[Resolved] Photo Title lost with replace photo

rustyblades · August 16, 2013

I've noticed that the photo title is cleared when you replace a photo (upload to same filename). The captions remain (as they should) but I also think the title should remain.

Paul
http://paultavares.smugmug.com/browse

martintyler · August 17, 2013

rustyblades wrote: »

I've noticed that the photo title is cleared when you replace a photo (upload to same filename). The captions remain (as they should) but I also think the title should remain.

Paul
http://paultavares.smugmug.com/browse

I just wrote some captions (in Lightroom) on all my portfolio shots, and re-uploaded them using the latest Lightroom/SmugMug plugin and now I have no titles on SmugMug, just captions.

Not sure if this is the same bug, or something specific to the Lightroom plugin

martintyler · August 18, 2013

I think you are right in saying the issue is when you replace a photo

I just uploaded a new photo from Lightroom - using the same publish service as before - and the title was ok, but the updated photos i uploaded yesterday lost their titles

rustyblades · August 19, 2013

The problem seems to be fixed. I uploaded several images this afternoon and Titles, Captions and keywords remained unchanged.

Paul

rustyblades · August 19, 2013

rustyblades wrote: »

The problem seems to be fixed. I uploaded several images this afternoon and Titles, Captions and keywords remained unchanged.

Paul

Spoke to soon. Checked again and the titles are gone.

Paul

rustyblades · August 26, 2013

rustyblades wrote: »

Spoke to soon. Checked again and the titles are gone.

Paul

Thanks to another post on this thread http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=237369 I think I've figured out what is happening. The title is being updated by the title in the EXIF information. If the title field in the EXIF is blank the replace photo operation blanks out the title in SM. If the replace photo has the title info in the EXIF then the title remains, assuming the updated title is the same as the old title.

Now that I know this I am filling in the title and description information in the EXIF. When I upload the title and captions are already there. I believe there is no bug and it's working as it should. Perhaps some documentation or an option not to import EXIF info into the title / caption area.

Paul
http://paultavares.smugmug.com/

BigRed · August 26, 2013

rustyblades wrote: »

Thanks to another post on this thread http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=237369 I think I've figured out what is happening. The title is being updated by the title in the EXIF information. If the title field in the EXIF is blank the replace photo operation blanks out the title in SM. If the replace photo has the title info in the EXIF then the title remains, assuming the updated title is the same as the old title.

Now that I know this I am filling in the title and description information in the EXIF. When I upload the title and captions are already there. I believe there is no bug and it's working as it should. Perhaps some documentation or an option not to import EXIF info into the title / caption area.

Paul
http://paultavares.smugmug.com/

Before concluding that this isn't a bug, please consider the workflow that some of us use to maintain titles & captions within SM (not within Lightroom, etc. pre-upload)...

Upload with blank titles & captions
Maintain them within SM
Later replace the image (file still having blank titles & captions)
Desired outcome: Preserve the previously maintained values, not have them blanked out or modified.

rustyblades · August 26, 2013

BigRed wrote: »

Before concluding that this isn't a bug, please consider the workflow that some of us use to maintain titles & captions within SM (not within Lightroom, etc. pre-upload)...
Upload with blank titles & captions

Maintain them within SM

Later replace the image (file still having blank titles & captions)

Desired outcome: Preserve the previously maintained values, not have them blanked out.

I totally agree with you. What you describe is exactly the way I do it. I've also done some further testing (only to minimize my work and not to find out all the permutations) but it seems that if the caption and the title both contain text in SM it seems that the caption in SM is not over written, the title in SM is cleared and the title in the EXIF is written to the caption in SM. Not the expected behaviour.

Paul

ablichter · August 27, 2013

rustyblades wrote: »

Thanks to another post on this thread http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=237369 I think I've figured out what is happening. The title is being updated by the title in the EXIF information. If the title field in the EXIF is blank the replace photo operation blanks out the title in SM. If the replace photo has the title info in the EXIF then the title remains, assuming the updated title is the same as the old title.

Now that I know this I am filling in the title and description information in the EXIF. When I upload the title and captions are already there. I believe there is no bug and it's working as it should. Perhaps some documentation or an option not to import EXIF info into the title / caption area.

Paul
http://paultavares.smugmug.com/

I corrected my former post in the other thread. LR writes those values to XMP and maybe IPTC.
SM might read those values from XMP.

There is at least one bug when Title and Caption having the same text/string (3.)

On my first tests I couldn't see anything strange when replacing an image. Seems it depends how metadata is written or a file was touched.
My expectation:

Title and Caption (metadata at all, which includes keywords) should change (online) when I replaced/remove them offline and replace the image
If Title and Caption holds the same text/string, both should be shown as such

See here -> http://joerglingnau.smugmug.com/OnSite/NewDesign-Matters/n-n67Td
Started with an image on which Title = "Title" and Caption = "Caption"

normal
uploaded 1., than replaced by 1.: still good
same as 1. but before uploading I changed Title&Caption both to "Title": only Caption has a value, Title is empty = bad
uploaded 3. again, than setting both Caption and Title to "Title" online; both remained = good.
made an online copy of 4. and replaced it by 3: both remained = good - not the same effect as on 3.
uploaded the image with empty Title/Caption, than maintained it online. Title = "Title" and Caption = "Caption" and later replaced it several times again with empty Title/Caption. Both fields remained = bad, because both should be empty/replaced now.

So far all offline changes to Title/Caption have been done with a tool which only changes XMP data.
made an online copy of 6. (Title = "Title" and Caption = "Caption") Before replacing it, the replacement was touched by PS (enlarged by 2px) and Title/Caption were removed.
Again only Caption is shown, Title is empty = bad, because both should be empty/replaced now.

Hope this makes sense somehow to someone. Probably to the Heroes/SM's coders.

W.W. Webster · October 4, 2013

Replace image deletes title
If I take the "replace duplicates" option when uploading images to an existing gallery, the caption and keywords are not disturbed but the title is removed for all replaced images.

This is all the more galling given that titles can only be added (and thereby replaced) one image at a time, not in bulk using the Organiser as for captions and keywords! Is a fix/feature request for this design anomaly also in the works and reaching the top of the list?

Teach · October 4, 2013

I am asking out team to take a look into this and we will get back to you when we have any updates on this situation. Thank you for your patience.

W.W. Webster · October 4, 2013

Thanks!

W.W. Webster · October 21, 2013

Any news, Teach? This isn't a feature request, it's a bug that is extremely irksome!

Just to know it's acknowledged as a bug would be appreciated. I can accept that scheduling the developer time to change the line of code in error may take a little longer!

mbonocore · October 30, 2013

Merged the two threads to track better. Will report back when I have an update.

mbonocore · October 30, 2013

W.W.

Can you confirm that this is still happening? If I use the uploader and choose replace duplicates, the title remains intact.

martintyler · October 31, 2013

I couldn't repeat it with the web uploader - and it didn't happen with all situations from Lightroom either, but definitely did happen in other situations - I just couldn't narrow it down

rustyblades · October 31, 2013

mbonocore wrote: »

W.W.

Can you confirm that this is still happening? If I use the uploader and choose replace duplicates, the title remains intact.

I used the replace photo option from the wrench under the large image in SM gallery several times today and the title was lost every time.

W.W. Webster · November 1, 2013

mbonocore wrote: »

W.W.

Can you confirm that this is still happening? If I use the uploader and choose replace duplicates, the title remains intact.

The problem is still there, Michael.

BTW, I'm using the Upload > This gallery function.

W.W. Webster · November 1, 2013

The problem also exists if an image is replaced using the wrench tool > organise > replace - whether from a normal gallery display or in the lightbox.

And, before you ask, the problem exists with the very latest version of at least three different browsers - Safari, Firefox and Chrome!

phaserbeam · November 2, 2013

I just replaced a very large JPEG where i started to play with titles (i normaly don't use titles since the editor for captions and keywords in organizer does not support it) and after the photo was finally replaced i lost the title... this does not seem to be a browser issue, i'm using Opera.

Looks like another reason not to use titles... :-/

Ferguson · November 3, 2013

Is there any hope of get this fixed?!?!

It is a real pain, to find that photos replaced (for example due to keyword changes) suddenly lose their titles. It's NOVEMBER and this problem was introduced at the beginning of the new system, and seems to be ignored.

It seems to happen every time with me, I have thousands and thousands of untitled photos out there now. This seems like a simple, straightforward BUG, not a feature, not a question like lower/upper case where it might break something to fix -- it's just BROKEN. Please, can someone look into this?

dhopkins · November 7, 2013

I need this fixed, too. Please update us on the status!

dhopkins · November 8, 2013

I've confirmed this here as well:
http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=1923774

Still happening, and I did some digging to find where Lightroom stores the title and caption metadata.

devbobo · November 18, 2013

A fix for this issue is live

dhopkins · November 18, 2013

devbobo wrote: »

A fix for this issue is live

Thank you very much for fixing the clearing/blanking issue. Titles no longer disappear! Woo hoo!!!

However, titles don't get updated either. They're not empty, but they're not changed to match the latest upload. Captions are changed, however.

devbobo · November 18, 2013

dhopkins wrote: »

Thank you very much for fixing the clearing/blanking issue. Titles no longer disappear! Woo hoo!!!

However, titles don't get updated either. They're not empty, but they're not changed to match the latest upload. Captions are changed, however.

What method are you using to upload photos ?

dhopkins · November 18, 2013

Using Lightroom (with Jeffrey Friedl's smugmug plugin) so far...haven't yet tried manual uploading. To be clear, I'm using the Title and Caption fields in Lightroom. Previously, when the upload failed from Lightroom (using the same plugin), I replicated the issue by using exiftool to modify the title/caption and then uploaded the photo manually.

devbobo · November 18, 2013

We don't actually load that info from the metadata on a replace, Friedl's plugin sends special upload parameters to modify Caption, Keywords, etc on Uploads and Replaces. Uploading Titles is only fairly recent and so chances are that he hasn't implemented that for his plugin.

He needs to send the "X-Smug-Title" header as outlined here.

Cheers,

David

dhopkins · November 19, 2013

devbobo wrote: »

We don't actually load that info from the metadata on a replace, Friedl's plugin sends special upload parameters to modify Caption, Keywords, etc on Uploads and Replaces. Uploading Titles is only fairly recent and so chances are that he hasn't implemented that for his plugin.

He needs to send the "X-Smug-Title" header as outlined here.

Cheers,

David

Thanks for the quick reply and the detailed info. I'll pass it along to Jeffrey Friedl. So to be clear, not updating the title and caption on replace is as designed unless explicitly done via the API, right?

W.W. Webster · November 19, 2013

All we need now is to be able to manage titles in bulk, rather than image by image!

dhopkins · November 19, 2013

w.w. Webster wrote: »

all we need now is to be able to manage titles in bulk, rather than image by image!

+1

[Resolved] Photo Title lost with replace photo

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