Map This... Cr@p This...

Robert Barnett

Ok, I am getting a little miffed at what appears to be a very poorly done feature and that is the geotagging/map this feature. I have my images geotagged, I have them uploaded, I have the map set to show, I have all of my tagged images captioned and I have the googles map key installed and finally I have the gallery set to show geography. However, no map shows, just a blank box.

NOTE: The only gallery geotagged is the Howarth Park one.

Come on SmugMug get on the ball and get this thing fixed and working slick like the rest of your site. Even when it was working it was kind of a weak feature with other photo sharing sites doing a much better job (Flickr as an example.)

I spend a lot of time geotagging my images and I am about to jump ship and go to Flickr is Smug Mug can't get this working.

Ok, now that my rantting is over does anyone have any idea why this isn't working?

http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/

Robert

DavidTO

Robert,

I moved this to SmugMug support.

Andy

Hi Robert, I do not see any map this button here:
http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/5197007_2rHQ8#315277610_8Tspu

which photos have geodata, please? Can you link me directly to one or two?

Robert Barnett

Map This...

Andy wrote:

Hi Robert, I do not see any map this button here:
http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/5197007_2rHQ8#315277610_8Tspu

which photos have geodata, please? Can you link me directly to one or two?

Well, when I go to this page:

http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/

I see a large box that is filled with a light gray. The caption for the box is "Around the World" There should be a map here with green pins indicating my geotagged photos.

I have no idea what you talking about as far as a Map This button. I only have two galleries up right now the only ones geotagged are the Howarth Park ones at:

http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/5197007_2rHQ8#315277610_8Tspu

Honestly, the way the geotagging works on this site is just way too much trouble. Not to mention it isn't all that attractive, interesting or engaging. It shouldn't be this hard to get geotagged photos to work right.

For what it is worth the photos were geo tagged with RoboGeo from a Garmin GPS 60 hand held unit. The photos work great when I have RoboGeo generate a Google Earth package.

Robert

Andy

Robert Barnett wrote:

Well, when I go to this page:

http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/

I see a large box that is filled with a light gray. The caption for the box is "Around the World" There should be a map here with green pins indicating my geotagged photos.

I have no idea what you talking about as far as a Map This button. I only have two galleries up right now the only ones geotagged are the Howarth Park ones at:

http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/5197007_2rHQ8#315277610_8Tspu

Honestly, the way the geotagging works on this site is just way too much trouble. Not to mention it isn't all that attractive, interesting or engaging. It shouldn't be this hard to get geotagged photos to work right.

For what it is worth the photos were geo tagged with RoboGeo from a Garmin GPS 60 hand held unit. The photos work great when I have RoboGeo generate a Google Earth package.

Robert

Look again?

Dunno why your files aren't getting mapped. When I do edit geography in photo tools, and save, they then show on th map. Can you again pls tell me exactly how you tagged these photo files with the geo data? Thanks1

renstar

Andy wrote:

Look again?

Dunno why your files aren't getting mapped. When I do edit geography in photo tools, and save, they then show on th map. Can you again pls tell me exactly how you tagged these photo files with the geo data? Thanks1

Andy, this is a bug with the maps that has been reported many times. Whenever photos are uploaded with geographic data, Smugmug sits on its thumbs (the site, not the people). The user then has to go into the edit geography, see that the coordinates are already there, hit save, then spin in their chair 3 times holding a thumb on their forehead, and hope the sun is shining at the correct angle in Hawaii. At that point, maybe the Map This! button will show up (it isn't always guaranteed, even if geography is enabled in the gallery). This must be repeated for every photo you want to have show up. When Map This! is clicked, there is a 50/50 chance that the photos you just re-saved the geo data on will actually show up. You can get all of them, none of them, or an arbitrary some of them. This procedure (along with a lack of ability to upload a gpx file to display a route with the photos, but thats a request anyway) effectively neuters the maps feature. If I want a map I'm better off using a different site.

I really don't have the extra time to wait for the N page loads required and the 4N mouse clicks required to use the feature. I've toyed with geotagging photos for a while now and finally found a suite of programs that make it easy, and am very frustrated that I can't use Smugmug as a display, even though the data is there.

If you want, I easily can provide you with another example gallery that demonstrates the above and/or the photos that are not processed correctly.

-r

Robert Barnett

Andy wrote:

Look again?

Dunno why your files aren't getting mapped. When I do edit geography in photo tools, and save, they then show on th map. Can you again pls tell me exactly how you tagged these photo files with the geo data? Thanks1

I told you that I am using Robogeo, the geotagging data is embedded in each image's metadata. The photos work fine every place except SmugMug. From the post below your last one I am not the only one having issues with your implementation.

I would like to suggest that instead of tweaking the look of the site that you actually spend some time getting the mapping features working and ultra nifty.

I created a trial account with flickr and uploaded the exact same images and they mapped perfectly.

Also, another complaint is that your display of meta data from images is very weak. It would be nice if it popped up a large overlay over the image that shows most all of the meta-data especailly the geotags.

Finally, if you have no interest in fixing or improving this set of features, please just say so and I will close out my account and move to Flickr. I WANT GEOTAGGING! At this stage of my photography it is a deal breaker.

Robert

Andy

Robert Barnett wrote:

I told you that I am using Robogeo,

Hi Robert, and yes I heard that. But there are different ways of tagging the info. Often, when folks detail the exact steps, we're able to troubleshoot better.
Sorry for the hassle, and yes, we're working on getting these things sorted out.

Thank you for pushing us, it's very important to us and we appreciate it.

Robert Barnett

Andy wrote:

Hi Robert, and yes I heard that. But there are different ways of tagging the info. Often, when folks detail the exact steps, we're able to troubleshoot better.
Sorry for the hassle, and yes, we're working on getting these things sorted out.

Thank you for pushing us, it's very important to us and we appreciate it.

Well, I do know that Robogeo is one of the more popular programs for the PC. You simple tell it a folder of images, tell it the location of the GPX file it then loads both in to the program, you can then tell it to put the geo information in to the meta-data of the image files and it does it.

The fact that you can go in to the gallery and click on an image and then use the photo tools to edit the geography and it shows the coordinates would seem to indicate that Robogeo is working fine and something on your end isn't reading the tags in the image files. If there was a problem with Robogeo I would assume that the coordinate information would not be shown.

You also have a strange bug in that you have to caption each image before it will show on the map as well. Personally, when I go out and shoot images I shoot close to 1000 images and generally have 100 to 300 images I would like to put on SmugMug. I have no intentions in this life or the after life of captioning those images one at a time.

Nor do I have any plans to go in to each and every image I geo tag and use the edit geography function to get it to show on the map. If flickr and google earth and others can see that geo tags and show the images just fine and you can't then that too would seem to indicate a problem on your end.

Please please fix this ASAP. I like SmugMug enough to give you time to do that. But, if this isn't fixed with in a year I am taking my images someplace else.

If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. I would be happy to furnish you with the non-geo tagged images, the geo-tagged images as well as the GPX track log from my garmin unit if any of this will help, please contact me at mice_on_rollerskates[@]yahoo.com.

Robert

Andy

Robert Barnett wrote:

Please please fix this

We plan on it. Thanks.

Thando

We apologize that maps have become the source of so much grief. A product shouldn't do that. I'll make sure that this isn't swept under the rug and will get the sorcerers to pay attention.

AnneMcBean

I want to post the resolution to this problem here, in case anyone encounters the same bug and stumbles across this thread.

Robert was having to hit "Edit Geography" for each photo to get them to show up on the map because when he created the gallery, "Geography" was toggled to "no" in his customize gallery settings. He toggled it to "yes" later, but it didn't trigger automatic mapping of photos already in the gallery.

This is definitely a bug, but a fairly obscure one. To encounter it, you'd need to have created a quick setting with "geography" toggled to "no", and then apply that quick setting as you create a gallery. Then, add photos with geodata, and finally, toggle the "geography" setting to "yes".

I haven't verified this, but it seems like moving the photos to a different gallery and then back to the first gallery should trigger that mapping just fine. Of course re-uploading the photos should work. And for future galleries you'll want to avoid a quicksetting with geography off.

Hope that helps until we can get this bug fixed!

-Anne
Support Hero

hyachts

While I won't go so far as to say "Cr@p This"...
I've been giggling with glee ever since the Eye-Fi/SmugMug partnership email I got (thanks to everyone for this little gift), and finally got off my can and got some geotagged photos this AM. (I'm still not getting "tagged" in my home wifi network, but that's a story for another forum, and another company) Anyways, "Map This" appears to work pretty well, with the one small exception that when I hit "play" it always skips the first image - what's up with that? Weird. That's not my problem, though - what bothers me is the "Around The World" map on my homepage. It is very buggy. For starters only half of the box gets filled and it begins centered somewhere in the South Atlantic/Indian Ocean (around the "Roaring 40's"):


Then, when I drag around and zoom in to where my photos are located, it still only displays part of a map and sometimes the little green "smugs" disappear entirely:


Same behavior in IE7 and FF3, logged in and not logged in, and so on...
Map is here: http://monkeytales.smugmug.com/galleries

You can see the actual mapped data (and what a relatively small portion of the globe it covers) here:
http://maps.smugmug.com/?feedType=geoUser&Data=monkeytales&Latitude=42.7544&Longitude=-71.4621&zoom=6

If this belongs in the bug reporting thread, please move it there, mods. I just figured it was roughly in the same vein as this issue.

hyachts

Shameless bump with the hope that Andy will at least say "I'll let our engineers know" (or - "Just do XXX instead of the YYY that you're currently doing")

I see you lurking around here, Andy...

EDIT: Never mind - I see a possible fix posted in another thread. Sorry - I swear I searched on this issue!

shrekie

Hi Anne,

I am experiencing this bug because as you pointed out, I also initially had set the Geography to "no" when I first created the gallery some time back. I'm extremely scared of moving all my photos to another gallery and then moving them back because as I had posted in another thread, it is a known bug that on return to the gallery, the order of the photos can become absolutely disorganised for no logical reason. I had wasted 2 hours yesterday having to just re-order photos that got jumbled up when moved into another gallery, so at this stage, until that bug is fixed (with the disorganised photos), I'm not going to risk doing that again. I was wondering if you've come across a fix yet for this bug with the geo-tagging? If not, I'm not going to bother trying to tag all the photos in my galleries until it's sorted out.

Thanks,

Nelson

AnneMcBean wrote:

I want to post the resolution to this problem here, in case anyone encounters the same bug and stumbles across this thread.

Robert was having to hit "Edit Geography" for each photo to get them to show up on the map because when he created the gallery, "Geography" was toggled to "no" in his customize gallery settings. He toggled it to "yes" later, but it didn't trigger automatic mapping of photos already in the gallery.

This is definitely a bug, but a fairly obscure one. To encounter it, you'd need to have created a quick setting with "geography" toggled to "no", and then apply that quick setting as you create a gallery. Then, add photos with geodata, and finally, toggle the "geography" setting to "yes".

I haven't verified this, but it seems like moving the photos to a different gallery and then back to the first gallery should trigger that mapping just fine. Of course re-uploading the photos should work. And for future galleries you'll want to avoid a quicksetting with geography off.

Hope that helps until we can get this bug fixed!

-Anne
Support Hero

Sequoyah

I too am finding this exact same problem. My photos are tagged, yet have to go through this exact process. I upload my pictures to Picasa web albums no problem, they show up the maps. My gallery was initially set up for geography so I don't get why it isn't working properly. I certainly do not want to go and do this with every tagged photo.

renstar wrote:

Andy, this is a bug with the maps that has been reported many times. Whenever photos are uploaded with geographic data, Smugmug sits on its thumbs (the site, not the people). The user then has to go into the edit geography, see that the coordinates are already there, hit save, then spin in their chair 3 times holding a thumb on their forehead, and hope the sun is shining at the correct angle in Hawaii. At that point, maybe the Map This! button will show up (it isn't always guaranteed, even if geography is enabled in the gallery). This must be repeated for every photo you want to have show up. When Map This! is clicked, there is a 50/50 chance that the photos you just re-saved the geo data on will actually show up. You can get all of them, none of them, or an arbitrary some of them. This procedure (along with a lack of ability to upload a gpx file to display a route with the photos, but thats a request anyway) effectively neuters the maps feature. If I want a map I'm better off using a different site.

I really don't have the extra time to wait for the N page loads required and the 4N mouse clicks required to use the feature. I've toyed with geotagging photos for a while now and finally found a suite of programs that make it easy, and am very frustrated that I can't use Smugmug as a display, even though the data is there.

If you want, I easily can provide you with another example gallery that demonstrates the above and/or the photos that are not processed correctly.

-r

PBolchover

I've given up on using smugmug for the maps. Instead I create my own maps (using Google MyMaps), and embed them in my smugmug pages.

This has the added advantage that I can use my normal customisation. For an example see:
http://pbolchover.smugmug.com/Maps

Sequoyah

How can I do this? I have a standard account so maybe it isn't possible?

PBolchover wrote:

I've given up on using smugmug for the maps. Instead I create my own maps (using Google MyMaps), and embed them in my smugmug pages.

This has the added advantage that I can use my normal customisation. For an example see:
http://pbolchover.smugmug.com/Maps

PBolchover

Sequoyah wrote:

How can I do this? I have a standard account so maybe it isn't possible?

You can paste the code from google in the description of a gallery (surrounded by <html> </html> tags).

A Power User like myself, can configure it so that only the description appears, without any photos. Unfortunately, a standard user will have a "This is a new gallery without any photos" appear underneath the map.

DonMB

I seem to be having this problem also -or some variation of it. I have a few different galleries which have photos with gps data. All these correctly have the map this button and that works.

However, for the map on the home page, only a subset of these photos show up. For two of the photos that weren't showing up on the map, I tried re-saving the GPS data (didn't make any real changes though) and this didn't fix it.

home page: http://www.pixelartifacts.com

Missing gps galleries: http://www.pixelartifacts.com/gallery/3883427_mTKZ8
http://www.pixelartifacts.com/gallery/1425332_9CKBX

These galleries seem to show up on the map:
http://www.pixelartifacts.com/gallery/5981952_nsCiN
http://www.pixelartifacts.com/gallery/3687644_HhPaL

The other oddity is the map looks different when I'm logged in. I see more map pins as if it's going to include all the photos, but I still can't find the missing photos.

rainforest1155

DonMB wrote:

I seem to be having this problem also -or some variation of it. I have a few different galleries which have photos with gps data. All these correctly have the map this button and that works.

Make sure that all mapped photos have captions. That should ensure that the map function is working properly.

Sebastian

DonMB

rainforest1155 wrote:

Make sure that all mapped photos have captions. That should ensure that the map function is working properly.

Sebastian

Yes, thanks. That did the trick. The problem photos didn't have a caption or keyword. Adding one or the other (or both I suppose) got them showing up on the map.

joffun

Map This button not showing up
The Map this button is missing from some of my galleries that I have geotagged some photos in. For example this gallery has the button: http://www.shimmerimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1495034_FxbhC#71641806_nMCR7

but these don't:
http://www.shimmerimages.smugmug.com/gallery/6677022_ojZ3x#426239207_UMNWj

and

http://www.shimmerimages.smugmug.com/gallery/8959058_iwtB2#595228145_PjxwC

The button appears on my home page. Is it something to do with my CSS? If so, I am confused as to why it would appear on some galleries and not on others.

Thanks in advance !

Allen

joffun wrote:

The Map this button is missing from some of my galleries that I have geotagged some photos in. For example this gallery has the button: http://www.shimmerimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1495034_FxbhC#71641806_nMCR7

but these don't:
http://www.shimmerimages.smugmug.com/gallery/6677022_ojZ3x#426239207_UMNWj

and

http://www.shimmerimages.smugmug.com/gallery/8959058_iwtB2#595228145_PjxwC

The button appears on my home page. Is it something to do with my CSS? If so, I am confused as to why it would appear on some galleries and not on others.

Thanks in advance !

Maybe this in your CSS is hiding it?:D

/*map this stuff*/
.map_this {display: none;}

joffun

Allen wrote:

Maybe this in your CSS is hiding it?:D

/*map this stuff*/
.map_this {display: none;}

Allen - thanks, I have changed it! It still doesn't explain why the button showed up in some galleries & not in others, but anyway it all now works as expected - thanks

Allen

joffun wrote:

Allen - thanks, I have changed it! It still doesn't explain why the button showed up in some galleries & not in others, but anyway it all now works as expected - thanks

Right below that rule in your CSS you turn it back on for some galleries.

canghuixu

Robert,

I'm curious, were you shooting in RAW, converting to JPG, and then using RoboGeo to add the geotags? For reasons I can't fathom, at least one of the raw conversion utilities I have used in the past, Breezesys, yielded JPG files that did not play well with geo-tagged. When I used Robogeo on the photos, they appeared to have the correct geography, but after I uploaded to Smugmug, I had oddball behavior much like what you described. For me the problem went away because I switched to Adobe Lightroom for my RAW conversions. Robogeo worked fine on all photos shot as JPG, and all photos converted with utilities other than BreezeSys. I have no idea if this is still a problem with the generally excellent BreezeSys package since while I use it heavily for browsing my photos, I haven't used it for RAW conversions in a while. If you are doing RAW conversions to produce the JPG files you are tagging with Robogeo, and you are still having trouble, I suggesting experimenting with another program for RAW conversion...

Robert Barnett wrote:

Well, when I go to this page:

http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/

I see a large box that is filled with a light gray. The caption for the box is "Around the World" There should be a map here with green pins indicating my geotagged photos.

I have no idea what you talking about as far as a Map This button. I only have two galleries up right now the only ones geotagged are the Howarth Park ones at:

http://robertbarnettphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/5197007_2rHQ8#315277610_8Tspu

Honestly, the way the geotagging works on this site is just way too much trouble. Not to mention it isn't all that attractive, interesting or engaging. It shouldn't be this hard to get geotagged photos to work right.

For what it is worth the photos were geo tagged with RoboGeo from a Garmin GPS 60 hand held unit. The photos work great when I have RoboGeo generate a Google Earth package.

Robert