Mass "Make 2nd copy" utility

liggitt · June 7, 2006

I recently needed to make duplicate galleries so I could customize the crop sizes and allowable print sizes for images. I had already tagged and ordered my main galleries exactly the way I wanted them (and with over 600 photos, this took a while). There was no way I could find to preserve those tags and gallery order, other than a manual "Make 2nd copy, move to gallery" process. Being lazy (and a programmer), I decided to write a tool to do this for me.

I've seen enough posts asking about making copies of galleries that I thought I would post this, in case it would be useful to anyone else.

Right now, it is Windows only, but I might consider working on a Mac version if enough people were interested in it.

You can get it here: http://www.liggitt.net/smugtools

Barb · June 7, 2006

liggitt wrote:

I recently needed to make duplicate galleries so I could customize the crop sizes and allowable print sizes for images. I had already tagged and ordered my main galleries exactly the way I wanted them (and with over 600 photos, this took a while). There was no way I could find to preserve those tags and gallery order, other than a manual "Make 2nd copy, move to gallery" process. Being lazy (and a programmer), I decided to write a tool to do this for me.

I've seen enough posts asking about making copies of galleries that I thought I would post this, in case it would be useful to anyone else.

Right now, it is Windows only, but I might consider working on a Mac version if enough people were interested in it.

You can get it here: http://www.liggitt.net/smugtools

Wow, I haven't tried this yet, but the idea is wonderful! I'd be VERY interested in a Mac version.

Thank you for what will most likely be a very popular program!

liggitt · June 7, 2006

Updated with Mac OS X versions
Well, thanks to bygates and another friend with a Mac, I now have versions for OS X available for download. If anyone has any problems or issues with these (or the Windows version, for that matter), please reply to this thread and let me know.

http://www.liggitt.net/smugtools

Barb · June 7, 2006

liggitt wrote:

Well, thanks to bygates and another friend with a Mac, I now have versions for OS X available for download. If anyone has any problems or issues with these (or the Windows version, for that matter), please reply to this thread and let me know.

http://www.liggitt.net/smugtools

This is an awesome program and worked perfectly. Very user friendly. Copied photos from one gallery to another very quickly and without any issues at all. (Using on an Intel Macbook). Nice! Thank you!

rainforest1155 · June 8, 2006

Sounds interesting even though I don't need it right now. What are the limitations of the test version?

Sebastian

liggitt · June 8, 2006

rainforest1155 wrote:

Sounds interesting even though I don't need it right now. What are the limitations of the test version?

Sebastian

It just limits the number of images you can copy. Basically, you can see how it works, make sure it works on your system, etc. If you then want to use it to copy an entire gallery, it would need to be registered.

pat.kane · June 8, 2006

Does it preserve the Zoom Thumbnail setting?

It doesn't look like it does, but can you copy from one account to another? That would really be useful.

Looks interesting. Thanks.

liggitt · June 9, 2006

pat.kane wrote:

Does it preserve the Zoom Thumbnail setting?

[HTML]<strike>Yes, the Zoom Thumbnail setting is preserved.</strike>[/HTML]
Edit: Since this post was made, the copier has been rewritten to use only SmugMug's published APIs. Because of that, the zoom thumbnail setting is no longer preserved.

pat.kane wrote:

It doesn't look like it does, but can you copy from one account to another? That would really be useful.

No, it doesn't currently do that... that could be a little tricky... simultaneously logging into two accounts... I'll have to think about that one.

pat.kane · June 10, 2006

liggitt wrote:

Yes, the Zoom Thumbnail setting is preserved.

OK. I'll definitely keep this little utility in mind in case the need arises.

DavidTO · June 11, 2006

Very cool!

I actually don't have a need for this right now, but bought it anyway. WTG, supporting OSX!

Andy · June 11, 2006

Sweet! OSX Apps are Teh Seckxxxxxxx!

Stormdancing · September 26, 2006

I just happened to need a tool like this for one of my galleries.
Found this thread by searching. When I go to website for the tool I get 404.
What has become of this?

liggitt · September 26, 2006

Stormdancing wrote:

I just happened to need a tool like this for one of my galleries.
Found this thread by searching. When I go to website for the tool I get 404.
What has become of this?

Humph... my directory redirect stopped working for no reason at all... you can find it at http://www.liggitt.net/smugtools/copier/

Stormdancing · September 26, 2006

liggitt wrote:

Humph... my directory redirect stopped working for no reason at all... you can find it at http://www.liggitt.net/smugtools/copier/

Thank you! I'll take a look see now.

Stormdancing · September 26, 2006

Stormdancing wrote:

Thank you! I'll take a look see now.

Ok downloaded and registered it.
It connects fine and gets all my galleries and the list of photos in the gallery I want to copy. When I click on Copy, it keeps saying can't connect, try again or restart and login again.

Have done that. Have restarted computer also.
I'm heading home now and will try it from that machine and connection and report back shortly. (45 min commute)

liggitt · September 26, 2006

Stormdancing wrote:

Ok downloaded and registered it.
It connects fine and gets all my galleries and the list of photos in the gallery I want to copy. When I click on Copy, it keeps saying can't connect, try again or restart and login again.

Have done that. Have restarted computer also.
I'm heading home now and will try it from that machine and connection and report back shortly. (45 min commute)

I just tried a test gallery and got the same error. I will investigate and see if I can figure out what is going on. I'll also check the forums to see if anyone else if having problems with the remote API.

Stormdancing · September 26, 2006

liggitt wrote:

I just tried a test gallery and got the same error. I will investigate and see if I can figure out what is going on. I'll also check the forums to see if anyone else if having problems with the remote API.

Hmmm, if I try to copy them to the same gallery, 1st try says can't connect. Click again and it connects. It goes through all the images like it's copying them, but does nothing.

If I try to copy to different gallery all I get is the Cannot connect.

BB in a couple hours. Gotta go shoot some kids.

liggitt · September 26, 2006

Ok... I figured it out. Recently (9/7/06), Smugmug.com received an updated secure site certificate. This new certificate was issued by a different company than their old certificate. Depending on your system configuration,
the SmugTools gallery copier may not accept the new certificate as valid, and therefore not connect to the secure portion of the Smugmug site, which is required to copy images.

If you receive an error stating "Could not connect to Smugmug. Please try again, or restart and log in again" immediately upon starting a copy operation, you will need to update the version of Java installed on your system.

For Windows machines, you can obtain the latest version of Java from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads

For Apple OS X machines, you can download the latest version of Java here:
http://developer.apple.com/java/download/

If you have any other issues, please let me know.

Stormdancing · September 26, 2006

That seems to have fixed my problem.
It's processing a large gallery right now.

Thanks for your prompt attention to this. You've saved me hours and hours of work!

SteveM · September 26, 2006

Although I haven't tried this yet, thank you for authoring this. I really applaud your efforts, and this is a much needed addition to Smugmug.

However, I have to say I do have a little problem with paying $10 to register a product to use a service I already pay $130/yr to use. Granted, that is no fault of your own, as this function should already be available through Smugmug itself. It does however rub me the wrong way when many many regular members spend countless hours helping, troubleshooting, volunteering our unique code, format, wording and overlooking our own potential copyrights to help out our fellow Smugger, then be asked to pay $10 to register a one-function "product". Perhaps Devbobo and Mike Lane should begin charging for all of their tricks, hacks, and additions to Smugmug for all of our mutal benefit. I'm sorry, but I feel this undermines the Smugmug community.

"Free slideshow on your homepage! $10 for 5 or more slides!" Bah!

Andy · September 27, 2006

SteveM wrote:

Although I haven't tried this yet, thank you for authoring this. I really applaud your efforts, and this is a much needed addition to Smugmug.

And it's very cool that someone has made the hack that you and others like to use. Some folks have hacks that they charge for, others have hacks availalbe for free. Surely you can justify the cost if it's providing a benefit to you?

SteveM · September 27, 2006

Andy wrote:

And it's very cool that someone has made the hack that you and others like to use. Some folks have hacks that they charge for, others have hacks availalbe for free. Surely you can justify the cost if it's providing a benefit to you?

I'm still considering that, actually. I do have a very occasional use for this function. If that need were more frequent, I might be able to justify it. However at this point, out of principle, I choose not to get dependent on it and hope Smugmug will impliment this function on their own. Hopefully my yearly fee won't go up $10/yr because of it. It just seems like a slap in the face to all of us that contribute so much for the benefit of others in the "community". That's absolutely just personal opinion and perhaps I'm just not enough of a capitalist. He is perfectly within his right.

Andy · September 27, 2006

SteveM wrote:

I'm still considering that, actually. I do have a very occasional use for this function. If that need were more frequent, I might be able to justify it. However at this point, out of principle, I choose not to get dependent on it and hope Smugmug will impliment this function on their own. Hopefully my yearly fee won't go up $10/yr because of it. It just seems like a slap in the face to all of us that contribute so much for the benefit of others in the "community". That's absolutely just personal opinion and perhaps I'm just not enough of a capitalist. He is perfectly within his right.

Well, you never know, but it's not on our list because a SmugHacker's already done it. Also, we already give unlimited storage with our subscriptions. I'd rather see virtual galleries come to light first, before mass 2nd copies.

SteveM · September 27, 2006

Andy wrote:

Well, you never know, but it's not on our list because a SmugHacker's already done it. Also, we already give unlimited storage with our subscriptions. I'd rather see virtual galleries come to light first, before mass 2nd copies.

Virtual galleries would certainly suffice, and would save on additional Smugmug storage costs! I'd love that! Hopefully Mike, Devbobo, Bigwebguy or the other SmugGeniuses don't see this and come up with a hack so it gets bumped from the queue and extort $10 for it! Although Mike's a new daddy and could probably use the dough!

technocraft · February 9, 2007

The time this tool has saved me was worth the $10. I just wish I didn't need another tool to accomplish this tasks.

Thanks liggitt.

liggitt · February 9, 2007

technocraft wrote:

The time this tool has saved me was worth the $10. I just wish I didn't need another tool to accomplish this tasks.

Thanks liggitt.

I agree... I would have been much happier if this function was built in to Smugmug... would have saved me about a hundred hours of work on the tool

Glad it was useful for you, though.

technocraft · February 9, 2007

Can I ask for one more thing? You've got everything to filter/sort/select on in there, except one thing: keywords.

S&SPhoto · February 9, 2007

technocraft wrote:

Can I ask for one more thing? You've got everything to filter/sort/select on in there, except one thing: keywords.

I agree. I don't frequent this forum much, so I just asked for the same thing a few minutes ago over here, until Andy set me straight. Reading through the thread, it looks like I have to download the latest version of Java because I too was getting the "could not connect..." error. Seems promising though!

Samir

cjyphoto · June 1, 2007

For the life of me I do not know why this is not part of SmugMug. I just had to create a private gallery for some dancers to help facilitate purchases. Instead of being able to simply copy them to the private gallery like is possible with PBase I had to reupload them all. Zenfolio offers "collections" which I assume would be the same as "virtual galleries". What is the hold up on virtual galleries? I think time invested in VG's would have been a lot more useful than SmugIsland.

JohnnyJr · June 1, 2007

Big Fat
Ditto!!!!!!!

JohnnyJr · June 1, 2007

Oh, Did I Mention
Ditto!!!!!!

Mass "Make 2nd copy" utility

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