August 16th Release Notes

Andy · August 19, 2007

A few notes from this past release, Thursday night.

* Squashed the Norton Bug

* Filenames now show throughout the cart, and in completed orders, if you have enabled them in your gallery settings

* We have a new uploader page. You can see it here. We'll auto-detect your computing platform (Win or Mac) and we've improved the choices. Windows users will see a new choice along with the familiar choices. Mac users see the Mac uploader, the Univ D&D, and a few cool plugins.

* We auto-rotate images that have proper EXIF orientation tags in them. :clap

* Homepage and Control Panel links to move boxes to control panel, or back to homepage, now say simply "show" or "hide."

Alan M. Carroll · August 19, 2007

Augh - don't mess with my pictures!

Andy wrote:

* We auto-rotate images that have proper EXIF orientation tags in them. :cry

That means that if I edit my photos before uploading and rotate them in my editor, the rotation is undone by Smugmug. That's already been a major PITA for me today in some batch uploads because I have to fire up the "Rotate Images" page, wait for the thumbnail loads, then inspect / select the images. Then I have to do it again because I don't always rotate the camera the same direction. It would really be great if I could disable that. I have already wasted 30 minutes or so looking for that off switch without success.

Andy · August 19, 2007

Alan M. Carroll wrote:

That means that if I edit my photos before uploading and rotate them in my editor, the rotation is undone by Smugmug. That's already been a major PITA for me today in some batch uploads because I have to fire up the "Rotate Images" page, wait for the thumbnail loads, then inspect / select the images. Then I have to do it again because I don't always rotate the camera the same direction. It would really be great if I could disable that. I have already wasted 30 minutes or so looking for that off switch without success.

Hi Alan,

Please tell us what you use for editing, how you rotated them on your computer. Please list everything you do, including how you save the file, okay?

And, if you could upload a photo to a test gallery, and don't rotate it on SmugMug, that'd help, too

Thanks!

Allen · August 19, 2007

I just did a test and uploaded a portrait I edited in PSPX. It auto-rotated on
PSPX load so when saved as portrait and up'd to Smug it showed up as a portriat. Didn't rotate.

I them turned off auto-rotate in PSPX, edited (landscaped portrait) and saved. Then uploaded and Smug rotated to portrait.

All seems to work great.

Alan M. Carroll · August 19, 2007

Andy wrote:

Hi Alan,

Please tell us what you use for editing, how you rotated them on your computer. Please list everything you do, including how you save the file, okay?

And, if you could upload a photo to a test gallery, and don't rotate it on SmugMug, that'd help, too

Thanks!

Here's an example. Taken with a D70. I download it from the camera using Corel Photo Album 6, edited (including rotation) with Paint Shop Pro 11.20. I then upload using Firefox 2.05 and the universal Smugmug uploader.

When I look at it on my local computer or in PSP, it has the correct orientation. The orientation it has on Smugmug is that of the original image.

P.S. With regard to Allen's comment, I have the PSP auto-rotate disabled because I don't like it messing with my pictures either.

Andy · August 19, 2007

Alan M. Carroll wrote:

Here's an example. Taken with a D70. I download it from the camera using Corel Photo Album 6, edited (including rotation) with Paint Shop Pro 11.20. I then upload using Firefox 2.05 and the universal Smugmug uploader.

When I look at it on my local computer or in PSP, it has the correct orientation. The orientation it has on Smugmug is that of the original image.

P.S. With regard to Allen's comment, I have the PSP auto-rotate disabled because I don't like it messing with my pictures either.

PSP doesn't do things like the rest of the photo editors, I'm afraid to say

Some software doesn't properly fix the Orientation tag after rotation. PSP is one of these software apps.

Seems like Allen has worked around it?

Alan M. Carroll · August 20, 2007

Andy wrote:

Some software doesn't properly fix the Orientation tag after rotation. PSP is one of these software apps.

That leaves those of us who use such software with either re-rotating our uploaded pictures or buying new software? It doesn't seem like a good idea to me to make Smugmug in a sense incompatible with some brands of photo editing software.

Andy wrote:

Seems like Allen has worked around it?

Or changing our workflow to suit Smugmug.

Turning on auto-rotate is not a trivial thing. For instance, auto-rotation counts as a file modification, making it annoying / risky to load up images just to look at them or use them as image sources because you then always get the "file modified, do you want to save it?" dialog. Marking the files read only doesn't help, although at least it makes it less likely to unintentionally modify the file.

In addition, I won't be able to "fire and forget" load to Smugmug, something I've found very handy, because I will need to inspect to make sure I didn't make an editing error that is undetectable before upload. And there are other costs I won't belabor here.

I still think the best solution is to make it possible to disable this action for an account.

jfriend · August 20, 2007

Andy wrote:

PSP doesn't do things like the rest of the photo editors, I'm afraid to say

Some software doesn't properly fix the Orientation tag after rotation. PSP is one of these software apps.

Seems like Allen has worked around it?

Does PSP leave any tags in the metadata that indicates that the file was last editing by PSP? If it did, perhaps the auto-rotation could see that and skip it.

Or, it sounds like you need to offer a global upload preference to ignore rotation tags in the image.

Andy · August 20, 2007

Alan M. Carroll wrote:

That leaves those of us who use such software with either re-rotating our uploaded pictures or buying new software? It doesn't seem like a good idea to me to make Smugmug in a sense incompatible with some brands of photo editing software.
Or changing our workflow to suit Smugmug.

Turning on auto-rotate is not a trivial thing. For instance, auto-rotation counts as a file modification, making it annoying / risky to load up images just to look at them or use them as image sources because you then always get the "file modified, do you want to save it?" dialog. Marking the files read doesn't help, although at least it makes it less likely to unintentionally modify the file.

In addition, I won't be able to "fire and forget" load to Smugmug, something I've found very handy, because I will need to inspect to make sure I didn't make an editing error that is undetectable before upload. And there are other costs I won't belabor here.

I still think the best solution is to make it possible to disable this action for an account.

Hi, I understand you completely. And I wish there were a way to satisfy everyone. This has been something that's been asked for for nearly 5 years and we didn't do it for precisely these reasons. But now, for the most part, software and camera makers are properly tagging files. I wish Corel PSP did the right thing

Allen · August 20, 2007

Turned auto-rotate off in PSPX.
Open photo and shows as landscape.
Rotate -90. Now portriat.
Saved.
Photo on hard drive now shows as portrait. Explorer thumbnail view, PicaView and IrfanView.
Upload and it's shows as landscape on Smug. EECK!!!

Smug rotated the portrait.

Open with auto-rotate on in PSPX.
Photo auto-rotates -90 to portrait.
Saved.
Photo on hard drive now shows as portrait. Explorer thumbnail view, PicaView and IrfanView.
Upload and it's shows as portrait on Smug.

Open with IrfanView.
Rotate to portrait -90.
Saved. (Saved all exif)
Photo on hard drive now shows as portrait. Explorer thumbnail view, PicaView and IrfanView.
Upload and it's shows as portrait on Smug.

Open with IrfanView.
Saved. (Saved all exif)
Photo on hard drive now shows as landscape +90. Explorer thumbnail view, PicaView and IrfanView.
Upload and it's shows as landscape on Smug. EECK!!!

Smug auto-rotate doesn't work with IrfanView.

Looks like Smug messes your photo if you edit without auto-rotate on in PSPX.
Wonder how's this going to work with all the other editors besides PS?
Especially all the P&S shooters that's not going to fork over $600-800
for an editing program?

Alan M. Carroll · August 20, 2007

Andy, I understand you completely as well. I don't want to leave the impression that I don't see the value in this, or why most people would find it an excellent change. Clearly it will make the Smugmug experience better for most people most of the time. Still, there are us old, technological troglodytes who are just asking for a manual override so we can continue to exist in our obsolete yet comfortable environment.

For now, I will be looking in to how I can adapt to this with the least impact on my workflow and leave this discussion for others. Thanks for responding.

Andy · August 20, 2007

Allen wrote:

Wonder how's this going to work with all the other editors besides PS?
Especially all the P&S shooters that's not going to fork over $600-800
for an editing program?

Iphoto (included with Macs) and Google's Picasa (free) work fine - so does Photoshop Elements 4 & 5 (very inexpensive editors).

dogwood · August 21, 2007

Andy wrote:

Hi, I understand you completely. And I wish there were a way to satisfy everyone. This has been something that's been asked for for nearly 5 years and we didn't do it for precisely these reasons.

I think it's a wonderful change and it speeds up MY workflow tremendously. In fact, what took so long to implement this change? Oh yeah... corel...:D

Cindy · August 23, 2007

YES - filenames

Andy wrote:

A few notes from this past release, Thursday night.

* Filenames now show throughout the cart, and in completed orders, if you have enabled them in your gallery settings
"

Yee - Hawwwww. Thank you so, so much for adding filenames to the checkout cart. I suspect I'll start using smugmug for customer orders MUCH more now

Now off to change my signature

Andy · August 23, 2007

Cindy wrote:

Yee - Hawwwww. Thank you so, so much for adding filenames to the checkout cart. I suspect I'll start using smugmug for customer orders MUCH more now

Now off to change my signature

Cindy

Ann McRae · August 23, 2007

Alan - I have autorotate on on both PSP and my 20d - I do not get the 'file modified' message. I use the universal uploader. All images are uploading just fine for me, as expected because I have autorotate on. I guess I do not understand the risk you describe, or why you choose to have that one extra step in your workflow. Maybe it is to do with in camera rotation?
ann

Alan M. Carroll wrote:

Turning on auto-rotate is not a trivial thing. For instance, auto-rotation counts as a file modification, making it annoying / risky to load up images just to look at them or use them as image sources because you then always get the "file modified, do you want to save it?" dialog. Marking the files read only doesn't help, although at least it makes it less likely to unintentionally modify the file.

August 16th Release Notes

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