Not allowing cropping

Erick L

Hello,

I simplified a page to not see the sizes that require cropping. It seems it's been applied to all images. Two problems:

1- There's still a cropping option at check out.
2- When unlogged, all sizes are shown.

Why is that and how do I fix this? I want customers to see the uncropped options only.

Thanks, I have another hundred questions in line... :scratch

Andy

Hi, you can't eliminate cropping in the cart, after millions and millions of prints, we've found it's best to give customers the knife.

You, as the pro, can set proof delay, and review crops before the order is placed.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/proof-retouch-replace


To eliminate options, you set that in pro pricing. Here's how: http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-pricing

if you need more, holler to our support heroes, many of us here on Dgrin will be offline from Dgrin for a day or so prepping for our 5th anniversary party

Erick L

Thanks,

The problem is I don't really want what is best for million others, just what is best for me. I don't like the idea of Smugmug deciding how I can sell my own work. Did you actually let photographers decide or is it because customers crop many images? Would they buy less if there weren't a cropping option? How many back away because it's too confusing?

I didn't check but can people see "products that cannot be purchased"? I thought hiding them would be a given.

Andy

Erick L wrote:

Thanks,

The problem is I don't really want what is best for million others, just what is best for me. I don't like the idea of Smugmug deciding how I can sell my own work. Did you actually let photographers decide or is it because customers crop many images? Would they buy less if there weren't a cropping option? How many back away because it's too confusing?

I didn't check but can people see "products that cannot be purchased"? I thought hiding them would be a given.

If you set prices to $0, they won't show up in your customer's cart. To see, log out, or use a 2nd browser, we LOVE firefox, it's free from www.mozilla.com and one of my recommendations on my pro fast start:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/pro-start.mg

I wish I could tell you that you could disable cropping, but you can't. So proof-delay, and you'll be able to review and change crops as needed

Erick L

If you set prices to $0, they won't show up in your customer's cart.

I can set price for different formats but that still means setting the price for every individual photo. There's an option to hide formats that need cropping when buying an image, why not make it possible to force that option on the customer?

Andy

Erick L wrote:

I can set price for different formats but that still means setting the price for every individual photo. There's an option to hide formats that need cropping when buying an image, why not make it possible to force that option on the customer?

I'm not quite following you - you can disable items on a gallery or sitewide basis, too.

We don't have the ability to force that option in the addtocart system, I'm so sorry.

Erick L

What I want is hiding format ratios that aren't the same as the image. So if an image has a 2:3 ratio, I don't want people to see the 5*7, 8*10, etc. Since my galleries have images with 2 or 3 different ratios. If I put 0$ for all "wrong" ratio, I can't apply the setting to a gallery because other images in the gallery might have a 4:5 ratio. That means I have to manually set the price for every single photograph.

Basically, I wish to force the "hide products that need to be cropped" on customers.

Same for "hide products that cannot be purchased". Why aren't they hidden by default? It just adds clutter.

Thanks.

rainforest1155

I understand what you're referring to, but it's not possible right now to only show the sizes that fit the photo size. If a crop would be off a tiny bit, you would end up with no items to buy for a photo in the worst case.

With the crop function in the cart, the customer is able to decide which print size fits best his needs.

Sebastian

Michael Banks - GSP

I agree with the others, it would be great to have an option for "hide products that need to be cropped" to be on by default. If they absolutely must have something in a particular size, they can always uncheck the box. However, I'd say that 90% of the time, hiding the right aspect ration amongst options for all the other rations will add to confusion rather than reduce it. Yes, some photographers use weird non-standard ratios and that option wouldn't be appropriate for them but photographers like me edit for a specific ratio and would like to at least encourage customers to buy prints at that ratio.

Either that or give us the option for sizes that don't need cropping to be listed first followed by sizes that do need cropping. If, for instance, if I have a few square format photos in a gallery, it would be nice for my customers to not have to hunt for 5x5, 10x10, etc. I also edit a lot of my photos to 4x5/8x10 and I don't want my customers to just shrug and crop it down to a 4x6 because they didn't see the 4x5 option way down the list.

BioID

I am unsure if Smugmug has offered a solution to the issue yet. Being able to hide the crop option at checkout is also a necessity in our case since we don't want our customers to screw up the actual image and also to avoid confusion.

Andy

BioID wrote: »

I am unsure if Smugmug has offered a solution to the issue yet. Being able to hide the crop option at checkout is also a necessity in our case since we don't want our customers to screw up the actual image and also to avoid confusion.

Just be sure your galleries are set for Proof Delay, and you will see (and can change) any customer-made crops in the order before it goes to the lab. Thanks!

LifeSquared

I agree with the people who want the no cropping option. I am not a fan of my clients cropping my work and then having to go and inspect their cropped work after. This creates extra work and a change to my creative vision I may or may not agree with. But at the end of the day the customer is always right, and I feel I must offer them (the customer) the product they desire (as long as they don't cry when their crops don't fit in their frames properly) ... so I think I have come up with a reasonable solution that I will test it and post back if it gets good reviews from my clients.

LifeSquared

Hi Everyone, I have found a great link and resource on how to obtain the no cropping option. http://www.greenman-advertising.com/photo-website-design/on-when-to-let-others-apply-the-crop This is a wonderful article, and I hope it helps everyone who wants this. Also I'm new to smug mug, why not add me as a contact

cmkultradome

LifeSquared wrote: »

Hi Everyone, I have found a great link and resource on how to obtain the no cropping option. http://www.greenman-advertising.com/photo-website-design/on-when-to-let-others-apply-the-crop This is a wonderful article, and I hope it helps everyone who wants this. Also I'm new to smug mug, why not add me as a contact

I read the article and had a question with step #2. It says "Apply and save your prices, and make sure the others are blank".

I might be mistaken but I think it should say make sure the others are "$0.00". I thought if you left a price blank it defaults to the SmugMug price, if you enter "$0.00" it does not offer that size for purchase.

Stephanie

LifeSquared

cmkultradome wrote: »

I read the article and had a question with step #2. It says "Apply and save your prices, and make sure the others are blank".

I might be mistaken but I think it should say make sure the others are "$0.00". I thought if you left a price blank it defaults to the SmugMug price, if you enter "$0.00" it does not offer that size for purchase.

Stephanie

I found the same thing actually, What I did was apply the prices that I wanted (so if I did square I changed all my square pricing) and then did a custom price of 0 dollars and applied it to all empty products, so no portfolio pricing snuck in there. I didn't write the article, so I cant change it..but good observation. Hope its been helpful

micknewton

You can count me another vote for a 'no crop' option. When I first setup my SmugMug site I configured my prices to hide print sizes that didn't match my image's size ratios, but it quickly became too much work to keep up with.

A user-selectable option to 'hide print sizes that require cropping' would be a great feature for SmugMug.

Merry Christmas everyone!

TheMoffBalls

Hi guys,

We are a couple of months on and I wondered if there is any update on this? There is an option to hide all photo's that need cropping in the shopping cart once a photo has been selected. This isn't immediately obvious to your average Joe and is hidden in under the 'simplify this page button'. The user can tick this option and it will hide all the options which require cropping. Perfect! What I don't understand is, if the user can select this as an option once they're in the checkout process why can't WE select it as an option before our customer is baffled with a million print/crop options?

rainforest1155

We don't have such an option at this point.

Would you mind adding this to our feedback pages? There's a similar suggestion on our feedback pages that you can add your vote / comment to:
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/250611-sell-only-matching-aspect-ratios?ref=title

Thanks!

TheMoffBalls

Yes, I realise there is no option for this - that is exactly the problem - it just doesn't make any sense to allow the customer to simplify the page and only show the prints which do not need cropping but not the photographer. It's completely counter-intuitive. The option IS there, it's just not available to the photographer.

MileHighAko

TheMoffBalls wrote: »

Yes, I realise there is no option for this - that is exactly the problem - it just doesn't make any sense to allow the customer to simplify the page and only show the prints which do not need cropping but not the photographer. It's completely counter-intuitive. The option IS there, it's just not available to the photographer.

Need cropping vs. allow cropping are two different things. You can always use item level pricing to remove any sizes for an item that require cropping so they don't show up in the list for a customer. But that doesn't stop them from being able to crop if they want to.

TheMoffBalls

MileHighAko wrote: »

Need cropping vs. allow cropping are two different things. You can always use item level pricing to remove any sizes for an item that require cropping so they don't show up in the list for a customer. But that doesn't stop them from being able to crop if they want to.

Yes, but my point is the whole page could be simplified if the option to not show prints which need cropping was made available to us. Who would want to buy a print in a size that doesn't fit the canvas? Nobody. I have had several emails from confused customers who are simply baffled by the checkout page as they are presented with dozens of print options which are simply redundant. Smugmug obviously realises this as there is the option to hide said prints. Why not just give us the option to hide them with one click right from the start instead of painstakingly going through each print and removing them by levelling the price. It's crazy.

TheMoffBalls

If you agree with this suggestion please throw a couple of votes this way and hopefully we can get the ball rolling.

http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/1678211-allow-us-to-hide-all-prints-which-require-cropping

kaz

TheMoffBalls wrote: »

If you agree with this suggestion please throw a couple of votes this way and hopefully we can get the ball rolling.

http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/1678211-allow-us-to-hide-all-prints-which-require-cropping

Hey MoffBalls,

I agree with you. As the seller, I'd prefer to control what options are displayed to the buyer as the default options are far too overwhelming for the average joe.

To that end, I hacked this piece of javascript that will automatically hide the types of items you want for your users (items that need to be cropped, items that can't be printed due to size limitations, items of particular types). It still allows a user to go into the panel and uncheck the filters, but at least the default is what you want the buyer to see.

I make no guarantees about the code, but it is relatively simple and only relies on modifying the cookie that smugmug already sets when a user modifies the filter options. It works for me and will be good enough until it's a real feature. Good luck, add this to the Advanced Customization under the 'Bottom Javascript' section:

// ------------------------------------------------------------
// Code to disable the default displaying of items that need to
// be cropped or cannot be printed due to size limitations. It
// works by setting the filter options in the cookie that Smug
// sets to persist these settings.

// Simple test for membership in an array. I couldn't find one 
// defined in the Smug or Yahoo javascript.
function contains(a, obj) {
  for (var i=0; i < a.length; i++) {
    if (a[i] === obj) {
      return true;
    }
  }
  return false;
}

// Add other filters to the 'fliters' list below if desired:
//   "print"      - hides items that cannot be printed due to size
//   "crop"       - hides items that must be cropped
//   "lustre"     - hides items with lustre finish
//   "gloss"      - hides items with gloss finish
//   "matte"      - hides items with matte finish
//   "metal"      - hides items with metal finish
//   "watercolor" - hides items with watercolor finish
var 
 filters = ["print", "crop"],
 modified = false,
 cartfilters = SM.util.getCookie('cartfilters');

if (!cartfilters) {
  SM.util.setCookie('cartfilters', filters.join('|'), 365);
} 
else {
  cartfilters = cartfilters.split('|'); 
  for (var i=0; i < filters.length; i++) {  
    if (!contains(cartfilters, filters[i])) { 
      modified = true;
      cartfilters.push(filters[i]);
    }
  }
  if (modified) {
    SM.util.setCookie('cartfilters', cartfilters.join('|'), 365);
  }
}

Mesenko

I'm getting confused customers as well... too many choices. I was printmarking my images manually, but if a customer accidentally picks a crop size, my printmark gets cropped. If I use the smugmug printmark, I can't individualize it for each photo without putting each photo in its own gallery...


Please allow us to preset the simplification for the buyers. Remember the KISS rule.

Thanks for a great product!

jfriend

Mesenko wrote: »

I'm getting confused customers as well... too many choices. I was printmarking my images manually, but if a customer accidentally picks a crop size, my printmark gets cropped. If I use the smugmug printmark, I can't individualize it for each photo without putting each photo in its own gallery...


Please allow us to preset the simplification for the buyers. Remember the KISS rule.

Thanks for a great product!

The best I know you can do is to set proof delay and check the crop on each image before printing. If the crop needs to be adjusted for your printmark, you can do so before approving the print order.

Mesenko

Thanks for the code... It works!

kaz wrote: »

Hey MoffBalls,

I agree with you. As the seller, I'd prefer to control what options are displayed to the buyer as the default options are far too overwhelming for the average joe.

To that end, I hacked this piece of javascript that will automatically hide the types of items you want for your users (items that need to be cropped, items that can't be printed due to size limitations, items of particular types). It still allows a user to go into the panel and uncheck the filters, but at least the default is what you want the buyer to see.

I make no guarantees about the code, but it is relatively simple and only relies on modifying the cookie that smugmug already sets when a user modifies the filter options. It works for me and will be good enough until it's a real feature. Good luck, add this to the Advanced Customization under the 'Bottom Javascript' section:

// ------------------------------------------------------------
// Code to disable the default displaying of items that need to
// be cropped or cannot be printed due to size limitations. It
// works by setting the filter options in the cookie that Smug
// sets to persist these settings.

// Simple test for membership in an array. I couldn't find one 
// defined in the Smug or Yahoo javascript.
function contains(a, obj) {
  for (var i=0; i < a.length; i++) {
    if (a[i] === obj) {
      return true;
    }
  }
  return false;
}

// Add other filters to the 'fliters' list below if desired:
//   "print"      - hides items that cannot be printed due to size
//   "crop"       - hides items that must be cropped
//   "lustre"     - hides items with lustre finish
//   "gloss"      - hides items with gloss finish
//   "matte"      - hides items with matte finish
//   "metal"      - hides items with metal finish
//   "watercolor" - hides items with watercolor finish
var 
 filters = ["print", "crop"],
 modified = false,
 cartfilters = SM.util.getCookie('cartfilters');

if (!cartfilters) {
  SM.util.setCookie('cartfilters', filters.join('|'), 365);
} 
else {
  cartfilters = cartfilters.split('|'); 
  for (var i=0; i < filters.length; i++) {  
    if (!contains(cartfilters, filters[i])) { 
      modified = true;
      cartfilters.push(filters[i]);
    }
  }
  if (modified) {
    SM.util.setCookie('cartfilters', cartfilters.join('|'), 365);
  }
}

Dota

Did they get rid if individual print pricing? That's how I was able to do non cropping pics only (for example, landscape size prints or square size only inside a gallery set). Granted I haven't done it for millions of pics because it does take time.

Dota

Jfriend, I recommend Kaz code be added to the javascript customization sticky thread. Kaz welcome, don't know if you know Jfriend but he's the javascript expert here on the board . If you know anymore contributions that would make smug better please feel free to give