Camera Awesome app crashing on iPad

The Photo Booth · December 20, 2015

This is a weird one... I updated my iPhone 6 to iOS 9.2 and made sure the Camera Awesome app was working with it before I updated my iPad Air 2. Now that I've installed iOS 9.2 on my iPad Air 2, I can't load an existing photo into Camera Awesome (for subsequent upload to my site) because the app crashes the moment I try to load the photo.

The app works fine on my iPhone 6. I even tested it again today by running Camera Awesome, selecting to load an existing photo, and choosing a photo from my camera roll. I was then able to upload the photo to my site.

The app DID work fine on my iPad Air 2 under iOS 9.1. But now that I've updated my iPad Air 2 to iOS 9.2, the Camera Awesome app crashes EVERY time I try to load a photo from the camera roll. I even tried using the exact same photo that was on my iPhone's camera roll. No go.

I quit the app and reloaded, still no go on the iPad. I rebooted my iPad Air 2 and tried again, still no go. Camera Awesome crashes every time I try to load a photo from the camera roll.

Very strange! And a royal pain the butt because we have a trip planned in January and I was planning to use my iPad as my main device to manage photos during the trip.

Any ideas or suggestions?

BTW, Camera Awesome version on both devices is 1.1.12.

Edit: I should also mention that I can't use iOS Safari to upload photos to my site because I get an error when I try to upload using SmugMug's mobile upload feature. The error I get is "We're sorry, but you don't appear to be logged in to that account. Please login and try again." Yet, in order to even access the gallery (to start the upload) I HAVE to be logged in. So I AM logged in.

Thus, without Camera Awesome, I have no way to upload photos to my site via my iPad.

Mark

leftquark · December 21, 2015

Hi Mark,
Is there any reason why the official SmugMug iOS app won't work for you? It should work on your iPad Air 2 on iOS 9.2 and allows you to upload from your iPad.

The Photo Booth · December 22, 2015

The official SmugMug app is a data hog by comparison. It requires loading of a bunch of thumbnails in a gallery just to upload a photo (or photos) to that gallery. That makes it slow as molasses when I only have 1 or 2 bars of signal.

I also find the official SmugMug app to be the opposite of intuitive. Just as SmugMug moved away from actual word descriptors for functions with the "new" SmugMug (relying instead on icons only), the official SmugMug apps is the same.

With Camera Awesome it was a simple matter to pull a photo from my Camera Roll into the app and upload it directly to ANY gallery without ever having to load that gallery. Fast and effective, even when in weak signal areas (as long as there was enough signal for the upload). Most of the "work" happens offline IN the app, instead of online IN my gallery (as with the SmugMug app).

In the meantime, I have discovered that I can upload photos from my iPad simply using the Safari browser. I expected to get the same error I was getting with my iPhone when using Safari to upload. However, the iPad version of SmugMug in Safari is actually the desktop version. And uploading works. So, thank you for that. But, again, it requires that I load the gallery thumbnails and a few other pages to even get to the gallery. That uses data. With Camera Awesome the ONLY data used was the actual upload.

Yet another thing that drives me crazy with the "new" SmugMug.... DIFFERENT versions for deferent devices. iOS on the iPhone is FULLY capable of handling the same layout as iOS on iPad. Sure, it would require some pinching and zooming but I'd PREFER that do an entirely different interface.

PLEASE give your customers back the ability to FORCE the Desktop version of OUR sites on mobile devices. Just let my iPhone see the same site design as my iPad. Why not give us, the paying customers, the OPTION to choose what we want?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!

So, SmugMug app aside (which I hate, and prefer not to use), to upload photos from my iPad I must use Safari. To upload photos from my iPhone I must use Camera Awesome.

Camera Awesome is broken on the iPad, Safari uploading is broken on the iPhone.

Does ANY of that concern ANYONE at SmugMug? Is it possible to get a response along the lines of "we'll look into fixing that" instead of "just use this other product" (a product that eats data)?

I should add that my iPad is a cellular model on the Verizon network. When adding photos to a gallery while on the go, I RARELY have a WiFi connection. So, the amount of data I use can have monetary considerations. The more thumbnails that SmugMug forces me to load (where I didn't have to do that before) the more money it might be costing me.

Mark

leftquark · December 22, 2015

On the SmugMug app you don't have to wait for the gallery images to load before clicking the upload button, so you could start uploading without having to load the gallery thumbnails. Additionally, one thing you could do, prior to being on the go, is to make the gallery available offline before you leave, while you're on WiFi, if you know you'll be accessing it while on the go. This will pre-fetch the images so they not only load instantly but don't require you to use data while on the go. It also has the added benefit of making your photos accessible really quickly and easily.

We always value feedback, so I'm curious to hear what you find unintuitive about the SmugMug app? It shows you your folders and galleries, with their name and feature photo nice and big. You click into them to access that folder or gallery, until you get thumbnails of the photos with the ability to open then full screen. Have you tried the latest version (v3) which was released a month or so ago? It cleaned up the interface quite a bit.

Uploading works on all devices, iPhones included, from any of our SmugMug apps: be it the iOS app, the mobile web (Safari) or from a desktop. It sounds like you may have had an issue on your iPhone with saving cookies. Sometimes Safari on the iPhone reverts itself to not save cookies, and that'll cause those uploading errors you were getting.

When we built the New SmugMug, we had to build it to fit the devices and tools that were available in 2013. Phones were much smaller with Apple making claims that they would never build a bigger device. iOS didn't have any easy way to request the desktop version, like it does today. We built SmugMug to be responsive, so it would look good on any sized screen, but that meant making some (at the time) smart decisions on how to do that. The method we chose doesn't allow us to switch to the desktop version in the way that other websites do, but it also meant that we could be a lot more accurate than most websites in loading a website that would look good on any device. Perhaps one day we'll re-architect SmugMug so that you can request a desktop site, but as of now, we're going to spending our energy on building some exciting new things so that we can continue to make SmugMug better for photographers.

leftquark · December 22, 2015

Looks like we can take it one step further. You can upload from the SmugMug app without having to go into a gallery at all. From your home screen, in the top right corner, is the Upload Photos button. Click that, select your photos, then it asks you which Gallery you want to upload to, using the hierarchy flow. Sounds exactly like what you wanted

rainforest1155 · December 23, 2015

With the SmugMug app, you also don't have to open the app at all to upload. You can upload directly from the Photos app on your device - select the photos in the Photos app and tap the share button. If you don't see the SmugMug option there, tap on more and enable SmugMug. Then you'll be able to pick the gallery to upload to and then the Photos app would take care of it.

The Photo Booth · January 14, 2016

leftquark wrote: »

Looks like we can take it one step further. You can upload from the SmugMug app without having to go into a gallery at all. From your home screen, in the top right corner, is the Upload Photos button. Click that, select your photos, then it asks you which Gallery you want to upload to, using the hierarchy flow. Sounds exactly like what you wanted

rainforest1155 wrote: »

With the SmugMug app, you also don't have to open the app at all to upload. You can upload directly from the Photos app on your device - select the photos in the Photos app and tap the share button. If you don't see the SmugMug option there, tap on more and enable SmugMug. Then you'll be able to pick the gallery to upload to and then the Photos app would take care of it.

Excellent! Thank you for that. I was not aware of that feature. You've made my day!!

Mark

Borderboy · February 8, 2016

Crashing on iPad
Until last year app worked on both iPad and iPhone. Now it only works on my iPhone5s. IPad which is running ios9 just won't open.

Removed and reloaded app. No difference. Can't see any difference in settings. Contacted developer but no real help

Anybody got any answers.

rainforest1155 · February 9, 2016

Hi there,
If you have any issues with the SmugMug iOS app, please contact us on our HelpDesk with details. In case you have already done so and the issue is resolved, you can reply back to our previous message so we can continue to troubleshoot the issue. Thanks!

Borderboy · February 9, 2016

Help desk
What was the point of pointing me towards a help desk only to be told that SmugMug no longer supports this app and tries to get me to download some other app that I don't need!

Not helpful atall

rainforest1155 · February 10, 2016

Hi there,
I opened up the app on my iPad running iOS9 and was able to take a photo with it without problems. If it's not working for you, I can only recommend contacting the HelpDesk with details so we may take a closer look.

Camera Awesome app crashing on iPad

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