Bye bye SmugMug - no more adjusting the positioning of the crop for thumbnails.

oeyvind

I`ve used the thumbnail gallery style for years. I`ve almost always needed to use the option to adjust the positioning of the crop for my square thumbnails. For some unknown reason SmugMug has removed this option and made my preferred setup useless. I don`t need nor want to change the design of my portfolio. The only solution for me is to find a new portfolio site and spend eons of time to set up my hundred of pages anew.
Thanks a lot SmugMug.

Allen

I feel your pain. The option is still there, but only works till that night then reverses itself.

leftquark

The crop thumbnail tool never impacted photos in the Thumbnail gallery style. The only photos impacted by that tool were the teeny thumbnails in SmugMug style galleries. Thumbnail gallery styles will use metadata embedded within the photo to automatically align the photo properly — if there’s faces included in the photo, or focus points (certain camera types). In the future we’d love to build a tool to manually adjust the “point of interest” for each photo. For now, it can be done by setting that photo as the gallery’s “cover photo” photo, then using the “realign cover photo” option to move it up/down to set the alignment.

oeyvind

> @leftquark said:
> The crop thumbnail tool never impacted photos in the Thumbnail gallery style. The only photos impacted by that tool were the teeny thumbnails in SmugMug style galleries.

Well that is surprising since I`ve used it for years. I`m afraid you`re wrong.

Allen

I think you're using the Smugmug style gallery. Shows a bunch of thumbs and one large photo.

oeyvind

No, I`m using the Thumbnail gallery style. https://toftportraitphotography.smugmug.com/browse

leftquark

@oeyvind said:

@leftquark said:
The crop thumbnail tool never impacted photos in the Thumbnail gallery style. The only photos impacted by that tool were the teeny thumbnails in SmugMug style galleries.

Well that is surprising since Ive used it for years. Im afraid you`re wrong.

No, the Crop Thumbnail tool only impacts the small thumbnail photos in the SmugMug style gallery. Specifically, it lets you set how the Ti and Th display copy sizes will be cropped. If you look at the source code for the Thumbnail style galleries you’ll see that they use much larger images than the tiny Ti and Th sizes. While you may have been using the tool, it wasn’t actually changing the cropping of those photos. This is one of many reasons why we opted to remove the tool - it led to confusion of folks thinking it was working when it wasn’t. In the future we’ll completely stop using Ti and Th sizes and instead build a new tool that lets you reposition any photo so it’s centered how you’d like.

Allen

What bothers me is the tool works perfect. It's just that they have a program running every night that reverses any changes.
You would think they were smart enough to fix that.
I've lost 15 years of hard work.

oeyvind

@leftquark said:
No, the Crop Thumbnail tool only impacts the small thumbnail photos in the SmugMug style gallery.

I dont have the foggiest idea what youre talking about. The only thing that is of interest to me is what is actually displayed on screen.
Oh well, I guess this happened by magic then, considering I`ve never, ever used the SmugMug style gallery: http://www.toftweb.no/adm/web_2019/SmugMug screenshots/

oeyvind

@Allen said:
I've lost 15 years of hard work.

I feel your pain.

Mark800

I've just gone through the same issue and thought no-one else out there has an issue with this. I've been using the Thumbnails style for all my galleries. I've also been using the crop thumbnail tool (for years). Then, suddenly the crop thumbnail tool disappeared. When I queried this with support, I was told that it was never there, which was bizarre. I was told that the workaround is to change temporarily to the SmugMug gallery style, which still provided the option of changing the crop of the thumbnail. This has been rather cumbersome to say the least - changing the gallery style every time I wanted to adjust the displayed thumbnail. Today, it seems that the crop thumbnail has disappeared from the SmugMug gallery style too giving no way to adjust the thumbnail any more. Does this mean that this feature is no longer going to be supported? If so, there seems little point in the square thumbnail option.

Allen

There is only one gallery style that true "thumbnails" appear, that's a Smugmug Style gallery. What you see everywhere else is a generated smallest size.
Actual "Thumbnails" come in -Th and -Ti sizes.
https://photos.smugmug.com/Birds/Missouri-Bird-Photos-A-G/i-Mrg8Z6F/2/fcaf4900/Ti/IMG_8160-1e-Ti.jpg

Actually they just removed the "Crop Thumbnail" tool from the tools wrench. Much easier then fixing it.
BTW, you can still pick each thumb size under "Share".

Notice how without a huge crop there is no way to tell what bird is represented.
It's actually a very rare American Flamingo here, that almost invisible pink thing in center of thumb.

leftquark

Most likely those photos are getting properly centered due to face detection in the photo or have a focus point that's embedded in the photo. A number of camera manufacturers make either their facial recognition or the spot where the photo was focused on, available in the metadata. Additionally, third party facial recognition performed in software like Lightroom can be embedded in the photo and used to determine how to crop the photo.

For example, in this photo of yours we were able to deduce the blue square as the point of interest and it's therefore centered around that spot. Here's how the photo would look in various aspect ratios that you can set on SM:

leftquark

In the future we'll build a tool so you can manually set the point of interest. For example, when looking at a gallery or folders "Feature Image" we'll just let you drag it around so its centered properly. When in a Thumbnail gallery, you could take all the photos and drag them around to be centered how you'd like, and it'll update the point of interest

Allen

Nothing mentioned about thumb zoom? You seem to have an opinion that there's only one type of photo.
That crop thumbnail tool worked great. The only problem is Smug is running software nightly reversing the changes. Fix that!

If I need a special "featured" photo I create my own, cropped and zoomed. Guess I'm waiting for Smug to disable being able to select featured photo from anywhere on site, that seems to be the norm now, removing great features we've been using for years.

David_S85

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but not one of my "Crop Thumbnail" images has ever reverted to un-cropped. The pics I use as my square gallery Feature Images for presentation in each category have not changed. The full "un-cropped" photos are still there in their respective galleries.

Perhaps it is a recent implementation that cropped thumbnails only after a certain date revert? All my old ones are just the same as I've left

That said, I'm not going to use the new crop tool in the organizer since it doesn't look like a tool to alter the photo for thumbnail presentation; looks more like a photo chopper.

Allen

@David_S85 said:
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but not one of my "Crop Thumbnail" images has ever reverted to un-cropped. The pics I use as my square gallery Feature Images for presentation in each category have not changed. The full "un-cropped" photos are still there in their respective galleries.

Perhaps it is a recent implementation that cropped thumbnails only after a certain date revert? All my old ones are just the same as I've left

That said, I'm not going to use the new crop tool in the organizer since it doesn't look like a tool to alter the photo for thumbnail presentation; looks more like a photo chopper.

Do not use the 'Crop" tool under the tools wrench. Wrench > Open in Editor > Crop
That tool crops the original photo not a thumbnail.
Smug recently removed the real crop thumbnail tool. It still worked perfectly.

The only thumbs that the "crop thumbnail tool" cropped was the Ti (100x100) and Th (150x150) sizes that are used in the thumbs of the Smugmug style gallery.

I have an unlisted gallery named "Gallery Featured Images" that I upload a duplicate original of a photo I want to use as a "featured photo". I then crop it, original, for use as a "Gallery/Folder Featured Images". I also use these cropped photos for my folder featured photos. For cropping here I can use the "Wrench > Open in Editor > Crop" as I'm looking for a zoomed square version with the subject in center, perfect for "featured photo" on galleries and folders pages.

David_S85

@Allen said:
I have an unlisted gallery named "Gallery Featured Images" that I upload a duplicate original of a photo I want to use as a "featured photo". I then crop it, original, for use as a "Gallery/Folder Featured Images". I also use these cropped photos for my folder featured photos. For cropping here I can use the "Wrench > Open in Editor > Crop" as I'm looking for a zoomed square version with the subject in center, perfect for "featured photo" on galleries and folders pages.

That's a good compromise. I might try that also.

oeyvind

@Mark800 said:

When I queried this with support, I was told that it was never there, which was bizarre.

I honestly think they have lost their mind.

The 'explanations' they come up with are pure drivel. This has nothing to do with facial recognition or focus point. I HAVE MANUALLY MOVED THE SQUARE CROP TO OTHER POSITIONS THAN THE DEFAULT CENTERIPOSITION. BELIEVE IT OR NOT!!
I used the tool for thousands of images, and now they say it never existed.
I`m currently searching for a new site to publish my work. Bizarre is the right word for this nonsense.

akira3d

I'm having a reverse issue where I actually want to get rid of previously used square thumbnails.
If I use the "grid" layout with 3:2 aspect ratio and place it within a 150 pixel wide layout, in some cases the old 150x150 square thumbnails appear in place of the 3:2 aspect ratio ones I was expecting to see.

Allen

In gallery settings under the appearance tab toggle the square thumbs off. They will return to the original 3x2 or whatever ratio.

akira3d

Interesting...that setting doesn't appear UNLESS you switch gallery appearance first to SmugMug. If you do that, only then can you disable it...and then you can switch the style back. Thanks.