If they're going to do any work in this regard, I'd much rather they just make virtual galleries orderable. Isn't that the better solution for all?
That would be the preferred solution, I concur. But if that's as huge a deal as they say, I would favor a (possibly simpler) bulk move copy option sooner than the ideal solution later.
That would be the preferred solution, I concur. But if that's as huge a deal as they say, I would favor a (possibly simpler) bulk move copy option sooner than the ideal solution later.
I think it's a fair guess that Smugmug will not make it easy for us to mass duplicate galleries (very storage inefficient which costs real money). We've been asking for it for years and virtual galleries looks like the direction they are going to solve the problem. So, our best bet is to help them understand why we need ordering of virtual galleries, why we're going solve our problem with manual duplicating or using other services until we get ordering and that there are a significant number of us.
I have hundreds of duplicate galleries for this reason and am continuing to make more because it's the only way to get multiple ordered views of the same images. As long as virtual galleries doesn't allow ordering, I choose to just re-upload duplicates into a new gallery overnight.
A much more straightfoward way of doing this would be to only put the desired subset of photos into the collected gallery in the first place. I would probably do this with keywords. Go through the original gallery and add a keyword to each photo you want in the collected gallery. Then make a virtual gallery based on those keywords. Then, you never have this issue with Hide. I personally find Hide quite troubling. Because they show to you the site owner, it's very easy to mess up and not correctly see what your viewers will see. Apparently, they also have some weird interactions with collections. I avoid the feature as much as possible.
The problem with splitting the photos is it's not easy. Keywording takes time, moving takes time, uploading takes time. It's easier for me to just upload to a gallery and hide what I don't need visible. I've never run into the subset issue before, so collections was one way to do it. The other way was to have two galleries and just manually set all the hide marks the same from one to the other and then work on the other.
Once I have a new workflow with Lightroom, I'll only be uploading what needs to be published.
I think it's a fair guess that Smugmug will not make it easy for us to mass duplicate galleries (very storage inefficient which costs real money). We've been asking for it for years and virtual galleries looks like the direction they are going to solve the problem...
I have hundreds of duplicate galleries for this reason and am continuing to make more because it's the only way to get multiple ordered views of the same images. As long as virtual galleries doesn't allow ordering, I choose to just re-upload duplicates into a new gallery overnight.
John,
I hope you're not right about SM's motivation, but since Andy hasn't chimed in on this, I fear you might be. I'm going to pm him, to make sure he has a chance to respond. Uploading images twice really isn't a viable option when they need to be watermarked. The watermarking process can be very time consuming and gets hung-up quite a bit.
Some other things for SM to consider:
1) Not offering the "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool only serves to exasperate us. I does not stop us from creating duplicates. It just makes it a PITA.
2) Unlimited storage is unlimited storage. That's what we pay for. If the motivation behind not releasing this tool is to somehow curtail storage by making it difficult for us to store more photos, then that's a bit underhanded.
3) Why not make the "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool a PRO tool, like watermarking? That seems like a good compromise.
I hope you're not right about SM's motivation, but since Andy hasn't chimed in on this, I fear you might be. I'm going to pm him, to make sure he has a chance to respond. Uploading images twice really isn't a viable option when they need to be watermarked. The watermarking process can be very time consuming and gets hung-up quite a bit.
Some other things for SM to consider:
1) Not offering the "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool only serves to exasperate us. I does not stop us from creating duplicates. It just makes it a PITA.
2) Unlimited storage is unlimited storage. That's what we pay for. If the motivation behind not releasing this tool is to somehow curtail storage by making it difficult for us to store more photos, then that's a bit underhanded.
3) Why not make the "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool a PRO tool, like watermarking? That seems like a good compromise.
With Smart Galleries, I'm not understanding why you need to upload twice now - what am I missing?
With Smart Galleries, I'm not understanding why you need to upload twice now - what am I missing?
Andy, are you missing the entire point of this sub-conversation? We need to be able to organize our collected galleries into a custom order. You do not support that. So, if we need a custom order, the ONLY way to get that is by double uploading. When you support custom ordering of virtual galleries, we will no longer have a reason to double upload. Until then, I'm still double uploading.
Andy, are you missing the entire point of this sub-conversation? We need to be able to organize our collected galleries into a custom order.
No John, I'm not.
You do not support that. So, if we need a custom order, the ONLY way to get that is by double uploading. When you support custom ordering of virtual galleries, we will no longer have a reason to double upload. Until then, I'm still double uploading.
We have heard this feature request, and said we want to do this. It's in active Sorcery right now - can't say when we'll have it but we plan on it. Thanks as always for your input
With Smart Galleries, I'm not understanding why you need to upload twice now - what am I missing?
From this post, it looks like jpc has the same issue that I do--there's no manual arrange function in a virtual gallery. If that's a deal-breaker (and it is to some people) then the only alternative is to use separate copies. Making copies one by one is a PITA, and even though it is probably faster to make a bunch of copies and then do a bulk move, it requires less of the user's time to select the pics on the home machine and do a new upload. Now that's nothing new--it's not that smart galleries and virtual copies have made matters worse. It's just disappointing that they didn't make things better for those who insist on manual arrangement.
From this post, it looks like jpc has the same issue that I do--there's no manual arrange function in a virtual gallery. If that's a deal-breaker (and it is to some people) then the only alternative is to use separate copies. Making copies one by one is a PITA, and even though it is probably faster to make a bunch of copies and then do a bulk move, it requires less of the user's time to select the pics on the home machine and do a new upload. Now that's nothing new--it's not that smart galleries and virtual copies have made matters worse. It's just disappointing that they didn't make things better for those who insist on manual arrangement.
Hi, you can't manually arrange collected photos, I'm so very sorry
To this:
We have heard this feature request, and said we want to do this. It's in active Sorcery right now - can't say when we'll have it but we plan on it.
And from post #199:
This, along with manual sorting, present a possibly insurmountable technical problem. We have been bouncing ideas around for a long time and it's part of the reason that this feature didn't see the light of day earlier.
I'm sorry, but unless we can figure out a solution, the current functionality is far, far better than the alternative just due to those technical reasons.
The "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool should be left on the table as an option for PROS, if you give up on manually arranging collected pics.
The "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool should be left on the table as an option for PROS, if you give up on manually arranging collected pics.
There actually is a third party tool for copying images from one gallery to another. I've tried it, but just found that uploading twice was easier, albeit much slower than the tool.
Downloading video - isn't this wrong?
Sorry, I find it hard to plow through 29-some pages in this thread. :cry
I created my first smart gallery, of nothing but videos, and while I made it public, etc., I also right-protected it. The right click does get that "can't do that" warning beep, but there was a little hover-type box (which I don't have in any of my regular galleries) for "collect" and also "download", and it immediately downloaded my video. So I guessed that might be for logged-in owners only, so I checked another browser not logged in (IE7) and this time that little hover box shows *partially* but appears not to be active. Should it be showing like this? Snapshot attached.
I checked my two galleries today and the hide marks synced again! This was a bad thing since the subsetted gallery was supposed to be more family friendly. Now it's not. Now I have to redo everything and just upload twice like I should have in the first place. Not too happy with the collect photos implementation right now...
I checked my two galleries today and the hide marks synced again! This was a bad thing since the subsetted gallery was supposed to be more family friendly. Now it's not. Now I have to redo everything and just upload twice like I should have in the first place. Not too happy with the collect photos implementation right now...
I think this is probably because [X] Hide Photo means to remove it from all publicly accessible indexes so it can't be found by the public in any way. One can't really have that capabilty part way. Either an image is completely hidden or it's not.
I know you want hide to apply locally only to one gallery, but Smugmug's implementation is perhaps more complicated than that because in order to succeed in hiding it from search, keywords, etc... it has to be removed from those indexes. Thus, it's hard to have one copy of the image hidden one place, but not hidden another because then it's confused about whether it's indexed or not. It is after all, only one image so it kind of only gets one choice for whether it's indexed or not. I can see reasons why their implementation might behave as it does.
Another possible solution might be to do the following. Upload all images to a master gallery, but make it unlisted. Hide nothing in that gallery. Now mass keyword everything in that gallery with two keywords. Bulk keywording can do that with a few clicks. You can call one "public" and one "family". Now create two virtual galleries, one for the "public" keyword and one for the "family" keyword. Now, to remove an image from either virtual gallery, just remove the relevant keyword from the image. You get two separate lists of the images without using hide without uploading anything twice. Perhaps removing a keyword isn't quite as convenient as clicking hide, but it's certainly doable.
I like the way SM implements most upgrades and changes, and especially think that it is logical for the virtual photos to take on the limitations of their original host gallery (however I can see the need as an improvement to allow people to choose 'take host gallery limitations' or 'take virtual gallery limitations'.
I also TOTALLY agree that I want this feature.....
Well, I completely see the point here. This one sentence: " Another way of seeing this feature is to allow a gallery to be assigned to multiple category/sub-category instead of only mapping it to a single category/sub-category" from Poggi is exactly what I'd originally thought was the main idea & main reason for virtual galleries, and also what I think many users here have mentioned in the past. What takes up so much space, and wastes so much time, is when you have a gallery that you really should have in 2 categories. My family can never figure out whether to look in "music" or "family" for the many family music galleries I have. I've copied some (yes, one photo by one!!) But that gets ridiculous, and I thought virtual galleries would solve this. (Yes, I know someone's going to say "just re-upload". But it's SO much easier for me to bulk caption & keyword onsite here, etc., so that's not a good answer for me.
I'd just list a gallery virtually under a second category. Isn't that what so many folks were asking for, with this feature? It's as if our new virtual galleries features, while offering a lot of new capability, just didn't solve some of those bigger problems because the features are so focused on individual photos, not entire galleries & the heirarchy issues. Again though, I just really hope these are the stepping stones to more virtual capability!
I think that would be awesome, and I've seen something similar on other sites, it will even show multiple breadcrumb trails:
jhelms > Family > 2009 > Trip to Mexico
jhelms > 2009 Events > Trip to Mexico
jhelms > Travel > 2009 Trip to Mexico
Smart Gallery update/index/keyword
I really like the idea of smart galleries. I am a loyal happy customer, love the service. A little background to feel my frustration. I shoot oval track racing. I live in Canada. I can put down my cameras in October/November and not touch them until March/April. It's cold in the winter, I stay in the house, don't go outside too often.
I have created categories for each of the 195+ races over the last 4 years I have shot. Meticulously keywording almost all of my 60,000 photos.
So since late January (when Smart Galleries were introduced, middle of the cold frigid Canadian winter) I have used smart galleries to create 1040 galleries for many of the drivers I have photos of. Chances are I will maybe shoot 200 or so drivers this season.
I started my 2010 season about two weeks ago. Get home, keyword, upload driver photos that should go into there respective smart galleries. Discover I can click "make gallery smarter", not do anything but save the settings and this is the only way the smart galleries are updated. Not efficient, not fun. I'd rather do without. I waited for them to index. I will shoot 50-60 drivers every Saturday from May until September, and I can't imagine redoing this make smarter technique every time I add photos.
Smart Gallery update/index/keyword
I am having the same problem. I contacted SmugMug email support and was told that this was a known bug and that they are working on a resolution. They said to watch the release notes for updates. http://releasenotes.blogs.smugmug.com/
I really like the idea of smart galleries. I am a loyal happy customer, love the service. A little background to feel my frustration. I shoot oval track racing. I live in Canada. I can put down my cameras in October/November and not touch them until March/April. It's cold in the winter, I stay in the house, don't go outside too often.
I have created categories for each of the 195+ races over the last 4 years I have shot. Meticulously keywording almost all of my 60,000 photos.
So since late January (when Smart Galleries were introduced, middle of the cold frigid Canadian winter) I have used smart galleries to create 1040 galleries for many of the drivers I have photos of. Chances are I will maybe shoot 200 or so drivers this season.
I started my 2010 season about two weeks ago. Get home, keyword, upload driver photos that should go into there respective smart galleries. Discover I can click "make gallery smarter", not do anything but save the settings and this is the only way the smart galleries are updated. Not efficient, not fun. I'd rather do without. I waited for them to index. I will shoot 50-60 drivers every Saturday from May until September, and I can't imagine redoing this make smarter technique every time I add photos.
I´m not sure if this is a bug of if it is just how it is meant to work.
In my advanced account (non Pro), there is a passworded gallery where buying photos is enabled. I also have a non passworded gallery where buying is disabled.
I created a test gallery (public, unpassoworded, buy-enabled) with a mixture of uploaded images, smart gallery images and collected images. Some of the smart gallery images and collected images come from the passworded and buy-enabled images, others come from the non passworded buy-disabled gallery.
I understand photo restrictions come from the original gallery, obviusly except for the password.
So in my test gallery (public, unpassoworded, buy-enabled) I can, as expected see all the images, without needing a password. The image that comes from the buy-disabled gallery can not be purchased as expected. The images that are uploaded to the gallery can be purchased as expected.
The problem lies in images that come from the passworded buy-enabled gallery. They can be seen but not bought until I visit the original gallery and enter the visitor password. Once that is done the image can be puchased, even from the virtual gallery.
Doesn´t seem intuitive to me. If the password is not needed for viewing why is it needed for buying?
Hi Robert, Its my understanding that the buy rules for Smart Gallery photos comes from the original image currently. I will find out for sure and let you know.
I just got verification. The photos in the Smart Gallery will respect all of the settings from the original gallery. The password does not apply as it is using the Smart Gallery settings. This is by design and not a bug.
Feel free to make any suggestions as to how you would like for it to work or improved. We love the feedback. You can submit it here in our feature request tracking system. http://smugmug.uservoice.com/
The password does not apply as it is using the Smart Gallery settings. This is by design and not a bug.
I understand buy settings are comming from the original gallery and that is expected.
I understand passwords are ignored for viewing (or come from the destination gallery) as a design characteristic or smart galleries and collections wouldn´t make sense.
What is strange is that to buy a photo on an unpassworded smart gallery my viewers need the password to the original gallery (which they obviously don´t have, or I wouldn´t be using the collection at all). This seems to be a bug or a glithc in the design. Can you please check this specifically with the designers?
I understand buy settings are comming from the original gallery and that is expected.
I understand passwords are ignored for viewing (or come from the destination gallery) as a design characteristic or smart galleries and collections wouldn´t make sense.
What is strange is that to buy a photo on an unpassworded smart gallery my viewers need the password to the original gallery (which they obviously don´t have, or I wouldn´t be using the collection at all). This seems to be a bug or a glithc in the design. Can you please check this specifically with the designers?
Thanks
Robert
I have this same problem and reported it to the help desk a few weeks back. I was advised that this was a known bug that would be fixed sometime soon - you should be able to purchase collected photos from a password protected gallery which has printing enabled.
Found another bug / strange functionality implementation.
Original passworded gallery and unpassworded collection gallery both have downloads enabled to users (original as max size).
On the collected gallery all images that come from galleries with original as max size have the "save photo" icon (as expected), but it will only work on images that come from passworded galleries if you firts visit and enter the password.
Seems like the same bug. Images collected on unpassworded galleries should behave like unpassworded images, and inherit all other characteristics from the original gallery.
Major Smart Gallery suggestion for making less work
Having now lived with the Smart Galleries and Collect Photo capabilities for awhile, and using them a lot lately, I have a better understanding of (for me) the broader sweep of what works well & what doesn't. So this is a major observation, and I hope it will help improve the system at some point. I imagine lots of people would share my thoughts on this, although I haven't searched the thread recently. The good news is that overall, this capability is certainly a great time & space-saver, and is nice as far as keyword searches not having to come up with multiple copies of the same photo sitting in different galleries... once I get the real copies turned into virtual ones, anyway. It's immenselymuch better having this capability than not.
Here's the big drawback for me: virtual galleries, i.e. smart galleries based on entire galleries that are then referenced/categorized elsewhere, take a lot more work than they should/could imho. When I originally imagined how these would work (having seen & heard of them in action elsewhere), I thought we would be able to set up one real/original gallery & put it in one category. Then I thought we'd be able to simply list it virtually under 2 or more other categories or sub-categories, and it would show up there virtually. Yes, we can kinda do that now, but it takes lots more work than it should, because we can't simply list it in more than one place.
I spent hours last night making a bunch of smart galleries for galleries that should show up under 2 or more categories. (example: I want the gallery "Fieldstone Details" to show up in my "Travel/Pennsylvania" sub-category as well as my "Arts & Crafts/Architecture" sub-category. For each smart gallery, I still had to go through & put in all the settings, add gallery keywords for it, name it & copy the description & had in the original gallery, set themes & pricing, etc. etc. Yes, I know there are shortcuts for a couple of those things. But it would just be fantastic if, instead of all that work, we could simply list the gallery in several categories as I described earlier, & all settings would transfer themselves. (Of course, some folks may still want the option of making some individual settings even for a virtual gallery. But that option could still exist, right?) It's just that... with all the "Smart" and "Collect" capabilities we have now, it's seeming rather archaic to have to copy all those settings over--especially stuff like the description! So... here's hoping for that change sometime in the not-too-distant future. Know what I mean, anyone? Ok. Off my soap-box now. :soapbox Or not-- ETA: After Andy's response above, I found this request on Uservoice. It's here: http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/...egor?ref=title I had even commented on it already, and completely forgot that I had! So, if you want multiple categories for a gallery... please add your voices! Thank you.
Having now lived with the Smart Galleries and Collect Photo capabilities for awhile, and using them a lot lately, I have a better understanding of (for me) the broader sweep of what works well & what doesn't. So this is a major observation, and I hope it will help improve the system at some point. I imagine lots of people would share my thoughts on this, although I haven't searched the thread recently. The good news is that overall, this capability is certainly a great time & space-saver, and is nice as far as keyword searches not having to come up with multiple copies of the same photo sitting in different galleries... once I get the real copies turned into virtual ones, anyway. It's immenselymuch better having this capability than not.
Here's the big drawback for me: virtual galleries, i.e. smart galleries based on entire galleries that are then referenced/categorized elsewhere, take a lot more work than they should/could imho. When I originally imagined how these would work (having seen & heard of them in action elsewhere), I thought we would be able to set up one real/original gallery & put it in one category. Then I thought we'd be able to simply list it virtually under 2 or more other categories or sub-categories, and it would show up there virtually. Yes, we can kinda do that now, but it takes lots more work than it should, because we can't simply list it in more than one place.
I spent hours last night making a bunch of smart galleries for galleries that should show up under 2 or more categories. (example: I want the gallery "Fieldstone Details" to show up in my "Travel/Pennsylvania" sub-category as well as my "Arts & Crafts/Architecture" sub-category. For each smart gallery, I still had to go through & put in all the settings, add gallery keywords for it, name it & copy the description & had in the original gallery, set themes & pricing, etc. etc. Yes, I know there are shortcuts for a couple of those things. But it would just be fantastic if, instead of all that work, we could simply list the gallery in several categories as I described earlier, & all settings would transfer themselves. (Of course, some folks may still want the option of making some individual settings even for a virtual gallery. But that option could still exist, right?) It's just that... with all the "Smart" and "Collect" capabilities we have now, it's seeming rather archaic to have to copy all those settings over--especially stuff like the description! So... here's hoping for that change sometime in the not-too-distant future. Know what I mean, anyone? Ok. Off my soap-box now. :soapbox
Thanks for posting such a great, detailed feature request. If you don't mind, we'd love it if you would put your feature requests here: http://smugmug.uservoice.com
Thanks for posting such a great, detailed feature request. If you don't mind, we'd love it if you would put your feature requests here: http://smugmug.uservoice.com
Thanks!
Hey, Andy! Yeah, I thought of that, but thought this was a little different from a feature request. It's more like a whole different implementation & evaluation. And it seemed that folks frequenting this thread were wanting to know what works & doesn't. But anyway, I'll check... I sorta thought there was already something similar in Feature Requests. ETA: I found the request. It's here: http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/461701-need-option-to-assign-an-album-to-multiple-categor?ref=title I had even commented on it already, and completely forgot that I had! So... please add your voices!
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That would be the preferred solution, I concur. But if that's as huge a deal as they say, I would favor a (possibly simpler) bulk move copy option sooner than the ideal solution later.
I have hundreds of duplicate galleries for this reason and am continuing to make more because it's the only way to get multiple ordered views of the same images. As long as virtual galleries doesn't allow ordering, I choose to just re-upload duplicates into a new gallery overnight.
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Once I have a new workflow with Lightroom, I'll only be uploading what needs to be published.
Want faster uploading? Vote for FTP!
I hope you're not right about SM's motivation, but since Andy hasn't chimed in on this, I fear you might be. I'm going to pm him, to make sure he has a chance to respond. Uploading images twice really isn't a viable option when they need to be watermarked. The watermarking process can be very time consuming and gets hung-up quite a bit.
Some other things for SM to consider:
1) Not offering the "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool only serves to exasperate us. I does not stop us from creating duplicates. It just makes it a PITA.
2) Unlimited storage is unlimited storage. That's what we pay for. If the motivation behind not releasing this tool is to somehow curtail storage by making it difficult for us to store more photos, then that's a bit underhanded.
3) Why not make the "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool a PRO tool, like watermarking? That seems like a good compromise.
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From this post, it looks like jpc has the same issue that I do--there's no manual arrange function in a virtual gallery. If that's a deal-breaker (and it is to some people) then the only alternative is to use separate copies. Making copies one by one is a PITA, and even though it is probably faster to make a bunch of copies and then do a bulk move, it requires less of the user's time to select the pics on the home machine and do a new upload. Now that's nothing new--it's not that smart galleries and virtual copies have made matters worse. It's just disappointing that they didn't make things better for those who insist on manual arrangement.
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To this: And from post #199:
The "Many Photos - Copy to Gallery" tool should be left on the table as an option for PROS, if you give up on manually arranging collected pics.
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SM has the ability to facilitate the proper workflow and I'm taking Andy at his word that manual arrangement of collected photos is planned.
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Sorry, I find it hard to plow through 29-some pages in this thread. :cry
I created my first smart gallery, of nothing but videos, and while I made it public, etc., I also right-protected it. The right click does get that "can't do that" warning beep, but there was a little hover-type box (which I don't have in any of my regular galleries) for "collect" and also "download", and it immediately downloaded my video. So I guessed that might be for logged-in owners only, so I checked another browser not logged in (IE7) and this time that little hover box shows *partially* but appears not to be active. Should it be showing like this? Snapshot attached.
The gallery where this occurs:
http://www.joinrats.com/AllVideosOfRats/All/11692078_XpEiR?ao=0#506239701_9WQTM
Also, can I affect the layout so the white across the top and the SmugMug logo disappear? Not that I don't love my smuggymuggy.
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I know you want hide to apply locally only to one gallery, but Smugmug's implementation is perhaps more complicated than that because in order to succeed in hiding it from search, keywords, etc... it has to be removed from those indexes. Thus, it's hard to have one copy of the image hidden one place, but not hidden another because then it's confused about whether it's indexed or not. It is after all, only one image so it kind of only gets one choice for whether it's indexed or not. I can see reasons why their implementation might behave as it does.
Another possible solution might be to do the following. Upload all images to a master gallery, but make it unlisted. Hide nothing in that gallery. Now mass keyword everything in that gallery with two keywords. Bulk keywording can do that with a few clicks. You can call one "public" and one "family". Now create two virtual galleries, one for the "public" keyword and one for the "family" keyword. Now, to remove an image from either virtual gallery, just remove the relevant keyword from the image. You get two separate lists of the images without using hide without uploading anything twice. Perhaps removing a keyword isn't quite as convenient as clicking hide, but it's certainly doable.
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I also TOTALLY agree that I want this feature.....
I think that would be awesome, and I've seen something similar on other sites, it will even show multiple breadcrumb trails:
jhelms > Family > 2009 > Trip to Mexico
jhelms > 2009 Events > Trip to Mexico
jhelms > Travel > 2009 Trip to Mexico
etc.
Nikon | Private Photojournalist
I really like the idea of smart galleries. I am a loyal happy customer, love the service. A little background to feel my frustration. I shoot oval track racing. I live in Canada. I can put down my cameras in October/November and not touch them until March/April. It's cold in the winter, I stay in the house, don't go outside too often.
I have created categories for each of the 195+ races over the last 4 years I have shot. Meticulously keywording almost all of my 60,000 photos.
So since late January (when Smart Galleries were introduced, middle of the cold frigid Canadian winter) I have used smart galleries to create 1040 galleries for many of the drivers I have photos of. Chances are I will maybe shoot 200 or so drivers this season.
I started my 2010 season about two weeks ago. Get home, keyword, upload driver photos that should go into there respective smart galleries. Discover I can click "make gallery smarter", not do anything but save the settings and this is the only way the smart galleries are updated. Not efficient, not fun. I'd rather do without. I waited for them to index. I will shoot 50-60 drivers every Saturday from May until September, and I can't imagine redoing this make smarter technique every time I add photos.
Any idea if this is going to be resolved?
Thanks
James
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I am having the same problem. I contacted SmugMug email support and was told that this was a known bug and that they are working on a resolution. They said to watch the release notes for updates. http://releasenotes.blogs.smugmug.com/
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Michael
In my advanced account (non Pro), there is a passworded gallery where buying photos is enabled. I also have a non passworded gallery where buying is disabled.
I created a test gallery (public, unpassoworded, buy-enabled) with a mixture of uploaded images, smart gallery images and collected images. Some of the smart gallery images and collected images come from the passworded and buy-enabled images, others come from the non passworded buy-disabled gallery.
I understand photo restrictions come from the original gallery, obviusly except for the password.
So in my test gallery (public, unpassoworded, buy-enabled) I can, as expected see all the images, without needing a password. The image that comes from the buy-disabled gallery can not be purchased as expected. The images that are uploaded to the gallery can be purchased as expected.
The problem lies in images that come from the passworded buy-enabled gallery. They can be seen but not bought until I visit the original gallery and enter the visitor password. Once that is done the image can be puchased, even from the virtual gallery.
Doesn´t seem intuitive to me. If the password is not needed for viewing why is it needed for buying?
Bug or funcionality design?
Robert
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I understand buy settings are comming from the original gallery and that is expected.
I understand passwords are ignored for viewing (or come from the destination gallery) as a design characteristic or smart galleries and collections wouldn´t make sense.
What is strange is that to buy a photo on an unpassworded smart gallery my viewers need the password to the original gallery (which they obviously don´t have, or I wouldn´t be using the collection at all). This seems to be a bug or a glithc in the design. Can you please check this specifically with the designers?
Thanks
Robert
I have this same problem and reported it to the help desk a few weeks back. I was advised that this was a known bug that would be fixed sometime soon - you should be able to purchase collected photos from a password protected gallery which has printing enabled.
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Original passworded gallery and unpassworded collection gallery both have downloads enabled to users (original as max size).
On the collected gallery all images that come from galleries with original as max size have the "save photo" icon (as expected), but it will only work on images that come from passworded galleries if you firts visit and enter the password.
Seems like the same bug. Images collected on unpassworded galleries should behave like unpassworded images, and inherit all other characteristics from the original gallery.
Robert
Having now lived with the Smart Galleries and Collect Photo capabilities for awhile, and using them a lot lately, I have a better understanding of (for me) the broader sweep of what works well & what doesn't. So this is a major observation, and I hope it will help improve the system at some point. I imagine lots of people would share my thoughts on this, although I haven't searched the thread recently. The good news is that overall, this capability is certainly a great time & space-saver, and is nice as far as keyword searches not having to come up with multiple copies of the same photo sitting in different galleries... once I get the real copies turned into virtual ones, anyway. It's immensely much better having this capability than not.
Here's the big drawback for me: virtual galleries, i.e. smart galleries based on entire galleries that are then referenced/categorized elsewhere, take a lot more work than they should/could imho. When I originally imagined how these would work (having seen & heard of them in action elsewhere), I thought we would be able to set up one real/original gallery & put it in one category. Then I thought we'd be able to simply list it virtually under 2 or more other categories or sub-categories, and it would show up there virtually. Yes, we can kinda do that now, but it takes lots more work than it should, because we can't simply list it in more than one place.
I spent hours last night making a bunch of smart galleries for galleries that should show up under 2 or more categories. (example: I want the gallery "Fieldstone Details" to show up in my "Travel/Pennsylvania" sub-category as well as my "Arts & Crafts/Architecture" sub-category. For each smart gallery, I still had to go through & put in all the settings, add gallery keywords for it, name it & copy the description & had in the original gallery, set themes & pricing, etc. etc. Yes, I know there are shortcuts for a couple of those things. But it would just be fantastic if, instead of all that work, we could simply list the gallery in several categories as I described earlier, & all settings would transfer themselves. (Of course, some folks may still want the option of making some individual settings even for a virtual gallery. But that option could still exist, right?) It's just that... with all the "Smart" and "Collect" capabilities we have now, it's seeming rather archaic to have to copy all those settings over--especially stuff like the description! So... here's hoping for that change sometime in the not-too-distant future. Know what I mean, anyone? Ok. Off my soap-box now. :soapbox Or not-- ETA: After Andy's response above, I found this request on Uservoice. It's here: http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/...egor?ref=title I had even commented on it already, and completely forgot that I had! So, if you want multiple categories for a gallery... please add your voices! Thank you.
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Thanks for posting such a great, detailed feature request. If you don't mind, we'd love it if you would put your feature requests here: http://smugmug.uservoice.com
Thanks!
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