First, thank you for an excellent piece of software. Assuming I stick with Smug Mug when the trial period expires, I'll certainly be registering your program.
I have some photos which have the keyword "private" (e.g. my wife breastfeeding, some college friends doing stupid things they wouldn't want on the internet, etc).
With Picasa / Picasa Web Albums, you can mark a photo as "do not upload", and never worry about it again.
Is there something similar with Star Explorer? If not, short of manually checking every photo and deleting ones you don't want uploaded, is there a different way to indicate that a certain class of photos shouldn't be uploaded?
Thanks, Carl.
When you export from Picasa, I would assume you would just filter the export then so that only photos you wanted uploaded would be exported to a temporary directory that you would then upload via StarExplorer. Though I use Lightroom instead of Picasa for my image management, that's how I do it. Filter the export from Lightroom, then upload the results of the filtered export using StarExplorer.
Thanks to the relentless efforts of John Friend (not many of my customers can bug me like he does :-), the long-standing issue of improper timeouts (and hopefully, dreadful "invalid handle" messages) seems to be fixed now. Yes, it was Microsoft bug (ha-ha), and I didn't know that at the time..
So, set S*E request timeout value to 600 (unless you do video or Valut, in which case you may need bigger values) and it should honot it.
If anyone has ever been having timeout problems or invalid handle problems, this new release solves them both for me, especially when doing Replace Photo (which seems to have a much longer response time).
When you export from Picasa, I would assume you would just filter the export then so that only photos you wanted uploaded would be exported to a temporary directory that you would then upload via StarExplorer. Though I use Lightroom instead of Picasa for my image management, that's how I do it. Filter the export from Lightroom, then upload the results of the filtered export using StarExplorer.
Curious -- is the Lightroom uploader not reliable/full-featured enough? I know Star Explorer does tons of extra stuff, but the extra-export seems so clunky to me.
Curious -- is the Lightroom uploader not reliable/full-featured enough? I know Star Explorer does tons of extra stuff, but the extra-export seems so clunky to me.
I often do large uploads (hundreds of images) across many galleries. I need to be able to configure the upload and then, when nobody else in the house will using the internet connection much (late at night while we're sleeping), let it all go in an unattended and reliable fashion. I need an uploader that tries to recover when there's a hiccup. I need an uploader that gives me some control over that. I need an uploader that ALWAYS tells me exactly what happened, NEVER leaves me to try to figure out what did and didn't upload and NEVER lies to me about what did and didn't succeed.
Star Explorer has a persistent queue (it's written to disk so it even survives an uploader crash or a computer crash). If it thinks anything might have gone wrong, it lets you know and keeps that image in the queue. It's whole log is available at any time. I've never gotten up the next morning and found that it stopped after a few images or found that I had to spend hours trying to figure out what did and didn't upload when using it. I have had that experience with other uploaders.
I haven't studied the Lightroom uploader, but I don't think it meets all these requirements. I don't know how it handles error conditions. I don't believe it lets you preconfigure a multi-gallery upload and then start that before you go to bed. I don't think that it has a persistent queue. I don't mind the export step in order to get all this and actually use it to my advantage in some other ways.
...Star Explorer has a persistent queue (it's written to disk so it even survives an uploader crash or a computer crash). If it thinks anything might have gone wrong, it lets you know and keeps that image in the queue. It's whole log is available at any time. I've never gotten up the next morning and found that it stopped after a few images or found that I had to spend hours trying to figure out what did and didn't upload when using it...
You convinced me too, John!
Acadiana Al
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
I often do large uploads (hundreds of images) across many galleries. I need to be able to configure the upload and then, when nobody else in the house will using the internet connection much (late at night while we're sleeping), let it all go in an unattended and reliable fashion. I need an uploader that tries to recover when there's a hiccup. I need an uploader that gives me some control over that. I need an uploader that ALWAYS tells me exactly what happened, NEVER leaves me to try to figure out what did and didn't upload and NEVER lies to me about what did and didn't succeed.
Star Explorer has a persistent queue (it's written to disk so it even survives an uploader crash or a computer crash). If it thinks anything might have gone wrong, it lets you know and keeps that image in the queue. It's whole log is available at any time. I've never gotten up the next morning and found that it stopped after a few images or found that I had to spend hours trying to figure out what did and didn't upload when using it. I have had that experience with other uploaders.
I haven't studied the Lightroom uploader, but I don't think it meets all these requirements. I don't know how it handles error conditions. I don't believe it lets you preconfigure a multi-gallery upload and then start that before you go to bed. I don't think that it has a persistent queue. I don't mind the export step in order to get all this and actually use it to my advantage in some other ways.
jfriend-
Are you saying I can upload multiple images to multiple galleries at the same time? Kind of like "set it and forget it it?" I've been using SE Pro for a while now and have only been uploading one gallery at a time. I never knew I could add multiple galleries to the queue.
Are you saying I can upload multiple images to multiple galleries at the same time? Kind of like "set it and forget it it?" I've been using SE Pro for a while now and have only been uploading one gallery at a time. I never knew I could add multiple galleries to the queue.
Yes, you can do that. Select a gallery in S*E, drop some images into the queue. Select a different gallery, drop some images into the queue. Look at the columns in the list of images and you will find one which shows which gallery the images in the list are destined for. I routinely upload to 30-50 different galleries in one unattended session.
Yes, you can do that. Select a gallery in S*E, drop some images into the queue. Select a different gallery, drop some images into the queue. Look at the columns in the list of images and you will find one which shows which gallery the images in the list are destined for. I routinely upload to 30-50 different galleries in one unattended session.
And of course you can do S*E trademark "auto album creation", when you drop a whole bunch of galleries, and S*E will recursively parse them all and will automatically create all the albums for you and assign images to them... all in one drop!
And of course you can do S*E trademark "auto album creation", when you drop a whole bunch of galleries, and S*E will recursively parse them all and will automatically create all the albums for you and assign images to them... all in one drop!
I don't use the auto-album creation, but my OTHER favorite feature in S*E is the bulk album creating. Just type a list of gallery names, check off some boxes for what settings you want them all the have and you can create 30 galleries in a couple minutes. It's very repetitive and time consuming to do that in the Smugmug UI.
I don't use the auto-album creation, but my OTHER favorite feature in S*E is the bulk album creating. Just type a list of gallery names, check off some boxes for what settings you want them all the have and you can create 30 galleries in a couple minutes. It's very repetitive and time consuming to do that in the Smugmug UI.
Same goes about categories and subcategories, btw - you can always create them in bulk..
The reason I'm using auto creation a lot is because it streamlines the work flow down to a single operation.
Let me give you a very simple example (and mind you, it can do way more complicated things).
My typical model/show shoot consists of multiple looks/runs. Each shoot is a folder and each look/run is a subfolder.
Let's say I have a folder named SHOW and ten subfolders in it named RUN01, RUN02, ... RUN10. Each RUNxx folder contains RAW files. Once I run ImageProcessor against them it will create jpeg files and place them into JPEG subfolders of the original folders. This is how Image Processor works, that JPEG name is not negotiable.
So now I have the following folders with images
SHOW\RUN01\JPEG\*.jpg
SHOW\RUN02\JPEG\*.jpg
..
SHOW\RUN10\JPEG\*.jpg
Once the conversion is complete, I launch S*E and create subcategory for the SHOW. It gets created and highlighted in S*E tree.
In Bridge (or Windows Explorer) I go into the SHOW folder, so I see all the RUNxx folders.
I select all these folders and drag them onto S*E window.
Since no album is selected in S*E it understands the fact of dropping folders as a command to create galleries (named RUN01, etc) - which it does - and populate the queue with all the images.
Albums are not created yet, hence their icons are ghostly. At this point you can actually rename any of them by highlighting it and pressing F2.
You can add more, add more images to these new or existing albums - and finally, when you're done, hit Upload.
You may ask - what happened to JPEG subfolder, why it doesn't get into the album name? Well, S*E is smart, it keeps a list of folder names to ignore. JPEG is one of them, and you can add more:-)
As you can see, with auto creation you don't need to add images manually - everything is done automatically.
Same goes about categories and subcategories, btw - you can always create them in bulk..
As you can see, with auto creation you don't need to add images manually - everything is done automatically.
Bulk creation is a nice feature. I still long, however, for the ability to specify WHICH watermark image I'm going to use. By default, SmugMug uses their own image. I don't want that, I want to use my own image. But I can't find a way, either on SmugMug or in Star*Explorer, to tell it to default to using my watermark image.
When that becomes a reality, the bulk album creation becomes a bigger productivity booster, IMO.
Same goes about categories and subcategories, btw - you can always create them in bulk..
The reason I'm using auto creation a lot is because it streamlines the work flow down to a single operation.
Let me give you a very simple example (and mind you, it can do way more complicated things).
My typical model/show shoot consists of multiple looks/runs. Each shoot is a folder and each look/run is a subfolder.
Let's say I have a folder named SHOW and ten subfolders in it named RUN01, RUN02, ... RUN10. Each RUNxx folder contains RAW files. Once I run ImageProcessor against them it will create jpeg files and place them into JPEG subfolders of the original folders. This is how Image Processor works, that JPEG name is not negotiable.
So now I have the following folders with images
SHOW\RUN01\JPEG\*.jpg
SHOW\RUN02\JPEG\*.jpg
..
SHOW\RUN10\JPEG\*.jpg
Once the conversion is complete, I launch S*E and create subcategory for the SHOW. It gets created and highlighted in S*E tree.
In Bridge (or Windows Explorer) I go into the SHOW folder, so I see all the RUNxx folders.
I select all these folders and drag them onto S*E window.
Since no album is selected in S*E it understands the fact of dropping folders as a command to create galleries (named RUN01, etc) - which it does - and populate the queue with all the images.
Albums are not created yet, hence their icons are ghostly. At this point you can actually rename any of them by highlighting it and pressing F2.
You can add more, add more images to these new or existing albums - and finally, when you don, hit Upload.
You may ask - what happened with JPEG subfolder, why it doesn't get into the album name? Well, S*E is smart, it keeps a list of folder names to ignore. JPEG is one of them, and you can add more:-)
As you can see, with auto creation you don't need to add images manually - everything is done automatically.
My workflow just works differently. I end up with a thousand images spread across 10 directories, but the images are tagged with one or more keywords that indicates what gallery they go to. Rather than do 50 individual conversion passes (one for each gallery destination) to put each set of tagged images into it's own directory, I export them all to one giant directory (because I can start the export once and walk away and do something else while it's running rather than have to sit there running 50 individual exports). I then use keywords in Bridge to grab just the images I want for each gallery and drop them into S*E for each gallery. My images destined for a particular gallery never actually live in their own directory in my file system.
Bulk creation is a nice feature. I still long, however, for the ability to specify WHICH watermark image I'm going to use. By default, SmugMug uses their own image. I don't want that, I want to use my own image. But I can't find a way, either on SmugMug or in Star*Explorer, to tell it to default to using my watermark image.
When that becomes a reality, the bulk album creation becomes a bigger productivity booster, IMO.
Mike.
Mike it's my bad, the API version I'm using (the original one) doesn't support custom watermarks. At some point new version of S*E will use the newer API and will have that support.
In the mean time the way to go with custom WM in S*E - have S*E created galleries, but do not upload images yet (you can do it with autocreated galleries, too). Then go online, customize the albums, and finally hit the green Upload button in S*E.
I know it's a hassle, but that's the best I can do for now
My workflow just works differently. I end up with a thousand images spread across 10 directories, but the images are tagged with one or more keywords that indicates what gallery they go to. Rather than do 50 individual conversion passes (one for each gallery destination) to put each set of tagged images into it's own directory, I export them all to one giant directory (because I can start the export once and walk away and do something else while it's running rather than have to sit there running 50 individual exports). I then use keywords in Bridge to grab just the images I want for each gallery and drop them into S*E for each gallery. My images destined for a particular gallery never actually live in their own directory in my file system.
To each is own:-) I'm glad S*E supports both ways :-)
Mike it's my bad, the API version I'm using (the original one) doesn't support custom watermarks. At some point new version of S*E will use the newer API and will have that support.
In the mean time the way to go with custom WM in S*E - have S*E created galleries, but do not upload images yet (you can do it with autocreated galleries, too). Then go online, customize the albums, and finally hit the green Upload button in S*E.
I know it's a hassle, but that's the best I can do for now
You've mentioned this to me before. This is what I do now. It's not a huge deal at this point, as I'm not creating scads of galleries at a time. Hopefully, I'll have the need to do that down the road. At that point, the new version of S*E will do what I need. :-)
New version 1.0.0.222 uploaded
Now S*E can run under Windows 7 RC!
How: you have to specify command-line parameter, namely /windows7
Catch: S*E will not be able to restore window position .
Easiest work around: maximize S*E window, it's one double-click on the caption bar (or simply drag window to the top W7 style :-)
new version question
Nikolai -
I installed the latest version - 1.0.0.222 - and I noticed a change in behavior. After an upload the processed files remain in the queue. They have been successfully uploaded, and it used to be that the queue was cleared after a successful upload.
I'm assuming this change wasn't deliberate, it used to be that only the files that weren't successfully uploaded were retained. Am I missing a setting somewhere?
I'm running on Vista (if that matters...), and this change in behavior coincided with my installing this version.
Nikolai -
I installed the latest version - 1.0.0.222 - and I noticed a change in behavior. After an upload the processed files remain in the queue. They have been successfully uploaded, and it used to be that the queue was cleared after a successful upload.
I'm assuming this change wasn't deliberate, it used to be that only the files that weren't successfully uploaded were retained. Am I missing a setting somewhere?
I'm running on Vista (if that matters...), and this change in behavior coincided with my installing this version.
Thanks.
--- Denise
I'm experiencing the same behavior, also on Vista, when the files that were just uploaded remain on the queue.
I have also noticed (but is not always and don't know how to recreate the issue), that when the files finish uploading I hear the sound of finish and the software restarts the uploading process again.
Nikolai -
I installed the latest version - 1.0.0.222 - and I noticed a change in behavior. After an upload the processed files remain in the queue. They have been successfully uploaded, and it used to be that the queue was cleared after a successful upload.
I'm assuming this change wasn't deliberate, it used to be that only the files that weren't successfully uploaded were retained. Am I missing a setting somewhere?
I'm running on Vista (if that matters...), and this change in behavior coincided with my installing this version.
Thanks.
--- Denise
This happened to me yesterday with version 217 so I don't think it's particular to the latest version. Somehow, S*E thought the files did not upload successfully, even though they did so it kept them in the queue. I don't now if Smugmug returned an error or if there's some problem in S*E.
This happened to me yesterday with version 217 so I don't think it's particular to the latest version. Somehow, S*E thought the files did not upload successfully, even though they did so it kept them in the queue. I don't now if Smugmug returned an error or if there's some problem in S*E.
Thanks for that - I was thinking about going back to version 217, but based on your experience I think I'll leave it as is. Problem happened with an upload last night and with another one this morning.
Thanks for that - I was thinking about going back to version 217, but based on your experience I think I'll leave it as is. Problem happened with an upload last night and with another one this morning.
--- Denise
I can confirm that the problem is still happening now on 217, 100% reproducible. Something must have changed on Smugmug's end of things that is confusing S*E. S*E now NEVER thinks an image was successfully uploaded even though it was.
Nikolai, can you take a look at this soon? S*E is partly busted right now.
I'm experiencing the same behavior, also on Vista, when the files that were just uploaded remain on the queue.
I have also noticed (but is not always and don't know how to recreate the issue), that when the files finish uploading I hear the sound of finish and the software restarts the uploading process again.
Running 1.0.0.222 on Vista 64.
Denise,
this shouldn't be happening.. They may have beenuploaded, but S*E must think they were not. Please check a log file from that session.
As to the queue - clear it next time - that is if you are sure they all went up OK.
FWIW, there was no deliberate change in the code for this version, at least in the business logic. The Windows 7 fix was on UI part only.
found. Fixed. It was a minute change on SM side for which S*E wasn't ready.
I'm doing a basic testing to ensure everything else works and will upload a new build shortly.
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Curious -- is the Lightroom uploader not reliable/full-featured enough? I know Star Explorer does tons of extra stuff, but the extra-export seems so clunky to me.
Star Explorer has a persistent queue (it's written to disk so it even survives an uploader crash or a computer crash). If it thinks anything might have gone wrong, it lets you know and keeps that image in the queue. It's whole log is available at any time. I've never gotten up the next morning and found that it stopped after a few images or found that I had to spend hours trying to figure out what did and didn't upload when using it. I have had that experience with other uploaders.
I haven't studied the Lightroom uploader, but I don't think it meets all these requirements. I don't know how it handles error conditions. I don't believe it lets you preconfigure a multi-gallery upload and then start that before you go to bed. I don't think that it has a persistent queue. I don't mind the export step in order to get all this and actually use it to my advantage in some other ways.
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Ow ow, ok already! Your point has been made! :-}
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
jfriend-
Are you saying I can upload multiple images to multiple galleries at the same time? Kind of like "set it and forget it it?" I've been using SE Pro for a while now and have only been uploading one gallery at a time. I never knew I could add multiple galleries to the queue.
_______________________________________________
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The reason I'm using auto creation a lot is because it streamlines the work flow down to a single operation.
Let me give you a very simple example (and mind you, it can do way more complicated things).
My typical model/show shoot consists of multiple looks/runs. Each shoot is a folder and each look/run is a subfolder.
Let's say I have a folder named SHOW and ten subfolders in it named RUN01, RUN02, ... RUN10. Each RUNxx folder contains RAW files. Once I run ImageProcessor against them it will create jpeg files and place them into JPEG subfolders of the original folders. This is how Image Processor works, that JPEG name is not negotiable.
So now I have the following folders with images
SHOW\RUN01\JPEG\*.jpg
SHOW\RUN02\JPEG\*.jpg
..
SHOW\RUN10\JPEG\*.jpg
Once the conversion is complete, I launch S*E and create subcategory for the SHOW. It gets created and highlighted in S*E tree.
In Bridge (or Windows Explorer) I go into the SHOW folder, so I see all the RUNxx folders.
I select all these folders and drag them onto S*E window.
Since no album is selected in S*E it understands the fact of dropping folders as a command to create galleries (named RUN01, etc) - which it does - and populate the queue with all the images.
Albums are not created yet, hence their icons are ghostly. At this point you can actually rename any of them by highlighting it and pressing F2.
You can add more, add more images to these new or existing albums - and finally, when you're done, hit Upload.
You may ask - what happened to JPEG subfolder, why it doesn't get into the album name? Well, S*E is smart, it keeps a list of folder names to ignore. JPEG is one of them, and you can add more:-)
As you can see, with auto creation you don't need to add images manually - everything is done automatically.
Bulk creation is a nice feature. I still long, however, for the ability to specify WHICH watermark image I'm going to use. By default, SmugMug uses their own image. I don't want that, I want to use my own image. But I can't find a way, either on SmugMug or in Star*Explorer, to tell it to default to using my watermark image.
When that becomes a reality, the bulk album creation becomes a bigger productivity booster, IMO.
Mike.
http://www.fourangelsphotography.com/
My workflow just works differently. I end up with a thousand images spread across 10 directories, but the images are tagged with one or more keywords that indicates what gallery they go to. Rather than do 50 individual conversion passes (one for each gallery destination) to put each set of tagged images into it's own directory, I export them all to one giant directory (because I can start the export once and walk away and do something else while it's running rather than have to sit there running 50 individual exports). I then use keywords in Bridge to grab just the images I want for each gallery and drop them into S*E for each gallery. My images destined for a particular gallery never actually live in their own directory in my file system.
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In the mean time the way to go with custom WM in S*E - have S*E created galleries, but do not upload images yet (you can do it with autocreated galleries, too). Then go online, customize the albums, and finally hit the green Upload button in S*E.
I know it's a hassle, but that's the best I can do for now
To each is own:-) I'm glad S*E supports both ways :-)
You've mentioned this to me before. This is what I do now. It's not a huge deal at this point, as I'm not creating scads of galleries at a time. Hopefully, I'll have the need to do that down the road. At that point, the new version of S*E will do what I need. :-)
Mike.
http://www.fourangelsphotography.com/
Now S*E can run under Windows 7 RC!
How: you have to specify command-line parameter, namely /windows7
Catch: S*E will not be able to restore window position
Easiest work around: maximize S*E window, it's one double-click on the caption bar (or simply drag window to the top W7 style
Nikolai -
I installed the latest version - 1.0.0.222 - and I noticed a change in behavior. After an upload the processed files remain in the queue. They have been successfully uploaded, and it used to be that the queue was cleared after a successful upload.
I'm assuming this change wasn't deliberate, it used to be that only the files that weren't successfully uploaded were retained. Am I missing a setting somewhere?
I'm running on Vista (if that matters...), and this change in behavior coincided with my installing this version.
Thanks.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I'm experiencing the same behavior, also on Vista, when the files that were just uploaded remain on the queue.
I have also noticed (but is not always and don't know how to recreate the issue), that when the files finish uploading I hear the sound of finish and the software restarts the uploading process again.
Running 1.0.0.222 on Vista 64.
This happened to me yesterday with version 217 so I don't think it's particular to the latest version. Somehow, S*E thought the files did not upload successfully, even though they did so it kept them in the queue. I don't now if Smugmug returned an error or if there's some problem in S*E.
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--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Nikolai, can you take a look at this soon? S*E is partly busted right now.
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this shouldn't be happening.. They may have beenuploaded, but S*E must think they were not. Please check a log file from that session.
As to the queue - clear it next time - that is if you are sure they all went up OK.
FWIW, there was no deliberate change in the code for this version, at least in the business logic. The Windows 7 fix was on UI part only.
I'm doing a basic testing to ensure everything else works and will upload a new build shortly.
Upload code change in response to SM changing the upload response.
The issue of images staying in the queue is fixed.
Thanks so much for the fast fix. I just downloaded the latest, and it looks good.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
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