HUMAN link from Smugmug back to Lightroom

Ferguson

I'm doing a project where my relatives will review galleries of photos and help me identify ancestors, dates, etc. As they do, I plan to update the files, and I expect (Hope) this will go on for some time as different people participate.

Most of these folks are not very computer literate. I need a way for them to say "in photo X, that is Mary Smith not Mary Jones". I'm struggling with "X". The photos have unique file names, and I simplified most of them to simply say Digitized_123456, and planned to ask them to look at the name (under details) and give me the number.

I had my (fairly computer literate) son do a test drive. He's a school teacher and so works with parents helping kids with computers all the time. His first reaction was "they will never find the file name in the show details section". He's not sure they can find the detail section even with explicit instructions.

I've got a position-in-gallery number showing, but that is worse than useless since it changes as I move photos around (e.g. correctly categorize people or dates). I may just suppress it in fact.

Anyone have better ideas how to do this?

I'm thinking of forcing the title or caption to include the filename (in Lightroom), but I have a LOT of real captions and titles I would lose. I could try to append it, but I'm not sure I can do that either without massive typing.

Anyone have any ideas?

Is there any way, with CSS (etc) on Smugmug to show the filename where the title or caption is?

Is there any way to put a persistent, file specific number or name that always displays?

I'm aware I can rename files as I publish, but that just takes me back to the "can they find the file name" issue.

I'm also aware that people can post comments -- but only if they log in, and I do not think many will be willing to create smugmug accounts just to do this (they might be willing to use their facebook account, but I do not know how many have one -- I don't). I really wish SM had not disabled anonymous comments!!!!

Am I missing any mechanisms?

Thanks. Linwood

Ferguson

Alternatively -- is there anyway to force Lightbox to always open with the show-details active?

sarasphotos

Hi Linwood, do you know about John Beardsworth's Search, Replace, Append plugin? I use it to rebuild my captions before export. A few mouse clicks, no big typing to change/append captions. And you can save presets for different combinations of metadata. Cheers, Sara

Ferguson

I'll need to look at it again, maybe I can append something like an image sequence number to the end of the caption. I don't want to overwrite the caption, and would want to take it off at some point. Or the title.

Or maybe SQL -- I have a lot more control there, though I need to check and see if I can easily trigger a republish. I think I just need to change the checksum, but would need to experiment.

So ... no SM CSS magic? No way to insert the filename into the collage or some such on smugmug only?

sarasphotos

Yes, you can use the existing caption and append almost any metadata item to it, filename, location, etc. Check John's blog site for the newest version which includes the new and improved Caption Builder.