@Jtring said:
I'm just disappointed since, especially because for the sharpness issue, I make a significant use of it.
Let me talk to the team and see if there's a better solution in the new LB to fix the sharpness issues.
@Ferguson said:
Bear in mind from whence some of us come... we've watched features removed, being promised "so we can build it better", but no "better" is ever forthcoming.
A large part of why we can't iterate as quickly as we'd like is because we're continuing to support features that few people are using. Every time a new bug comes up with one of those we have to stop and fix it, distracting us from working on the exciting things we want to make SmugMug better or add new functionality that you all do want to use. JTring mentioned it above, and it's a big factor in slowing us down. My goal is to cut out a lot of that bloat so we can get back to quickly innovating and delivering exciting features to help all of you.
@Ferguson said:
Bear in mind from whence some of us come... we've watched features removed, being promised "so we can build it better", but no "better" is ever forthcoming.
A large part of why we can't iterate as quickly as we'd like is because we're continuing to support features that few people are using. Every time a new bug comes up with one of those we have to stop and fix it, distracting us from working on the exciting things we want to make SmugMug better or add new functionality that you all do want to use. JTring mentioned it above, and it's a big factor in slowing us down. My goal is to cut out a lot of that bloat so we can get back to quickly innovating and delivering exciting features to help all of you.
I get that, really I do.
But the path to making this more credible is to deliver both together. If you are getting rid of (say) the zies button to permit a zoom feature, why not make the zoom a PART of getting rid of this, so when one goes away, the other is present.
The issue is that the prerequisites always seem to get done, not the follow ups.
I feel like the little kid, over time, who is told to eat his vegetables, so he can get desert, but who eats a lot of vegetables but never gets desert.
I'm assuming by all this that "Originals" will be useless for viewing after all this is enabled.
Kinda means every document scanned and uploaded will not be readable.
@Ferguson said:
But the path to making this more credible is to deliver both together. If you are getting rid of (say) the zies button to permit a zoom feature, why not make the zoom a PART of getting rid of this, so when one goes away, the other is present.
That's fair. I probably shouldn't say this since it's still early and things can always change, but all of these Lightbox changes are because we want to do some really fun things with Lightbox that the old one can't do (like having different Lightbox styles), and simplifying it gets us closer to working on the new features. Rather than hold the new Lightbox until the brand new stuff was ready, and find out that there's thing y'all don't like, we're iterating in pieces so we can gather your feedback and incorporate it quickly.
it
@Jtring said:
I'm just disappointed since, especially because for the sharpness issue, I make a significant use of it.
Let me talk to the team and see if there's a better solution in the new LB to fix the sharpness issues.
I very much appreciate your taking another look at this. Let me pass on a few thoughts that you may (or may not) wish to fold into your thinking.
My use of the sizes button to manage sharpness is fairly limited. Typically I move to the display copy the next size smaller. (I.e. if the fill uses a shrunken X3, I'd look at the X2.) Occasionally I go to the display copy that was shrunk to produce the fill image. (I.e. go up to the display X3 if the fill used a shrunken X3). So a "little smaller/little larger" option could fully replicate what I do. Even simply having the option just to go to the largest display copy that fits -- the next one smaller -- would answer the mail most of the time.
The worst of the current sharpening problems, the one involving shrinking the image by a few pixels in Firefox, will go away with new frame you are putting around the image. So you've actually solved that one with the new design. Serendipity perhaps ... but I'll take it. It was the combination of my monitor size exactly matching the display copy size, the fill image being full screen, and Firefox playing games with a few pixels that brought about that situation. Going forward, if you can somehow avoid calling for fill image sizes that are only a few pixels under a display copy, then any few-pixel-scaling problems will be gone forever. (Other sharpening variations between fill and display views remain.)
Since the sharpness issues seem to be browser-, situation-, and probably image-dependent, and since browsers adjust their algorithms all the time, what probably will not work in the long run is simply upping the sharpness of the display copies. I tried that once on my side by putting up some over-sharpened images. Mistake. When the browser image scaling algorithm changes or the viewing situation changes, what looked sort of good as a fill image can turn awful. Took me a while to clean up all those over-sharpened originals.
One of the things I've considered with the team is to display custom image sizes in Lightbox if a display copy won't fill the space. So rather than having a display copy be enlarged or shrunk a few pixels, a custom size would be loaded that doesn't need the browser to pixel-render it. I'm not quite sure we're ready to take that on quite yet, since it's a little more expensive on the server side of things (and potentially a little slower; we've gotten really good at rendering them in ways that humans cannot perceive, but things like Google Friendly Scores might not like the slightly longer load time).
One option we're currently toying with is to try to customize the image-rendering option for each browser. I just took a look in Chrome and it doesn't look like there's much of an improvement that it could do -- though comparing to the original Chrome on my computer did a good job of not butchering your photo. If you play with the image-rendering options outlined here, do you see any better results? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-rendering
comes very close to reproducing display copy sharpness. In a brief exploration of several images, I didn't see any degredation or sharpening artifacts by doing so. Note I needed -moz-crisp-edges, not just crisp-edges as the link suggests.
It's a shame there isn't something comparable on Chrome. image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrast doesn't seem to do anything useful. Chrome doesn't mess up when the screen size matches a display copy, but it still changes sharpness when doing real downscaling.
The two examples below illustrate. These are 100% quality JPGs from two SmugMug Chrome screen captures, one of an X2 and one of a somewhat larger fill image, both from my 1920 x 1200 monitor. The fill is downscaled by Chrome from the X3. (I was running Chrome in a window, not full screen, so the fill is smaller than the monitor's 1920 x 1200.) The original was 4692 x 3448, so the X3 and X2 display copies have had a fair amount of SmugMug downscaling, but my observation is that those match the original well. I've cropped the screen captures to show just one part of the image, which I hope shows here at 1:1. Take a look at the duff on the ground in front of the tree and parts of the bark illuminated by sunlight. In this example the fill is sharped about right and the X2 is a bit oversharp, but the relative difference -- fairly obvious to me -- is what's important. This example also illustrates the quandry. Do I sharpen to make the display copies right, or do I oversharpen them so some sizes of fill images come out just right? This, by the way, is exactly the sort of image that shows the worst sharpening differences. There's lots of small, high contrast detail in the tree bark and the duff. The difference between images isn't "butchery", but it is noticeable. Softer images and ones without a lot of high spacial frequency detail seem much more resilient to sharpening differences.
Got any other approaches (other than making the display copies available) to produce images on Chrome (or other browsers besides Firefox) whose sharpness reliably matches those of the display copies and the original?
(The example is from a SmugMug gallery I'm still working on. It's unlisted. Let me know if you want the URL for the image or the gallery so you can look at the image in situ. The image, by the way, is from the base of a giant sequoia in the McKinley Grove.)
@Ferguson said:
As a simple example, I'm still waiting for the smugmug android app to get the automation features back you removed in the name of code consistency with apple. Meanwhile you've shoveled in lots of other junk, now promoting it as a photo backup tool (yet it isn't in so many ways), but I still can't automatically sync, I have to manually do it.
Just to close the loop, Leftquark let me know that sometime in the years since this happened, it actually did get fixed. I just had stopped trying it, so never noticed. Sorry for the incorrect example (I stand by my main concern though).
Hi, for all of us who don't see what you are talking about, can you please post a series of screenshot? Eg. with a comparison lightbox now/later?
Or, in another discussion, @leftquark told that the new lighbox will be in the Darkroom to test the new features? It's still too early?
Surely I can't see nothing in the organizer because I've some CSS to reduce caption and keywords size.
But it would be nice to have a sneak peek, especially reading that the caption will be more "invasive". Something that worries me since I'd not have the need to show them (even if I do it to optimize the site).
@sdb said:
Surely I can't see nothing in the organizer because I've some CSS to reduce caption and keywords size.
But it would be nice to have a sneak peek, especially reading that the caption will be more "invasive". Something that worries me since I'd not have the need to show them (even if I do it to optimize the site).
The Lightbox in the Organizer doesn't use your CSS. You can get a sneak peak by opening the Organizer and opening any photo in the Lightbox.
@sdb said:
Surely I can't see nothing in the organizer because I've some CSS to reduce caption and keywords size.
But it would be nice to have a sneak peek, especially reading that the caption will be more "invasive". Something that worries me since I'd not have the need to show them (even if I do it to optimize the site).
The Lightbox in the Organizer doesn't use your CSS. You can get a sneak peak by opening the Organizer and opening any photo in the Lightbox.
Thank you @leftquark, I was wrong, for customizer I insisted on trying to open the lightbox through Content and Design
I've seen the new lightbox. Between the new and the current one, I'm for the current Lightbox for the same reason well explained from @Allen and @Jtring
Aesthetically it's really bad that with every mouse movement title/captions appears for 3 seconds. I read that it would not be the final version and that you are developing new features, hope so.
Clearly, I understand that each of us have different needs, some find it very good, some not.
There are different categories in which we could divide us. Two of these categories are:
1) photographers who make extensive use of title, caption, keywords
2) photographers who prefer a lightbox as clean and simple as possible (like me)
As told, I only use caption because in SM it's recognized as "alt text" and keywords because they are the best indexed pages on google. Otherwise, I'd not do it at all, I don't need it for my type of photography/site.
Lightbox with full screen arrows and share button possibility is all that I need from my point of view.
Personally I'd find it fantastic if in the new version the "alt text" could be separated from title/caption. Eg. in the Organizer -> Title, Caption and Keywords -> in the Info section you could enter a field related to the alt text.
Like it works in wordpress or other platforms. I don't know, is it so difficult? Should all the SM structure be changed? I ask it because in no other platform the alt text has to be shown as a caption like SM.
I know that probably I'm going a little bit OT, but since it's related, I just wanted to point it out. In this way, who doesn't want to use title and caption (and now is obliged to do it), can simply optimize the photos by inserting the alt text and completely hide title/caption field. Those who prefer to have title/caption always shown, will have new and greater possibilities to do so.
I hope something of what I've said is already planned
Hi - I am have been trying to change the colors of the icons in the lightbox.
Example :
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-comment {color: #D35400 !important;}
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-share {color: #D35400 !important;}
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-sizes {color: #D35400 !important;}
@jerryr said:
Hi - I am have been trying to change the colors of the icons in the lightbox.
Example :
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-comment {color: #D35400 !important;}
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-share {color: #D35400 !important;}
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-sizes {color: #D35400 !important;}
@jerryr: The Organizer Lightbox (using our new Lightbox) doesn't support customization. If you're asking about the old Lightbox, then it's probably best asked in the Customizations forum (and I'll separate out the last few posts to be its own topic).
Just wanted to confirm: The new lightbox (reached via Organize/[select image]/View) plays videos, but the lightbox reached via the Slideshow button on a gallery page doesn't. That's an excellent (and very long-requested) improvement if so. Can you confirm that the new behavior will replace the current Slideshow button behavior?
The lightbox has always allowed one to play a video, whether it was launched from the gallery or from the Organizer.
The fullscreen slideshow, launched from within a gallery, or even from the Lightbox, has not played videos and still does not play videos using the lightbox. We'd have to pause the slideshow, play the video, then resume the slideshow, and we haven't had a chance to add that functionality.
So you can browse photos in the lightbox, when you get to a video, you can click Play, and it will play, and then you can browse more photos. But if you open the lightbox, and press the slideshow button, and a video comes up, it will still not auto-play.
It's nice for me. (On a PC monitor) The captions panel is not too overwhelming and disappears if you stop moving the mouse. I find no glitch when switching from one picture to another.
But in Fill mode the FullScreen arrow doesn't show the picture fullscreen, it stays the same size.
A suggestion too, I'd like to have immediately each picture filling the screen with all controls and caption over it, I don't like to have the small size picture and have to click to get it full screen. I also think a zoom feature would be nice...
@nspz73 said:
A suggestion too, I'd like to have immediately each picture filling the screen with all controls and caption over it, I don't like to have the small size picture and have to click to get it full screen.
I also think a zoom feature would be nice...
If you've set the galleries "Maximum Display Size" large enough, the lightbox will always attempt to fill the screen, as large as it possible can.
Let me update my comments on the apparent sharpness (really Acutance) of browser-scaled fill images in the lightbox from August 9 on this thread. I finally had time to read about and try out more of the CSS-based image-rescaling controls that apply on various browsers. If SmugMug really does get rid of the sizes button, then working the quality of the fill images, which use browser rescaling, becomes a priority. With current defaults, I see a notable reduction in sharpness between the display copies and fill images on some (not all) photos. For reference, I’m on Win7 and am looking at a 1920 x 1200 display. Smugmug supports Firefox, Chrome, and IE on that platform.
In August, I noted .sm-lightbox .sm-lightbox-image {image-rendering: -moz-crisp-edges;} seemed to fix scaling fuzziness problems under Firefox, but what seemed to be the equivalent under Chrome with {image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrast} didn't help.
The css-tricks.com page notes “Unfortunately after a lot of testing it seems that browsers interpret the crisp-edges and pixelated values [for the image-rendering property] in very confusing ways at the moment ... For instance Chrome appears to render pixelated images in the same way that Firefox and Safari will render images with crisp-edges." And, indeed, {image-rendering: pixelated;} really does clean up some of the downscaling fuzziness on Chrome. A reading of those web pages also led me to observe {-ms-interpolation-mode: nearest-neighbor;} does the same on IE 11. I haven’t tested other browsers and other operating systems, but from the caniuse.com page, it looks like the basic {image-rendering: crisp-edges;} should perform similarly for Safari on iOS.
I suspect all are using more than the basic nearest-neighbor algorithm for downscaling, even though the web pages suggest that’s what Chrome and IE11 are doing with this CSS in place. Nearest-neighbor should produce more aliasing-related artifacts than I’ve seen. Still, that’s the trade underlying the whole issue here: seek to avoid aliasing that may occur in some images and you can end up softening all. The trade is probably very similar to the one going on in parts of the digital camera world right now about whether or not to have an anti-aliasing filter in with the sensor. (Do a web search on “digital camera low pass filter”.) I’d also note that with enough computational time, one can have it both ways: one can mostly avoid both aliasing and softness. That’s what SmugMug does with the display copies. (< editorial > I am still disappointed that SmugMug, whose display copies offer just about the best possible practical approach to highest-quality image generation across multiple (if pre-specified) resolutions, seems to be abandoning that best path by removing the sizes button in the lightbox. But then I’m also disappointed with the search engine world for making such a fetish out of speed at the cost of other less-easily-measured virtues. < /editorial >)
In any case, I've put the following custom CSS on my site for improving fill images. The first block is for Safari and any other browser that does (or will) support the draft spec. as currently written. The later ones are for the others.
Since CSS control of image rendering is still in development, this is going to need to be watched. (And if SmugMug applies some of these, they too are going to have to monitor the situation closely.)
The plan was to implement these, basically as you had identified them. We'll continue to monitor, especially if the browsers iterate on their methods.
That's good for me since I'm mostly shooting natural landscapes where moire or other aliasing artifacts are rarely an issue. Photography of more civilized, more repetitive things -- rows of windows on buildings, the detail of the weave on cloth, etc. -- may present more of a problem if the feature size is small enough. Having read up on this, I have a little more appreciation for the tightrope the browsers walk to balance sharpness and artifact production while keeping the real-time computational load down. It's been a topic for years. What's unique to SmugMug is that the scaling is limited to just the sizes between display copies, which serves to limit the artifact issue. So yes, keep monitoring. Maybe even consider making "browser default" and "lightbox crisper edges" a toggle the user can select.
By the way, I've since read that Safari may need {image-rendering: -webkit-crisp-edges}. Since I don't have it, I'm not in a position to check.
Update: that last paragraph may not be correct. Other sources contradict.
Is it really that difficult to just leave the sizes button, or at least the option to have it? I just can’t imagine that it would be so impossible to work around it. It's pretty clear that people are going to be very unhappy if it goes.
@erik64 said:
Is it really that difficult to just leave the sizes button, or at least the option to have it? I just can’t imagine that it would be so impossible to work around it. It's pretty clear that people are going to be very unhappy if it goes.
We dove pretty extensively into how people use it and the results were super clear: basically nobody is using the sizes option. It's easy to come here on dgrin and think that a few vocal customers represent the large majority of our customers but when making decisions like this we rely on a number of other factors that give us a better sense of how the SmugMug community (and your visitors) interact with the lightbox.
We also found that for many, including most of your visitors, the sizes option confused them. Removing it not only means it's one less thing for us to have to support from a technical perspective, but it also removes confusion for the people who use the Lightbox the most.
The few people who used it, were mostly using it as a zoom option. If that's a use case that becomes more necessary to the large set of SmugMug viewers, then we can build a much better tool for that in the future.
Will the link (edited to not expose my site) from "share" for the original photo still be available? I could probably add it to each caption.
Sample of page where original or full zooming needed. These are from passworded galleries. https://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-SVJrpWF/0/fe5ff56e/O/IMG_1067-01.jpg https://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-shDkwnX/0/39cfca8b/O/IMG_2373.jpg
I'm trying to preserve the whole album page complete with notes between photos and scanning/photographing the whole page saves a huge amount of time.
Original size or at least zooming to original size allows seeing each photo much larger and also to read newspaper clippings.
Well, is it really that big a deal to let it remain as an option for those users that actually do use it until you are ready to roll out something better to replace it with? I would like to see an option that would allow you to display the largest non-scaled image that will fit the available screen space. Yes, that will necessitate a border which, unless the image fits the ENTIRE screen, I would greatly prefer anyway. I hate only two sides of my image at the edge of the screen and a border would allow for captions to be centered attractively under the image.
Comments
Let me talk to the team and see if there's a better solution in the new LB to fix the sharpness issues.
A large part of why we can't iterate as quickly as we'd like is because we're continuing to support features that few people are using. Every time a new bug comes up with one of those we have to stop and fix it, distracting us from working on the exciting things we want to make SmugMug better or add new functionality that you all do want to use. JTring mentioned it above, and it's a big factor in slowing us down. My goal is to cut out a lot of that bloat so we can get back to quickly innovating and delivering exciting features to help all of you.
(I'll ping you separately about the Android app)
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 get that, really I do.
But the path to making this more credible is to deliver both together. If you are getting rid of (say) the zies button to permit a zoom feature, why not make the zoom a PART of getting rid of this, so when one goes away, the other is present.
The issue is that the prerequisites always seem to get done, not the follow ups.
I feel like the little kid, over time, who is told to eat his vegetables, so he can get desert, but who eats a lot of vegetables but never gets desert.
I'm assuming by all this that "Originals" will be useless for viewing after all this is enabled.
Kinda means every document scanned and uploaded will not be readable.
My Website index | My Blog
That's fair. I probably shouldn't say this since it's still early and things can always change, but all of these Lightbox changes are because we want to do some really fun things with Lightbox that the old one can't do (like having different Lightbox styles), and simplifying it gets us closer to working on the new features. Rather than hold the new Lightbox until the brand new stuff was ready, and find out that there's thing y'all don't like, we're iterating in pieces so we can gather your feedback and incorporate it quickly.
it
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 very much appreciate your taking another look at this. Let me pass on a few thoughts that you may (or may not) wish to fold into your thinking.
My use of the sizes button to manage sharpness is fairly limited. Typically I move to the display copy the next size smaller. (I.e. if the fill uses a shrunken X3, I'd look at the X2.) Occasionally I go to the display copy that was shrunk to produce the fill image. (I.e. go up to the display X3 if the fill used a shrunken X3). So a "little smaller/little larger" option could fully replicate what I do. Even simply having the option just to go to the largest display copy that fits -- the next one smaller -- would answer the mail most of the time.
The worst of the current sharpening problems, the one involving shrinking the image by a few pixels in Firefox, will go away with new frame you are putting around the image. So you've actually solved that one with the new design. Serendipity perhaps ... but I'll take it. It was the combination of my monitor size exactly matching the display copy size, the fill image being full screen, and Firefox playing games with a few pixels that brought about that situation. Going forward, if you can somehow avoid calling for fill image sizes that are only a few pixels under a display copy, then any few-pixel-scaling problems will be gone forever. (Other sharpening variations between fill and display views remain.)
Since the sharpness issues seem to be browser-, situation-, and probably image-dependent, and since browsers adjust their algorithms all the time, what probably will not work in the long run is simply upping the sharpness of the display copies. I tried that once on my side by putting up some over-sharpened images. Mistake. When the browser image scaling algorithm changes or the viewing situation changes, what looked sort of good as a fill image can turn awful. Took me a while to clean up all those over-sharpened originals.
One of the things I've considered with the team is to display custom image sizes in Lightbox if a display copy won't fill the space. So rather than having a display copy be enlarged or shrunk a few pixels, a custom size would be loaded that doesn't need the browser to pixel-render it. I'm not quite sure we're ready to take that on quite yet, since it's a little more expensive on the server side of things (and potentially a little slower; we've gotten really good at rendering them in ways that humans cannot perceive, but things like Google Friendly Scores might not like the slightly longer load time).
One option we're currently toying with is to try to customize the
image-renderingoption for each browser. I just took a look in Chrome and it doesn't look like there's much of an improvement that it could do -- though comparing to the original Chrome on my computer did a good job of not butchering your photo. If you play with theimage-renderingoptions outlined here, do you see any better results? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-renderingFormer SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Interesting. On Firefox, it appears that
.sm-lightbox .sm-lightbox-image { image-rendering: -moz-crisp-edges; }comes very close to reproducing display copy sharpness. In a brief exploration of several images, I didn't see any degredation or sharpening artifacts by doing so. Note I needed -moz-crisp-edges, not just crisp-edges as the link suggests.
It's a shame there isn't something comparable on Chrome.
image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrastdoesn't seem to do anything useful. Chrome doesn't mess up when the screen size matches a display copy, but it still changes sharpness when doing real downscaling.The two examples below illustrate. These are 100% quality JPGs from two SmugMug Chrome screen captures, one of an X2 and one of a somewhat larger fill image, both from my 1920 x 1200 monitor. The fill is downscaled by Chrome from the X3. (I was running Chrome in a window, not full screen, so the fill is smaller than the monitor's 1920 x 1200.) The original was 4692 x 3448, so the X3 and X2 display copies have had a fair amount of SmugMug downscaling, but my observation is that those match the original well. I've cropped the screen captures to show just one part of the image, which I hope shows here at 1:1. Take a look at the duff on the ground in front of the tree and parts of the bark illuminated by sunlight. In this example the fill is sharped about right and the X2 is a bit oversharp, but the relative difference -- fairly obvious to me -- is what's important. This example also illustrates the quandry. Do I sharpen to make the display copies right, or do I oversharpen them so some sizes of fill images come out just right? This, by the way, is exactly the sort of image that shows the worst sharpening differences. There's lots of small, high contrast detail in the tree bark and the duff. The difference between images isn't "butchery", but it is noticeable. Softer images and ones without a lot of high spacial frequency detail seem much more resilient to sharpening differences.
Got any other approaches (other than making the display copies available) to produce images on Chrome (or other browsers besides Firefox) whose sharpness reliably matches those of the display copies and the original?
(The example is from a SmugMug gallery I'm still working on. It's unlisted. Let me know if you want the URL for the image or the gallery so you can look at the image in situ. The image, by the way, is from the base of a giant sequoia in the McKinley Grove.)
Fill:
X2:
Just to close the loop, Leftquark let me know that sometime in the years since this happened, it actually did get fixed. I just had stopped trying it, so never noticed. Sorry for the incorrect example (I stand by my main concern though).
Hi, for all of us who don't see what you are talking about, can you please post a series of screenshot? Eg. with a comparison lightbox now/later?
Or, in another discussion, @leftquark told that the new lighbox will be in the Darkroom to test the new features? It's still too early?
Surely I can't see nothing in the organizer because I've some CSS to reduce caption and keywords size.
But it would be nice to have a sneak peek, especially reading that the caption will be more "invasive". Something that worries me since I'd not have the need to show them (even if I do it to optimize the site).
sebastian
wedding and portrait photographer in italy | facebook | instagram
The Lightbox in the Organizer doesn't use your CSS. You can get a sneak peak by opening the Organizer and opening any photo in the Lightbox.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Thank you @leftquark, I was wrong, for customizer I insisted on trying to open the lightbox through Content and Design
I've seen the new lightbox. Between the new and the current one, I'm for the current Lightbox for the same reason well explained from @Allen and @Jtring
Aesthetically it's really bad that with every mouse movement title/captions appears for 3 seconds. I read that it would not be the final version and that you are developing new features, hope so.
Clearly, I understand that each of us have different needs, some find it very good, some not.
There are different categories in which we could divide us. Two of these categories are:
1) photographers who make extensive use of title, caption, keywords
2) photographers who prefer a lightbox as clean and simple as possible (like me)
As told, I only use caption because in SM it's recognized as "alt text" and keywords because they are the best indexed pages on google. Otherwise, I'd not do it at all, I don't need it for my type of photography/site.
Lightbox with full screen arrows and share button possibility is all that I need from my point of view.
Personally I'd find it fantastic if in the new version the "alt text" could be separated from title/caption. Eg. in the Organizer -> Title, Caption and Keywords -> in the Info section you could enter a field related to the alt text.
Like it works in wordpress or other platforms. I don't know, is it so difficult? Should all the SM structure be changed? I ask it because in no other platform the alt text has to be shown as a caption like SM.
I know that probably I'm going a little bit OT, but since it's related, I just wanted to point it out. In this way, who doesn't want to use title and caption (and now is obliged to do it), can simply optimize the photos by inserting the alt text and completely hide title/caption field. Those who prefer to have title/caption always shown, will have new and greater possibilities to do so.
I hope something of what I've said is already planned
sebastian
wedding and portrait photographer in italy | facebook | instagram
Yep -- we're working on changing the mouseover movement with captions.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
What I'd really like to see is the mouse grabbing a large photo to scroll around like Google maps and many more sites do.
My Website index | My Blog
Hi - I am have been trying to change the colors of the icons in the lightbox.
Example :
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-comment {color: #D35400 !important;}
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-share {color: #D35400 !important;}
.sm-lightbox-icons .sm-button.sm-button-image-sizes {color: #D35400 !important;}
No luck - any thoughts ? jerryr
SmugMug Sites - Creative Examples
Favorite Images and SmugMug Designs
Reference this thread: https://dgrin.com/discussion/263471/coloring-buttons-widgets#latest
.sm-user-ui .sm-lightbox .sm-button.sm-button-skin-default .sm-fonticon.sm-fonticon-Comment, .sm-user-ui .sm-lightbox .sm-button.sm-button-skin-default .sm-fonticon.sm-fonticon-Action, .sm-user-ui .sm-lightbox .sm-button.sm-button-skin-default .sm-fonticon.sm-fonticon-Sizes { color: #D35400; }Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
@jerryr: The Organizer Lightbox (using our new Lightbox) doesn't support customization. If you're asking about the old Lightbox, then it's probably best asked in the Customizations forum (and I'll separate out the last few posts to be its own topic).
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Hi - Mike - thanks for the above - seems to work fine now. appreciate it! jerryr
SmugMug Sites - Creative Examples
Favorite Images and SmugMug Designs
Just wanted to confirm: The new lightbox (reached via Organize/[select image]/View) plays videos, but the lightbox reached via the Slideshow button on a gallery page doesn't. That's an excellent (and very long-requested) improvement if so. Can you confirm that the new behavior will replace the current Slideshow button behavior?
jcharmon.smugmug.com
The lightbox has always allowed one to play a video, whether it was launched from the gallery or from the Organizer.
The fullscreen slideshow, launched from within a gallery, or even from the Lightbox, has not played videos and still does not play videos using the lightbox. We'd have to pause the slideshow, play the video, then resume the slideshow, and we haven't had a chance to add that functionality.
So you can browse photos in the lightbox, when you get to a video, you can click Play, and it will play, and then you can browse more photos. But if you open the lightbox, and press the slideshow button, and a video comes up, it will still not auto-play.
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 captions panel is not too overwhelming and disappears if you stop moving the mouse.
I find no glitch when switching from one picture to another.
But in Fill mode the FullScreen arrow doesn't show the picture fullscreen, it stays the same size.
A suggestion too, I'd like to have immediately each picture filling the screen with all controls and caption over it, I don't like to have the small size picture and have to click to get it full screen.
I also think a zoom feature would be nice...
If you've set the galleries "Maximum Display Size" large enough, the lightbox will always attempt to fill the screen, as large as it possible can.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Let me update my comments on the apparent sharpness (really Acutance) of browser-scaled fill images in the lightbox from August 9 on this thread. I finally had time to read about and try out more of the CSS-based image-rescaling controls that apply on various browsers. If SmugMug really does get rid of the sizes button, then working the quality of the fill images, which use browser rescaling, becomes a priority. With current defaults, I see a notable reduction in sharpness between the display copies and fill images on some (not all) photos. For reference, I’m on Win7 and am looking at a 1920 x 1200 display. Smugmug supports Firefox, Chrome, and IE on that platform.
There’s much on the web regarding CSS control of browser-rescaled image sharpness. One of Leftquark’s posts above cited https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-rendering. I also found https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/i/image-rendering/ and https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-crisp-edges to be useful. All deal with a draft CSS specification, https://drafts.csswg.org/css-images-3/#propdef-image-rendering. Since this in still in draft, the various browsers have partial and imperfect implementations. What’s out there may change next month.
In August, I noted .sm-lightbox .sm-lightbox-image {image-rendering: -moz-crisp-edges;} seemed to fix scaling fuzziness problems under Firefox, but what seemed to be the equivalent under Chrome with {image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrast} didn't help.
The css-tricks.com page notes “Unfortunately after a lot of testing it seems that browsers interpret the crisp-edges and pixelated values [for the image-rendering property] in very confusing ways at the moment ... For instance Chrome appears to render pixelated images in the same way that Firefox and Safari will render images with crisp-edges." And, indeed, {image-rendering: pixelated;} really does clean up some of the downscaling fuzziness on Chrome. A reading of those web pages also led me to observe {-ms-interpolation-mode: nearest-neighbor;} does the same on IE 11. I haven’t tested other browsers and other operating systems, but from the caniuse.com page, it looks like the basic {image-rendering: crisp-edges;} should perform similarly for Safari on iOS.
I suspect all are using more than the basic nearest-neighbor algorithm for downscaling, even though the web pages suggest that’s what Chrome and IE11 are doing with this CSS in place. Nearest-neighbor should produce more aliasing-related artifacts than I’ve seen. Still, that’s the trade underlying the whole issue here: seek to avoid aliasing that may occur in some images and you can end up softening all. The trade is probably very similar to the one going on in parts of the digital camera world right now about whether or not to have an anti-aliasing filter in with the sensor. (Do a web search on “digital camera low pass filter”.) I’d also note that with enough computational time, one can have it both ways: one can mostly avoid both aliasing and softness. That’s what SmugMug does with the display copies. (< editorial > I am still disappointed that SmugMug, whose display copies offer just about the best possible practical approach to highest-quality image generation across multiple (if pre-specified) resolutions, seems to be abandoning that best path by removing the sizes button in the lightbox. But then I’m also disappointed with the search engine world for making such a fetish out of speed at the cost of other less-easily-measured virtues. < /editorial >)
In any case, I've put the following custom CSS on my site for improving fill images. The first block is for Safari and any other browser that does (or will) support the draft spec. as currently written. The later ones are for the others.
.sm-lightbox .sm-lightbox-image { image-rendering: crisp-edges; } .sm-browser-firefox .sm-lightbox .sm-lightbox-image { image-rendering: -moz-crisp-edges; } .sm-browser-chrome .sm-lightbox .sm-lightbox-image { image-rendering: pixelated; } .sm-browser-ie .sm-lightbox .sm-lightbox-image { -ms-interpolation-mode: nearest-neighbor; }Since CSS control of image rendering is still in development, this is going to need to be watched. (And if SmugMug applies some of these, they too are going to have to monitor the situation closely.)
The plan was to implement these, basically as you had identified them. We'll continue to monitor, especially if the browsers iterate on their methods.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
.> @leftquark said:
That's good for me since I'm mostly shooting natural landscapes where moire or other aliasing artifacts are rarely an issue. Photography of more civilized, more repetitive things -- rows of windows on buildings, the detail of the weave on cloth, etc. -- may present more of a problem if the feature size is small enough. Having read up on this, I have a little more appreciation for the tightrope the browsers walk to balance sharpness and artifact production while keeping the real-time computational load down. It's been a topic for years. What's unique to SmugMug is that the scaling is limited to just the sizes between display copies, which serves to limit the artifact issue. So yes, keep monitoring. Maybe even consider making "browser default" and "lightbox crisper edges" a toggle the user can select.
By the way, I've since read that Safari may need {image-rendering: -webkit-crisp-edges}. Since I don't have it, I'm not in a position to check.
Update: that last paragraph may not be correct. Other sources contradict.
So how, when we upload family documents, are we suppose to look at them if we can not see the original?
Mostly text docs.
My Website index | My Blog
You can always download the original to your device for viewing at any size.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Is it really that difficult to just leave the sizes button, or at least the option to have it? I just can’t imagine that it would be so impossible to work around it. It's pretty clear that people are going to be very unhappy if it goes.
We dove pretty extensively into how people use it and the results were super clear: basically nobody is using the sizes option. It's easy to come here on dgrin and think that a few vocal customers represent the large majority of our customers but when making decisions like this we rely on a number of other factors that give us a better sense of how the SmugMug community (and your visitors) interact with the lightbox.
We also found that for many, including most of your visitors, the sizes option confused them. Removing it not only means it's one less thing for us to have to support from a technical perspective, but it also removes confusion for the people who use the Lightbox the most.
The few people who used it, were mostly using it as a zoom option. If that's a use case that becomes more necessary to the large set of SmugMug viewers, then we can build a much better tool for that in the future.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Will the link (edited to not expose my site) from "share" for the original photo still be available? I could probably add it to each caption.
Sample of page where original or full zooming needed. These are from passworded galleries.
https://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-SVJrpWF/0/fe5ff56e/O/IMG_1067-01.jpg
https://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-shDkwnX/0/39cfca8b/O/IMG_2373.jpg
I'm trying to preserve the whole album page complete with notes between photos and scanning/photographing the whole page saves a huge amount of time.
Original size or at least zooming to original size allows seeing each photo much larger and also to read newspaper clippings.
My Website index | My Blog
Well, is it really that big a deal to let it remain as an option for those users that actually do use it until you are ready to roll out something better to replace it with? I would like to see an option that would allow you to display the largest non-scaled image that will fit the available screen space. Yes, that will necessitate a border which, unless the image fits the ENTIRE screen, I would greatly prefer anyway. I hate only two sides of my image at the edge of the screen and a border would allow for captions to be centered attractively under the image.