When you say "right now," does that mean it will be a power feature again soon?
Not that I think many people would want to lift my pictures, but I liked being able to block out the largest image. I know technically I can still block out the largest (original), but I'd like to block out anything larger than large. Seeing as how this was a power feature, why shouldn't it remain one? It's not that I don't appreciate the capability to show larger pics, but I just don't want to show them.
All in all I adore smugmug and the features...I mean, unlimited storage and bandwidth? (not that I use a lot of bandwidth, but still it's there...:D ) But becoming a pro user just so I can use a feature that I had as a power user doesn't really sit right with me.
I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.
If you don't mind if I ask, if you aren't selling your photos, why does it bother you to let people see larger sizes on the web? Is it 100% good-ness that your viewers can take full advantage of their large screens? I realize it's conceptually a change from before, but after you think about it for awhile, isn't it purely a step forward for web viewing?
I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.
If you don't mind if I ask, if you aren't selling your photos, why does it bother you to let people see larger sizes on the web? Is it 100% good-ness that your viewers can take full advantage of their large screens? I realize it's conceptually a change from before, but after you think about it for awhile, isn't it purely a step forward for web viewing?
Hi John
No, I'm not selling my photos at this point. And maybe my photos aren't good enough for people to want to steal, but I still liked having the capability to protect the larger images. Like I said before, I realize that technically I still have the ability to protect originals like I did before, but the largest display size was "Large," which is what I wanted and still do.
This point could be argued from both sides, I guess.
I say, "I want to protect anything bigger than 'Large,' like I could before."
Smugmug says, "You can still protect Originals, which is all you had before."
I think both sides could be considered valid, but for obvious reasons I'm biased towards my side.
I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.
If you don't mind if I ask, if you aren't selling your photos, why does it bother you to let people see larger sizes on the web? Is it 100% good-ness that your viewers can take full advantage of their large screens? I realize it's conceptually a change from before, but after you think about it for awhile, isn't it purely a step forward for web viewing?
I sell plenty of prints, though none through smugmug. All are stock and art prints, None of my customers trust an overseas lab and international shipping for some reason.
I have been thinking of upgrading to a pro acct for the digital downloads and watermarking but I'm holding off until I hear back about the problems I've been having with broken CSS (a whole other issue)
as I see it it's not just a change in concept. It's about control. Even though I don't sell my pictures I still want to be in control of how big I present them.
And it's a big difference between a 800x600 image and a 1600x1200. Sometimes that's all it takes for some applications. And let's face it, there are people who would rather go for a "good enough" freebie (which is not free anyway, I just can't protect it anymore) than buying a pro pic.
I sell plenty of prints, though none through smugmug. All are stock and art prints, None of my customers trust an overseas lab and international shipping for some reason.
I have been thinking of upgrading to a pro acct for the digital downloads and watermarking but I'm holding off until I hear back about the problems I've been having with broken CSS (a whole other issue)
If you sell images/prints elsewhere (and thus don't need originals here for print orders) and just want Smugmug for small version web display, would it work to just upload smaller images in the first place? I hope you get the CSS issues figured out.
If you sell images/prints elsewhere (and thus don't need originals here for print orders) and just want Smugmug for small version web display, would it work to just upload smaller images in the first place? I hope you get the CSS issues figured out.
At the risk of sounding whiny (hey, it's past my bedtime ), I like storing my full size images on smugmug (unlimited storage...gotta use it), but I don't want to upload images twice. It's a small inconvenience, but still an inconvenience.
as I see it it's not just a change in concept. It's about control. Even though I don't sell my pictures I still want to be in control of how big I present them.
And it's a big difference between a 800x600 image and a 1600x1200. Sometimes that's all it takes for some applications. And let's face it, there are people who would rather go for a "good enough" freebie (which is not free anyway, I just can't protect it anymore) than buying a pro pic.
Hi from Shanghai,
Sven
I think it's fine to ask Smugmug for more options in the standard and power accounts if that's what you think you need. Since not everything will be in the less expensive accounts, they will have to decide where to draw the line.
I'm just trying to understand why people who aren't selling their images are so concerned about someone borrowing a larger version of an image and making their own print from it? If that's costing you income then you should have a pro account and custom watermark your images so they are really protected. If that's not costing you income because you don't sell, then I wonder why it's a problem?
If you sell images/prints elsewhere (and thus don't need originals here for print orders) and just want Smugmug for small version web display, would it work to just upload smaller images in the first place? I hope you get the CSS issues figured out.
I like to have the full res here as I often get messages from family and friends asking for the originals. I turn off the originals protection long enough for them to grab what they want.
What would really rock my socks is being able to give them a pw or code for a specific gallery and then they can grab the originals at their leisure for that without me having to turn off and then on the protection.
I know of 2 other smugmuglers who work exactly the same way.
If it were available. I would probably set the maximum viewing size at XL. no larger
just because we're amateurs does not mean that we can't take a good picture now and then, right?
So, how would you feel as a pro when someone is not buying your photographs because he can browse millions of "free" good-enough pictures instead? And really sometimes x3large is good enough.
I agree though that smugmug has to draw the line somewhere. But I hope that this topic is still a work in progress.
I like to have the full res here as I often get messages from family and friends asking for the originals. I turn off the originals protection long enough for them to grab what they want.
What would really rock my socks is being able to give them a pw or code for a specific gallery and then they can grab the originals at their leisure for that without me having to turn off and then on the protection.
I know of 2 other smugmuglers who work exactly the same way.
If it were available. I would probably set the maximum viewing size at XL. no larger
A separate password to get to large sizes would be a cool feature. Have you posted that in the feature requests thread and described how you'd use it and who else might be interested in it? It would kind of be like digital download via password instead of with money.
Standard and power users can still block original viewing (and only original viewing) and pro users can still block everything down to, and including, the Large size.
I don't want to sell any images, so a pro account is out of the question for me. Still I don't want my images in larger sizes than 800x800 to be up for grabs. And I don't want to watermark my images. My power account has all the other features I want, but this one annoys me a bit. I guess I'll just waste more storage space for you, by uploading two versions of my images. I would have liked a warning about this, because this means I'll have to redo an upload I did yesterday.
A separate password to get to large sizes would be a cool feature. Have you posted that in the feature requests thread and described how you'd use it and who else might be interested in it? It would kind of be like digital download via password instead of with money.
Yeah I saw the idea floated in a thread a while back and threw my thumbs up into the ring
I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.
As someone who *was* part of SmugMug's decision, I can tell you that we never even considered this angle for a single second.
We definitely thought we were adding features for our customers, not taking them away. Standard and Power accounts could only block 'Originals' before, and that's still true today. We spent a lot of time over the months talking about permissions and how to best handle them - but not this scenario. We've been completely taken by surprise.
We'll definitely noodle on this a bit and see what we come up with. Thanks for letting us know how you feel.
If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:
- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?
...
If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:
- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?
I like the X-X2-X3 Large feature very much - it's great for:
- my private Standard Account
- my business Professional Account
However, it is truly a problem that I cannot block the X-X2-X3 Large for my third site, the volunteer work on a Standard Account: I wanted to protect the people on these images which I cannot anymore.
BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
edited October 16, 2007
Wow, this is an interesting development, at least to me. I was so caught up in the pressure we've been under to provide larger sizes that at least I didn't really consider this scenario. Thanks for letting us know about this.
We have quite an internal debate going on at the moment, and this thread is the topic.
It isn't our intent to cause you to upgrade. It really is all about making you and your visitors happy, responding to competitive pressure, and following the trend of monitors (the cheapest iMac you can buy has 1680 pixels and we've been hearing continuously how forlorn our Large size looks in the middle of it).
I'm just one of the SmugMug team and I don't yet know if my opinion is shared by the others. But I have to admit that I cringe at the thought of visitors viewing your galleries on the monitors Dell and Apple are now shipping and getting the impression that SmugMug is archaic because it has no XL size. The 3 or 4 of our competitors that we care most about all have XL and we hear all day long about how much their visitors love viewing that size.
On the other hand, we have a lot of respect for your privacy concerns and appreciate you sharing them here. We turned the company upside down to do SmugIslands as a result of a thread like this.
I like the X-X2-X3 Large feature very much - it's great for:
- my private Standard Account
- my business Professional Account
However, it is truly a problem that I cannot block the X-X2-X3 Large for my third site, the volunteer work on a Standard Account: I wanted to protect the people on these images which I cannot anymore.
Best, Nicolas
Nicolas, when I want to protect images of people (I take photos of young kid's sports teams), I use password protected galleries. Inside the password protected galleries, I can offer the full web viewing experience with larger sizes. I just share the password in the same communication that has the gallery URL and it works great. If there are multiple galleries for an event, I just give them all the same password and the viewers only have to enter it once for access to all the galleries (a nice Smugmug feature). Have you considered this option as something that's both doable at any account level and better protection?
If you aren't allowing prints, then you could also just upload 800x800 images to limit the size. If you are allowing prints, then you aren't really getting much protection because anyone who wants to see high res images can just order a good sized print for a few bucks.
Nicolas, when I want to protect images of people (I take photos of young kid's sports teams), I use password protected galleries. ...Have you considered this option as something that's both doable at any account level and better protection?
...
If you aren't allowing prints, then you could also just upload 800x800 images to limit the size. If you are allowing prints, then you aren't really getting much protection ...
Thanx for your feedback - it's what I would do if a normal way of communication would be possible.
These kids, however, join the holiday activities through their schools. There's no direct communication between us - the holiday activity team - and the kids ... making the password protection unusable.
You're right, prints aren't allowed for this reason.
I've uploaded the full quality for two reasons:
- I don't want to resize all images since Smugmug is doing an excellent job on it (and: too many - haven't got time to resize/crop)
- instead of sending individual emails with the requested original picture I'll open the web site for a day/weekend or so for the download of originals. I'll know in a few weeks whether this is a good way to go or not.
Don't forget about Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira from the Flickr incident? After all, her 72dpi, 1200×800 pixels images were clearly large enough to use for making prints. And yes, flickr is a completely different beast and her photos were easily found. However, the various XL sizes are large enough for prints. I think she's now upload max 800 pixels across (maybe wrong on this point).
[FONT="]
The other photo hosting places offer very-large sizes, but at least one of them even gives the basic account the ability to lock the very large and original.
And yes, there is a work-around for smugmug. People can resize before they upload, make galleries private, password-protect, SmugIsland, turn off photorank, etc. The question is... should the standard and power accounts be required to do so?
note: I'm a power user and I know that hundreds of my photos are taken and used on facebook/myspace, etc. without my permission. I don't like it, but accept it since they're only sized large. [/FONT]
Don't forget about Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira from the Flickr incident? After all, her 72dpi, 1200×800 pixels images were clearly large enough to use for making prints. And yes, flickr is a completely different beast and her photos were easily found. However, the various XL sizes are large enough for prints. I think she's now upload max 800 pixels across (maybe wrong on this point).
[FONT="] The other photo hosting places offer very-large sizes, but at least one of them even gives the basic account the ability to lock the very large and original.
And yes, there is a work-around for smugmug. People can resize before they upload, make galleries private, password-protect, SmugIsland, turn off photorank, etc. The question is... should the standard and power accounts be required to do so?
note: I'm a power user and I know that hundreds of my photos are taken and used on facebook/myspace, etc. without my permission. I don't like it, but accept it since they're only sized large. [/FONT]
If folks really, really need this, then definitely let Smugmug know. But, even if they make it available to standard and power accounts, I hope you all seriously consider the trade-offs involved in using it.
You are seriously compromising your viewers experience by limiting them to smaller images if you restrict galleries to Large size only. As Baldy said, when you put one of Smugmug's large images in a lightbox on a large screen, it looks downright puny and the viewer is definitely not getting the maximum viewing experience. Try looking at a full screen slideshow view on a large screen in a gallery that limits you to larges. It's downright ugly (because images have to be upsized from the large one - they can't be based on the larger sizes in order to respect your limitations).
In a short while, Smugmug will probably have the new flash-based slideshows working for regular gallery slideshow views and boy that will be spectacular when it can use the new large sizes on a big screen. Do you really want to deprive all that from your viewers?
If you're not a pro and aren't making money from your images, what is to you if someone borrows an image occasionally? I know it feels weird and you wish it wasn't happening. But, do you really want to seriously compromise your intended viewer's experience just to protect against something that costs you nothing? I definitely vote no. I want my viewers to have a world class experience. If someone borrows some of my images for an unintended purpose - oh well. It doesn't actually cost me anything and it's certainly not a reason for me to penalize my legitimate viewers.
If you are a pro and do have money at stake, then you really ought to do a custom watermark (which has always required a pro account) for real protection without having to compromise the viewing sizes available.
To be clear, anything that generates new display images or a new original image will generate the SmugMungous sizes as well. This includes adding/removing watermarks, cropping, color effects, replace this photo, or rotating. You're right though, seems like it would have twice the load of a simple opt-in.
-Anne
Use the new smugmug.images.rotate api and do a rotation of 0 or 360 degrees. This does the invalidation and only requires one rebuild. Which gets you to something like this in pretty short order. (sorry that's the best I can do to compare with Andy's adorable daughter.)
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Why can't we, the users decide what size we want to present our image in? What's wrong with this?
If you want to go for x3large, go for it but give everyone else the chance to do as he or she likes. Is it really so hard to let people decide for themselves? I like my images restricted to large or max. extra large.
I'm sure that most people having a pro account won't mind if the rest is having this feature too. You go for a pro account when you want watermarking and full control over your online business.
I don't know but this whole thing does not feel right.
- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?
Thanks!
Hi, I have a Power Level, just trying to sort some bugs out before I jump for Pro (reasons in my other post above). My girlfriend has standard level acct.
This is important to me, Like I said in a post above. I would show XL or maybe above for galleries of friends, parties and some of my landscapes that look good big. I'd restrict images to large for street photography or for proof galleries for the odd paid shoot. It's so important that I would think long and hard about upgrading to pro or going back to using a php browser on my hosted machine for some of my galleries.
I've also had a play with some of my images and the new sizes and quickly realized that I'm going to have to spend a lot of extra effort in sharpening and noise reduction to make sure they look great at the largest sizes. I've got a 5d and nice lenses but you can get away with a lot when you are in a rush and (and maybe a tad hungover) to get 80-100 images out of a party/event for viewing the next day. My girlfriend also just commented/commanded that I'm not allowed to put up any images of her on the web at that size untouched
I don't see why you can't give full control over sizes to all customers. It seems like it wouldn't mean a whole lot of extra server load or be one of the money making features that make it pro only worthy.
If you start to use flash slideshows I would urge you to consider having separate size settings for jpegs vs flash, I know that someone determined can take a screenshot of the flash display, but like right click protection, it's extra hoops for them to jump through.
Thanks for listening, I really appreciate that you do, it's why I'm here and recommend smugmug to everyone who asks
One Thumb -
I'm a power account user. I'm sure that some day I'm going to have a Pro account. I want to support Smugmug. But right now the issue is not the money, but the time to put into it. When I get a pro account I want to do it right. A Power account offers me everything I want right now except the ability to block everything bigger than Large. I know that we can still block originals, same as before. But from the other angle it's not quite the same because we can't block anything bigger than Large. Thanks for your concern in the matter. And thank you for offering the smugmungous sizes! You all do so much to make this place great. It's a feature I'm sure I'll use for some galleries, but not all (hopefully if all goes well). :
John -
I know this concept is still hard for you, but just because we don't sell prints and make profit doesn't mean we want it to be easy for people to upload and make copies of our pictures. For me, it has nothing to do with profit. I don't want my images being "borrowed." To me that is stealing. Maybe it's not stealing money out of my pocket, but it is taking my pictures without my permission (stealing!). Maybe it happens anyways, maybe it doesn't happen at all (to me), but I'd rather not make it easier by offering up bigger sizes.
I know this concept is still hard for you, but just because we don't sell prints and make profit doesn't mean we want it to be easy for people to upload and make copies of our pictures. For me, it has nothing to do with profit. I don't want my images being "borrowed." To me that is stealing. Maybe it's not stealing money out of my pocket, but it is taking my pictures without my permission (stealing!). Maybe it happens anyways, maybe it doesn't happen at all (to me), but I'd rather not make it easier by offering up bigger sizes.
Well said Jen!
I'm running a German exhibition design company in Shanghai and this place is teaching me more lessons about copycats stealing ideas and designs (and pictures) than I would have ever cared to learn. I'm so tired of it!
So even though I'm not making any money from my pictures they are still mine and I like to decide what is happening with them. I still believe that not everything in the world always has to be about money.
Smugmug is a great place, that's why we're all here and I'm sure things can be sorted out, right, powers that be?
Love the new sizes! A request....
Love the new size folks!..I see lots of threads complaining, so thought I would toss a bone here to let you know that your hard work is appreciated!!
now...just get them to work in Smugmug view [tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?]
OK two minor requests:
1) I see a dramatic difference in image size if I 'F11" the screen, getting rid of all the icons and address line in either FF or IE...is there anyway to put a reminder along the 'toolbar' in Lightbox or perhaps even in the flyout box, to remind the user to 'press F11'?
2) I expect you are going to get lots of requests for crops and rotates, I am guilty of that. However, I am in no real rush, I can be patient. How about providing an automated update, thru "scheduling" gallery updates?
I would be happy to request that a few of my galleries be updated to new sizes, and I would be happy to wait say a week for it to happen. This way, you can schedule the work when your servers have lower loads, like early morning. Then you can just auto rotate or crop away, and in a week (or two?), I have shiny new sizes!
Love the new size folks!..I see lots of threads complaining, so thought I would toss a bone here to let you know that your hard work is appreciated!!
now...just get them to work in Smugmug view [tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?]
{JT} is working on it
OK two minor requests:
1) I see a dramatic difference in image size if I 'F11" the screen, getting rid of all the icons and address line in either FF or IE...is there anyway to put a reminder along the 'toolbar' in Lightbox or perhaps even in the flyout box, to remind the user to 'press F11'?
2) I expect you are going to get lots of requests for crops and rotates, I am guilty of that. However, I am in no real rush, I can be patient. How about providing an automated update, thru "scheduling" gallery updates?
I would be happy to request that a few of my galleries be updated to new sizes, and I would be happy to wait say a week for it to happen. This way, you can schedule the work when your servers have lower loads, like early morning. Then you can just auto rotate or crop away, and in a week (or two?), I have shiny new sizes!
Thanks for the feedback and requests, we really appreciate it
BTW, the F11 thing, that's "auto" at work - we sense more real estate, so we bump the size for you. Neat.
I personally think this is a huge upgrade to SM. I use a 22" and 20" Dell monitors side by side and the images look sooo much better displayed on these in larger formats. The Auto feature rocks!
Thanks to the team for the hard work and innovation
Maybe allow watermarking for all accounts? This does not affect the Standard or Power accounts profits but it will probably lead to more prints for SM with the larger sizes available for viewing and protects the images.
If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:
- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?
Thanks!
I'm a power user and I would like to be able to set the viewing limit from large on up (maybe not restrict it to medium like pros can do, if that is a compromise). It seems like large was small enough to only make it somewhat worth it to infringe copyright. When you can get something that is half the size of the original, it becomes more reasonable. An analogous example would be those 30 second clips on iTunes. If they had full songs the whole time, why would I bother paying (or in my case, contacting me and asking me for a high-res version).
-r
Ps - i love that I can now display panoramas at a reasonable size. Large used to be too small and original was far too big.
Comments
I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.
If you don't mind if I ask, if you aren't selling your photos, why does it bother you to let people see larger sizes on the web? Is it 100% good-ness that your viewers can take full advantage of their large screens? I realize it's conceptually a change from before, but after you think about it for awhile, isn't it purely a step forward for web viewing?
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Hi John
No, I'm not selling my photos at this point. And maybe my photos aren't good enough for people to want to steal, but I still liked having the capability to protect the larger images. Like I said before, I realize that technically I still have the ability to protect originals like I did before, but the largest display size was "Large," which is what I wanted and still do.
This point could be argued from both sides, I guess.
I say, "I want to protect anything bigger than 'Large,' like I could before."
Smugmug says, "You can still protect Originals, which is all you had before."
I think both sides could be considered valid, but for obvious reasons I'm biased towards my side.
Gallery of mine...caution, it's under CONSTANT construction! | Photo Journal
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary. ~Aaron Rose
I sell plenty of prints, though none through smugmug. All are stock and art prints, None of my customers trust an overseas lab and international shipping for some reason.
I have been thinking of upgrading to a pro acct for the digital downloads and watermarking but I'm holding off until I hear back about the problems I've been having with broken CSS (a whole other issue)
as I see it it's not just a change in concept. It's about control. Even though I don't sell my pictures I still want to be in control of how big I present them.
And it's a big difference between a 800x600 image and a 1600x1200. Sometimes that's all it takes for some applications. And let's face it, there are people who would rather go for a "good enough" freebie (which is not free anyway, I just can't protect it anymore) than buying a pro pic.
Hi from Shanghai,
Sven
If you sell images/prints elsewhere (and thus don't need originals here for print orders) and just want Smugmug for small version web display, would it work to just upload smaller images in the first place? I hope you get the CSS issues figured out.
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At the risk of sounding whiny (hey, it's past my bedtime
Gallery of mine...caution, it's under CONSTANT construction! | Photo Journal
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary. ~Aaron Rose
I think it's fine to ask Smugmug for more options in the standard and power accounts if that's what you think you need. Since not everything will be in the less expensive accounts, they will have to decide where to draw the line.
I'm just trying to understand why people who aren't selling their images are so concerned about someone borrowing a larger version of an image and making their own print from it? If that's costing you income then you should have a pro account and custom watermark your images so they are really protected. If that's not costing you income because you don't sell, then I wonder why it's a problem?
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I like to have the full res here as I often get messages from family and friends asking for the originals. I turn off the originals protection long enough for them to grab what they want.
What would really rock my socks is being able to give them a pw or code for a specific gallery and then they can grab the originals at their leisure for that without me having to turn off and then on the protection.
I know of 2 other smugmuglers who work exactly the same way.
If it were available. I would probably set the maximum viewing size at XL. no larger
John,
just because we're amateurs does not mean that we can't take a good picture now and then, right?
So, how would you feel as a pro when someone is not buying your photographs because he can browse millions of "free" good-enough pictures instead? And really sometimes x3large is good enough.
I agree though that smugmug has to draw the line somewhere. But I hope that this topic is still a work in progress.
Sven
A separate password to get to large sizes would be a cool feature. Have you posted that in the feature requests thread and described how you'd use it and who else might be interested in it? It would kind of be like digital download via password instead of with money.
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I don't want to sell any images, so a pro account is out of the question for me. Still I don't want my images in larger sizes than 800x800 to be up for grabs. And I don't want to watermark my images. My power account has all the other features I want, but this one annoys me a bit. I guess I'll just waste more storage space for you, by uploading two versions of my images. I would have liked a warning about this, because this means I'll have to redo an upload I did yesterday.
Yeah I saw the idea floated in a thread a while back and threw my thumbs up into the ring
I agree. After a less pleasant incidence I became friend of blocking images to the 800x600 size - mainly to protect the people shown on the images.
I actually counted on this type of protection for this specific project (volunteer work with kids): http://ferienpassfrauenfeld.smugmug.com/
I'm not sure what I can/should do now with a pro account being out of reach for this project. Any ideas?
Best, Nicolas
As someone who *was* part of SmugMug's decision, I can tell you that we never even considered this angle for a single second.
We definitely thought we were adding features for our customers, not taking them away. Standard and Power accounts could only block 'Originals' before, and that's still true today. We spent a lot of time over the months talking about permissions and how to best handle them - but not this scenario. We've been completely taken by surprise.
We'll definitely noodle on this a bit and see what we come up with. Thanks for letting us know how you feel.
If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:
- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?
Thanks!
I like the X-X2-X3 Large feature very much - it's great for:
- my private Standard Account
- my business Professional Account
However, it is truly a problem that I cannot block the X-X2-X3 Large for my third site, the volunteer work on a Standard Account: I wanted to protect the people on these images which I cannot anymore.
Best, Nicolas
We have quite an internal debate going on at the moment, and this thread is the topic.
It isn't our intent to cause you to upgrade. It really is all about making you and your visitors happy, responding to competitive pressure, and following the trend of monitors (the cheapest iMac you can buy has 1680 pixels and we've been hearing continuously how forlorn our Large size looks in the middle of it).
I'm just one of the SmugMug team and I don't yet know if my opinion is shared by the others. But I have to admit that I cringe at the thought of visitors viewing your galleries on the monitors Dell and Apple are now shipping and getting the impression that SmugMug is archaic because it has no XL size. The 3 or 4 of our competitors that we care most about all have XL and we hear all day long about how much their visitors love viewing that size.
On the other hand, we have a lot of respect for your privacy concerns and appreciate you sharing them here. We turned the company upside down to do SmugIslands as a result of a thread like this.
Thanks!
Baldy
Nicolas, when I want to protect images of people (I take photos of young kid's sports teams), I use password protected galleries. Inside the password protected galleries, I can offer the full web viewing experience with larger sizes. I just share the password in the same communication that has the gallery URL and it works great. If there are multiple galleries for an event, I just give them all the same password and the viewers only have to enter it once for access to all the galleries (a nice Smugmug feature). Have you considered this option as something that's both doable at any account level and better protection?
If you aren't allowing prints, then you could also just upload 800x800 images to limit the size. If you are allowing prints, then you aren't really getting much protection because anyone who wants to see high res images can just order a good sized print for a few bucks.
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Thanx for your feedback - it's what I would do if a normal way of communication would be possible.
These kids, however, join the holiday activities through their schools. There's no direct communication between us - the holiday activity team - and the kids ... making the password protection unusable.
You're right, prints aren't allowed for this reason.
I've uploaded the full quality for two reasons:
- I don't want to resize all images since Smugmug is doing an excellent job on it (and: too many - haven't got time to resize/crop)
- instead of sending individual emails with the requested original picture I'll open the web site for a day/weekend or so for the download of originals. I'll know in a few weeks whether this is a good way to go or not.
Best, Nicolas
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The other photo hosting places offer very-large sizes, but at least one of them even gives the basic account the ability to lock the very large and original.
And yes, there is a work-around for smugmug. People can resize before they upload, make galleries private, password-protect, SmugIsland, turn off photorank, etc. The question is... should the standard and power accounts be required to do so?
note: I'm a power user and I know that hundreds of my photos are taken and used on facebook/myspace, etc. without my permission. I don't like it, but accept it since they're only sized large.
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If folks really, really need this, then definitely let Smugmug know. But, even if they make it available to standard and power accounts, I hope you all seriously consider the trade-offs involved in using it.
You are seriously compromising your viewers experience by limiting them to smaller images if you restrict galleries to Large size only. As Baldy said, when you put one of Smugmug's large images in a lightbox on a large screen, it looks downright puny and the viewer is definitely not getting the maximum viewing experience. Try looking at a full screen slideshow view on a large screen in a gallery that limits you to larges. It's downright ugly (because images have to be upsized from the large one - they can't be based on the larger sizes in order to respect your limitations).
In a short while, Smugmug will probably have the new flash-based slideshows working for regular gallery slideshow views and boy that will be spectacular when it can use the new large sizes on a big screen. Do you really want to deprive all that from your viewers?
If you're not a pro and aren't making money from your images, what is to you if someone borrows an image occasionally? I know it feels weird and you wish it wasn't happening. But, do you really want to seriously compromise your intended viewer's experience just to protect against something that costs you nothing? I definitely vote no. I want my viewers to have a world class experience. If someone borrows some of my images for an unintended purpose - oh well. It doesn't actually cost me anything and it's certainly not a reason for me to penalize my legitimate viewers.
If you are a pro and do have money at stake, then you really ought to do a custom watermark (which has always required a pro account) for real protection without having to compromise the viewing sizes available.
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Use the new smugmug.images.rotate api and do a rotation of 0 or 360 degrees. This does the invalidation and only requires one rebuild. Which gets you to something like this in pretty short order. (sorry that's the best I can do to compare with Andy's adorable daughter.)
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
If you want to go for x3large, go for it but give everyone else the chance to do as he or she likes. Is it really so hard to let people decide for themselves? I like my images restricted to large or max. extra large.
I'm sure that most people having a pro account won't mind if the rest is having this feature too. You go for a pro account when you want watermarking and full control over your online business.
I don't know but this whole thing does not feel right.
Sven
Hi, I have a Power Level, just trying to sort some bugs out before I jump for Pro (reasons in my other post above). My girlfriend has standard level acct.
This is important to me, Like I said in a post above. I would show XL or maybe above for galleries of friends, parties and some of my landscapes that look good big. I'd restrict images to large for street photography or for proof galleries for the odd paid shoot. It's so important that I would think long and hard about upgrading to pro or going back to using a php browser on my hosted machine for some of my galleries.
I've also had a play with some of my images and the new sizes and quickly realized that I'm going to have to spend a lot of extra effort in sharpening and noise reduction to make sure they look great at the largest sizes. I've got a 5d and nice lenses but you can get away with a lot when you are in a rush and (and maybe a tad hungover) to get 80-100 images out of a party/event for viewing the next day. My girlfriend also just commented/commanded that I'm not allowed to put up any images of her on the web at that size untouched
I don't see why you can't give full control over sizes to all customers. It seems like it wouldn't mean a whole lot of extra server load or be one of the money making features that make it pro only worthy.
If you start to use flash slideshows I would urge you to consider having separate size settings for jpegs vs flash, I know that someone determined can take a screenshot of the flash display, but like right click protection, it's extra hoops for them to jump through.
Thanks for listening, I really appreciate that you do, it's why I'm here and recommend smugmug to everyone who asks
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I'm a power account user. I'm sure that some day I'm going to have a Pro account. I want to support Smugmug. But right now the issue is not the money, but the time to put into it. When I get a pro account I want to do it right. A Power account offers me everything I want right now except the ability to block everything bigger than Large. I know that we can still block originals, same as before. But from the other angle it's not quite the same because we can't block anything bigger than Large. Thanks for your concern in the matter. And thank you for offering the smugmungous sizes! You all do so much to make this place great. It's a feature I'm sure I'll use for some galleries, but not all (hopefully if all goes well).
John -
I know this concept is still hard for you, but just because we don't sell prints and make profit doesn't mean we want it to be easy for people to upload and make copies of our pictures. For me, it has nothing to do with profit. I don't want my images being "borrowed." To me that is stealing. Maybe it's not stealing money out of my pocket, but it is taking my pictures without my permission (stealing!). Maybe it happens anyways, maybe it doesn't happen at all (to me), but I'd rather not make it easier by offering up bigger sizes.
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Well said Jen!
I'm running a German exhibition design company in Shanghai and this place is teaching me more lessons about copycats stealing ideas and designs (and pictures) than I would have ever cared to learn. I'm so tired of it!
So even though I'm not making any money from my pictures they are still mine and I like to decide what is happening with them. I still believe that not everything in the world always has to be about money.
Smugmug is a great place, that's why we're all here and I'm sure things can be sorted out, right, powers that be?
Sven
Love the new size folks!..I see lots of threads complaining, so thought I would toss a bone here to let you know that your hard work is appreciated!!
now...just get them to work in Smugmug view [tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?]
OK two minor requests:
1) I see a dramatic difference in image size if I 'F11" the screen, getting rid of all the icons and address line in either FF or IE...is there anyway to put a reminder along the 'toolbar' in Lightbox or perhaps even in the flyout box, to remind the user to 'press F11'?
2) I expect you are going to get lots of requests for crops and rotates, I am guilty of that. However, I am in no real rush, I can be patient. How about providing an automated update, thru "scheduling" gallery updates?
I would be happy to request that a few of my galleries be updated to new sizes, and I would be happy to wait say a week for it to happen. This way, you can schedule the work when your servers have lower loads, like early morning. Then you can just auto rotate or crop away, and in a week (or two?), I have shiny new sizes!
BTW, the F11 thing, that's "auto" at work - we sense more real estate, so we bump the size for you. Neat.
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Maybe allow watermarking for all accounts? This does not affect the Standard or Power accounts profits but it will probably lead to more prints for SM with the larger sizes available for viewing and protects the images.
Just a thought
Monte
-r
Ps - i love that I can now display panoramas at a reasonable size. Large used to be too small and original was far too big.