Keywords and the Lightroom Smugmug plugin

photosbygerry · April 14, 2014

Hi, I have some questions and some problems mostly related to keywords on Smugmug and using the Lightroom plugin.

For information, I am running Lightroom 5.4 with the 2.1.1 version of the Smugmug Plugin on an iMac on OSX 10.9.2. I am still running legacy Smugmug but I enabled the new Smugmug preview a few days ago. The only actions I have taken in the new Smugmug were to try a few themes and then select one.

In preparation for migrating to new Smugmug I thought I would do some tidy-up of my galleries and keywords. I also ran some test searches inside Smugmug (Browse photos) and using Google. The results were not what I was expecting leading to the questions below.

Questions:

1. A keyword search in Smugmug’s Browse Photos with PHOTOS selected will only return images with the keyword(s) and will not return images which do not have the keyword(s) but which reside inside a gallery with those keyword(s). Is this correct?

2. A keyword search in Smugmug’s Browse Photos with GALLERIES selected will only return galleries (not images) which have the keyword(s) explicitly assigned and will not return galleries which do not have the keyword(s) assigned but which contain images which have those keyword(s). Is this correct?

3. There is no Help for viewers in how to use Browse Photos. I take it that multiple keywords are ANDed together for the search and that multi-word keywords need to be enclosed in quotes. Is this correct? Is it possible to insert an "exclude" i.e. a term which must not exist in selected photos? If so how?

If my understanding on these points is correct i.e. that there is no filtering up or down of keywords between Smugmug galleries and images, then owners will need to duplicate keywords as required for both galleries and images.

Interestingly but disappointingly, a PHOTO search inside Smugmug Browse Photos, using my site name “photosbygerry.smugmug.com” returns zero results. Ditto for a GALLERIES search. Similarly, PHOTO and GALLERIES searches inside Browse Photos using “photosbygerry” returns only those photos (now 3060 of them) or galleries (now 63 of them) which have the explicit assignment of the keyword “photosbygerry”. Curiously, a Google image search on “photosbygerry” (and not “photos by gerry”) reruns about 15 rows of images (I guess about 200 or so photos) of which only 52 photos seem to come from photosbygerry.smugmug.com!.

Anyway, as a consequence of the above, I added appropriate keywords to all of my galleries through the Lightroom Smugmug 2.1.1 plugin. At the same time I also updated some gallery names and some gallery custom URLs. These all worked ok except for the following problems:

a) A few (I think it was 4) of my galleries became unlisted in the process. I have no idea why but I am fairly certain I did not choose for them to be unlisted. Is this a known bug?

b) With several galleries I noticed that after the above updates, my headers and footers disappeared, only to re-appear some time later. While they were gone the headers were replaced by a single Smugmug text plus icon. Is this expected behaviour?

c) I notice that the paths to my galleries now start with "Gerry >". I do not recall seeing this before and seem to recollect that it used to be "Photosbygerry >". Has something changed? Can I change it back?

Gerry

photosbygerry · April 14, 2014

Further to the above, from within Lightroom I also added the keyword "photosbygerry" to all photos in my gallery "Table tennis...." under my Events category. This marked the photos as needing to be republished so I clicked Publish. The plugin then re-uploaded all photos in the gallery rather than just the keyword metadata. I can tell from the time taken and the network traffic levels. I repeated the process for the other gallery under Events and the same thing happened. This seems to be a bug.

Teach · April 14, 2014

Questions:

1. A keyword search in Smugmug’s Browse Photos with PHOTOS selected will only return images with the keyword(s) and will not return images which do not have the keyword(s) but which reside inside a gallery with those keyword(s). Is this correct?

That is correct. Image search will only return image keyword(s).

2. A keyword search in Smugmug’s Browse Photos with GALLERIES selected will only return galleries (not images) which have the keyword(s) explicitly assigned and will not return galleries which do not have the keyword(s) assigned but which contain images which have those keyword(s). Is this correct?

That is correct. Gallery search will only return galleries with that keyword(s).

3. There is no Help for viewers in how to use Browse Photos. I take it that multiple keywords are ANDed together for the search and that multi-word keywords need to be enclosed in quotes. Is this correct? Is it possible to insert an "exclude" i.e. a term which must not exist in selected photos? If so how?

Have you seen our help page about how keywords work in search? i think it may answer some of your questions. Click the section titled "I want details with examples!" for specific details.

http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93291-how-do-keywords-work-for-search-

a) A few (I think it was 4) of my galleries became unlisted in the process. I have no idea why but I am fairly certain I did not choose for them to be unlisted. Is this a known bug?

Can you let us know teh names of the galleries that became unlisted so we can take a look please?

b) With several galleries I noticed that after the above updates, my headers and footers disappeared, only to re-appear some time later. While they were gone the headers were replaced by a single Smugmug text plus icon. Is this expected behaviour?

It sounds like the galleries may have had "hide owner" set. Did you set that for any galleries?

http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93131-can-i-hide-the-account-owner-information-for-a-gallery-

c) I notice that the paths to my galleries now start with "Gerry >". I do not recall seeing this before and seem to recollect that it used to be "Photosbygerry >". Has something changed? Can I change it back?

You set your display name in teh accoutn settings to be Gerry so that is why youa re seeing that in the path.

http://screencast.com/t/bVfBmrL5Ch

Further to the above, from within Lightroom I also added the keyword "photosbygerry" to all photos in my gallery "Table tennis...." under my Events category. This marked the photos as needing to be republished so I clicked Publish. The plugin then re-uploaded all photos in the gallery rather than just the keyword metadata. I can tell from the time taken and the network traffic levels. I repeated the process for the other gallery under Events and the same thing happened. This seems to be a bug.

When you republish it replaces the photo. It wouldn't just update the metadata. Can you give us each of the exact steps you took to re-publish so we can try replicating your steps to see what happens please?

photosbygerry · April 14, 2014

Thanks and some more keyword changing tests
Hi Teach, Thanks for the fast and specific replies!

Re 3) I had not viewed that Help page but have read it now. I guess that a part of my point was that the Help for SmugMug Browse is targeted more at owners than visitors looking at photos. The visitors would have to be very dedicated to find that page from the Browse page Help.

Re a) I am sorry but I did not keep track. I was trying to make many updates to many galleries and did not keep notes. I will if it happens again.

Re b) I believe I have all of my galleries set to Show owner and don't recall making any changes (but its possible that I might have fixed one if I came across it during the updates).

Re my second post I did some further keyword updates after reading your response:

1) I updated the first photo in the gallery Skyfire 25 by typing the keyword photosbygerry directly into the keyword field from within the Smugmug publish collection for the gallery. Lightroom marked it as modified and I clicked Publish. Network traffic shows high traffic suggesting the full photo was uploaded again.

2) I then updated the next 3 photos in the same gallery, again from within the Smugmug publish collection and again using direct edit of the keyword field. Lightroom marked the photos as modified and I clicked Publish. This time the update was faster and network traffic was light.

3) I then updated the next 3 photos in the same gallery, again from within the Smugmug collection, but this time by selecting the photosbygerry keyword in the keyword list. Lightroom marked them as modified and I clicked Publish. Again a fast update with little traffic.

4) I then opened the source folder for the gallery 2013 Canberra Centenary Fireworks, selected all 34 photos already published to my Smugmug and selected the photosbygerry keyword from the keyword list. Again Lightroom marked them as modified and I clicked Publish. From the time it took and from the network traffic it is clear that all of the photos were being uploaded again, not just the metadata.

5) I then went back to the Skyfire 25 collection under Smugmug publish, selected all photos and ticked the photosbygerry keyword in the keyword list. Lightroom marked 143 (out of 150 - the others were changed in steps 1-3 above) as modified and I clicked Publish. From the time it took and from the network traffic it is clear that only the keyword metadata was being uploaded.

My take on all of the the above is that the first keyword update seems to trigger a full image re-upload, regardless of the number of images involved but that a second and subsequent update seems to be able to just update the keyword metadata. All of the above were within a single invocation of Lightroom.

It is late and I am off to bed now, but I have many more photos which need keyword updating so I can do some more testing tomorrow.

Cheers

Teetime · April 14, 2014

Teach wrote: »

Questions:

1. A keyword search in Smugmug’s Browse Photos with PHOTOS selected will only return images with the keyword(s) and will not return images which do not have the keyword(s) but which reside inside a gallery with those keyword(s). Is this correct?

That is correct. Image search will only return image keyword(s).

2. A keyword search in Smugmug’s Browse Photos with GALLERIES selected will only return galleries (not images) which have the keyword(s) explicitly assigned and will not return galleries which do not have the keyword(s) assigned but which contain images which have those keyword(s). Is this correct?

That is correct. Gallery search will only return galleries with that keyword(s).

Teach, it seems to me a preferred behavior would be to provide check boxes for setting the scope of the search. So I could search (for example) galleries AND photos AND videos for a given keyword.

Allen · April 14, 2014

There was recently a photos+videos but for some reason they removed it. This makes absolutely
no sense.

Keywords and the Lightroom Smugmug plugin

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