Apple Photos export to SmugMug - how?

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Comments

  • worldriderworldrider Registered Users Posts: 12 Big grins

    I'd have to weigh in and say that I too would like to see Photos.app integration and support for SmugMug export, as we had in the later version of Aperture. As I am a fan and supporter of SmugMug, I've retired my Aperture libraries and am all in with Photos and iCloud Photo Sharing/Storage. Yet I understand that Apple's commitment to Photos is questionable, it's new plug-in/extension architecture does open the door for developers to provide enhanced functionality. I don't like to export and then import to SmugMug because not only is a multi-step process, it creates further photo management tasks and requires using (temporarily) local storage on top of the database that the photos are already stored.

    All this is to say, add my name to the long time SM user list asking for further support for Apple Photos.

  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    We recently launched our macOS SmugMug app that will allow you to upload photos from your computer to SmugMug without having to visit your smugmug website first. One of the features we wanted to include was a Photos extension so you could upload straight from Photos, but we decided to release the app without it so we could get it to you faster. A SmugMug extension for Photos is one of the things we'll be working on in the future. Stay tuned.

    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
  • davimledavimle Registered Users Posts: 7 Big grins

    Aaron, thanks for the updates. :smile: Regarding the questions you posed at the beginning of June, I also take far too many photos compared to what I can sort through, so the syncing of local folders doesn't really help. I also don't like the export from my library to temporary folders and consume local storage, etc. as @worldrider points out. So for me at least, I would not benefit from the Google Photos like approach with background uploading. My usage aligns with your assessment where a "Camera Roll" would not be that useful. (Again, each person's usage is going to be a little bit different, but thought I would share mine after being "harsh" on the lack of integration compared to "free" services.)

    My problem is that I am still stuck in Aperture. The model there is what I would like to see. I want to create a linkage between a Project or Album in Aperture to a SmugMug gallery. (I know that you are not going to do development for Aperture.) So I would like the equivalent for Apple Photos. Once I manually establish a linkage to "publish" to a SmugMug gallery, I would like it to be maintained and updated automatically without effort on my part. If I add more photos to the Project/Album (sorry, not sure of the terminology in Photos since I gave up on it), it would automatically sync to SmugMug. Ditto for keyword or metadata updates to photos in the local Album.

    I am considering Lightroom, but haven't had the time to evaluate it fully, so I'm just buying time with Aperture and keeping an eye on Photos to see if it will ever be usable for me. (Though I am biased against it after what Apple did to Aperture and other "Pro" apps.) Does SmugMug offer better integration with Lightroom? Thanks again.

  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    @davimle said:
    I am considering Lightroom, but haven't had the time to evaluate it fully, so I'm just buying time with Aperture and keeping an eye on Photos to see if it will ever be usable for me. (Though I am biased against it after what Apple did to Aperture and other "Pro" apps.) Does SmugMug offer better integration with Lightroom? Thanks again.

    As I was reading your post I kept thinking "you should try our Lightroom plugin!" and wallah! We have an extremely powerful Lightroom plugin that does exactly what you were looking to do here. I do pretty much everything within it! You can watch a video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9moOKwNk_4

    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
  • janineannejanineanne Registered Users Posts: 3 Beginner grinner
    I'd just like to throw my two cents in as a brand new Smug Mug user and a non-professional photographer. The only reason I need a service like SmugMug is to organize and share dance videos. My husband and I go to competitions and come back with videos of ourselves which we need to share with our teachers. I therefore need a way to keep them organized in a way that lets us drill down from the Event, to the specific competition, to the individual dancer (we often both dance in in the same comps, so there can be videos of both of us). We also have videos from workshops and private lessons we have taken.

    I've tried a number of different ways to organize these. At first we used iCloud Shared Libraries for our lesson videos, which was barely functional. You have to add each video to the shared library by hand, they sort by date added instead of date taken, and downloading a whole 3 minute video to watch takes *forever* and doesn't seem to be cached. I also had the competition videos organized into Dropbox folders.

    When I got tired of these limited systems I tried Mylio. It has a lot of potential and way more features than I need, but having to have the apps open for new photos/videos to sync is a non-starter. It's also fairly complicated to use. And it doesn't support sharing, so I was still having to maintain the Dropbox folders.

    Next i looked at other services. Neither Google nor Amazon Photos allow for an organizational hierarchy; you get one level of albums and their sorting algorithms and you're going to like it. ;) Flickr limits videos to three minutes, which is not long enough. Any of these is sufficient as a photo backup, which is another of my goals here, but not as an organizational tool.

    So far it looks like SmugMug has a feature set I can work with, but I would really like to have Google Photo style continuous upload, especially for the initial upload which is going to take a very long time. I haven't looked at the iOS app; if it automatically uploads from the Camera Roll then we may be ok once everything is up there, since our only cameras are our phones. But that first upload is still going to be a doozy.
  • epettiepetti Registered Users Posts: 55 Big grins

    I finally had a chance to use the new app today. From an ease of use aspect, it's a great step in the right direction... with one big caveat. If you use it to upload straight from Photos then it still doesn't transfer any tagging or description information (or geolocation I think). So you still have the two step process of having to export from Photos to a folder, and then use the app to upload from the Folder to Smugmug. That's still a giant pain that would be my biggest request for any future features.

  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    And that's the first thing we're going to work on to improve the macOS app. It was something we wanted to include in the initial version but decided we wanted to get it out without making y'all wait any longer.

    We're going to work on something I'm excited to work on (not on the macOS app) first, and then hopefully get back to this as soon as we can.

    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
  • nigelbbnigelbb Registered Users Posts: 26 Big grins

    @epetti said:
    I finally had a chance to use the new app today. From an ease of use aspect, it's a great step in the right direction... with one big caveat. If you use it to upload straight from Photos then it still doesn't transfer any tagging or description information (or geolocation I think). So you still have the two step process of having to export from Photos to a folder, and then use the app to upload from the Folder to Smugmug. That's still a giant pain that would be my biggest request for any future features.

    I must be missing something as I cannot see any way to upload directly from Photos. When I open the SmugMug app I can only browse folders not the Photos library. Apparently I need to export out of Photos then use the SmugMug uploader.

    I don't care about tagging etc as my Photos library isn't organised I just use it to dump all the photos off my SD cards. I organise by making iPhoto Shared Library albums & that is what I would like to upload to SmugMug ideally automatically.

  • wootenwooten Registered Users Posts: 12 Big grins

    Trying this new app now, but it doesn't seem to be keeping the "titles" I chose in the Photos app. Am I missing something or does that not work?

    I've recently decided to completely shift to Photos for my workflow and I've gotten used to it, but it doesn't seem to work well with smugmug. I was hoping this app would help but if something as simple as titles doesn't transfer I'm not sure what use it is. It's bad enough that I still can't sort images by title within a gallery.

  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    @nigelbb said:
    I must be missing something as I cannot see any way to upload directly from Photos. When I open the SmugMug app I can only browse folders not the Photos library. Apparently I need to export out of Photos then use the SmugMug uploader.

    Yes, until we build in the integration, this is the only way to upload from Photos to SmugMug. We definitely want to make it easier to upload from Photos, so stay tuned.

    @wooten said:
    Trying this new app now, but it doesn't seem to be keeping the "titles" I chose in the Photos app. Am I missing something or does that not work?

    If the Photos app properly embeds the titles into the metadata of the photo, SmugMug will accept those and use those titles. Make sure the photo is saved and you're uploading the new version after giving them titles in Photos.

    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
  • akcorcoranakcorcoran Registered Users Posts: 29 Big grins

    @leftquark said:
    We recently launched our macOS SmugMug app that will allow you to upload photos from your computer to SmugMug without having to visit your smugmug website first. One of the features we wanted to include was a Photos extension so you could upload straight from Photos, but we decided to release the app without it so we could get it to you faster. A SmugMug extension for Photos is one of the things we'll be working on in the future. Stay tuned.

    So, I downloaded that app and was all happy with the solution - assuming (mistakenly) that I could drag my selected photos to the Smugmug app sitting right there in my menu bar. Not so much.

    So, I'm still stuck as of 8/30/17 having to Export the photos to a folder again (Mine are in a folder BEFORE they go in Photos, and I like that naming and heirarchy but I'm trying to use Photos to sync all my photos across all my devices. Smugmug is where my photos for sharing are, not screenshots or simple pics) and then upload them to Smugmug? Just trying to confirm.

    It seems odd that you can upload photos from the Photos app on iOS but no option in Photos Desktop (regarding your statements above that Apple imposes the limitations?)

    Thank you for the guidance -

  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    @akcorcoran said:

    @leftquark said:
    We recently launched our macOS SmugMug app that will allow you to upload photos from your computer to SmugMug without having to visit your smugmug website first. One of the features we wanted to include was a Photos extension so you could upload straight from Photos, but we decided to release the app without it so we could get it to you faster. A SmugMug extension for Photos is one of the things we'll be working on in the future. Stay tuned.

    So, I downloaded that app and was all happy with the solution - assuming (mistakenly) that I could drag my selected photos to the Smugmug app sitting right there in my menu bar. Not so much.

    So, I'm still stuck as of 8/30/17 having to Export the photos to a folder again (Mine are in a folder BEFORE they go in Photos, and I like that naming and heirarchy but I'm trying to use Photos to sync all my photos across all my devices. Smugmug is where my photos for sharing are, not screenshots or simple pics) and then upload them to Smugmug? Just trying to confirm.

    It seems odd that you can upload photos from the Photos app on iOS but no option in Photos Desktop (regarding your statements above that Apple imposes the limitations?)

    Thank you for the guidance -

    The MacOS Photos extension would be required before you can drag or upload straight from Photos to SmugMug. Since iOS and macOS apps are completely different, the functionality to do it on the iOS side is not compatible with the macOS version. There are additional limitations on the iOS side that I didn't mention (for example we can only upload ~20 photos at a time from the iOS Photos extension).

    Are you using Photos to do any sort of editing? If you upload photos to SmugMug they should be available on any device (all your devices). On the iOS/Android side, you can mark galleries for offline viewing so you can access them without an internet connection. On the computer side, you'd have access to anything on SmugMug provided you have an internet connection (the only time you wouldn't would be if you use a laptop with no internet connection, but you could use a phone or tablet to display the pictures when not at home).

    I, for example, have transitioned entirely to just using photos on SmugMug for all my devices. My iPhone and iPad have several galleries marked offline so I can show them whenever I want, and since they're in my pocket, means I have them on any computer for display.

    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
  • carmel6942carmel6942 Registered Users Posts: 154 Major grins

    I am a long time user of Apples Aperture, and I have a 2009 iMac that I use just to upload pictures to smugmug. I use smuginpro, from the export menu this lets me create a new gallery, select an existing gallery, or a sub gallery. I can then caption, keyword, and even see a preview of whats being uploaded. I don't need to sync or copy how my directory is set up. I dislike light room and refuse to use it. I have been using On1, Affinity Photo, and Luminar and would like a way to send the photo's directly to smugmug. I have been using Poster, but this has been discontinued so I am not sure how much longer it will work.

    Carl
  • JenuineJenuine Registered Users Posts: 155 SmugMug Employee

    Hello Carl,
    Since Apple no longer supports Aperture, the app is no longer supported. Lightroom is the only current plugin available that can publish images direct to SmugMug. These applications are largely created by outside developers. At this time I am not aware of other applications to be used with On1, Affinity Photo or Luminar. You can suggest this as feature request on our User Voice page:

    http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug

    That is where our Product Managers look to see what things are important to our site owners and helps in setting direction for the future products.

    Jen
    SmugMug Support Hero
  • Saurav AnandSaurav Anand Registered Users Posts: 13 Big grins

    Hi,

    I'm from PicBackMan team, we have our product named 'PicBackMan' (www.picbackman.com) which will allow you to upload your Apple Photos or iPhoto library to SmugMug.

    You need to go through following steps:

    1.Download & install PicBackMan into your Mac.
    2).Once registration done, go to 'Account' tab of the application.
    3).Connect your SmugMug account. (We use oAuth)
    4).Go to 'Photo' tab, click on 'Associate Apple Photos' button.
    5).Go to Apple Photos location and select/click on the icon of Apple Photos.
    6).Check the checkbox corresponds to SmugMug. Hit 'Upload' button.
    7).PicBackMan will pick up all your files and upload them to SmugMug automatically.

    You need not to extract or export folders from Photos library. Just select the whole library.

    Note: PicBackMan will create the same folder hierarchy on SmugMug according to your Photos library structure.

    In case if you need any help or have any query feel free to write us at team@picbackman.com, we help you right away!

  • willisjwwillisjw Registered Users Posts: 1 Beginner grinner
    I would also like the SmugMug extension visible in Apple Photos, but unlike some of the people here i have no interest in using SmugMug as a storage depot for all my photos. That would be an extremely awkward way to edit and refine my images. On the other hand I have often used the LightRoom plugin to publish directly to SmugMug. This is extremely effective and useful, and it would be nice to have in Photos as well. I've only just started to use Photos but I've used Aperture and LightRoom for a long time. The thing that kicked me over the brink was Photos nice integration of the iPhone videos. Kudos to SmugMug in general. Almost everything I've ever wanted gets added eventually.
  • JenuineJenuine Registered Users Posts: 155 SmugMug Employee

    Hello Willisjw,
    Thank you for the detail and suggestion. Also many thanks for the kind words. We do love to be able to add products that aid our customers in using the site in the most beneficial and strategic ways that we can. Add your suggestion regarding the integration you mentioned of the upload ability within Photos to our User Voice Page. Whether the API of the Apple product will allow the integration is of course something to be researched, but we love ideas and thoughts to make our product even better.
    Best,

    Jen
    SmugMug Support Hero
  • danielharveydanielharvey Registered Users Posts: 1 Beginner grinner
    Any update on Photos support SmugMug? (its been a while)
  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    This is still something I’d love to get the team to work on but since we have a small group of Apple developers, we’ve been focusing on getting the iOS app up to speed with a few important things (like being able to create folders and galleries, searching, moving items around). Once we’ve wrapped up a few of the obvious missing things in the iOS app, we’ll have some time to get back to the macOS app, adding Photos support, and more.

    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
  • worldriderworldrider Registered Users Posts: 12 Big grins

    I recently received a newsletter from SM that the MacOS app has been updated, but cannot figure out how to use the Photos.app integration—unless it's because it's still not there, or someone forgot to put it in? Just wondering if this is on the development plan and when we might see further information? Thanks!

  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    @worldrider said:
    I recently received a newsletter from SM that the MacOS app has been updated, but cannot figure out how to use the Photos.app integration—unless it's because it's still not there, or someone forgot to put it in? Just wondering if this is on the development plan and when we might see further information? Thanks!

    Our iOS and Android apps have seen a number of updates, and were the focus of the recent newsletter. There have not been any macOS app updates at this time and the Photos integration is still something towards the top of the list for the macOS app

    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
  • shawn814shawn814 Registered Users Posts: 2 Beginner grinner
    > @epetti said:
    > Pretty excited about this new app. Downloaded it but haven't had a chance to actually try it out yet. Personally for my usage, I tend to agree with you about being concerned about the organization. My general workflow tends to be:
    >
    > Download and organize photos in Apple Photos into Albums.
    > Often these are adding to existing albums rather than creating new albums.
    > Tag them all and give descriptions, etc.
    > Then, upload the photos to their corresponding folders in Smugmug.
    >
    > Anything that could be done to make that more straightforward would be a big win, but I don't want to have to organize twice, once in Photos and once in Smugmug. So I'd rather if it could sync up the albums I select with the new photos and tags that I've added. And maintain tags, descriptions, and geolocation info as well, of course.
    >
    > Ernie


    I have a similar flow and am interested in updates to the app. Camera/Scanner>Apple Photos>SmugMug.

    It would be much more efficient if my album hierarchy could be synced(or at least copied) to SmugMug rather than creating the organization twice. Also, when I upload photos I have been navigating through the finder and loading directly from the Photos App. The only trick here is that I have multiple photo libraries and I am looking to load photos from those other libraries soon. This path of upload only works with the Library that's designated as the System Library. If this upload path could work for which ever library is open in context that would work better. I really would like to avoid exporting to folders and then importing from there.

    It would also be helpful if there were settings before or during the upload process for quality size resolution. Or at least a more robust explanation of what's happening when I select files from my library. i.e. I have Raw files that I have edited. When viewing or selecting photos for the upload I see the edited version which is great. It's just not clear what's happening to that file during the upload. It's Raw with instructions on one end and ends up a Jpeg in SmugMug. I am not sure if that file is sufficient for printing, sharing having relatives download and do what they will with it. In general I want to ensure the highest possible quality file ends up in SmugMug.


    Thanks
    Shawn
  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins

    @shawn814 said:
    When viewing or selecting photos for the upload I see the edited version which is great. It's just not clear what's happening to that file during the upload. It's Raw with instructions on one end and ends up a Jpeg in SmugMug. I am not sure if that file is sufficient for printing, sharing having relatives download and do what they will with it. In general I want to ensure the highest possible quality file ends up in SmugMug

    Uploading the largest size edited version is the way to go. We have tools in place to help you limit what people can view (a “Maximum Display Size” setting limits what resolution photos people can see) and we have other tools like Right Click Messaging, download passwords and more to help control who can see and download what. The high resolution copies are used for printing and your relatives can download the high resolution copies based on which download settings you choose (enable/disable downloading .... enable/disable a download password ... password protect galleries, etc).

    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
  • shawn814shawn814 Registered Users Posts: 2 Beginner grinner
    Are there any updates on integrations with Apple Photos? Wondering if it will be possible to upload albums and maintain album names and organization from Photos. Also I wanted to know if we will be able to sync what’s in SmugMug with multiple Photos Libraries?
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