Android app comments (no keywords?!)

Ferguson · April 6, 2018

Noticed that there was a new version overnight. Comments:

The new icon is ugly. Sorry, I know no one likes to be told their child is ugly, but this one is. The old was much better. To stark white especially on a black themed phone.

The bigger comment is perhaps from day one as I have not paid attention. Having "Search" highlighted (was it new?) made me try searching, and I got extremely inconsistent results. Some weirdness "content no longer on smugmug" whatever that means, but I could not find any people or lots of other things.

Turns out that Smugmug the app is apparently not downloading the keywords that Smugmug website has. in fact it doesn't appear to do keywords at all. Considering people are often tagged as keywords, not to mention LOTS of other labeling, this makes search almost useless.

Why are keywords not supported?

leftquark · April 6, 2018

Adding more support for viewing and editing keywords has been in our backlog and is something we'd like to add. On a mobile device it can be a little hard to try to fit photo, title, caption, keywords, etc all on the screen and keywords were initially left out. When we added the ability to edit titles/captions I considered also editing keywords, but since we didn't display those keywords, it felt off to be able to edit keywords and not see those changes. I'd like to add both the ability to see the keywords, and also edit them in the future.

I surprised to hear that you're seeing different results in the app versus on the website. Both the app and the website should use the same search to display the results. Did you try searching for the same thing on the web and see different results? Would you mind giving me a few examples where keywords weren't being found? And perhaps a few examples with the "Content no longer on smugmug" error as well. That's an error I haven't seen before.

For recommendations on auto-complete when you start typing, we pull your top 400 keywords from your account. The rest can be searched by typing the keyword.

Searching for other SmugMug users is still done on the "Following" tab of the app.

Ferguson · April 6, 2018

OK, I think I jumped to a conclusion, and must have had a typo in my initial search.

The keywords are not shown, but you can search on them anyway. And it does find things properly.

But... so here are things you consider more important to take up screen real estate than keywords?

File name
Pixel dimensions
Camera
Shutter/Aperture/ISO
Lens focal length
Date taken, modified
Altiutude
Flash
Hyperfocal distance
lens details
Light source
Metering
Program
Exposure bias
Saturation
Sharpness
Software
White balance.

Takes up almost my whole phone display and these are more important than keywords?

But... I think my initial reaction was incorrect, it looks like you can search, you just can't see. That was the bigger concern.

So what does "This content is no longer available Smugmug" mean? I searched for "Linwood" (my name) which should appear in a lot of places, and that's the error on my Android. It's actually a bit odd searching on Smugmug that it does not find more, but it does find some.

leftquark · April 6, 2018

@Ferguson said:
So what does "This content is no longer available Smugmug" mean? I searched for "Linwood" (my name) which should appear in a lot of places, and that's the error on my Android. It's actually a bit odd searching on Smugmug that it does not find more, but it does find some.

There's something about SmugMug that just wants to not play nice with you. I made sure we tested this thoroughly before we launched. That error is certainly not intended. If there are no results, it should say there are no results (and in many cases that works as intended). I've got our team looking into that issue.

@Ferguson said:
But... so here are things you consider more important to take up screen real estate than keywords?

File name
Pixel dimensions
Camera
...
Takes up almost my whole phone display and these are more important than keywords?

We typically display Titles, Captions, and Keywords on the actual photo (on top of the lightbox) sine they're much more prominent and used more frequently than the metadata of the photo. Additionally, since metadata can be hidden as a setting in Gallery Settings, we didn't want to force keywords to be hidden or shown as part of the metadata. Displaying metadata, which isn't interactable, was a fairly low effort task and that's why we added the ability to see the metadata in the app. Keywording has much more involved interactions: Showing keywords meant we would have to be able to edit keywords. If we display the keywords you most likely want to be able to tap on them to see all the photos tagged with that keyword. The app never had the keyword galleries, so that would have been built. Now that search is in the app, we could use search results to display all the photos tagged with that keyword. It's definitely something we'll look to add in the future.

Ferguson · April 6, 2018

That search that returns that error should return valid images; the same word on Smugmug finds things.

Just to be sure we are on the same page -- I'm talking about showing keywords on the info page, not just the image itself like captions. I would not have expected to see them on the image like a caption (images could have LOTS of keywords, especially with face tagging).

Nothing else really on the info page is editable either so showing it there won't imply an ability to edit.

leftquark · April 7, 2018

We’re on the same page — while keywords are technically metadata embedded with the file, we’ve typically separated them out due to the nature that people want to interact with them. I’m certainly willing to be proven wrong. What benefit do you get by being able to see your keywords on the info page, if you can’t interact with them? Do you not need to be able to click on one so you can see other photos with that keyword?

I’ve imagined that the app behaves similar to the web, with keywords not shown in the Photo Info panel, but instead shown together with title, and caption.

—————————

Turns out the search issue comes down to some issues with Amazon’s search platform that we use. We’re about a week away from upgrading to a slightly different service which we’ve verified will not have this issue. Once that rolls out you should see those searches returning without any errors.

Ferguson · April 7, 2018

@leftquark said:
We’re on the same page — while keywords are technically metadata embedded with the file, we’ve typically separated them out due to the nature that people want to interact with them. I’m certainly willing to be proven wrong. What benefit do you get by being able to see your keywords on the info page, if you can’t interact with them? Do you not need to be able to click on one so you can see other photos with that keyword?

It's primarily people. I've started doing a fair amount of tagging of individuals by using keywords, for example a local MiLB team each player is tagged with a keyword of their name and often those guys last all of 2-3 weeks at a given farm team, so I hardly recognize them. That also blends well with Lightroom, which just re-did their face recognition so it works fairly well instead of poorly. While for family this is moot, for semi-strangers (e.g. someone my wife identified for me in Lightroom) I might be showing someone an image on my cell and they say "who is that". The keyword(s) provide the answer.

The new search makes it far more useful. i have frequently been at a baseball game and had one of their social media staff say "Do you have a shot of John Smith". So that is covered with search. Having the keyword visible is not that important.

But the whole "interact" aspect is moot for me, I never want to modify metadata on the phone -- I'm a huge believer of "one version of the truth" and that's my lightroom catalog. Search is adequate for finding them, I don't need to click on keywords for those few times I might want a second order search (e.g. search for X, see keyword Y, search for Y).

I’ve imagined that the app behaves similar to the web, with keywords not shown in the Photo Info panel, but instead shown together with title, and caption.

Not a big deal either way for me, but I think this depends a lot on the user. For me, for example, that would work OK, as I usually have few keywords on each image. I know a lot of sports photographers however who have massive lists on each photo -- the team name, city name, variations (such as nicknames), the game itself, the stadium/arena, their affiliation for the game, the players visible (and often variations on their name) their jersey number... you get the idea. I've seen cases of 2-3 dozen keywords on each photo, which I think would cloud the display.

Now which is a more typical Smugmug user? I don't know. Ones who might want the app? I don't know. I've seen bird photographers go nuts also with keys. but my guess is the "average" person will have just a few.

I think it's worth asking why people use the app. For me it's a cache of recent images (like a year), so when I'm at a game and someone says "did you get a shot of XXX last week" I can look and show them, or send them a link to the original, or even a small version right from the app. It's incredibly handy for that due to the offline cache, as wifi and cell signals are often spotty in arenas. The search feature is a nice benefit there, by the way, so don't mean to sound negative.

The biggest downside for me is that the offline feature is not firm -- I can't say "STOP CHECKING SMUGMUG". If there's a signal at all, it often hangs for long periods even though i have the images offline, presumably trying to check if they are current. Frequently I have to put the phone in airplane mode to get the app to work adequately. Hint, hint... a "use offline only" mode of some sort would be nice.

But that's me... for some this is likely their main connection to smugmug for uploading and editing, and they would have a completely different view on all this.

—————————

Turns out the search issue comes down to some issues with Amazon’s search platform that we use. We’re about a week away from upgrading to a slightly different service which we’ve verified will not have this issue. Once that rolls out you should see those searches returning without any errors.

Thanks.

leftquark · April 8, 2018

By the way, it turns out a recent Android update changes the way app icons work. We provide a transparent icon with the green smuggy. Android (or the Pixel launcher or whichever launcher you’re using) has opted to go from the black square’ish icons to now white circular ones.

Ferguson · April 8, 2018

Ah... that's unfortunate. I'm on the Pixel 2 (vanilla google). It's the only one I noticed changed, but maybe I do not have transparent backgrounds on others. Maybe the google change was coincident with the update, I think the April patches came down about the same time.