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New Photo Editor

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    ChancyRatChancyRat Registered Users Posts: 2,141 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    mbonocore wrote: »
    Hi DGrinners,

    Ok, we have taken all of your feedback and have been working on it behind scenes. Some of these are in the beginning stages, while others are already in test. Keep in mind that priorities and scope can change. Also keep in mind this isn't by any means a complete final list of issues we plan to address, but these are things that are actively being worked on.
    • Allow for bulk title editing
    • Add 'On X Selected' in the title/caption editor. This number will display how many photos are highlighted.
    • Rework the behavior that shows empty text boxes on Title and Caption when in bulk editing. Currently, the boxes appear empty, which may be confusing if you have titles or captions on some of the selected photos.
    • Improve the initial behavior when you click on a keyword to edit. This should make it easier to edit keywords. These changes include changing the color of the keyword, making it editable on first click, and placing the cursor at the end of the keyword selected.
    • Change the wording "On All Selected" to "On X Selected" on the bulk keyword edit. X represents the number of selected images
    • A slew of Keyboard shortcuts throughout the editor to eliminate unneeded mouse clicks.
    • Keep the user in the tool they were using when they click "Unselect All" as opposed to returning them to the main photo editor menu.
    • Make the locked area more obvious that it is, indeed locked.
    • Add and improve functionality in special galleries (Date, Keyword, etc)

    I will keep you updated as these progress.

    Thank you SO much, Baldy and Michael, for sharing your thinking process and the issues as you see them, with new ideas that clearly take into consideration some needs expressed on this forum. (Ok, mine, but who am I :D). It's so much easier to hear about uncertainties, limitations, even the "no's", when they're shared out loud.

    Michael, glad you are alive after the food poisoning!

    Michael, in the list above, is all of that to be in the new SM tool that you recently implemented? When I saw "bring back batch editing", I thought that meant the Legacy tool, or a variation on it. But I think you mean you will expand the current New tool. I actually think Nicholas' tool, which I've started testing, will be much superior to anything you design in New, BECAUSE the keywords are added by text entry. They are not the Extremely Annoying blocks of words that cannot be copied/pasted.

    This method of capturing words in blocks - why is it the new wave? Gmail implemented it. That now causes me to double-click if I want to copy an email address, as that's the only way to revert the address to text. 100% more clicking required. A tool at work I have to use implemented words in blocks. The worst problem with it: I need to search for a term with a strange spelling, long, I can't remember the spelling easily. It's located in an email document, so I copy/paste it, bring to the search field, paste. Oops, I left off the last letter in my copy. Too bad, I can't add the last letter, the word block closed up, sealed, and my only option is to delete and start over. Raw typing in a word? Same problem - don't misspell or you fight the system and have to re-enter from scratch. I guess I really would like to know why the wave of words in blocks...

    Anyway, Nicolas' tool has been awesome in testing. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=247377
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    ChancyRatChancyRat Registered Users Posts: 2,141 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    I think you guys have completely missed one of the points. Titles, captions and keywords are all
    connected and should be edited on the same page. Why should we have to run two tools on a gallery
    to make changes? Some times it's very important to see/edit both the keyword and caption together.
    A lot of the KW changes come out of the caption.

    As for Title, personally, I see no functionality in it. Just use the first line of the caption. All it does is
    push the caption/KW's farther below the fold. Does the Title provide some kind of functionality I'm not
    aware of?

    Titles use the theme-wide font. In my case I wouldn't want that font for photo titles. It's also in a large size, and one can't reduce the size (or can one... ). So I haven't wanted to add titles...
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    mbonocorembonocore Registered Users Posts: 2,299 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    I think you guys have completely missed one of the points. Titles, captions and keywords are all
    connected and should be edited on the same page. Why should we have to run two tools on a gallery
    to make changes? Some times it's very important to see/edit both the keyword and caption together.
    A lot of the KW changes come out of the caption.

    As for Title, personally, I see no functionality in it. Just use the first line of the caption. All it does is
    push the caption/KW's farther below the fold. Does the Title provide some kind of functionality I'm not
    aware of?

    Allen,

    As I said, this is not a final list by all means, but the scope of a project you describe is greater. As of this moment, we are tackling alot of the low hanging fruit that we think can make an immediate impact.
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    pilotdavepilotdave Registered Users Posts: 785 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    As for Title, personally, I see no functionality in it. Just use the first line of the caption. All it does is
    push the caption/KW's farther below the fold. Does the Title provide some kind of functionality I'm not
    aware of?

    I just used CSS to hide titles everywhere. I couldn't see a point and I had thousands of pictures with no titles. Suddenly adding them seemed useless to me. I can understand them for people that use very long captions and might want a shortened title, but I don't use captions like that.

    Dave
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    pilotdavepilotdave Registered Users Posts: 785 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    Baldy wrote: »
    So we're bringing back the batch editor but adding the ability to add title, and also cleaning it up so it's presentable. I know, we've read many times here that the functionality is all that really matters to you, and I believe you. It's just that you really are the 1% use case for the appearance of the tool. The 99% take one look at it and say GAH.

    Thanks for listening! Between this news and the chome extension, I feel pretty comfortable there will be a useable solution. So I went ahead and published my new smug site. What a relief!

    Dave
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    mbonocorembonocore Registered Users Posts: 2,299 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    pilotdave wrote: »
    Thanks for listening! Between this news and the chome extension, I feel pretty comfortable there will be a useable solution. So I went ahead and published my new smug site. What a relief!

    Dave

    You are unveiled? This makes me happier than you could ever know. clap.gifthumbwings.gifivar
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    pilotdavepilotdave Registered Users Posts: 785 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    mbonocore wrote: »
    You are unveiled? This makes me happier than you could ever know. clap.gifthumbwings.gifivar

    Yup, here ya go! wings.gif

    Dave
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    BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
    edited May 30, 2014
    pilotdave wrote: »
    Yup, here ya go! wings.gif

    Dave
    Looks awesome, Dave!
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    BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
    edited May 30, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    I think you guys have completely missed one of the points. Titles, captions and keywords are all
    connected and should be edited on the same page. Why should we have to run two tools on a gallery
    to make changes? Some times it's very important to see/edit both the keyword and caption together.
    A lot of the KW changes come out of the caption.
    Hey Allen, I probably am missing the point. We're bringing back the batch editor so you can see them all on the same page and I thought that's what you were asking for. Can you elaborate?
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    BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
    edited May 30, 2014
    ChancyRat wrote: »
    Thank you SO much, Baldy and Michael, for sharing your thinking process and the issues as you see them, with new ideas that clearly take into consideration some needs expressed on this forum. (Ok, mine, but who am I :D). It's so much easier to hear about uncertainties, limitations, even the "no's", when they're shared out loud.
    No worries, Chancy, it was our mistake removing that tool and we're sorry we did it. At the time it seemed like a no-brainer because none of us remember a customer ever saying they liked it, we hated it, and we heard a lot of complaints about it.
    ChancyRat wrote: »
    I actually think Nicholas' tool, which I've started testing, will be much superior to anything you design in New, BECAUSE the keywords are added by text entry. They are not the Extremely Annoying blocks of words that cannot be copied/pasted.

    This method of capturing words in blocks - why is it the new wave? Gmail implemented it.
    I'm one of those who doesn't have the patience to enter keywords by text entry. Dunno if you saw this, but in case not I did a 40-second tip on those blocks:

    http://youtu.be/rXaftgbM21M
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    ChancyRatChancyRat Registered Users Posts: 2,141 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    Baldy wrote: »
    No worries, Chancy, it was our mistake removing that tool and we're sorry we did it. At the time it seemed like a no-brainer because none of us remember a customer ever saying they liked it, we hated it, and we heard a lot of complaints about it.

    As I've been testing (with fab results), Nicholas' bulk edit tool, I set up my test gallery with keywords first in Legacy mode. While there I did some edits, to set up the keywords in a particular way (like ending some of them with a multi-word keyword, and some with a semi on the last keyword), because I wanted to be in a real legacy keyword scenario. In doing my edits on the keywords, the problems of 'olde did come back to me: search/replace still does truncate two words, including removing the semi between them. One has to fix the fix of the fix of the fix before getting everything squared away. But, on the other hand, search/replace can easily handle those, including replacing part of the last word of a multi-word keyword, the semi, and part of the next keyword, with some correction. Once one gets the logic, blazing to the right end is relatively easy.
    I'm one of those who doesn't have the patience to enter keywords by text entry. Dunno if you saw this, but in case not I did a 40-second tip on those blocks: http://youtu.be/rXaftgbM21M

    I did just watch the video, but I do not see keyboard shortcuts... or was that another video?

    So I did just go and try to work with my test gallery in the New mode, and - am I missing something - it's not possible to see the keywords assigned to any image without clicking the image. Then it's not possible - at all, under any circumstances - to see which sub-set of images share the same keywords. I conclude this because when I click Image A and see dog and cat, and then click Image B and see dog, cat, bird, I cannot tell if Image B has all 3 words, or only bird, or bird and cat, or bird and dog.

    I guess I'm not following how it's possible to work with any keyword tool that does not show you the existing keywords on each image, keeping them at all times visible to you.
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    BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
    edited May 30, 2014
    ChancyRat wrote: »
    I did just watch the video, but I do not see keyboard shortcuts... or was that another video?
    Keyboard shortcuts are coming but not live yet. There will be hints somewhere on the screen when they appear. Still working that out.
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    AllenAllen Registered Users Posts: 10,011 Major grins
    edited May 30, 2014
    Baldy wrote: »
    Keyboard shortcuts are coming but not live yet. There will be hints somewhere on the screen when they appear. Still working that out.
    Why not fix the "a" key for lightbox? The shortcut should not include alt a and cntl a.
    Al - Just a volunteer here having fun
    My Website index | My Blog
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    mbonocorembonocore Registered Users Posts: 2,299 Major grins
    edited May 31, 2014
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    AllenAllen Registered Users Posts: 10,011 Major grins
    edited June 1, 2014
    New Caption tool
    I used my smart gallery (http://www.photosbyat.com/Keyword-Change/n-ZzqqX) to gather all photos
    for the "American Golden Plover" keyword. Opened edit caption in organizer. I want to a add the dash in the
    caption to correct the proper name like this.
    American Golden-Plover

    The only option other then doing one at a time was to replace the whole caption of every photo
    but almost every caption is different. I just want to add the dash, not destroy all the captions.

    Edit: Ended up using thenickdude's legacy hack which worked fine.
    Al - Just a volunteer here having fun
    My Website index | My Blog
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    mbonocorembonocore Registered Users Posts: 2,299 Major grins
    edited June 2, 2014
    From my list above, this change is now live.
    • Change the wording "On All Selected" to "On X Selected" on the bulk keyword edit. X represents the number of selected images
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    toddbuchanantoddbuchanan Registered Users Posts: 61 Big grins
    edited June 4, 2014
    THANK YOU for taking some feedback on the new caption tool....I administer 10 sites for my different clients and did not see the changes until I was at my best clients event and the staff wanted to edit a large number of the captions (as they have done for the last several years) and of course the tutorials I had set up for them were now obsolete and they were completely confounded and upset.

    It was easier for me to make the changes and re-upload them. These are not casual women users but people who need that functionality to make changes to the captions i have embedded (using Photo Mechanic) and this was a real concern for them. I had to assure them that Smugmug listens to it's users and I am VERY relieved that you are going to address these (in my perception) short comings of the new caption editor. They just need to be able to select a number of images (that may have the same caption or may have different versions) and use find an replace tools or completely change them...Find and Replace are VERY important to them, so thank you and I will follow the changes you have listed...
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    sarasphotossarasphotos Registered Users Posts: 3,830 Major grins
    edited June 5, 2014
    Hi Todd, just a word of caution - when you use phrases like "casual women users..." it makes you sound a bit sexist and I'll bet you don't want to be perceived as such. I've been a system administrator and computer support professional for the last 20+ years and I have seen an equal number of technically challenged users of both sexes.

    Cheers,
    Sara
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    toddbuchanantoddbuchanan Registered Users Posts: 61 Big grins
    edited June 5, 2014
    Hi Todd, just a word of caution - when you use phrases like "casual women users..." it makes you sound a bit sexist and I'll bet you don't want to be perceived as such. I've been a system administrator and computer support professional for the last 20+ years and I have seen an equal number of technically challenged users of both sexes.

    Cheers,
    Sara

    Sara, my apologies but I was trying to say that my clients (who predominantly ARE women) do not reflect what Baldy was saying was the primary users (i.e. casuall users versus pros or technically adept users)...see this quote earlier in the thread from Baldy who was asked who the predominant users were and why did they make these changes to the editor...his quote: "Our most prominent customer type is not very technical. They describe themselves as artists and are increasingly women (reflecting the photography industry as a whole). Here on dgrin we are very technical and predominantly men." So I am sorry and I should have said less technically adept persons (but ironically my clients were the women who were complaining...I would characterize their complaint (and I would agree sometimes) 'what is it with men...they have something working and they go and screw it up and make it unusable'...

    So as a man, I'll admit we screw things up plenty, but I do hope that we can get this caption tool in a much more robust state so I can get a NEW tutorial for my clients...at the moment it leaves me in an akward moment as I have to apologize to all my clients that it changed and no longer works the way I described to them in the tutorials I created for them...
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    sarasphotossarasphotos Registered Users Posts: 3,830 Major grins
    edited June 6, 2014
    Todd, no need to apologize - sorry if I jumped to conclusions. Yes I did read Baldy's earlier post - I almost outed myself then as one of the exceptions to the dgrin forum rule. Female, 59 years old, technically proficient and an "artist" as well. (In addition to snapping a few photos and working in IT-administration I am a trained opera singer and still perform professionally from time to time.) So sometimes I react in an over-sensitive manner to stereotypical categorizations.

    At any rate, I wish you luck with your quest for a robust caption tool. ...if it ain't broke don't fix it!

    Me, I use Lightroom and wouldn't touch the SM tool with a ten-foot pole. :-)

    Cheers, Sara
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    mbonocorembonocore Registered Users Posts: 2,299 Major grins
    edited June 6, 2014
    Hi Guys,

    We added the "Crop Thumbnail" tool back into the workflow. Keep in mind, this is a temporary tool while we work on making this process easier for the galleries that it affects.

    i-mb2x79p-X2.png
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    AllenAllen Registered Users Posts: 10,011 Major grins
    edited June 6, 2014
    Thanks for adding it back which means I can stay in the browser I'm using at least for quick
    one offs as you have to start from scratch on every photo going back to the photo tool and
    selecting it again.

    One of the MAJOR problems with the current NewSmug is after getting out of a tool I have
    no idea what thumb is currently active. If I have a bunch of very similar thumbs I have no
    idea what thumb was just cropped. We really need an indication like legacy had that we can
    have the active thumb highlighted, border or something.

    I've been using the Chrome hack which stays in the tool and jumps to the next photo. That
    makes this process much easier. The only thing I can think of to make it more efficient besides
    that is remember the ratio selection while in the tool.
    Al - Just a volunteer here having fun
    My Website index | My Blog
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    mbonocorembonocore Registered Users Posts: 2,299 Major grins
    edited June 6, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    Thanks for adding it back which means I can stay in the browser I'm using at least for quick
    one offs as you have to start from scratch on every photo going back to the photo tool and
    selecting it again.

    One of the MAJOR problems with the current NewSmug is after getting out of a tool I have
    no idea what thumb is currently active. If I have a bunch of very similar thumbs I have no
    idea what thumb was just cropped. We really need an indication like legacy had that we can
    have the active thumb highlighted, border or something.

    I've been using the Chrome hack which stays in the tool and jumps to the next photo. That
    makes this process much easier. The only thing I can think of to make it more efficient besides
    that is remember the ratio selection while in the tool.

    Great feedback. Thanks Allen!
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    phaserbeamphaserbeam Registered Users Posts: 452 Major grins
    edited June 8, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    I think you guys have completely missed one of the points. Titles, captions and keywords are all
    connected and should be edited on the same page. Why should we have to run two tools on a gallery
    to make changes? Some times it's very important to see/edit both the keyword and caption together.
    A lot of the KW changes come out of the caption.
    I'm just in progress to edit captions to about 300 new photos. Captions depend on some of the tags. With the old editor it was pretty easy to copy&paste the same caption between photos with the same tag... all i had to do is to scroll down the page and have a look to the keywords block. If the keyword is there: CTRL+V to the captions block. At the end i had to scroll down just to check if all photos have a caption -> SAVE.
    With the new photo editor its horrible to do that. Especially since there is still the bug that hides the panel/menu behind the thumbs if you "UNSELECT ALL" and select a single photo to edit.
    I have given up on that and will now using the JOURNAL-Style and edit the captions directly in the gallery.
    Allen wrote: »
    As for Title, personally, I see no functionality in it. Just use the first line of the caption. All it does is
    push the caption/KW's farther below the fold. Does the Title provide some kind of functionality I'm not
    aware of?
    The only thing i am aware of is that titles are a kind of a headline... fontsize is a little bit bigger then for the captions. Not sure if i will add titles with the current version of the photo editor. Too much work for mass edit of photos.
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    leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins
    edited June 8, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    As for Title, personally, I see no functionality in it. Just use the first line of the caption. All it does is
    push the caption/KW's farther below the fold. Does the Title provide some kind of functionality I'm not
    aware of?

    I use title's all the time ... it's the title of the photo afterall. Sure, I could do it in the caption by adding some HTML, but why should I have to add HTML to EVERY PHOTO when SmugMug can do it for me? Lightroom automatically embeds my TITLE and CAPTION and all I have to do is upload and SmugMug handles it nicely!

    For what it's worth, the Old SmugMug didn't support Title's, so I had to add HTML to every photo. The new SmugMug does support Title's, so I had to them remove the HTML from every photo. Pain in the tuchas. Now that it's all setup, it works well and saves me time on new photos. Please for the love of #$& don't go and take title's away :)
    dGrin Afficionado
    Former SmugMug Product Team
    aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
    Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
    My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
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    AllenAllen Registered Users Posts: 10,011 Major grins
    edited June 8, 2014
    leftquark wrote: »
    ...
    Do you know what shows in a slideshow if you turn captions on? Titles?
    Al - Just a volunteer here having fun
    My Website index | My Blog
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    leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins
    edited June 9, 2014
    Allen wrote: »
    Do you know what shows in a slideshow if you turn captions on? Titles?

    It shows both. It's quite hideous actually :P
    Sample: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=22733977&AlbumKey=5ZDRph
    dGrin Afficionado
    Former SmugMug Product Team
    aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
    Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
    My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
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    sixguntomsixguntom Registered Users Posts: 4 Beginner grinner
    edited June 21, 2014
    Baldy wrote: »
    Hey, sorry, disclaimer: I haven't kept up on this thread since I last posted but we did talk to Denise and I do have some news.

    I know many of you will disagree with much of this, but I'll tell you what we're thinking so you know.

    -Bulk vs batch-

    Think about this, I understand why you might want to bulk keywords, but captions?
    How many people want to upload 50 unique photos to tell the story of something and write the exact same caption about them? No you want to write different stuff about each picture.

    Previously that was smooth and easy. You had one click to bring it up, write what you want about each thing tabbing through the form and then save at the end. You could see what you wrote about the picture above and you had a one click save and refresh.

    Now the the new tool you have to mouse photo by photo, go to another place and say "edit" type it in save and confirm. Multiple refresh required which can tac a lot of time on EACH picture.

    If you are doing this within the organize mode you have the added fun of having to make sure you select and DESELECT the proper pictures or you accidentally replace all your previous work with the caption of the last picture unless your paying attention. There is no visual clue about what your last caption was.

    Multiple mouse clicks, refreshes, selections and room for error vs seeing what you have, one click, one refresh. I understand the desire and need for progress, but how can this be considered "better" in any way for the very common task of getting lots of captions in a gallery to tell your story?

    Am I the only one that thinks taking away that functionality is crazy?
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    GaryBakkerGaryBakker Registered Users Posts: 266 Major grins
    edited June 23, 2014
    sixguntom wrote: »
    -Bulk vs batch-

    Think about this, I understand why you might want to bulk keywords, but captions?
    How many people want to upload 50 unique photos to tell the story of something and write the exact same caption about them? No you want to write different stuff about each picture.

    Previously that was smooth and easy. You had one click to bring it up, write what you want about each thing tabbing through the form and then save at the end. You could see what you wrote about the picture above and you had a one click save and refresh.

    Now the the new tool you have to mouse photo by photo, go to another place and say "edit" type it in save and confirm. Multiple refresh required which can tac a lot of time on EACH picture.

    If you are doing this within the organize mode you have the added fun of having to make sure you select and DESELECT the proper pictures or you accidentally replace all your previous work with the caption of the last picture unless your paying attention. There is no visual clue about what your last caption was.

    Multiple mouse clicks, refreshes, selections and room for error vs seeing what you have, one click, one refresh. I understand the desire and need for progress, but how can this be considered "better" in any way for the very common task of getting lots of captions in a gallery to tell your story?

    Am I the only one that thinks taking away that functionality is crazy?

    I agree with you completely. The new caption functionality is a terrible user interface for those of us who put a caption on nearly every photo in galleries. It is a step backwards in usability. I have run software companies in the course of my career, and I probably would have fired the designer for this change.

    I will use Nick's wonderful Chrome extension -- it provides the usability that Smugmug should do.
    SmugMug site => The Bakker Chautauqua
    "The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." (Einstein)
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    ChancyRatChancyRat Registered Users Posts: 2,141 Major grins
    edited June 23, 2014
    I believe the last I heard, SM is building a batch tool. Baldy acknowledged the difference between bulk and batch editing. I don't know when it will be available. In the meantime (or maybe forever), I LOVE Nicholas' tool, it is fantastic. For those suffering the limitations of the current SM tool, who are finding this thread for the first time, I really encourage you to check out the Chrome extension. Not only does it give you batch or bulk editing capability, but it can also back up your website!
    http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=247592
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