Duplicate Galleries

MrBook2 · June 11, 2007

Ok, I know that there is already a thread for feature requests, but I feel I have to ask, why is there no good way to duplicate galleries?

Yes, I know that you can "make a second copy" and then move them to a new gallery. But for anything more than a few photos, this is incredibly unwieldy. I also know that there is a utility written by a user that will do it, but it runs under Windows and OS-X. As a linux user, this doesn't really help me. I also know that it is not preferable from SM's standpoint to have bunches of duplicate photos hosted, but unlimited does, in fact, mean unlimited. I have heard talk of "virtual galleries", but since they don't yet exists, it still doesn't help me.

There already exists an interface to "move" photos from one gallery to another. Why not just use the same interface and "copy" instead of "duplicate"? Yes, I understand that nothing is ever that easy when dealing with a large complex website, but this feature has been requested multiple times by multiple users. It is so wanted that a user took it upon himself to write a version of his own. What is the hold up?

Please bear in mind that I write this post out of frustration. I have run into this issue many times and it doesn't get any easier to accept when it happens.

--Aaron

AnneMcBean · June 11, 2007

MrBook2 wrote:

Ok, I know that there is already a thread for feature requests, but I feel I have to ask, why is there no good way to duplicate galleries?

Yes, I know that you can "make a second copy" and then move them to a new gallery. But for anything more than a few photos, this is incredibly unwieldy. I also know that there is a utility written by a user that will do it, but it runs under Windows and OS-X. As a linux user, this doesn't really help me. I also know that it is not preferable from SM's standpoint to have bunches of duplicate photos hosted, but unlimited does, in fact, mean unlimited. I have heard talk of "virtual galleries", but since they don't yet exists, it still doesn't help me.

There already exists an interface to "move" photos from one gallery to another. Why not just use the same interface and "copy" instead of "duplicate"? Yes, I understand that nothing is ever that easy when dealing with a large complex website, but this feature has been requested multiple times by multiple users. It is so wanted that a user took it upon himself to write a version of his own. What is the hold up?

Please bear in mind that I write this post out of frustration. I have run into this issue many times and it doesn't get any easier to accept when it happens.

--Aaron

Hi Aaron,

I can't answer for all of SmugMug here, but I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "I also know that it is not preferable from SM's standpoint to have bunches of duplicate photos hosted, but unlimited does, in fact, mean unlimited."

Unlimited, does in fact, mean unlimited. And if it's important enough for you to have two copies of a photo on SmugMug that you'll take the time to re-upload the photos, we're happy to host them. But making it easy for click-happy or unknowing subscribers to idly copy 100s of Mbs of photos in one click? We'd have to make a duplicate copy of each original sized-photo (up to 16 MB each for pros) as well as each large, medium, small, thumb, and tiny display size of each photo. SmugMuggers often have hundreds of photos in a gallery. You do the math.

Of course, that raises other questions as well... copying over exif? Captions? Keywords? Comments? Making sure people know the photo will have fresh PhotoRank, image pricing, etc.? It's a bit of a nasty mess all around and could make our bottom line a lot less pleasant in a hurry. It's in our customers' best interests for us to be profitable without raising our prices, so in my mind it really all comes down to your observation "I also know that it is not preferable from SM's standpoint".

We hardly ever say never when it comes to feature requests, but hopefully this offers some insight as to why this one doesn't top our list?

-Anne

MrBook2 · June 11, 2007

Thanks Anne. I really appreciate your candor in your response. I understand that smugmug is, by defination, a business, and you do have two very conflicting demands to balance. We want everything, and you need to actually make money.

So, what about other solutions? Given the unlimted storage (one of the main reasons I came to SM in the first place) I tend to upload absolutely everything I take, so that it is backed up somewhere other than my house. But when I want to share photos, I then may only want to share some of them. I could just move those, and then have two directories to worry about, one with the good stuff (shared) and one with the outakes (hidden). This is pretty much what I do. The other thing that happens, is that I would like to make the low-res images public and allow certain people access to the originals. In this case, the only real option (unless I am missing something) is to make a second copy of all of them and put them in a hidden directory, sending my friends the link. Is there a better way?

Another gripe that I have (sorry for so many gripes tonight) is that when I am logged in, I can't download my own originals unless I explicitly turn on originals on that gallery (unless it has changed recently. I suspect this is because it would be tricky to code, but it is annoying none the less.

I apologize for sounding like I am only complaining, there are many many things that I love about smugmug. But given how good most of the site is, some of the little things tend to leave me scratching my head.

--Aaron

PBolchover · June 12, 2007

If you're a Power User or Pro, and want identical galleries to appear in different categories, then you can use a gallery redirect to do this.

iamback · June 20, 2007

AnneMcBean wrote:

Unlimited, does in fact, mean unlimited. And if it's important enough for you to have two copies of a photo on SmugMug that you'll take the time to re-upload the photos, we're happy to host them. But making it easy for click-happy or unknowing subscribers to idly copy 100s of Mbs of photos in one click? We'd have to make a duplicate copy of each original sized-photo (up to 16 MB each for pros) as well as each large, medium, small, thumb, and tiny display size of each photo. SmugMuggers often have hundreds of photos in a gallery. You do the math.

Of course, that raises other questions as well... copying over exif? Captions? Keywords? Comments? Making sure people know the photo will have fresh PhotoRank, image pricing, etc.? It's a bit of a nasty mess all around and could make our bottom line a lot less pleasant in a hurry. It's in our customers' best interests for us to be profitable without raising our prices, so in my mind it really all comes down to your observation "I also know that it is not preferable from SM's standpoint".

We hardly ever say never when it comes to feature requests, but hopefully this offers some insight as to why this one doesn't top our list?

That sounds like an excellent argument for implementing virtual galleries.

Rhuarc · June 20, 2007

iamback wrote:

That sounds like an excellent argument for implementing virtual galleries.

pengrus · August 8, 2009

iamback wrote:

That sounds like an excellent argument for implementing virtual galleries.

i did some search and found this thread talking about the Virtual Galleries.

Wow, two years have passed and the Virtual Gallery feature still has not implemented!

This just sounds too dumb:

Smugmug wastes those valuable disk space to host millions of duplicated photos,
Smuger users waste thousands of hours trying to upload duplicate photos just to make "the best of" sort of virtual gallery

When I contact Smugmug customer service, they usually reply within an hour. Why can't they spend some time to implement this most useful feature? In today's technology, this is just not acceptable...

We all love smugmug, but why this feature request is not taken seriously?

Andy · August 8, 2009

pengrus wrote:

Wow, two years have passed and the Virtual Gallery feature still has not implemented!

No, but we've done dozens and dozens of other asked-for things.

We all love smugmug, but why this feature request is not taken seriously?

It is. It's on the short-list of things to get to next. Hang in there

pengrus · August 8, 2009

Great to hear that. Thank you!

Dave Jr · August 9, 2009

I am in the process of moving my images here from pbase and was very surprised to learn that this is one feature that pbase has always offered, and smugmug still does not. Smugmug is far superior to pbase in most every way and I appreciate the many features offered here, that is why I am switching.

That said, I think many people like to maintain a favorites gallery. Also, with macro, flora, landscapes, etc...many of these shots would appear in a particular travel gallery, but it would be nice to able to copy them to an all-inclusive macro gallery, or landscapes gallery, etc. On pbase, you simply select images and copy them to another gallery. I assume they must be using virtual galleries, as these copies do not affect your usage.

I am hopeful that this feature will be added soon. I am really enjoying the site so far!

HokkaidoStu · August 10, 2009

C'mon Smugmug. How hard can this be?

I can't believe this simple feature is on free sites like Flickr but not on a paid site like Smugmug.

HokkaidoStu · August 10, 2009

pengrus wrote:

This just sounds too dumb:
Smugmug wastes those valuable disk space to host millions of duplicated photos,

Smuger users waste thousands of hours trying to upload duplicate photos just to make "the best of" sort of virtual gallery

Yup, it sounds dumb. Completely and utterly so.