a way to treat multiple words as a set, so "Bob Smith" could be located, rather than all the "Bob" and "Smith" photos? I saw discussion of underscores being used but not sure why/how.

Also, it would be a huge help to search Captions (doesn't work for Smart Gallery) as another place where valuable data might exist. Again I'm looking for meta-level ways to manage a very large existing library.

I've avoided Lightroom because it is Cloud based, which is not a safe scenario for primary storage and work. As a standalone app I'd give it a closer look. Is being a Cloud app really beneficial to users, or just gives Adobe a way to charge monthly? I've been a database developer for decades, long enough to see hundreds (maybe thousands) of companies, products, brands, technologies, etc, arrive, become successful, rich, famous, then vanish, taking with them everything that was proprietary. Avoiding this is why I still have all my data.

sallyb

Lightroom doesn't have to be cloud based. I have been using the subscription based local install version for well over a year and have had no issues with it. Everything is stored and exited locally. HTH

denisegoldberg

@Hpix said:
I've avoided Lightroom because it is Cloud based, which is not a safe scenario for primary storage and work. As a standalone app I'd give it a closer look. Is being a Cloud app really beneficial to users, or just gives Adobe a way to charge monthly? I've been a database developer for decades, long enough to see hundreds (maybe thousands) of companies, products, brands, technologies, etc, arrive, become successful, rich, famous, then vanish, taking with them everything that was proprietary. Avoiding this is why I still have all my data.

Lightroom Classic CC is installed locally. It is part of Adobe Creative Cloud and you're right, a monthly fee is charged and it does check for a current subscription on a periodic basis.

The program is installed locally. The Lightroom catalog is local. I export my files locally as well. You can also use SmugMug's lightroom plugin to upload directly from Lightroom to your galleries.

leftquark

It's a common misconception that "Lightroom CC" is "Cloud Based". It is not. As the others have mentioned, the program itself is still installed on your computer. In fact, everything can still be stored locally on your computer. The one new feature of Lightroom CC (note, Lightroom Classic CC is different) is that it can store your RAW files in the cloud, so that you can access them on any device. But you don't have to -- those can also still be stored on your computer.

Lightroom Classic CC doesn't store anything in the cloud -- your photos (RAW) have to live on your computer. So if you hop onto a different device, you have no access to your raws. If you had used Lightroom CC, you'd have the option to do that.

While I'm a Lightroom Classic user, the option to have my RAW's in the cloud is quite enticing, especially since I use an iPad in addition to my computer, and it seems rather enticing to be able to edit on a computer or my iPad sometimes!

Richard

@leftquark said:

If it's part of the EXIF standard, then we'll definitely want to consider supporting it. I'm a little surprised because we have many many many photos from many many many photographers and this is the first time I've seen it used! But I know Lightroom supports it, so you're not wrong in wanting to use it. I'll try to find some time to investigate and get back to you. For now I would assume that we don't support it until you hear otherwise (trying to be honest with you).

As far as I can see, there's nothing in the 2.3 standard that explicitly addresses hierarchical keywords, though there's nothing that forbids them either. Since there's really no standard, that leaves vendors free to implement their own proprietary schemes, which would not necessarily be interoperable. SmugMug could implement their own scheme, but that could cause more problems than it would solve.

What SM could do, though, is flatten the hierarchy, stripping out the delimiter characters and treating each term as a separate keyword. This would make search more useful, though you might have to do multiple passes to narrow down the results. Seems like at a minimum this could be added to SmugMug's LR plugin so that it happens automatically on upload. You could still maintain a hierarchical scheme in LR. Just a suggestion.

Richard

@Hpix said:
I've avoided Lightroom because it is Cloud based, which is not a safe scenario for primary storage and work. As a standalone app I'd give it a closer look.

As others have pointed out, you don't have to store your data in the cloud, but that's not the only issue. One of LR's best features is catalog management, which makes it very easy to find what you're looking for. But under the subscription model, you will lose this ability if you ever cancel your subscription. So you will have your terabytes of images, but good luck navigating them. However, LR 6.0 is still available as a standalone, perpetual license version. It's not going to be updated, and eventually will become unusable on newer hardware and operating systems, but for now it's still an option. As long as you store your metadata in the pics themselves (not just in LR), you will be able to import them into a newer product without sacrificing the work you did on keywords, captions, etc, though you will almost certainly lose LR specific features like collections.

leftquark

Lightroom Classic CC (which continues to be supported) still maintains your catalog file on your computer.
Lightroom CC maintains a copy of the catalog file on the cloud servers and also keeps a local cached copy on your computer.

So, either way, you're safe

@Richard said:
What SM could do, though, is flatten the hierarchy, stripping out the delimiter characters and treating each term as a separate keyword. This would make search more useful, though you might have to do multiple passes to narrow down the results. Seems like at a minimum this could be added to SmugMug's LR plugin so that it happens automatically on upload. You could still maintain a hierarchical scheme in LR. Just a suggestion.

I'll talk to the team about this. I'd want to do it on the server level, so we take advantage of the ability when someone uploads the photos anywhere, not just from LR uploads.

Richard

@leftquark said:
I'll talk to the team about this. I'd want to do it on the server level, so we take advantage of the ability when someone uploads the photos anywhere, not just from LR uploads.

Better still, though you'll probably want to investigate how products other than LR represent hierarchies.

leftquark

@Hpix: I confirmed that we do search within captions for whatever word you chose. But as you pointed out, Smart Galleries doesn't give the option to populate based on caption. However, if you are doing a regular search, we'll look for *anything* in the captions. If you search for "store" for example, we'll return anything with "store", or "stored", or "storing", or "stores", etc

Keywords look for an exact match on the keyword. So only a keyword for "Store" would show up. I'm still looking into why our parsing of the backslashes is so awful. Stay tuned on that.

Hpix

I'm impressed with the responsiveness and helpfulness of this community, thank you.

@leftquark Thank you for the update and digging in. Fingers crossed on fixing keywords. From what I now know about SM (likely incomplete), I am seeing Smart Galleries are the key to presenting dynamic collections of photos to various family members and on various places and topics. As you explain, that relies on keywords. Since my photos are compreshensively defined via keywords, hierarchical via backslashes, the simple solution might be to treat the slashes as delimiters that identify individual keywords. If there is already a delimiter that does this in SM, then instead of removing all backslashes resulting in smashedtogetherwords, just replace them with the appropriate delimiter character. Seems simple.


Also thanks to those who corrected my offbase impression of Lightroom. My ignorance is still deep, so I wonder, why is it so popular? (For managing my photos and other media I really like JRiver Media Center, used for 15+ years for images, audio, video. I use a variety of image editors.)

My initial curiosity is because LR was mentioned as a way to sync local and SM files, but the LR toll is steep just for that. I think SM's Upload should be a tad smarter, seems rather simplistic. (I have suggested to JRiver that it adds SM sync support, they already do amazing integration with many audio and video sites and services, but not so much with image sites. They were able to crack/hack iPod syncing back when it was deemed "impossible").


(I'm still frustrated by the light-gray font of the Comment box I'm typing in. Does anyone else find it almost impossible to see? I spent many years as editor-in-chief of many magazines and their websites, and making them comfortably readable was a fundamental requirement -- focus on substance before style, I'd preach to our editors and designers.)

leftquark

Yep — I’m looking at seeing what it’ll take to treat the backlash as a delimiter instead of parsing it out. Just like a comma or a semi-colon, it should be doable. Again, I’ll check the metadata spec details to see if they say anything about delimeters but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be difficult.

I’ll also work on the font text. Just to confirm, it’s just the grey font inside the comment box that’s the main problem?

leftquark

How do the backslashes get put in? Are you manually typing them in or is JRiver adding them once you’ve created the hierarchy inside it?

Richard

@Hpix said:
(I'm still frustrated by the light-gray font of the Comment box I'm typing in. Does anyone else find it almost impossible to see?

I don't like it either, but I guess I've gotten used to it. However, if you switch to full screen you get two higher contrast choices: Start by clicking in the upper right of the comment box:

That gives you high contrast black and white. If you want, there's a button to invert it:

Clicking on it gives you this:

Hope this helps.

leftquark

We're working on adding the backslash (\) to the list of delimiters so each one in your hierarchy will be its own keyword. I'll let you know when it's live.

I ran a test in LR, which has support for hierarchical keywords and since EXIF is an XML based system, there's a specific format which the hierarchy gets created. Uploading those photos to SmugMug does properly separate each of the hierarchy into separate keywords (prior to any change we're making). Is JRiver adding the backslashes? Are you adding them because its your own system for creating a hierarchy?

Hpix

The hierarchical keywords with backslashes are added by me. JRiver Media Center simply allows this, stores it in the image files, then uses the backslashes to create a nested tree list, allows searching on any of the values, etc. Also (cool), when assigning existing keywords to a photo, I simply type some of the text and it finds the matching keyword, complete with the backslashes, lets me select it, and I'm done. So in one sense it is an allowed hack, I add the backslashes. But, the excellent database design of JR Media Center uses the backslashes intelligently in lists, views (what SM calls galleries), keyword selection, searches, etc. So, it is a somewhat common method among JRMC users.

PS: I appreciate your tip on switching to higher contrast in the Comment box, BUT I don't see anything to click on, I don't see your screenshot example. No formatting tools, nada. All I see is a single pull-down of emojis (which I'm sparing you). Almost... :(

Hikin' Mike

@Hpix said:
PS: I appreciate your tip on switching to higher contrast in the Comment box, BUT I don't see anything to click on, I don't see your screenshot example. No formatting tools, nada. All I see is a single pull-down of emojis (which I'm sparing you). Almost...

I think it's because you are a new member here. In time (post-count) you'll see the formatting tools.

Richard

@Hpix said:
PS: I appreciate your tip on switching to higher contrast in the Comment box, BUT I don't see anything to click on, I don't see your screenshot example. No formatting tools, nada. All I see is a single pull-down of emojis (which I'm sparing you). Almost...

Log out and log in again and you should be able to post links and see all the controls. We limit new members for a short time to discourage spammers.

Hpix

The change re backslashes will be much appreciated.

Any progress on the pain of re-uploading that Replaces a photo but ignores its meta data? SM's Update-Replace really needs to update the database too, with all meta data text, notably photo Date, Caption, Keywords. That's probably 90% of my reason to re-upload. (The images are usually in good shape before I upload, but facts about the photo dribble in, memories get better, mistakes are found, etc.)

PS: I now see the formatting tools, I'm out of kindergarten.

leftquark

@Hpix said:
Any progress on the pain of re-uploading that Replaces a photo but ignores its meta data? SM's Update-Replace really needs to update the database too, with all meta data text, notably photo Date, Caption, Keywords. That's probably 90% of my reason to re-upload. (The images are usually in good shape before I upload, but facts about the photo dribble in, memories get better, mistakes are found, etc.)

I agree with you -- in fact our entire team agrees with you. That behavior is going to change. Unfortunately I've been saying its going to change for many months now and we just haven't had a chance to get it out of the backlog and onto someones plate to work on. With the recent Flickr acquisition, that's going to consume some of the folks that would have been able to do this. So while I wish I could say "we're going to fix this behavior soon", I also want to be honest and say that it's going to happen, I just don't know when.

P.S: Another push towards Lightroom: Our LR plugin does have a way to update the metadata after the photo's been uploaded. So no need to delete/re-upload.

Hpix

I used Flickr years ago, until it seemed to be abandoned by Yahoo. The uploader worked randomly, image organization was prehistoric, etc. You folks have some work to do.

BUT maybe polishing SM is also a priority, so all the Flickr folks see how cool and solid it is. (First Impression...)

For me, SmugMug's meta data support is a huge selling feature that elevates it far above the Famous Names In Photo Sharing who ignore meta data, thinking superficial image recognition of simple objects and some faces is a substitute for actual specific knowledge (words escape them...). Fix up SM a little bit, and brag, brag, brag. (Point out the difference between finding photos only labeled as showing Dogs, Airplanes, Children, vs. photos of all the family gatherings at Grandma's, with details of the date, place, people and activities. No algorithm will ever know that.)

leftquark

Just wanted to keep you in the loop -- we've got the fix for the \ as a delimiter going into quality control right now. Hoping it won't be too much longer

Here's what I entered into Lightroom as my keywords:

Today, SmugMug just strips the backslash and combines the phrase. Yucky:

What they'll look like after the change is live:

Allen

All those have to remain as one multi-word keyword, otherwise you completely lose sort.

"sand dunes dead tree"
or
sand dunes dead tree;

animals
       dogs
          large
             brown
             tan
          small
             brown
             tan
       cats
          large
             brown
             tan
          small
             brown
             tan

"animals"
"animals dogs"
"animals dogs small"
"animals dogs small brown"
"animals dogs small tan"

All these could applied to a photo in order to view nested KW's at any level.

"animals" "animals dogs" "animals dogs small" "animals dogs small tan"
or
animals; animals dogs; animals dogs small; animals dogs small tan;

leftquark

I'm not sure I follow @Allen. The \ is the delimiter, just like ; and ,. It's not the equivalent of a space in which the keyword remains as one phrase.

In other words "Sand\Dunes\Dead\Tree" is not "Sand Dunes Dead Tree", it's "sand; dunes; dead; tree".

EXIF has support for hierarchical keywords but it does it in a much smarter way than relying on some delimiter. It's an XML based format in which the hierarchy is defined in schema. Each keyword is separated out as its own keyword, regardless of what level it's in. The app that reads the EXIF can choose whether to honor and store those levels, or ignore it and treat it all as one level (which is what we do). In the example above, the keywords "Africa", "Deadvlei" and "Namibia" were stored as a hierarchy:

Africa
    Namibia
       Deadvlei

And we properly detected them as separate keywords.

leftquark

The backslash \ can now be used as a delimiter between keywords. Any photo uploaded after now or any keyword edited after now should be able to be entered with a \ and then have the keywords parsed out as separate keywords.

Hpix

Excellent news about backslash keywords problem cured...for new/changed uploads only, right?

The change is re backslash in keywords, which is common to indicate tree-like nesting. But Lightroom shows keywords that have backslashes as forward slashes. But they such keywords aren't URLs, they are similar to file paths (though they also are back or forward depending on OS). So, what is it that SmugMug actually sees or uses or whatever, and does that complicate things? Because, if keywords have backslashes, but are uploaded to SM by LR, will the slashes reliably be treated as delimiters?

Assuming the slashes situation is fully fixed. the new Big Question is, what about photos already uploaded to SM, which have mashedtogetherkeywords? How can those photos be corrected to have the proper keywords?

SM could correct its database by re-reading text from ALL the existing photos, since presumably they have their original correct metadata. That would be a one-time big task done by SM. OR....

Since the local copies are correct, force Lightroom to update them all on SM? Don't see how since the files aren't changed locally, and maybe not changed on SM either, so perhaps nothing to "sync". That's what a quick experiment indicates. Synching a bunch of local photos with SM via Lightroom does not change the keywords as seen in SM. Maybe they did not really sync (update SM with local version), though it took LR a long time, seemed to be doing something. Or maybe SM did get updated but looking at the metadata does not show changed keywords? Would they visibly change?

Assuming SM's Replace still has its skip-metadata bug, that's not useful to update.

Therefore, does getting existing keywords fixed on SM require deleting all of the photos on SM, then uploading all photos again, as new, so metadata is read fresh, presumably enters SM's database un-mangled,. This would be a pain, but just once, right?

Or is there another method?

Hpix

Latest adventure: I told LR to Sync 65,000 photos with SM, photos that were already on SM, to see if this would get the keywords changed on SM side. The photos are unchanged on my side therefore unchanged as seen by LR. And they are unchanged in SM other than the possible mismatch of keywords due to how SM originally mangled them. So, possibly no reason for LR to update SM... UNLESS it senses the change in metadata/keywords, IF that somehow is now recognizable (keywords contain back slashes).

BUT, after munching for hours, LR sync now insists on stopping on EVERY PHOTO, asking if they are a Match. They obviously are in every way it shows me -- same file name, path, size, etc. So, why is the sync asking for human confirmation of every update? The sync now sees differences in Keywords, possibly?

I don't see a way to tell LR, Yes, they are ALL a Match, or No, none are a match... proceed. Nor do I know the consequences of responding Match vs. Not a Match, since my goal is to update every SM photo with the local original via LR. Perhaps this is beyond LR's intelligence?

Which would lead back to needing to use SM's Update mode, with Replace, but if it still does not update metadata that's not a solution.

Back to thinking it is necessary to Delete All Photos from SM and Upload them all as New (via SM, not LR, which makes everything horribly complex). Which raises another question: Is there a simple, efficient way in SmugMug to DELETE ALL rather than folder by folder, or photo by photo?

Sorry to keep pounding on this, but as usual, the devil is in the details....

leftquark

LR does keep track of metadata changes and can republish those, but it needs to know the metadata has changed. You can also force it to republish it all by right clicking on the photos and marking "Mark to republish" (or something of that matter).

I'll talk to our LR developer about a "match all" button since this has come up a number of times before.

Hpix

I tried Republish, still led to endless Match / No Match questions. Unless I did it wrong?

I could not find a way to Republish all 64,000 individual photos at the photo level. Select All apparently did that, but then I didn't find a Republish-related button anywhere. Did I overlook something?

Instead, in the SmugMug section, I clicked each of my three top level folders, selecting Mark to Republish. Then I opened SmugMug Edit Settings and clicked Sync Now. This seemed to work, probably it was processing each of the top level and all the sub folders, because it ran for an hour. THEN LR started demanding I respond to endless Match / No Match boxes. They are modal dialogs so once they begin, Lightroom is locked from any other actions. I have to click Cancel Sync. Which of course throws me back to Step 0.

Suggestions?