Can't crop thumb in Thumbnail style gallery

Richard · September 20, 2015

I'm moving away from SmugMug style to Thumbnail for most of my galleries, or at least that was my intent till I saw that cropping the thumbnail had no effect. I don't want to crop the actual images. In my testing, cropping the thumbnail affected neither the display of the image in the thumbnail style gallery nor even the thumb in the organizer. I don't much care what it looks like in the organizer, but I care a lot about how it appears in the gallery. Am I missing something? Very disappointing if not--it makes the Thumbnail style pretty much useless for me.

ChancyRat · September 20, 2015

I don't use thumbnail galleries.. but check:

http://origin.sherlockphotography.org/Customisations/Thumbnail-aspect-ratio

This might be of interest:
http://origin.sherlockphotography.org/Customisations/Avoid-cutting-off-heads

Richard · September 20, 2015

Thanks for the tips, CR, but neither of these really solve my problem. Like the standard SM image in the (square) Thumbnail style, they just arbitrarily carve out a part of the image. That's OK most of the time, but it can miss badly at others, which I why I want to specify the crop on an image specific basis. In my legacy site, I used SmugMug style with square thumbs and as part of my normal upload procedure, I went through all the pics adjusting the thumb when needed. The thumb cropper panel made this quite efficient as there was no jumping among different screens needed.

denisegoldberg · September 20, 2015

Richard wrote: »

...neither of these really solve my problem. Like the standard SM image in the (square) Thumbnail style, they just arbitrarily carve out a part of the image. That's OK most of the time, but it can miss badly at others, which I why I want to specify the crop on an image specific basis.

I can't help with cropping for square thumbs, but have you considered using one of the collage styles instead? I know it's a very different look from thumbnails (and maybe it doesn't meet your needs) but it does eliminate the need to crop thumbs.

--- Denise

Richard · September 20, 2015

Right. I had started with the idea of using collage, but then realized that it was going to be hard to fine tune in the absence of a drag to arrange in the gallery view. So I switched my thinking to thumbnail, but if I can't control the crop, then that's out of the question. So I'll probably go back to the collage view and comfort myself with the thought that I don't have to crop thumbs anymore. It's always something...

WinsomeWorks · September 21, 2015

Richard wrote: »

Right. I had started with the idea of using collage, but then realized that it was going to be hard to fine tune in the absence of a drag to arrange in the gallery view. So I switched my thinking to thumbnail, but if I can't control the crop, then that's out of the question. So I'll probably go back to the collage view and comfort myself with the thought that I don't have to crop thumbs anymore. It's always something...

Are you serious? No drag to arrange in gallery? *&*$^#+% I use that all the time. Why even ask why anymore.

Allen · September 21, 2015

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

Are you serious? No drag to arrange in gallery? *&*$^#+% I use that all the time. Why even ask why anymore.

Yes there is, just click Organizer at the top and move your photos around however you want. Might
have to change to Manual sort upper right first.

leftquark · September 21, 2015

We should probably get rid of the "Crop Thumbnail" tool entirely ... in fact, when we launched New SmugMug it was not included. It only impacts the thumbnails used on SmugMug style. The images used for feature images and for the thumbnail gallery style come from larger resolution images in which we display the center-center portion of the image. We have some plans to improve upon part of the photo and there's some long-term things that will get fairly advanced. On the more short term, we plan to be smarter: instead of doing center-center always, we'll be moving towards top-center for portrait orientation photos and center-center for landscape orientation. It obviously won't fix everything but it will at least prevent most peoples heads from being chopped off.

WinsomeWorks · September 22, 2015

Please, please please don't get rid of "Crop Thumbnail".. I don't know yet how many galleries I'll keep in SmugMug style, but there's a bunch that would get really screwed up if the crops are lost. Some galleries wouldn't even make sense because of the way I cropped the thumbs (I have a bunch of color-based galleries representing hundreds of hand-cropped photos each...)

Incidentally, are watermarks supposed to be showing up on the Folder preview photos pages, or sub-category / whatever... sub-folder? pages? Mine are, & it's not very attractive. I didn't expect them to be showing anywhere but inside a gallery, or if it's a collage theme, then only in the LightBox View.

leftquark wrote: »

We should probably get rid of the "Crop Thumbnail" tool entirely ... in fact, when we launched New SmugMug it was not included. It only impacts the thumbnails used on SmugMug style. The images used for feature images and for the thumbnail gallery style come from larger resolution images in which we display the center-center portion of the image. We have some plans to improve upon part of the photo and there's some long-term things that will get fairly advanced. On the more short term, we plan to be smarter: instead of doing center-center always, we'll be moving towards top-center for portrait orientation photos and center-center for landscape orientation. It obviously won't fix everything but it will at least prevent most peoples heads from being chopped off.

Richard · September 22, 2015

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

Please, please please don't get rid of "Crop Thumbnail".. I don't know yet how many galleries I'll keep in SmugMug style, but there's a bunch that would get really screwed up if the crops are lost.

All your previous crops in SM style carry over and in that style, I'm pretty sure. You can still crop new thumbs in SM style, though it's a little more cumbersome than in legacy--more screen flips to do a bunch a once.

WinsomeWorks · September 22, 2015

I realize it carries over now, but was responding to Aaron's statement that it should be gotten rid of entirely.

Richard wrote: »

All your previous crops in SM style carry over and in that style, I'm pretty sure. You can still crop new thumbs in SM style, though it's a little more cumbersome than in legacy--more screen flips to do a bunch a once.

Richard · September 22, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

We should probably get rid of the "Crop Thumbnail" tool entirely...

I'm all for making the automatically generated thumbs smarter. Chopping portrait and landscape differently makes sense most of the time. But depending on the image, it can completely miss what you would like to use as the tease. So by all means, make it smarter but please let us override when it gets it wrong. Having a thumbnail gallery without custom crops is like a B&W converter with no channel mixer or other parameters to tweak--OK for people who don't much care but pretty much useless for those who do.

Richard · September 22, 2015

Allen wrote: »

Yes there is, just click Organizer at the top and move your photos around however you want. Might
have to change to Manual sort upper right first.

Yes, but the Organizer view is different from the view in the gallery itself. It's fine if you're only concerned about the order of the pics, but it fails to give you a sense of the immediate visual impact of a page.

WinsomeWorks · September 22, 2015

Exactly... makes me completely crazy when I'm forced to organize something in a view wholly unrelated to the actual view. It's a visual site... I want to see it... I want WYSIWYG whenever possible.

Richard wrote: »

Yes, but the Organizer view is different from the view in the gallery itself. It's fine if you're only concerned about the order of the pics, but it fails to give you a sense of the immediate visual impact of a page.

David_S85 · September 22, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

We should probably get rid of the "Crop Thumbnail" tool entirely …

Please don't do that. Keep the tool available but maybe call it something else like "Custom Thumbnail Crop, for SM Style Galleries" or the like. Properly cropped thumbnails add emphasis to a gallery and also invite additional viewer clicks. That should be as important to Smugmug as it is to any gallery owner. The viewer has a richer visual experience as well.

Do what you want for automatic default display of thumbs, but please keep the gallery owner's control over their product if they choose to override a default.

EDIT: Solved for me now.

Thing is, I don't know how to get to the crop thumb tool through new smug. It is accessible in New via Nick's extension, but it is still useful. Question: How does one call up that tool within new smug, once they've abandoned old smug (without the extension)?

leftquark · September 22, 2015

It's in "Tools" (the wrench) under the photo (if you're in SM Style) ... if you're using another style like Collage or Thumbnail, open the Lightbox and then the Tools (wrench) will be displayed.

David_S85 · September 22, 2015

^ Ha. Well, I'll be darned. I had thought the only tool in there was crop photo, which was irreversible.

jchin · September 22, 2015

Thank you for this thread. I've been going nuts trying to figure out why the thumbnails in the Thumbnail view isn't matching the custom cropped thumbnails.
*bang head against desk*

pbandj · September 23, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

We should probably get rid of the "Crop Thumbnail" tool entirely ...

I second the "please don't do that"! I use primarily Smugmug Style Galleries and use Thumbnail Crop all the time...it's part of my process when I upload a new gallery.

I can work around the fact that the feature photos don't honor my square crop by choosing a photo that will work...but I still need a way to make sure the thumbnails in my Smugmug gallery highlight the part of the photo I choose.

Rename it if you need to...but PLEASE don't remove it.

leftquark · September 23, 2015

It's here to stay, at least for the time being.

Richard · September 27, 2015

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

Exactly... makes me completely crazy when I'm forced to organize something in a view wholly unrelated to the actual view. It's a visual site... I want to see it... I want WYSIWYG whenever possible.

I published my site a couple of days ago and now have a bit of real-world experience with maintaining it. The lack of drag to arrange in a collage gallery view turns out to be not as bad as I feared. The trick is to keep two browser windows open, one in the gallery and one in the organizer view of that gallery. You can drag to arrange in the organizer and (as in the legacy gallery view) the effect is immediate--you don't have to click "Done" in the organizer every time. You do have to refresh the gallery window to see the change(s), however. That makes it a little less efficient than legacy drag to arrange, but on balance, it's not too bad.

Can't crop thumb in Thumbnail style gallery

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