Are your HD and SM images sync'd?

basel

This is related to customization more than other topic - I suppose

Is there an implementation to synchronize the photos on the Hard Drive and the Galleries in SmugMug?

At the beginning of building the Smugmug website, it is easy to keep track images, the structure of galleries, etc. However, the site of the galleries may not reflect the filing system/structure on my computer. I end up with two filing systems and eventually loose track of which photos are where. With years of past images and hopefully years of images yet to accumulate, I would like have better control on what is on the computer and what is one SmugMug.

Is there code, tips or tricks to replicate/synchoronize the computer structure with the SmugMug structure?

Thanks,

Basel

richW

I don't know if SmugMug has anything in the works to synchoronize to HD.
There are two good programs that give you a good look into your galleries.
SmugBrowser lets you upload to SmugMug.
Album Fetcher lets you download from SmugMug.
I'm sure if there is a way to synchoronize, someone will come up with a way...

I for one ran into this same problem a while back. I now have my images in folders that are named the same as the galleries on my site.
My folders on the HD are named the same as categories / sub-categories / gallery.

BTW - Welcome to DGRIN & SmugMug

peterparker

I've considered writing an app that would include this function as well as managing galleries and a few other things (for OS X mind you). Similar to phanfare.com's client if you are familiar. But I'm afraid that everybody has a different way of managing their photos locally so I'm not sure there would be enough interest in having a tool that contained your photos and would be smart enough to do synching.

David

Nebvin

I have started work on a sync program for the same reasons you stated. I want to have my complete collection on my computer and have the ability to easily choose what is shown on smugmug. It is not complete but it is coming along nicely.

It is made for my use, and being programmed in ruby for speed of development, and used in linux. When it is in a state I am happy with I will make it available and perhaps make sure it also works fine in Windows.

If there is anything in particular that you'd like to see just reply here, and I'll try to keep those ideas in mind

Pixoul

Just chiming in for a +1 request for synchronization. I just posted about this:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=52151

Nebvin

Pixoul wrote:

Just chiming in for a +1 request for synchronization. I just posted about this:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=52151

As for a status update with my own project, I got Smugmug -> Filesystem one way sync going (checks for updates to albums and downloads only changed files/metadata). I'm doing a rewrite of it right now to make it more flexible and modular, but coming along nicely.

Looks like speed of the language isn't going to be an issue at all, so it's going to stay a ruby script. I wasn't going to do it in C unless I was going to see a real improvement.

In regards to syncing IPTC, I'm currently using md5sums to detect any changes to files. Problem there is if any embedded info is changed the md5sum will change as well. This might be disirable if all the pics on smugmug already had embedded IPTC and you wanted to keep it up to date. In my case, my files only have EXIF without anything else embedded and I never really thought about how to handle changing of EXIF since I never have to. I'll think about the problem a bit and see if I can come up with a decent solution.

I'll post again when I get 2 way sync working well.

aktse

Nebvin wrote:

As for a status update with my own project, I got Smugmug -> Filesystem one way sync going (checks for updates to albums and downloads only changed files/metadata). I'm doing a rewrite of it right now to make it more flexible and modular, but coming along nicely.

Nebvin,

Good luck with your project; I think it would be great fo smugmug. I think Sharpcast is trying to do something similar or sell a similar service. You might want to check them out just for ideas and to see what works/doesn't work... I think they're moving beyond photos and into other areas, but they focus on synchronization on all platforms, including mobile. I think their current project is for photos...

Nebvin

aktse wrote:

Nebvin,

Good luck with your project; I think it would be great fo smugmug. I think Sharpcast is trying to do something similar or sell a similar service. You might want to check them out just for ideas and to see what works/doesn't work... I think they're moving beyond photos and into other areas, but they focus on synchronization on all platforms, including mobile. I think their current project is for photos...

Just checked them out. The problem I find with their service is that it appears it just works with their online service unless I missed something. After getting Smugmug, Filesystem, and Database conduits all done I plan to move onto other services like flickr so people aren't limited to just 1 service.

Of course this is just a personal project of mine, so we'll see if I take it that far first

mjskier

Nebvin wrote:

I'll post again when I get 2 way sync working well.

I'm curious about the PC -> Smugmug direction since I was just thinking that I ought to be a bit more serious about backing my pictures than rsync'ing them nightly to a different computer (in the same house) Mirroring my photo directory to Smugmug sounds like a good insurance to losing everything in a house catastrophy.

I too run Linux at home and my photo saving "scheme" (if you can call it that :-) is to have one directory per year, then one dir for each month under that, and maybe at most 2-3 levels under that. And of course I have exceptions, like all the scans of the negative I found at my dad's house that date back to the 40's...

I'm fairly new to Smugmug so I could be mistaken, but I don't think you can have subcategories under other subcategories, so the directory depth is going to be a problem. I suppose you can play games and imply arbitraty depth in the subcategory name (2004_jan_22_dog_...) but the presentation isn't going to be very nice.

Thanks,

Bruno.

Nebvin

mjskier wrote:

I'm fairly new to Smugmug so I could be mistaken, but I don't think you can have subcategories under other subcategories, so the directory depth is going to be a problem. I suppose you can play games and imply arbitraty depth in the subcategory name (2004_jan_22_dog_...) but the presentation isn't going to be very nice.

Thanks,

Bruno.

I am handling this is several ways, one of which is what you specificed, combining category names together. Another way is by telling the program which categories to ignore, so in your case maybe you'd tell it to ignore the years/dates since smugmug lets you view images by date as well.

But this will just be a "Translation" from filesystem to smugmug, and wont change your organization of your filesystem.

mjskier

Nebvin wrote:

But this will just be a "Translation" from filesystem to smugmug, and wont change your organization of your filesystem.

I can see where this is a good distinction. And really if I want to use Smumug as a backup, it isn't really important what the presentation is, as long as I don't lose the pics. Most likely these will be in a private gallery anyway.

Thanks, Bruno.

huseyin

Has there been any development on Smugmug Synchronization?

SamirD

I remember trying a product a while back that downloaded and sync'd a version of what was on SM to a local HD, but not the other way around. I know udy's SmugLoader has some of that functionality, but I haven't used it in a while:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=161675

huseyin

I am looking for two way sync or at least just one way from HD to SM. Send to Smugmug works, but it is a bit slow. Sync would work by matching folder names, utilizing the existing attributes of the folder. Send to smugmug works great.
Did you ever try Star Explorer? How is it?

SamirD

huseyin wrote: »

I am looking for two way sync or at least just one way from HD to SM. Send to Smugmug works, but it is a bit slow. Sync would work by matching folder names, utilizing the existing attributes of the folder. Send to smugmug works great.
Did you ever try Star Explorer? How is it?

I don't think you're going to find what you want. It's the folder creation process that's the problem. There's so many variables that prompting the user is almost necessary to get the right information for the gallery.

I have a license of SE, but it crashes on every one of my computers. Nikolai and I have never figured out why it never works right. :cry

huseyin

It wouldn't create any folders. That's why I mentioned "Sync would work by matching folder names, utilizing the existing attributes of the folder" I should have said "existing album attributes on SM". I tend to refer albums as folders.
So if you have an album called Vehicles, the software would keep an eye on your My Pictures directory for matching album (folder names) and sync.
No creation or modification, just seamless upload.
Maybe someone can hack Windows Live Mesh.

SamirD

huseyin wrote: »

It wouldn't create any folders. That's why I mentioned "Sync would work by matching folder names, utilizing the existing attributes of the folder" I should have said "existing album attributes on SM". I tend to refer albums as folders.
So if you have an album called Vehicles, the software would keep an eye on your My Pictures directory for matching album (folder names) and sync.
No creation or modification, just seamless upload.
Maybe someone can hack Windows Live Mesh.

Ahh, that makes more sense. I believe SmugLoader, and SE both attempt to do this.