Smart Gallery not obeying settings

amorphic8 · June 26, 2011

I created a smart gallery of photos that have been retouched for a client. The gallery settings have watermarks and image protection off because I want the client to be able to download full resolution copies from this gallery only.

When I visit the gallery, however, the photos are showing a watermark and I don't see any way for my client to download the images.

I also have the largest size set to original, yet the largest choice available when viewing an image large is X2.

screen shot of my settings:
http://screencast.com/t/VmkE3nNNeL

screen shot of sizes available to visitor:
http://screencast.com/t/nWD4Auk3VN0

screen shot of photo with watermark:
http://screencast.com/t/ACv7aVvbo4F

my smart gallery
http://richcirminello.smugmug.com/Agency/Fashion-Division/Natasha-Completed-Photos/17745391_55nLsq#1351156113_QFz78TM

denisegoldberg · June 26, 2011

Is the largest size set to original in the source gallery? Is the source gallery watermarked?

From the help page at http://www.smugmug.com/help/smart-galleries:

Tip: All photos that are collected into other galleries will honor the settings from the original gallery. This means that if you've applied watermarks, custom pricing, limited the largest size, etc., these will apply to the photos no matter where they are displayed.

--- Denise

amorphic8 · June 26, 2011

denisegoldberg wrote: »

Is the largest size set to original in the source gallery? Is the source gallery watermarked?

From the help page at http://www.smugmug.com/help/smart-galleries:
--- Denise

Yes, the source gallery is watermarked. Yes the size is limited and yes it's protected. It's a gallery of proofs from which I want to allow a client to choose favorites for me to retouch and replace with images they can then download.

Thanks for pointing out the information for me. I am a bit disappointed, but at least you saved me the trouble of trying to make this work in a way that it is clearly not designed to work.

Seems a bit useless, though, to have gallery settings on a smart gallery that won't ever have effect. I mean, why make it possible to set watermarking, sizes, etc.... in gallery settings of a Smart Gallery if all the images are going to ignore the rules anyway?

I suppose I'll have to manually create a new gallery of finished images and delete the retouched ones out of the proofing galleries (or else have uploaded duplicates of the same images) and re-upload them to the new.

Denise, thanks again for your help.

jfriend · June 26, 2011

amorphic8 wrote: »

Yes, the source gallery is watermarked. Yes the size is limited and yes it's protected. It's a gallery of proofs from which I want to allow a client to choose favorites for me to retouch and replace with images they can then download.

Thanks for pointing out the information for me. I am a bit disappointed, but at least you saved me the trouble of trying to make this work in a way that it is clearly not designed to work.

Seems a bit useless, though, to have gallery settings on a smart gallery that won't ever have effect. I mean, why make it possible to set watermarking, sizes, etc.... in gallery settings of a Smart Gallery if all the images are going to ignore the rules anyway?

I suppose I'll have to manually create a new gallery of finished images and delete the retouched ones out of the proofing galleries (or else have uploaded duplicates of the same images) and re-upload them to the new.

Denise, thanks again for your help.

Watermarks are understandable to me. Those are put on the actual image copies so it's technically impossible to have one virtual copy have watermarks and one not - they are the same image so they can't be different in that regard. If they had different watermarks (or one had watermarks and one didn't), they wouldn't be virtual copies - they'd be actual copies. When the virtual copies are your own images from your own galleries, I don't think Smugmug has much of an excuse for not honoring the other settings - it's just downright misleading to the site owner to not enforce the settings of the gallery you're viewing. IMO, this is a bug. Smugmug will disagree and say they made it this way on purpose. Regardless of nomenclature, it isn't working the way customers expect it to.

Andy · June 26, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

Watermarks are understandable to me. Those are put on the actual image copies so it's technically impossible to have one virtual copy have watermarks and one not - they are the same image so they can't be different in that regard. If they had different watermarks (or one had watermarks and one didn't), they wouldn't be virtual copies - they'd be actual copies. When the virtual copies are your own images from your own galleries, I don't think Smugmug has much of an excuse for not honoring the other settings - it's just downright misleading to the site owner to not enforce the settings of the gallery you're viewing. IMO, this is a bug. Smugmug will disagree and say they made it this way on purpose. Regardless of nomenclature, it isn't working the way customers expect it to.

We do not intend to be misleading, John - I'm very sorry you feel that way

We publish in our documentation that collected photos obey the settings of the source gallery. I wish that you all could have your cake and eat it, too, in this case.

jfriend · June 26, 2011

Andy wrote: »

We do not intend to be misleading, John - I'm very sorry you feel that way We publish in our documentation that collected photos obey the settings of the source gallery. I wish that you all could have your cake and eat it, too, in this case.

It is misleading because you offer gallery settings in the virtual gallery and the virtual images in that gallery don't obey those settings. Duh, user changes a gallery setting and they expect it to apply.

IMO, it's a design miss/flaw. It doesn't work the way the user expects and the only way they would know how it actually works is to read documentation. When there's an obvious way for it to work that >99% of all users would expect and documentation is required to understand how it works differently than that, the software obviously isn't working the way the user expected and is misleading the user.

Why shouldn't your own virtual galleries of your own images obey all gallery settings except the watermark? They are your images. You should be able to set the gallery settings however you want and have them apply to all images in that gallery, including the virtual images. Clearly you can see why everyone expects that to be the way it works (before they read your documentation). I know you didn't design it that way, but I'm arguing that that was a wrong (and misleading) design decision.

I understand why the watermark must be the same for all virtual copies, but not all the other settings.

amorphic8 · June 27, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

Watermarks are understandable to me. Those are put on the actual image copies so it's technically impossible to have one virtual copy have watermarks and one not - they are the same image so they can't be different in that regard. If they had different watermarks (or one had watermarks and one didn't), they wouldn't be virtual copies - they'd be actual copies. When the virtual copies are your own images from your own galleries, I don't think Smugmug has much of an excuse for not honoring the other settings - it's just downright misleading to the site owner to not enforce the settings of the gallery you're viewing. IMO, this is a bug. Smugmug will disagree and say they made it this way on purpose. Regardless of nomenclature, it isn't working the way customers expect it to.

John,
I don't see why there can't be watermarked and non-watermarked copies of the same photo. After all, there are already multiple copies of the same photo in various sizes.
There exists only "ONE COPY" in reference, yet in actuality there are several. Why can't/shouldn't there be copies with watermarks applied and ones without in accordance with the settings of the respective galleries in which the photo appears?

The original photo NEVER has the watermark applied.

It makes perfect sense to me that in one particular public gallery or proofing gallery that watermarks be applied to protect the photo from unauthorized downloading... and that in another private or protected gallery the photo be accessible without watermark for downloading.

jfriend · June 27, 2011

amorphic8 wrote: »

John,
I don't see why there can't be watermarked and non-watermarked copies of the same photo. After all, there are already multiple copies of the same photo in various sizes.
There exists only "ONE COPY" in reference, yet in actuality there are several. Why can't/shouldn't there be copies with watermarks applied and ones without in accordance with the settings of the respective galleries in which the photo appears?

The original photo NEVER has the watermark applied.

It makes perfect sense to me that in one particular public gallery or proofing gallery that watermarks be applied to protect the photo from unauthorized downloading... and that in another private or protected gallery the photo be accessible without watermark for downloading.

Smugmug makes something like 7 different web sizes of every original you upload (Ti, Th, S, M, L, XL, X2, X3). Each of those web sizes gets the watermark applied (except the thumbs in some settings). Smugmug could make N completely separate copies of each of those 7 different web sizes, each with it's own watermark for each virtual gallery that contains the image, but then they no longer have virtual copies of the same image. They can't use the same URLs to refer to the images. In fact, their whole virtual copy architecture no longer works for that at all. In fact, every time an image shows up in a virtual gallery or is removed from a virtual gallery, they potentially have to generate 7 new images or remove 7 images. They'd have to do a total rewrite of the virtual gallery functionality that ONLY shared the original while every other web copy was different for each gallery. That's possible, but I rather doubt they're going to do that because it's a ton of work just for the watermark problem. So yes, it's just software, anything can be done, but it's likely not worth the difficulty of the project compared to all the other things they could with their time.

SamirD · June 28, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

It is misleading because you offer gallery settings in the virtual gallery and the virtual images in that gallery don't obey those settings. Duh, user changes a gallery setting and they expect it to apply.

I agree that this is a bit of a UI design miss. But it does have a fairly easy solution--just make the gallery settings which cannot be changed in a smart gallery not changable like when you select a gallery preset. Simple. And a user won't expect changes because they can't change them.

jfriend · June 28, 2011

SamirD wrote: »

I agree that this is a bit of a UI design miss. But it does have a fairly easy solution--just make the gallery settings which cannot be changed in a smart gallery not changable like when you select a gallery preset. Simple. And a user won't expect changes because they can't change them.

I think that's problematic because I think even a smart gallery can have images uploaded directly to it.

SamirD · June 28, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

I think that's problematic because I think even a smart gallery can have images uploaded directly to it.

Ahh yes, very true. I forgot about that variable. Good point!

Smart Gallery not obeying settings

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