New image sizes?

[jfriend]

Has this (http://friend.smugmug.com/help/display-quality)been announced yet? It's in the help system. By test, it seems to apply to newly uploaded or freshly rotated images.

BTW, this new functionality is very awesome!

http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/208553073-O.jpg

[Sheaf]

It's just part of what we released last night. We will be making a full announcement soon detailing all the changes.

[jfriend]

It's just part of what we released last night. We will be making a full announcement soon detailing all the changes.

Is there any method for getting this to apply to existing galleries other than a double rotate of all images in the gallery?

[Andy]

BTW, this new functionality is very awesome!


:nod
Here we go, XL3 down to Tiny thumbnail :clap
http://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-X3-2.jpghttp://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-X2-2.jpghttp://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-XL-2.jpghttp://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-L-2.jpghttp://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-M-2.jpghttp://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-S-2.jpghttp://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-Th-2.jpghttp://nancyrose.smugmug.com/photos/207810133-Ti-2.jpg

[jfriend]

Here we go, XL3 down to Tiny thumbnail

Awesome, awesome, awesome! Really changes the way Smugmug images look on bigger screens!

[Andy]

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-X3.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-X2.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-XL.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-L.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-M.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-S.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-Th.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/88694459-Ti.jpg

[Sheaf]

Is there any method for getting this to apply to existing galleries other than a double rotate of all images in the gallery?

Currently, no. Sorry! If there was an easy way to do it in bulk, our servers would have some serious problems. But we don't want it to be a chore either for those set on getting full functionality of it on their site. I'm sure we will be discussing it at length this week at SmugMug HQ.

[DavidTO]

BTW, this new functionality is very awesome!


Jfriend, the master of understatement. :wink



:clap WTG, Smuggy!

[jfriend]

Currently, no. Sorry! If there was an easy way to do it in bulk, our servers would have some serious problems. But we don't want it to be a chore either for those set on getting full functionality of it on their site. I'm sure we will be discussing it at length this week at SmugMug HQ.

I understand and appreciate the server load issue. The work-around of double rotating is twice as bad on server load since it will regenerate all sizes twice. If you had a more efficient (for you) workaround, I'd use that.

I, for one, would be fine with an opt-in feature for the new sizes where you guys queue my request up and process it "when the servers have cycles" which is hopefully sometime in the next few days and probably in the middle of the night. I only need to do about 10% of my galleries.

[AnneMcBean]

I understand and appreciate the server load issue. The work-around of double rotating is twice as bad on server load since it will regenerate all sizes twice. If you had a more efficient (for you) workaround, I'd use that.

I, for one, would be fine with an opt-in feature for the new sizes where you guys queue my request up and process it "when the servers have cycles" which is hopefully sometime in the next few days and probably in the middle of the night. I only need to do about 10% of my galleries.
To be clear, anything that generates new display images or a new original image will generate the SmugMungous sizes as well. This includes adding/removing watermarks, cropping, color effects, replace this photo, or rotating. You're right though, seems like it would have twice the load of a simple opt-in. :dunno

-Anne

[Sheaf]

I understand and appreciate the server load issue. The work-around of double rotating is twice as bad on server load since it will regenerate all sizes twice.

That's true, but until we find an alternative solution this saves us from having the site bog down immensely when someone with 50,000 photos pulls the trigger.

[Baldy]

Hey John and David, who never miss a trick and catch things the moment we release 'em :D:

We've only worked out the display of large sizes in lightbox so far, but the way it does it is pretty trick, we think. If you're viewing a gallery in SmugMug style and click on the medium image, lightbox auto chooses the size that fits your browser area. Expand your browser or shrink it and it selects a different image size. Send the URL you see in your address bar and notice that it ends in A-LB. Send that URL to someone and it will auto choose for them too.

Notice on the top of lightbox where you used to be able to choose S M L. Now you have the extra sizes (no surprise) but also Auto too.

On our biggest days we can get as many as a million photos now and so scaling this was a major concern. And we get 'em in spikes. And how to go back and make these larger sizes for the existing 210 million photos?

You'll wanna read Don's blog on how we process these now and plan to handle the Sunday night spikes.

Anne has a whole bunch of updated help sections about to go live.

[jfriend]

Hey John and David, who never miss a trick and catch things the moment we release 'em :D:

We've only worked out the display of large sizes in lightbox so far, but the way it does it is pretty trick, we think. If you're viewing a gallery in SmugMug style and click on the medium image, lightbox auto chooses the size that fits your browser area. Expand your browser or shrink it and it selects a different image size. Send the URL you see in your address bar and notice that it ends in A-LB. Send that URL to someone and it will auto choose for them too.

Notice on the top of lightbox where you used to be able to choose S M L. Now you have the extra sizes (no surprise) but also Auto too.

On our biggest days we can get as many as a million photos now and so scaling this was a major concern. And we get 'em in spikes. And how to go back and make these larger sizes for the existing 210 million photos?

You'll wanna read Don's blog on how we process these now and plan to handle the Sunday night spikes.

Anne has a whole bunch of updated help sections about to go live.

Auto LB is great. I love it. I had noticed that it picked a larger size. I didn't realize you had a new "auto" URL. For folks with large screens, that's really, really cool and kind of a neat URL to share instead of a direct image link.

Will the "smugmug view" show larger than an "M" sized image on a large screen if those sizes are enabled? I don't have a large screen right now to try it on.

You are obviously right to protect the load of your systems.

At the same time, the double rotate work-around that is both inefficent (for your server load) and kind of a pain for your users doesn't seem like the best place to be either.

On the other hand, maybe the users who know about it and care will use the double rotate work-around and then the whole issue will just go away in a few weeks.

[devbobo]

At the same time, the double rotate work-around that is both inefficent (for your server load) and kind of a pain for your users doesn't seem like the best place to be either.

On the other hand, maybe the users who know about it and care will use the double rotate work-around and then the whole issue will just go away in a few weeks.

John,

For pro users, they can just reapply a watermark to achieve the same result.

David

[marlof]

Right now I can set the max image size to either X3Large or Original. Will there be a setting to allow nothing more than Large? I like to upload originals to my galleries (for safe keeping), but only allow large viewing by visitors. If this is not possible, I'll have to create double galleries, one with 800x800s and one private one with originals.

[Andy]

Will the "smugmug view" show larger than an "M" sized image on a large screen if those sizes are enabled? I don't have a large screen right now to try it on.


Stay tuned, SmugMungous is in phase 1 now :)

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=32241

[jfriend]

John,

For pro users, they can just reapply a watermark to achieve the same result.

David

I saw that in Anne's message. If you're pro and using a watermark, that is the easiest way because it is only one user operation rather than two. It also has the benefit that your galleries are never in a compromised state during the transition like they are when you do the double rotate.

I'm guessing that pro+watermark is only a minotiry portion of the overall galleries in your service though. Anyway, I don't mean to make a big deal out of this. It's in the "would be nice" category. I've already double rotated six of my galleries and will do a few more in the next few days.

[jfriend]

Stay tuned, SmugMungous is in phase 1 now :)

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=32241

This discussion was so long ago (April) that I'd forgotten what was discussed in Baldy's summary (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=292043&postcount=31) mid-thread. That stuff will be cool when it gets here. I'll be anxiously waiting for phase two I guess.

[Andy]

This discussion was so long ago (April) that I'd forgotten what was discussed in Baldy's summary (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=292043&postcount=31) mid-thread. That stuff will be cool when it gets here. I'll be anxiously waiting for phase two I guess.
Hey, we're 25 peeps doing the work of 50 :) we'll get there :lol3

AFAIK nobody has something like this. Nobody.

[Baldy]

This discussion was so long ago (April) that I'd forgotten what was discussed in Baldy's summary (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=292043&postcount=31) mid-thread. That stuff will be cool when it gets here. I'll be anxiously waiting for phase two I guess.We're telliing ourselves here (well, maybe the UI and theme guys aren't) that the really gut-busting stuff that requires 200 extra terrabytes of storage :whew and a huge step-up in image processing is behind us.

It wasn't so difficult to make lightbox stretch as the image got larger, but there's a lot of work to do on the themes to make them stretch.

[jfriend]

We're telling ourselves here (well, maybe the UI and theme guys aren't) that the really gut-busting stuff that requires 200 extra terrabytes of storage :whew and a huge step-up in image processing is behind us.

It wasn't so difficult to make lightbox stretch as the image got larger, but there's a lot of work to do on the themes to make them stretch.

I'm glad the heavy lifting is now behind you. The UI possibilities going forward are exciting. Ahh yes, the themes. That would be a bunch of work to adapt to a bunch of new image sizes.

From the day I first messed with Smugmug CSS, I found it a bit surprising that the CSS for the themes was just covered with hard coded widths. They aren't even use symbolic constants or variables just pure hard-coded numbers. It seems like such a giant step backwards in screen layout technology, particular in support of AJAX-capable dynamic screens.

I wish there was a more extensible way to solve this problem than just making separate hard-coded width versions of every single theme for every single discrete display image size. It feels to me like themes (and thus Smugmug) are slowly getting backed into a corner that will make even more dynamic screens (with other optional elements or dynamic layout elements in the main screen layout) more and more difficult in the future.

[JenGrace]

Right now I can set the max image size to either X3Large or Original. Will there be a setting to allow nothing more than Large? I like to upload originals to my galleries (for safe keeping), but only allow large viewing by visitors. If this is not possible, I'll have to create double galleries, one with 800x800s and one private one with originals.

I'd like an answer to this as well... :ear

[jfriend]

I'd like an answer to this as well... :ear

Hmmm, does your customize gallery dialog not look like this:

http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/208787179-O.jpg

I wonder if this finer granularity is a "pro" only feature (I have a pro account)? I can't really tell if that's the case from this help page (http://jfriend.smugmug.com/help/picture-storage).

[Andy]

Hmmm, does your customize gallery dialog not look like this:

http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/208787179-O.jpg

I wonder if this finer granularity is a "pro" only feature (I have a pro account)? I can't really tell if that's the case from this help page (http://jfriend.smugmug.com/help/picture-storage).
It is indeed a pro-only feature right now.

[AnneMcBean]

It is indeed a pro-only feature right now.

Standard and power users can still block original viewing (and only original viewing) and pro users can still block everything down to, and including, the Large size.

-Anne

[{JT}]

You are correct, integrating the new image sizes into existing styles will be a challenge. Most of the CSS code you see is legacy code left there since our first days 5 years ago - when themes and cobranding (now customizing) were not in the game plan. There is a plan in motion to clean up a lot of current code, enabling the new larger sizes and themes to work, exciting times indeed.


I'm glad the heavy lifting is now behind you. The UI possibilities going forward are exciting. Ahh yes, the themes. That would be a bunch of work to adapt to a bunch of new image sizes.

From the day I first messed with Smugmug CSS, I found it a bit surprising that the CSS for the themes was just covered with hard coded widths. They aren't even use symbolic constants or variables just pure hard-coded numbers. It seems like such a giant step backwards in screen layout technology, particular in support of AJAX-capable dynamic screens.

I wish there was a more extensible way to solve this problem than just making separate hard-coded width versions of every single theme for every single discrete display image size. It feels to me like themes (and thus Smugmug) are slowly getting backed into a corner that will make even more dynamic screens (with other optional elements or dynamic layout elements in the main screen layout) more and more difficult in the future.

[Andy]

You are correct, integrating the new image sizes into existing styles will be a challenge. Most of the CSS code you see is legacy code left there since our first days 5 years ago - when themes and cobranding (now customizing) were not in the game plan. There is a plan in motion to clean up a lot of current code, enabling the new larger sizes and themes to work, exciting times indeed.
Get back to work :whip

[seth]

I don't know if the idea was to get more pro users, but the new sizes put me over the top. I just upgraded to a pro account. :-)

[JenGrace]

It is indeed a pro-only feature right now.

When you say "right now," does that mean it will be a power feature again soon?

Not that I think many people would want to lift my pictures, but I liked being able to block out the largest image. I know technically I can still block out the largest (original), but I'd like to block out anything larger than large. Seeing as how this was a power feature, why shouldn't it remain one? It's not that I don't appreciate the capability to show larger pics, but I just don't want to show them.

All in all I adore smugmug and the features...I mean, unlimited storage and bandwidth? (not that I use a lot of bandwidth, but still it's there...:D ) But becoming a pro user just so I can use a feature that I had as a power user doesn't really sit right with me.

[SUBMONO]

I'm also a bit alarmed about the new settings and the pro-only policy to finetune them. Even though I'm just using the standard account I don't want people to be able to view my pictures bigger than large or maybe xlarge at the most. Forcing me into x3large is, well, a little bit surprising to say the least.

Please reconsider your settings policy and also allow standard users (which I think make up the majority of all smugug accounts) to decide how big they want to present their photographs.

Thanks,
Sven

[jogle]

Like Sven, I'm a power user that is shocked that my site has suddenly changed from being able to restrict people to Large images to them having access to x3 sized images for any new galleries.

I was going to upload a bunch of recent shoots tonight to try it out, but there is no way I will do that until my larger then large sizes are protected.

[jfriend]

When you say "right now," does that mean it will be a power feature again soon?

Not that I think many people would want to lift my pictures, but I liked being able to block out the largest image. I know technically I can still block out the largest (original), but I'd like to block out anything larger than large. Seeing as how this was a power feature, why shouldn't it remain one? It's not that I don't appreciate the capability to show larger pics, but I just don't want to show them.

All in all I adore smugmug and the features...I mean, unlimited storage and bandwidth? (not that I use a lot of bandwidth, but still it's there...:D ) But becoming a pro user just so I can use a feature that I had as a power user doesn't really sit right with me.

I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.

If you don't mind if I ask, if you aren't selling your photos, why does it bother you to let people see larger sizes on the web? Is it 100% good-ness that your viewers can take full advantage of their large screens? I realize it's conceptually a change from before, but after you think about it for awhile, isn't it purely a step forward for web viewing?

[JenGrace]

I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.

If you don't mind if I ask, if you aren't selling your photos, why does it bother you to let people see larger sizes on the web? Is it 100% good-ness that your viewers can take full advantage of their large screens? I realize it's conceptually a change from before, but after you think about it for awhile, isn't it purely a step forward for web viewing?

Hi John :wave

No, I'm not selling my photos at this point. And maybe my photos aren't good enough for people to want to steal, but I still liked having the capability to protect the larger images. Like I said before, I realize that technically I still have the ability to protect originals like I did before, but the largest display size was "Large," which is what I wanted and still do.

This point could be argued from both sides, I guess.
I say, "I want to protect anything bigger than 'Large,' like I could before."
Smugmug says, "You can still protect Originals, which is all you had before."

I think both sides could be considered valid, but for obvious reasons I'm biased towards my side. :D

[jogle]

I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.

If you don't mind if I ask, if you aren't selling your photos, why does it bother you to let people see larger sizes on the web? Is it 100% good-ness that your viewers can take full advantage of their large screens? I realize it's conceptually a change from before, but after you think about it for awhile, isn't it purely a step forward for web viewing?

I sell plenty of prints, though none through smugmug. All are stock and art prints, None of my customers trust an overseas lab and international shipping for some reason.

I have been thinking of upgrading to a pro acct for the digital downloads and watermarking but I'm holding off until I hear back about the problems I've been having with broken CSS (a whole other issue)

[SUBMONO]

Hi John,

as I see it it's not just a change in concept. It's about control. Even though I don't sell my pictures I still want to be in control of how big I present them.

And it's a big difference between a 800x600 image and a 1600x1200. Sometimes that's all it takes for some applications. And let's face it, there are people who would rather go for a "good enough" freebie (which is not free anyway, I just can't protect it anymore) than buying a pro pic.

Hi from Shanghai,
Sven

[jfriend]

I sell plenty of prints, though none through smugmug. All are stock and art prints, None of my customers trust an overseas lab and international shipping for some reason.

I have been thinking of upgrading to a pro acct for the digital downloads and watermarking but I'm holding off until I hear back about the problems I've been having with broken CSS (a whole other issue)

If you sell images/prints elsewhere (and thus don't need originals here for print orders) and just want Smugmug for small version web display, would it work to just upload smaller images in the first place? I hope you get the CSS issues figured out.

[JenGrace]

If you sell images/prints elsewhere (and thus don't need originals here for print orders) and just want Smugmug for small version web display, would it work to just upload smaller images in the first place? I hope you get the CSS issues figured out.

At the risk of sounding whiny (hey, it's past my bedtime :D ), I like storing my full size images on smugmug (unlimited storage...gotta use it), but I don't want to upload images twice. It's a small inconvenience, but still an inconvenience.

[jfriend]

Hi John,

as I see it it's not just a change in concept. It's about control. Even though I don't sell my pictures I still want to be in control of how big I present them.

And it's a big difference between a 800x600 image and a 1600x1200. Sometimes that's all it takes for some applications. And let's face it, there are people who would rather go for a "good enough" freebie (which is not free anyway, I just can't protect it anymore) than buying a pro pic.

Hi from Shanghai,
Sven

I think it's fine to ask Smugmug for more options in the standard and power accounts if that's what you think you need. Since not everything will be in the less expensive accounts, they will have to decide where to draw the line.

I'm just trying to understand why people who aren't selling their images are so concerned about someone borrowing a larger version of an image and making their own print from it? If that's costing you income then you should have a pro account and custom watermark your images so they are really protected. If that's not costing you income because you don't sell, then I wonder why it's a problem?

[jogle]

If you sell images/prints elsewhere (and thus don't need originals here for print orders) and just want Smugmug for small version web display, would it work to just upload smaller images in the first place? I hope you get the CSS issues figured out.

I like to have the full res here as I often get messages from family and friends asking for the originals. I turn off the originals protection long enough for them to grab what they want.

What would really rock my socks is being able to give them a pw or code for a specific gallery and then they can grab the originals at their leisure for that without me having to turn off and then on the protection.

I know of 2 other smugmuglers who work exactly the same way.

If it were available. I would probably set the maximum viewing size at XL. no larger

[SUBMONO]

Wow, this is a fast moving thread :D

John,

just because we're amateurs does not mean that we can't take a good picture now and then, right?

So, how would you feel as a pro when someone is not buying your photographs because he can browse millions of "free" good-enough pictures instead? And really sometimes x3large is good enough.

I agree though that smugmug has to draw the line somewhere. But I hope that this topic is still a work in progress.

Sven

[jfriend]

I like to have the full res here as I often get messages from family and friends asking for the originals. I turn off the originals protection long enough for them to grab what they want.

What would really rock my socks is being able to give them a pw or code for a specific gallery and then they can grab the originals at their leisure for that without me having to turn off and then on the protection.

I know of 2 other smugmuglers who work exactly the same way.

If it were available. I would probably set the maximum viewing size at XL. no larger

A separate password to get to large sizes would be a cool feature. Have you posted that in the feature requests thread and described how you'd use it and who else might be interested in it? It would kind of be like digital download via password instead of with money.

[marlof]

Standard and power users can still block original viewing (and only original viewing) and pro users can still block everything down to, and including, the Large size.

I don't want to sell any images, so a pro account is out of the question for me. Still I don't want my images in larger sizes than 800x800 to be up for grabs. And I don't want to watermark my images. My power account has all the other features I want, but this one annoys me a bit. I guess I'll just waste more storage space for you, by uploading two versions of my images. I would have liked a warning about this, because this means I'll have to redo an upload I did yesterday.

[jogle]

A separate password to get to large sizes would be a cool feature. Have you posted that in the feature requests thread and described how you'd use it and who else might be interested in it? It would kind of be like digital download via password instead of with money.

Yeah I saw the idea floated in a thread a while back and threw my thumbs up into the ring :)

[Nicolas_CH]

...Still I don't want my images in larger sizes than 800x800 to be up for grabs. ...

I agree. After a less pleasant incidence I became friend of blocking images to the 800x600 size - mainly to protect the people shown on the images.

I actually counted on this type of protection for this specific project (volunteer work with kids): http://ferienpassfrauenfeld.smugmug.com/

I'm not sure what I can/should do now with a pro account being out of reach for this project. Any ideas?

Best, Nicolas

[onethumb]

I wasn't part of Smugmug's decision process (I'm just a customer like you), but I think there are two ways to look at this. The other way to look at it is that previously, standard and power accounts could block the view of originals and all other sizes were visible in the web display. Exactly that is still true today, except you have an enhanced web display for viewers with larger screens.

As someone who *was* part of SmugMug's decision, I can tell you that we never even considered this angle for a single second.

We definitely thought we were adding features for our customers, not taking them away. Standard and Power accounts could only block 'Originals' before, and that's still true today. We spent a lot of time over the months talking about permissions and how to best handle them - but not this scenario. We've been completely taken by surprise. :)

We'll definitely noodle on this a bit and see what we come up with. Thanks for letting us know how you feel.

If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

Thanks!

[Nicolas_CH]

...
If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?


I like the X-X2-X3 Large feature very much - it's great for:
- my private Standard Account
- my business Professional Account

However, it is truly a problem that I cannot block the X-X2-X3 Large for my third site, the volunteer work on a Standard Account: I wanted to protect the people on these images which I cannot anymore.

Best, Nicolas

[Baldy]

Wow, this is an interesting development, at least to me. I was so caught up in the pressure we've been under to provide larger sizes that at least I didn't really consider this scenario. Thanks for letting us know about this.

We have quite an internal debate going on at the moment, and this thread is the topic.

It isn't our intent to cause you to upgrade. It really is all about making you and your visitors happy, responding to competitive pressure, and following the trend of monitors (the cheapest iMac you can buy has 1680 pixels and we've been hearing continuously how forlorn our Large size looks in the middle of it).

I'm just one of the SmugMug team and I don't yet know if my opinion is shared by the others. But I have to admit that I cringe at the thought of visitors viewing your galleries on the monitors Dell and Apple are now shipping and getting the impression that SmugMug is archaic because it has no XL size. The 3 or 4 of our competitors that we care most about all have XL and we hear all day long about how much their visitors love viewing that size.

On the other hand, we have a lot of respect for your privacy concerns and appreciate you sharing them here. We turned the company upside down to do SmugIslands as a result of a thread like this.

Thanks!
Baldy

[jfriend]

I like the X-X2-X3 Large feature very much - it's great for:
- my private Standard Account
- my business Professional Account

However, it is truly a problem that I cannot block the X-X2-X3 Large for my third site, the volunteer work on a Standard Account: I wanted to protect the people on these images which I cannot anymore.

Best, Nicolas

Nicolas, when I want to protect images of people (I take photos of young kid's sports teams), I use password protected galleries. Inside the password protected galleries, I can offer the full web viewing experience with larger sizes. I just share the password in the same communication that has the gallery URL and it works great. If there are multiple galleries for an event, I just give them all the same password and the viewers only have to enter it once for access to all the galleries (a nice Smugmug feature). Have you considered this option as something that's both doable at any account level and better protection?

If you aren't allowing prints, then you could also just upload 800x800 images to limit the size. If you are allowing prints, then you aren't really getting much protection because anyone who wants to see high res images can just order a good sized print for a few bucks.

[Nicolas_CH]

Nicolas, when I want to protect images of people (I take photos of young kid's sports teams), I use password protected galleries. ...Have you considered this option as something that's both doable at any account level and better protection?
...
If you aren't allowing prints, then you could also just upload 800x800 images to limit the size. If you are allowing prints, then you aren't really getting much protection ...

Thanx for your feedback - it's what I would do if a normal way of communication would be possible.
These kids, however, join the holiday activities through their schools. There's no direct communication between us - the holiday activity team - and the kids ... making the password protection unusable.

You're right, prints aren't allowed for this reason.

I've uploaded the full quality for two reasons:
- I don't want to resize all images since Smugmug is doing an excellent job on it (and: too many - haven't got time to resize/crop)
- instead of sending individual emails with the requested original picture I'll open the web site for a day/weekend or so for the download of originals. I'll know in a few weeks whether this is a good way to go or not.

Best, Nicolas

[aktse]

Don't forget about Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira from the Flickr incident? After all, her 72dpi, 1200×800 pixels images were clearly large enough to use for making prints. And yes, flickr is a completely different beast and her photos were easily found. However, the various XL sizes are large enough for prints. I think she's now upload max 800 pixels across (maybe wrong on this point).


http://aktse.smugmug.com/photos/208907547-M.jpg

The other photo hosting places offer very-large sizes, but at least one of them even gives the basic account the ability to lock the very large and original.

And yes, there is a work-around for smugmug. People can resize before they upload, make galleries private, password-protect, SmugIsland, turn off photorank, etc. The question is... should the standard and power accounts be required to do so? :dunno

note: I'm a power user and I know that hundreds of my photos are taken and used on facebook/myspace, etc. without my permission. I don't like it, but accept it since they're only sized large.

[jfriend]

Don't forget about Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira from the Flickr incident? After all, her 72dpi, 1200×800 pixels images were clearly large enough to use for making prints. And yes, flickr is a completely different beast and her photos were easily found. However, the various XL sizes are large enough for prints. I think she's now upload max 800 pixels across (maybe wrong on this point).

The other photo hosting places offer very-large sizes, but at least one of them even gives the basic account the ability to lock the very large and original.

And yes, there is a work-around for smugmug. People can resize before they upload, make galleries private, password-protect, SmugIsland, turn off photorank, etc. The question is... should the standard and power accounts be required to do so? :dunno

note: I'm a power user and I know that hundreds of my photos are taken and used on facebook/myspace, etc. without my permission. I don't like it, but accept it since they're only sized large.


If folks really, really need this, then definitely let Smugmug know. But, even if they make it available to standard and power accounts, I hope you all seriously consider the trade-offs involved in using it.

You are seriously compromising your viewers experience by limiting them to smaller images if you restrict galleries to Large size only. As Baldy said, when you put one of Smugmug's large images in a lightbox on a large screen, it looks downright puny and the viewer is definitely not getting the maximum viewing experience. Try looking at a full screen slideshow view on a large screen in a gallery that limits you to larges. It's downright ugly (because images have to be upsized from the large one - they can't be based on the larger sizes in order to respect your limitations).

In a short while, Smugmug will probably have the new flash-based slideshows working for regular gallery slideshow views and boy that will be spectacular when it can use the new large sizes on a big screen. Do you really want to deprive all that from your viewers?

If you're not a pro and aren't making money from your images, what is to you if someone borrows an image occasionally? I know it feels weird and you wish it wasn't happening. But, do you really want to seriously compromise your intended viewer's experience just to protect against something that costs you nothing? I definitely vote no. I want my viewers to have a world class experience. If someone borrows some of my images for an unintended purpose - oh well. It doesn't actually cost me anything and it's certainly not a reason for me to penalize my legitimate viewers.

If you are a pro and do have money at stake, then you really ought to do a custom watermark (which has always required a pro account) for real protection without having to compromise the viewing sizes available.

[cabbey]

:clap :barb :bow

To be clear, anything that generates new display images or a new original image will generate the SmugMungous sizes as well. This includes adding/removing watermarks, cropping, color effects, replace this photo, or rotating. You're right though, seems like it would have twice the load of a simple opt-in. :dunno

-Anne

Use the new smugmug.images.rotate api and do a rotation of 0 or 360 degrees. This does the invalidation and only requires one rebuild. Which gets you to something like this (http://cabbey.smugmug.com/gallery/816962#208908570-A-LB) in pretty short order. (sorry that's the best I can do to compare with Andy's adorable daughter.)

[SUBMONO]

Why can't we, the users decide what size we want to present our image in? What's wrong with this?

If you want to go for x3large, go for it but give everyone else the chance to do as he or she likes. Is it really so hard to let people decide for themselves? I like my images restricted to large or max. extra large.

I'm sure that most people having a pro account won't mind if the rest is having this feature too. You go for a pro account when you want watermarking and full control over your online business.

I don't know but this whole thing does not feel right.

Sven

[jogle]

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

Thanks!

Hi, I have a Power Level, just trying to sort some bugs out before I jump for Pro (reasons in my other post above). My girlfriend has standard level acct.

This is important to me, Like I said in a post above. I would show XL or maybe above for galleries of friends, parties and some of my landscapes that look good big. I'd restrict images to large for street photography or for proof galleries for the odd paid shoot. It's so important that I would think long and hard about upgrading to pro or going back to using a php browser on my hosted machine for some of my galleries.

I've also had a play with some of my images and the new sizes and quickly realized that I'm going to have to spend a lot of extra effort in sharpening and noise reduction to make sure they look great at the largest sizes. I've got a 5d and nice lenses but you can get away with a lot when you are in a rush and (and maybe a tad hungover) to get 80-100 images out of a party/event for viewing the next day. My girlfriend also just commented/commanded that I'm not allowed to put up any images of her on the web at that size untouched ;)

I don't see why you can't give full control over sizes to all customers. It seems like it wouldn't mean a whole lot of extra server load or be one of the money making features that make it pro only worthy.

If you start to use flash slideshows I would urge you to consider having separate size settings for jpegs vs flash, I know that someone determined can take a screenshot of the flash display, but like right click protection, it's extra hoops for them to jump through.

Thanks for listening, I really appreciate that you do, it's why I'm here and recommend smugmug to everyone who asks

[wellman]

Know what's better than a cute baby? A really big cute baby (http://www.wellmanphoto.com/gallery/3605962#205149547-A-LB)! Way to go SmugMug! W00t! :thumb

[JenGrace]

One Thumb -
I'm a power account user. I'm sure that some day I'm going to have a Pro account. I want to support Smugmug. But right now the issue is not the money, but the time to put into it. When I get a pro account I want to do it right. A Power account offers me everything I want right now except the ability to block everything bigger than Large. I know that we can still block originals, same as before. But from the other angle it's not quite the same because we can't block anything bigger than Large. Thanks for your concern in the matter. And thank you for offering the smugmungous sizes! You all do so much to make this place great. It's a feature I'm sure I'll use for some galleries, but not all (hopefully if all goes well). :):

John -
I know this concept is still hard for you, but just because we don't sell prints and make profit doesn't mean we want it to be easy for people to upload and make copies of our pictures. For me, it has nothing to do with profit. I don't want my images being "borrowed." To me that is stealing. Maybe it's not stealing money out of my pocket, but it is taking my pictures without my permission (stealing!). Maybe it happens anyways, maybe it doesn't happen at all (to me), but I'd rather not make it easier by offering up bigger sizes.

[SUBMONO]

I know this concept is still hard for you, but just because we don't sell prints and make profit doesn't mean we want it to be easy for people to upload and make copies of our pictures. For me, it has nothing to do with profit. I don't want my images being "borrowed." To me that is stealing. Maybe it's not stealing money out of my pocket, but it is taking my pictures without my permission (stealing!). Maybe it happens anyways, maybe it doesn't happen at all (to me), but I'd rather not make it easier by offering up bigger sizes.

Well said Jen!

I'm running a German exhibition design company in Shanghai and this place is teaching me more lessons about copycats stealing ideas and designs (and pictures) than I would have ever cared to learn. I'm so tired of it!

So even though I'm not making any money from my pictures they are still mine and I like to decide what is happening with them. I still believe that not everything in the world always has to be about money.

Smugmug is a great place, that's why we're all here and I'm sure things can be sorted out, right, powers that be? :D

Sven

[cmason]

Love the new size folks!..I see lots of threads complaining, so thought I would toss a bone here to let you know that your hard work is appreciated!!

now...just get them to work in Smugmug view [tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?] :D

OK two minor requests:

1) I see a dramatic difference in image size if I 'F11" the screen, getting rid of all the icons and address line in either FF or IE...is there anyway to put a reminder along the 'toolbar' in Lightbox or perhaps even in the flyout box, to remind the user to 'press F11'?

2) I expect you are going to get lots of requests for crops and rotates, I am guilty of that. However, I am in no real rush, I can be patient. How about providing an automated update, thru "scheduling" gallery updates?

I would be happy to request that a few of my galleries be updated to new sizes, and I would be happy to wait say a week for it to happen. This way, you can schedule the work when your servers have lower loads, like early morning. Then you can just auto rotate or crop away, and in a week (or two?), I have shiny new sizes!

[Andy]

Love the new size folks!..I see lots of threads complaining, so thought I would toss a bone here to let you know that your hard work is appreciated!!

now...just get them to work in Smugmug view [tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?] :D

{JT} is working on it :D

OK two minor requests:

1) I see a dramatic difference in image size if I 'F11" the screen, getting rid of all the icons and address line in either FF or IE...is there anyway to put a reminder along the 'toolbar' in Lightbox or perhaps even in the flyout box, to remind the user to 'press F11'?

2) I expect you are going to get lots of requests for crops and rotates, I am guilty of that. However, I am in no real rush, I can be patient. How about providing an automated update, thru "scheduling" gallery updates?

I would be happy to request that a few of my galleries be updated to new sizes, and I would be happy to wait say a week for it to happen. This way, you can schedule the work when your servers have lower loads, like early morning. Then you can just auto rotate or crop away, and in a week (or two?), I have shiny new sizes!Thanks for the feedback and requests, we really appreciate it :)

BTW, the F11 thing, that's "auto" at work - we sense more real estate, so we bump the size for you. Neat.

[Montec]

I personally think this is a huge upgrade to SM. I use a 22" and 20" Dell monitors side by side and the images look sooo much better displayed on these in larger formats. The Auto feature rocks!

Thanks to the team for the hard work and innovation

:clap

Maybe allow watermarking for all accounts? This does not affect the Standard or Power accounts profits but it will probably lead to more prints for SM with the larger sizes available for viewing and protects the images.

Just a thought

[renstar]

If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

Thanks!
I'm a power user and I would like to be able to set the viewing limit from large on up (maybe not restrict it to medium like pros can do, if that is a compromise). It seems like large was small enough to only make it somewhat worth it to infringe copyright. When you can get something that is half the size of the original, it becomes more reasonable. An analogous example would be those 30 second clips on iTunes. If they had full songs the whole time, why would I bother paying (or in my case, contacting me and asking me for a high-res version).

-r

Ps - i love that I can now display panoramas at a reasonable size. Large used to be too small and original was far too big.

[jfrancho]

Let me get this straight. The 3x/Original is only for freshly uploaded files, correct? And as long as I upload 800px. or so, Origianl is still "actual" dimensions, correct?

Personally, I like the idea of larger sizes, but limiting the functionality for me (a longtime standard user) pretty much sucks. Sneeking this under the radar is not cool. I'm going to have to at least consider other options before staying with you.

You guys have been great, but this is a piss poor implementation of what could be a great feature.

~JF

[Aaron Jors]

I currently have a power account and upload photos with the maximum size of 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels high. I do this to limit what others can do with my photos as everyone has access to save my pictures.

If in the future I decided that I wanted to try and sell my pictures and uploaded original size photos I would have a big problem with viewers being able to access the larger sizes of XL2 and XL3. At some point I would probably upgrade to a pro account but in the interim it would be a problem.

There is no doubt that no matter what you do to protect your pictures people are going to use them without your permission but I want to make this as difficult as possilbe for people to do even if I'm not selling my pictures.

I also believe that the trend for bigger and bigger monitors is going to slow down and eventually the standard for most people will be a 22" or 24" widescreen monitor. I just don't think it is practical for most people to have anything larger than a 24" monitor. Also in my personal opinion viewing and image at 1024 wide is large enough that the viewer can have a plesant viewing experinece. It may not fill the entire screen of a 24" monitor but you can still get a good view of the picture.

Just my .02 cents.

[renstar]

You are seriously compromising your viewers experience by limiting them to smaller images if you restrict galleries to Large size only.
And that is my choice as the owner of those photos. Why do you care anyway? As a pro user, I don't see how you have a dog in this fight.

In a short while, Smugmug will probably have the new flash-based slideshows working for regular gallery slideshow views and boy that will be spectacular when it can use the new large sizes on a big screen. Do you really want to deprive all that from your viewers?
Then I can turn it back on if I want to. Its not like once that flag is set, it is set permanently. For now, such a display doesn't exist. At some point it might and it might make more sense to take advantage of it.

If you're not a pro and aren't making money from your images, what is to you if someone borrows an image occasionally? I know it feels weird and you wish it wasn't happening.
Because it is against the law? Because it violates my rights as a content creator? Because just because I let you view it doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it, and it is not wrong of me to do what I want to try and stop you.

I don't mean to sound so hostile, but you are in this thread campaigning against people that are asking smugmug for a reasonable amount of control over their users viewing experience, and such a change would not even effect you. If you don't want to view things at smaller than large size, then leave those sites when you come across them, the same way i leave sites that make music or disable browser functionality.

-r

[deadsmiley]

.

If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

Thanks!

I am a long time Smugmug customer and this entire situation really unnerves me. I have a power level account and although I do some professional work it's not enough to justify having a Pro account.

I upload all of my images to my SmugMug site for two reasons.

If I am not at home I can still access the orignal images if I need them for any reason
They are backed up and protected from loss due to my own home PC failing.The ability to protect my images from theft or unwanted printing is extremely important to me. However, I don't like to password protect everything as it makes the site look uninteresting. The ability to restrict image sizes to no more than the traditional "large" worked perfect for me.

This whole situation is very disheartening to me and I really cannot upload any more images until the ability to restrict down to "large" is restored. That being the said, if it is not restored I cannot continue to maintain an account with SmugMug.

[jfriend]

And that is my choice as the owner of those photos. Why do you care anyway? As a pro user, I don't see how you have a dog in this fight. I've said that if you want this, you should ask for it. I wrote that message because I just wanted to make sure everyone was making an informed decision and understood that this is a tradeoff. If you want to prevent piracy of larger sizes, then you have to deny your viewers access to those larger sizes in their web experience or use pro-watermarking. That is your choice. I don't care what you choose (unless I wanted to be one of your viewers). I just wasn't sure that everyone asking for this understood what they were giving up by limiting the web viewing size. If you do understand and still want to do it, then go for it.

[Andy]

I am a long time Smugmug customer and this entire situation really unnerves me. I have a power level account and although I do some professional work it's not enough to justify having a Pro account.

I upload all of my images to my SmugMug site for two reasons.

If I am not at home I can still access the orignal images if I need them for any reason
They are backed up and protected from loss due to my own home PC failing.The ability to protect my images from theft or unwanted printing is extremely important to me. However, I don't like to password protect everything as it makes the site look uninteresting. The ability to restrict image sizes to no more than the traditional "large" worked perfect for me.

This whole situation is very disheartening to me and I really cannot upload any more images until the ability to restrict down to "large" is restored. That being the said, if it is not restored I cannot continue to maintain an account with SmugMug.Thanks for your plain-talk - we wouldn't want it any other way.

We're discussing this internally and hope to come to a decision point soon.

[BBones]

personally I like the feature, but I don't like it as a default. I use Star Explorer to upload presently due to the massive amount of photos I need to post. As it stands I already have more then my fair share of people stealing photos off my site (yes I have protection and watermarking turned on and people are still taking the PROOF's). With the smaller proof and the larger sizes availalble I'm not as happy. I am having to go through and manually alter the size options to "large" instead of everything under "Original"

[misnoma]

If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

Thanks!

I'm a Power account user who would very much like to be able to still restrict back to something smaller than XL3.

Cheers

[caroline]

If you wouldn't mind, and are reading this thread, would you mind letting me know two things:

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?
Hello onethumb,
I'm responding here in part because it looks like this thread is getting a lot of views and not really so many responses :(, and also because I have a slightly different view ?

I have a pro account which gives me all I could wish for (except for £ sterling shopping cart), and a power level which I use for 'other' purposes.

I have no doubt that if I currently had just the power level account only, I would wish to exercise some more control over the image sizes, and also I generally echo the sentiments of Renstar's post above re unauthorized usage.

However, if I was a potential new customer, and could actually find my way around all of this prior to signing up at all, then I would go for the Pro level account because of the protection and control it would give me.

I truly believe that SmugMug offers exceptional value for money, and considering the amount of $$$$ spent on equipment $150 a year is peanuts to protect those precious images.

(I have a long-standing gripe with anyone who "borrows" my images without the courtesy of a request - I just love to give them to those who ask almost as much as selling them.)

Caroline
smugmugmonday.blogspot,com

[mdraughn]

I use custom rendering to generate images for display in another web site. I have originals turned off, so any custom image larger than 800x600 (900x750 would be ideal for me) would be blurry because it was upsized from the Large image, I think.

If I now enable XL sizes, will the custom rendering engine generate larger-than-large sizes cleanly from the original? Or do I have to do one of the regeneration tricks so that it can generate the larger size from the XL images?

(I tried just testing it, but I'm having trouble judging what I'm seeing.)

Pro account, if that makes a difference.

[lempinet]

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)? Hi! I am new to smugmug, but already upped over 5k pictures. I thought its great that I can upload my original size for backup and to have them handy, but restrict viewing to L. I was shocked to see this function gone and I think I will stop uploading anymore pictures till this is sorted out.

I think Standard Users should at least be able to choose between the former L and X3L as biggest viewing size. I would go for a Power account if I could then chosse all sizes, since I would like XL as biggest viewing size for some galleries.

Going Pro just to get back the restriction to L is not an option for me.

Kristof

[AnneMcBean]

I use custom rendering to generate images for display in another web site. I have originals turned off, so any custom image larger than 800x600 (900x750 would be ideal for me) would be blurry because it was upsized from the Large image, I think.

If I now enable XL sizes, will the custom rendering engine generate larger-than-large sizes cleanly from the original? Or do I have to do one of the regeneration tricks so that it can generate the larger size from the XL images?

(I tried just testing it, but I'm having trouble judging what I'm seeing.)

Pro account, if that makes a difference.

I believe that we custom render from the largest size you have allowed. So if you allow XL, we'll custom render from that.

Basically, we don't want people to be able to get more quality pixels than you allow them. If you limit them to 800 pixel images (larges) we don't want them to be able to manipulate the url and get larger sizes.

Make sense? I'd have to look into it further to double-check, but I think that's how we do it! :D

-Anne

[Alan M. Carroll]

I would like to make another request to have some hover text on the page in discussion that specifies what size the image actually is. For instance, if you put the mouse on the "Copy Link" box you get a status message or hover text of "600x400" or whatever. I use a D70 and a T-10, which means sometimes Medium is 600x400 and sometimes 600x450. Right now I have to click through, right click for "Properties" to get the size so that I can embed the link correctly.

[underexposed]

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

this is important to me. i'm a standard account holder.

[Andy]

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

this is important to me. i'm a standard account holder.
:wave welcome! Can you elaborate :ear

[seth]

I'm trying to double rotate a few of my galleries to get the new sizes generated, but the rotate operation is consistently leaving out some of the photos. For example, on the rotate page, I select all of the images in a gallery of 50 photos and 6 or 7 will not rotate. Is this a known issue? Is there a workaround? Thanks.

[Andy]

I'm trying to double rotate a few of my galleries to get the new sizes generated, but the rotate operation is consistently leaving out some of the photos. For example, on the rotate page, I select all of the images in a gallery of 50 photos and 6 or 7 will not rotate. Is this a known issue? Is there a workaround? Thanks.
Hi, please email our Support Heroes with gallery link(s) and we'll check it out for you, thanks! http://www.smugmug.com/help/emailreal

[Sheaf]

I'm trying to double rotate a few of my galleries to get the new sizes generated, but the rotate operation is consistently leaving out some of the photos. For example, on the rotate page, I select all of the images in a gallery of 50 photos and 6 or 7 will not rotate. Is this a known issue? Is there a workaround? Thanks.

Out of curiousity, were you applying a rotation and then applying another rotation soon afterwards? Our servers don't like that, and will often skip the second rotation.

[cabbey]

I also believe that the trend for bigger and bigger monitors is going to slow down and eventually the standard for most people will be a 22" or 24" widescreen monitor. I just don't think it is practical for most people to have anything larger than a 24" monitor. Also in my personal opinion viewing and image at 1024 wide is large enough that the viewer can have a plesant viewing experinece. It may not fill the entire screen of a 24" monitor but you can still get a good view of the picture.

Just my .02 cents.

Ture, but the trend to higher resolutions will continue once that trend has stopped. In a few years those 24" screens will likely have 200+ pixels per inch resolution. Meaning that 1024 pixel wide image you feel is "large enough" will be ~5" across. Higher and higher resolution displays show up every quarter. The flat panel I'm typing this on has higher resolution than the first color printer I bought back in the late 80s. There are already displays in the wild with 150+ ppi. Readily available displays at 133 ppi are easy to come by.

[BBones]

something I noticed today. I changed a gallery from "Protected" and "Large" to "Not Protected" and "Original" and the new XL sizes do not show up as options. This is a new gallery however though that did originally have the XL options

[Allen]

something I noticed today. I changed a gallery from "Protected" and "Large" to "Not Protected" and "Original" and the new XL sizes do not show up as options. This is a new gallery however though that did originally have the XL options
The new size options will not show in the lightbox unless that photo has been
regenerated for new sizes.

[mdraughn]

I believe that we custom render from the largest size you have allowed. So if you allow XL, we'll custom render from that.

That's my understanding as well. However, I'm wondering what happens when I allow XL on a gallery with images that were uploaded before XL sizes were possible. Those images don't have XL versions, just L and O. So if I request a custom rendering that is larger than L but smaller than XL, will it up-res the L image (which will be blurry) or down-res the O image.

That is, when originals are off, is custom rendering limited by the largest allowed size or the largest existing size?

[jogle]

That's my understanding as well. However, I'm wondering what happens when I allow XL on a gallery with images that were uploaded before XL sizes were possible. Those images don't have XL versions, just L and O. So if I request a custom rendering that is larger than L but smaller than XL, will it up-res the L image (which will be blurry) or down-res the O image.

That is, when originals are off, is custom rendering limited by the largest allowed size or the largest existing size?

Here's a request for an x3 image of one that was uploaded ages ago......

http://ogle.smugmug.com/photos/191431427-X3.jpg

it shows the largest size that is already processed, Large.

Now this gallery is limited to XL size

this is what happens with a custom request res:

http://ogle.smugmug.com/photos/191431427-1000x1000.jpg

it looks like the large is uprezed

[AnneMcBean]

Here's a request for an x3 image of one that was uploaded ages ago......

http://ogle.smugmug.com/photos/191431427-X3.jpg

it shows the largest size that is already processed, Large.

Now this gallery is limited to XL size

this is what happens with a custom request res:

http://ogle.smugmug.com/photos/191431427-1000x1000.jpg

it looks like the large is uprezed

Yep, so even if you allow people to view images up to X2L, for example... we have to actually generate XL and X2L sizes for your images before they'll be used for custom rendering.

-Anne

[wslam]

When i saw the new options, I almost wanted to cry (joyful tears)!!!:clap

One thing though, a lot of people are gonna be 'rotating' the photos to get the new sizes... why not just add an 'regenerate image sizes' function and maybe give it a 'low' priority on your servers?

It will be nice to have a function to regenerate image sizes on the ENTIRE account!!! I am a PRO user with over 61k photos.....

[PBolchover]

I'm trying to double rotate a few of my galleries to get the new sizes generated, but the rotate operation is consistently leaving out some of the photos. For example, on the rotate page, I select all of the images in a gallery of 50 photos and 6 or 7 will not rotate. Is this a known issue? Is there a workaround? Thanks.

I've been getting the same issue. A couple of the photos were stuck in the rotation "processing" state for a long time, and then simply timed out.

[cmason]

I found that 'crop' worked much better. I simply selected the 'crop' function, and then choose save, without doing any crop. worked just fine and was faster than two rotations.

[mdraughn]

Yep, so even if you allow people to view images up to X2L, for example... we have to actually generate XL and X2L sizes for your images before they'll be used for custom rendering.

Thanks, I guess I'll have to add to your server load and re-gen a few galleries...

[seth]

I found that 'crop' worked much better. I simply selected the 'crop' function, and then choose save, without doing any crop. worked just fine and was faster than two rotations.

That sounds like a good idea. I'll try it out this evening. However, I'm wondering if either cropping (without any crop) or double rotating the photos causes any loss in quality. If there is any degradation in quality, it may be better just to re-upload the images.

Hopefully SmugMug will add a 'regenerate' function soon and this will all become moot.

Thanks.

[underexposed]

:wave welcome! Can you elaborate :ear
Thanks Andy. I've actually lost my credentials from before so I had to get a new login.

In the past, I've resized my photos before uploading because the Large was a tad too small, but I definitely didn't want the full size showing up for easy downloads. I've been wanting to be able to upload full size photos for archival and backup reasons just like the other users but didn't want to double upload. Now that you have the X-Large size, I'd love to be able to use that as the max viewable size and know that I have a backup that I can always get to from anywhere.

Just fyi, if it weren't for the great resizing algorithms that you chose to implement, this would all be a moot point anyways, so I just wanted to put that in as well. :thumb

[mdraughn]

Yep, so even if you allow people to view images up to X2L, for example... we have to actually generate XL and X2L sizes for your images before they'll be used for custom rendering.

I'm still having problems with custom rendering.

I added an invisible watermark to an image to force regeneration. Here's the 3X version of it, to prove that the smugmongous versions exist:

http://mdraughn.smugmug.com/photos/209446927-X3.jpg

That's 1600x1067. It's big and beautiful the way smugmug is supposed to be.

Now I'll use custom rendering to request a slightly smaller version:

http://mdraughn.smugmug.com/photos/209446927-1590x1590.jpg

Blurry. I'm beginning to think the custom rendering engine is ignoring the XL sizes.

[momwac]

Thanks for your plain-talk - we wouldn't want it any other way.

We're discussing this internally and hope to come to a decision point soon.
Andy, please throw my concerns in with those expressed by other Power and Standard users. I have two Power user accounts and was planning to add another. Let me explain my situation here. I shoot events for a local school and a youth theatre. I upload my full-size original images for the school to use in its yearbook, and we make the gallery URLs known to students and parents during the year. The school will, at some point, upgrade to a Power user account and sell prints. Having the small images available soon after the event lets the school community celebrate events and builds interest to purchase prints when we make them available (which we're waiting on in hopes that you'll implement packages and coupons soon). Next year we'll be running our own sports league; hence the plan for a new Power user account, to frontload images from this year's sporting events without making them available for sale.

But you have just made it possible for anyone to download any new image I upload and print a nice 200dpi 4x6 at Walmart -- completely undercutting the school's plans to sell images if I continue to post them. Not only that, you didn't even tell me you were doing it (no message in the account, no email, jeez no flowers or singing telegrams?). I just found out when I uploaded a bunch of new photos, glanced over the gallery, saw the new sizes, and tried to apply restrictions. WTH? Looked for a message... nothing. Hunted around and hit the release notes page... aha.

When you talked about offering this as a feature, it was pitched as an extra option for Pro users. I don't recall any mention that the rest of us would be forced into the larger sizes. That makes this look much less like a feature, and much more like a sneaky attempt to force a bunch of us to upgrade. If your Pro account supported our needs, we would have started out with a Pro account.

This morning, the slogan on your release notes blog seems all too apt to me:
release early, release often: keeping our customers on their toes

There may be good, sound economic reasons to seek more high-end, revenue-generating users. That may be necessary for the business to continue offering the services it does, and I'd usually rather pay a bit more for great services than see the company fail to remain viable. But only if the company is honest with me. If this is your goal -- to force upgrades to Pro -- you could at least put out a message that warns the Standard and Power users. If not, I hope you'll reconsider and at least allow Power users to pick L or XL as our maximum size. Until today, with my Power user accounts I could restrict image display sizes to the size I chose. You didn't add a feature for us, so much as take one away.

Edit: Since writing the above, I've understood that what I thought of as "restrict to Large" was really only "deny Original." There are three workarounds to this from my perspective: 1-Upload smaller images, not the right option for me because of the dual uses. 2-Duplicate galleries at different sizes, not a cost-saving option for Smugmug because I'll be using more disk, not less. 3-Move, not the option I want because although I'm fairly new and not yet fully committed to Smugmug, I like the company's historic service-oriented attitude. I'll probably take option #2 and grumble about it at home, because it's extra work for me on every shoot, but it will meet my purpose for the short term. Sorry guys, but I'd have been much happier without this new "feature" making printable sizes of my photos available to viewers.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

[momwac]

As someone who *was* part of SmugMug's decision, I can tell you that we never even considered this angle for a single second.

We definitely thought we were adding features for our customers, not taking them away.
(snip)
We've been completely taken by surprise. :)

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

Thanks!

I just read this post on this thread, and I'm very glad to see what was said here. This is very reassuring.

My responses.

Yes, protecting my images at printable sizes is very, very important to me. Being able to display a larger image is not that important to me at all.

Yes, I have two Power accounts and plan to add one or two more in this academic year. Two of those will ultimately become Pro accounts.

[Baldy]

Many thanks for taking the time to pour your hearts out regarding this issue. The honest answer is none of us at SmugMug ever imagined this could happen. :huh Nothing would be worse than not knowing we disappointed some of you, so we're glad you spoke up.

As far as sneaking it out goes, trust me when I say we would have LOVED to spam you with "The extra-large photo sizes you've all been wanting are here!" (We now know that not all were wanting them.)

If we'd had a clue that there would be consternation instead of the dancing in the streets we had envisioned, we would have figured out how to make more noise in advance of it.

There's no way we want these larger sizes to be a reason for you to upgrade to a Pro subscription. So we're changing the customize gallery tool for standard and power users to enable you to restrict X2Large and X3Large. It isn't live at the moment, but we're working on it and hope to have it done quickly.

Why not enable blocking of XL? The answer is XL is the new L. It's a standard feature of photo sharing sites now because L looks so archaic on modern monitors, as our customers tell us all day long. We've tried to provide private islands, plus private and password-protected albums for sensitive photos.

I hope this helps and wish I had an answer that would please everyone.

All the best,
Baldy

[JenGrace]

.......
I hope this helps and wish I had an answer that would please everyone.

All the best,
Baldy

Thank you. :bow :):

[momwac]

There's no way we want these larger sizes to be a reason for you to upgrade to a Pro subscription. So we're changing the customize gallery tool for standard and power users to enable you to restrict X2Large and X3Large. It isn't live at the moment, but we're working on it and hope to have it done quickly.
God bless you guys!
Now I know firsthand why your support is legendary. :bow
Thank you so much for taking our concerns into account; for my part, I'll wait patiently for the change. This is very much appreciated.

[Wildearth]

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

I just came across this issue and read the entire thread. I know you've made your decision already, but did want to add my comments. First, it's a shame that so many people assume the worst about others. Of course, you didn't do this with the idea that you'd arm-twist users into an upgrade. One need look no farther than your stated reason of keeping up with the competition. Good for you for working to hard to keep Smugmug on the leading edge. That's good for you and for us.

That said, I am VERY happy that you have decided to give everyone the option of restricting 2XL and up. I have a power level account and was preparing to ask for the option as so many others did, because I do want control of my images. It never mattered before because the smaller sizes are all so small that no one can really steal your images for print. But now they can and we should be able to control that, whether or not we make out living from this. I would have preferred full control (I can't believe giving us that would cost you even one single pro account), but I can live with the compromise of XL being the new L and your allowing me to limit images above that.

So thank you, not only for bringing us new features, but for listening when you found out not everyone wanted the new features.

[Andy]

I'm still having problems with custom rendering.

I added an invisible watermark to an image to force regeneration. Here's the 3X version of it, to prove that the smugmongous versions exist:

http://mdraughn.smugmug.com/photos/209446927-X3.jpg

That's 1600x1067. It's big and beautiful the way smugmug is supposed to be.

Now I'll use custom rendering to request a slightly smaller version:

http://mdraughn.smugmug.com/photos/209446927-1590x1590.jpg

Blurry. I'm beginning to think the custom rendering engine is ignoring the XL sizes.It's actually rather complicated and I don't understand how the rendering occurs. I'll try to get an answer for you.

[deadsmiley]

Many thanks for taking the time to pour your hearts out regarding this issue. The honest answer is none of us at SmugMug ever imagined this could happen. :huh Nothing would be worse than not knowing we disappointed some of you, so we're glad you spoke up.

As far as sneaking it out goes, trust me when I say we would have LOVED to spam you with "The extra-large photo sizes you've all been wanting are here!" (We now know that not all were wanting them.)

If we'd had a clue that there would be consternation instead of the dancing in the streets we had envisioned, we would have figured out how to make more noise in advance of it.

There's no way we want these larger sizes to be a reason for you to upgrade to a Pro subscription. So we're changing the customize gallery tool for standard and power users to enable you to restrict X2Large and X3Large. It isn't live at the moment, but we're working on it and hope to have it done quickly.

Why not enable blocking of XL? The answer is XL is the new L. It's a standard feature of photo sharing sites now because L looks so archaic on modern monitors, as our customers tell us all day long. We've tried to provide private islands, plus private and password-protected albums for sensitive photos.

I hope this helps and wish I had an answer that would please everyone.

All the best,
Baldy

All I can say is thank you for listening to us. You guys have proved once again that you take your customers concerns seriously. I think other sites would have simply told us that the change was final and not up for debate.

[mdraughn]

It's actually rather complicated and I don't understand how the rendering occurs. I'll try to get an answer for you.

Thanks. I realize you have some bigger issues to deal with regarding XL sizes, but being able to post larger images on my site without giving away the originals was one of the things I was looking forward to.

It turns out the straight 1X size is only slightly too large for my current design, so I might be able to make it work for now...but I do like being able to choose a precise size...

[Baldy]

It turns out the straight 1X size is only slightly too large for my current design, so I might be able to make it work for now...but I do like being able to choose a precise size...Dunno if you've seen this but in case not: http://www.smugmug.com/help/custom-photo-sizes

That's one thing the pre-rendered extra sizes give us: a way to make custom sizes faster without having to resort to trying to make them off the original, which is slow.

[GarethLewin]

There's no way we want these larger sizes to be a reason for you to upgrade to a Pro subscription. So we're changing the customize gallery tool for standard and power users to enable you to restrict X2Large and X3Large. It isn't live at the moment, but we're working on it and hope to have it done quickly.


Thank you!

[SUBMONO]

The answer is XL is the new L. It's a standard feature of photo sharing sites now because L looks so archaic on modern monitors
Thanks a lot for listening to us! I think we all can live with xl as the "new black" in photo sites.

[udy]

There's no way we want these larger sizes to be a reason for you to upgrade to a Pro subscription. So we're changing the customize gallery tool for standard and power users to enable you to restrict X2Large and X3Large.

Thanks a lot for the choice.:thumb

[SteveM]

I personally want to thank everyone for speaking up and voicing their opinions. After we introduced this and realized the possible dislikes, there was much talk around the water cooler, and we can guess, but we really can't "know" until we hear from people.

If we left this, I'm sure it would have arm-twisted more people into Pro accounts than we'd forfeit from Standard/Power, but we're SO not about that. I'm so proud of SmugMug for who we are.

And unlike other companies, such as how Google has been painted (truth or fiction), with a "goodguy" public image, yet a mean, self-serving Wizard behind the curtain, we really try to do what's right, and we even listen to Toto, so thanks to EVERYONE who barked.

[nsh65]

Hi,

I'm a Standard user, and I'd also like to have the option to hide originals as we had before. I was really annoyed to find out after I made one of my most recent galleries public, that users could view my photos in sizes that I really didn't want them to see.

One thing, on the customize gallery page, I can only select "Original" or "X3Large" in the Largest Size select box. Can you add more sizes in the box, such as Large or XL, please? Also, please restore the "Show/Block Originals" radio button.

One of the main reasons I joined Smugmug over 2 years ago was because I could block originals without having to resize all my photos. If this feature is permanently removed, I'll be forced rethink my membership.

I read a few posts up that the management will be restoring some of these features. When can we expect this to be completed?

Thanks for listening!

[AnneMcBean]

Hi,

I'm a Standard user, and I'd also like to have the option to hide originals as we had before. I was really annoyed to find out after I made one of my most recent galleries public, that users could view my photos in sizes that I really didn't want them to see.

One thing, on the customize gallery page, I can only select "Original" or "X3Large" in the Largest Size select box. Can you add more sizes in the box, such as Large or XL, please? Also, please restore the "Show/Block Originals" radio button.

One of the main reasons I joined Smugmug over 2 years ago was because I could block originals without having to resize all my photos. If this feature is permanently removed, I'll be forced rethink my membership.

I read a few posts up that the management will be restoring some of these features. When can we expect this to be completed?

Thanks for listening!

Hi, :wave

Thanks for weighing in. That "largest size" dropdown in your customize gallery pages currently functions the exact same way as the "block originals" option. Choose "original" as your largest size if you don't mind your visitors having access to it, or choose "X3L" as your largest size if you'd prefer to block originals.

That same dropdown is about to become more powerful, because we'll be giving you the option to choose X2L as your largest size, or XL as your largest size. Choosing XL as your largest size will effectively block X2L, X3L, and your originals. :deal

-Anne

[dmc]

Great to have ability to view pics bigger! thanks :D

Please consider making a tool for us to have the new sizes available in our existing galleries.... I know there is alot of overhead, but I'd rather not re-upload pics, or rotate them, etc. Maybe you allow users to re-gen some limited amount of pictures/galleries per day, in the background... something like that.

Also, when will the styles support the new sizes? Specifically, I'd like some new features in the Journal style that allows users to select size and pics/page.... (long standing feature request of mine) :wink

[Andy]

Also, when will the styles support the new sizes?

The new sizes work in Lightbox now, fired from SmugMug & Critique.

The next step is for SmugMug style to allow the use of the new sizes on the page.

[mdraughn]

Dunno if you've seen this but in case not: http://www.smugmug.com/help/custom-photo-sizes

That's one thing the pre-rendered extra sizes give us: a way to make custom sizes faster without having to resort to trying to make them off the original, which is slow.

Yeah, the custom sizes are one of the reasons I host my photos on smugmug---I can redesign my site and adjust photo sizes with a template variable without having to do the heavy lifting of resizing all the photos myself. It's very cool.

However, my informal testing suggests that the larger sizes aren't actually helping custom sizing right now.

Here's the X3L of one of my photos, to prove I regenerated it:

http://mdraughn.smugmug.com/photos/209446927-X3.jpg

That's 1600x1067. It's big and beautiful the way smugmug is supposed to be.

Now I'll use custom rendering to request a slightly smaller version:

http://mdraughn.smugmug.com/photos/2...-1590x1590.jpg (http://mdraughn.smugmug.com/photos/209446927-1590x1590.jpg)

Blurry. I'm guessing it must have up-rezzed the L size instead of down-rezzing the X3.

[Ric Grupe]

Great! :clap

[SUBMONO]

Hi,

can you give us an estimate when the new restrict to xl-feature for standard and pro accounts will be implemented?

Thanks,
Sven

[Andy]

Hi,

can you give us an estimate when the new restrict to xl-feature for standard and pro accounts will be implemented?

Thanks,
SvenHi Sven, thanks for posting....

We're testing it internally... "soon, very soon" is the best I can say at this point.

[Nicolas_CH]

Looking forward to the solution!

Meanwhile I encounter a hickup:
With my pro account ( http://numimages.smugmug.com/ ) I still see the "old" Small_Medium_Large_Original menu - no 2X3X etc. - in the galleries made befor the change in the Smugmug software.
Desipte trying to apply a new custom setting it remains like this. When I select "show medium" it'll restrict to medium but with the option set to "Original" I again see the "old" menu only - no 2X3X etc.
I even tried doing it with IE but ... no success. :dunno

There are other funky things going on with the size issue also in my standard accounts galleries but I wait in the hope for an answer explaining those hickups as well ... :D

Nicolas

[SUBMONO]

"soon, very soon" is the best I can say at this point.
Hi Andy,

thanks for the info. Very soon sounds very good.

:beer, Sven

[Andy]

Looking forward to the solution!

Meanwhile I encounter a hickup:
With my pro account ( http://numimages.smugmug.com/ ) I still see the "old" Small_Medium_Large_Original menu - no 2X3X etc. - in the galleries made befor the change in the Smugmug software.
Desipte trying to apply a new custom setting it remains like this. When I select "show medium" it'll restrict to medium but with the option set to "Original" I again see the "old" menu only - no 2X3X etc.
I even tried doing it with IE but ... no success. :dunno

There are other funky things going on with the size issue also in my standard accounts galleries but I wait in the hope for an answer explaining those hickups as well ... :D

Nicolas
Hi, if you want the new sizes, you must regenerate the display copies - rotate all left, wait till that's done, then rotate them right:thumb

[Nicolas_CH]

Hi, if you want the new sizes, you must regenerate the display copies - rotate all left, wait till that's done, then rotate them right:thumb

Aah, so everybody is rotating images now - which explains the extreme slow speed of the sites, countless 104 Errors, "rotate" commands which never arrive, uploads which take ages to become calculated images.

Honestly, I'm confused ... :scratch

Nicolas

[Andy]

Aah, so everybody is rotating images now - which explains the extreme slow speed of the sites, countless 104 Errors, "rotate" commands which never arrive, uploads which take ages to become calculated images.

Honestly, I'm confused ... :scratch

Nicolashi Nicolas, the site is fast for nearly all - but not for you -please write our help desk so we can help you have a fast smugmug :thumb

[Nicolas_CH]

hi Nicolas, the site is fast for nearly all - but not for you -please write our help desk so we can help you have a fast smugmug :thumb

I guess the Smugmug header on top of all galleries " We're having some temporary difficulties. We expect full service to resume shortly. Sorry! " means that I should give it a rest for a while. I'm back in a few hours and hope the troubles are gone.

Chers

Nicolas

[Jason Dunn]

I've noticed something strange about the new sizes: they don't seem to be remembered as they were before. Previously with Smugmug, if I clicked on an image from the Smugmug Gallery view it would take me to the "full image" view - and if I had last clicked size "M" it would remember that. Now if I go to an image:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/3688300#211057076-A-LB

Then I click XL:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/3688300#211057076-XL-LB

...and shut down the browser tab (I'm not clearing out cookies or anything, just closing the tab), and head back to the gallery, I once again see the size large. It even happens when I click on the image to go back to the Smugmug gallery view...clicking on an image takes me to a size "L" preview, not the XL I had previously selected. This is in Firefox 2.0.0.8 on Windows Vista.

Internet Explorer 7 has it's own quirks - it ALWAYS presents size XL, even if I've previously selected size "M"...except the URL looks like it's size large:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/3688300#211057983-A-LB

:scratch I know I read in this forum that XL is the new size "L", but regardless, shouldn't Smugmug continue to remember the size that the user selected? XL is great, but maybe someone with a low-res monitor (or someone that isn't browsing full screen) would prever to have size "L". I always liked that feature about Smugmug...

[bigwebguy]

I've noticed something strange about the new sizes: they don't seem to be remembered as they were before. Previously with Smugmug, if I clicked on an image from the Smugmug Gallery view it would take me to the "full image" view - and if I had last clicked size "M" it would remember that. Now if I go to an image:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/3688300#211057076-A-LB

Then I click XL:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/3688300#211057076-XL-LB

...and shut down the browser tab (I'm not clearing out cookies or anything, just closing the tab), and head back to the gallery, I once again see the size large. It even happens when I click on the image to go back to the Smugmug gallery view...clicking on an image takes me to a size "L" preview, not the XL I had previously selected. This is in Firefox 2.0.0.8 on Windows Vista.

Internet Explorer 7 has it's own quirks - it ALWAYS presents size XL, even if I've previously selected size "M"...except the URL looks like it's size large:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/3688300#211057983-A-LB

:scratch I know I read in this forum that XL is the new size "L", but regardless, shouldn't Smugmug continue to remember the size that the user selected? XL is great, but maybe someone with a low-res monitor (or someone that isn't browsing full screen) would prever to have size "L". I always liked that feature about Smugmug...Lightbox now auto-selects the largest size that will fit on the screen. Someone with a high-res display may get XL size where a lo-res display may get Large or Medium. You can manually select different sizes once in lightbox but closing and reopening lightbox will enable auto-sizing again. -A on the url indicates auto-sizing.

I love your customization BTW.

[underexposed]

looks like the bandwidth stats need to be updated as well...

[jfriend]

I've mentioned this before, but now with the new sizes I feel like this matters even more with the new larger viewing sizes.

I would like a few important fields of IPTC/XMP data (like copyright info) to be preserved in the M, L, XL, XL2, XL3 sizes. Right now, everything is stripped from all generated sizes. This is about clarifying the legal ownership for these larger sized images, even in cases where someone borrows them. If we're just talking about a few ownership-related fields, this shouldn't be impactful on the size of the images.

Yes, I know that this info could be stripped by a knowledgable thief, but in cases where it isn't stripped, it would be nice to have that info in the images.

[renstar]

I've mentioned this before, but now with the new sizes I feel like this matters even more with the new larger viewing sizes.

I would like a few important fields of IPTC/XMP data (like copyright info) to be preserved in the M, L, XL, XL2, XL3 sizes. Right now, everything is stripped from all generated sizes. This is about clarifying the legal ownership for these larger sized images, even in cases where someone borrows them. If we're just talking about a few ownership-related fields, this shouldn't be impactful on the size of the images.

Yes, I know that this info could be stripped by a knowledgable thief, but in cases where it isn't stripped, it would be nice to have that info in the images.

Seconded.

[colourbox]

Along the same lines, I was thinking that instead of today's binary choice of "watermarking: yes/no" I would like to see the ability to watermark only above a chosen size. That way, the smaller, hard-to-pirate sizes would not need to be significantly obstructed by a watermark, while the high-res, tempting-to-pirate versions would have a watermark.

[BenA2]

I've mentioned this before, but now with the new sizes I feel like this matters even more with the new larger viewing sizes.

I would like a few important fields of IPTC/XMP data (like copyright info) to be preserved in the M, L, XL, XL2, XL3 sizes. Right now, everything is stripped from all generated sizes. This is about clarifying the legal ownership for these larger sized images, even in cases where someone borrows them. If we're just talking about a few ownership-related fields, this shouldn't be impactful on the size of the images.

Yes, I know that this info could be stripped by a knowledgable thief, but in cases where it isn't stripped, it would be nice to have that info in the images.
One could even argue that once you get to the XL+ sizes, all the EXIF/IPTC/XMP data can be retained. Because, at those sizes, metadata becomes a less significant percentage of overall file size and therefore has a less perceptable impact on download speed. By extension, I'm also assuming the additional storage capacity needed on SmugMug's side would be insignificant as well.

[1pocket]

Hi,

I'm a Standard user, and I'd also like to have the option to hide originals as we had before. I was really annoyed to find out after I made one of my most recent galleries public, that users could view my photos in sizes that I really didn't want them to see.

One thing, on the customize gallery page, I can only select "Original" or "X3Large" in the Largest Size select box. Can you add more sizes in the box, such as Large or XL, please? Also, please restore the "Show/Block Originals" radio button.

One of the main reasons I joined Smugmug over 2 years ago was because I could block originals without having to resize all my photos. If this feature is permanently removed, I'll be forced rethink my membership.

I read a few posts up that the management will be restoring some of these features. When can we expect this to be completed?

Thanks for listening!Ditto -- why not go all the way down to simple Large? I definitely resent the limit on maximum size choices. Hell for my little 6 megapix camera triple X is almost original :) What is the point of having just the two choices -- Original or triple X????

[jfriend]

One could even argue that once you get to the XL+ sizes, all the EXIF/IPTC/XMP data can be retained. Because, at those sizes, metadata becomes a less significant percentage of overall file size and therefore has a less perceptable impact on download speed. By extension, I'm also assuming the additional storage capacity needed on SmugMug's side would be insignificant as well.

Good idea.

[Andy]

Ditto -- why not go all the way down to simple Large? I definitely resent the limit on maximum size choices. Hell for my little 6 megapix camera triple X is almost original :) What is the point of having just the two choices -- Original or triple X????
hang in there, it's coming, as baldy posted :thumb

[oddstuff]

Thx Andy for the heads up. :ivar

[darryl]

In the odd case that you're a Pro account holder that doesn't use watermarks, and you *want* the new sizes generated, I discovered that if you "unwatermark" a photo that doesn't actually have a watermark, it generates the new sizes for you. Pretty damn quickly, it would seem.

[Andy]

I've mentioned this before, but now with the new sizes I feel like this matters even more with the new larger viewing sizes.

I would like a few important fields of IPTC/XMP data (like copyright info) to be preserved in the M, L, XL, XL2, XL3 sizes. Right now, everything is stripped from all generated sizes. This is about clarifying the legal ownership for these larger sized images, even in cases where someone borrows them. If we're just talking about a few ownership-related fields, this shouldn't be impactful on the size of the images.

Yes, I know that this info could be stripped by a knowledgable thief, but in cases where it isn't stripped, it would be nice to have that info in the images.
I've been looking into this. So one big "IF" is if we can selectively parse out metadata without impacting image processing time. Coupla data points, based on my analysis this morning. We gen 8 display sizes, but even if we just were able to keep full metadata on the XL, XL2 and XL3 copies, that could be around 300Kb per image you upload to SmugMug. We took in 100,000,000 images in our first four years in business, and then 100,000,000 more in just the last one year :) So there are some costs to consider, not only storage, bandwidth, but then page-weight. What is the impact of ~100Kb to the on-page viewing experience in a SmugMug gallery in smugmug style? Keep in mind, SmugMungous part II is to have the gallery be fluid, stretch, to fill your giant monitors with many thumbnails and a XL, or perhaps even larger, main image :) We want SmugMug to be really fast, for everyone. So we have to consider that, very high on the list of decision points. In fact, the on-page, in-gallery experience is probably the most important factor, moreso than the cost of storage and bandwidth (which we do probably better than ANYone out there in this business).

The above is mitigated, if we could do what you suggest, keeping ONLY say the copyright notice, copyright status, and author fields, for example. But I have no idea how do-able that is, given our image processing tools/steps/workflow, or if it's even a reasonable interim step to add, without causing processing delay, cost and overhead. Over the past year and a half, overall, we've improved image processing dramatically, and yes, there have been bumps in the road from time to time, but we no longer have those nasty Sunday night backlogs in the queue. SmugMug customers today are accustomed to rapid image processing, and we want to keep it that way.

:jfriend

[michaelb]

- Is this important to you?
- Do you have a Standard or Power level account (or if you're thinking about signing up, what level you're eyeing)?

Thanks!

1. Yes, I just signed up for a trial membership and i don't like the idea of not being able to block images greater than large size. I'm not a pro, but I am not pleased with the idea of people using my images without my consent. Because of this I won't be uploading any more large images.

2. Trial account, so maybe my opinion doesn't matter. :D
I think you should be able to block images greater than large size, even with a standard account.

[Foochar]

1. Yes, I just signed up for a trial membership and i don't like the idea of not being able to block images greater than large size. I'm not a pro, but I am not pleased with the idea of people using my images without my consent. Because of this I won't be uploading any more large images.

This IS coming to some degree, although you'll only be able to block images larger than the new XL size, see this post (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=659689&postcount=95) by Baldy on page 10 of this thread. While not yet implemented it is testing and coming "soon" according to andy in this post (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=662264&postcount=114)

[DonMB]

The above is mitigated, if we could do what you suggest, keeping ONLY say the copyright notice, copyright status, and author fields, for example. But I have no idea how do-able that is, given our image processing tools/steps/workflow, or if it's even a reasonable interim step to add, without causing processing delay, cost and overhead. Over the past year and a half, overall, we've improved image processing dramatically, and yes, there have been bumps in the road from time to time, but we no longer have those nasty Sunday night backlogs in the queue. SmugMug customers today are accustomed to rapid image processing, and we want to keep it that way.


Why couldn't it be setup like watermarking? Instead of adding a watermark to the images, you add the above exif/iptc data?

[BenA2]

Coupla data points, based on my analysis this morning. We gen 8 display sizes, but even if we just were able to keep full metadata on the XL, XL2 and XL3 copies, that could be around 300Kb per image you upload to SmugMug.
Hmm. I threw out the idea of preserving all metadata down to XL under the impression it was on the order of 20K per image. At 100K, I can see how that's a bigger deal. I checked a little data myself and found the following sizes for an example image: XL: 217K, X2: 320K, & X3: 477K. If you added 100K of metadata to each of those, you'd be allocating an additional 30% in memory to store it. That's a pretty big hit; whereas, it would only be a 6% increase at 20K. Of course, if you calculate that as a percentage of total storage, factoring in the originals, that mitigates the impact a bit more. But, even if the total storage impact is something like 5%, that's still a lot of disk space SmugMug's got to pay for.

I do still like Joh