How can I see if a pic has been collected?

Richard · September 22, 2015

Me again :rolleyes. I'm planning on making extensive use of collected photos in my public facing galleries. There is a clear indication within the Organizer that the virtual copy has been collected. However, when I look at the source gallery, where the real copy lives, there seems to be no indication that a pic has been collected. I find this a little troubling, as it could lead to unexpected results. TBH, I'm not really sure what I'm worried about here. I haven't tried this, but I assume that if I move the source pic to another gallery (with the same permissions) the virtual copy remains untouched. Are there any gotchas that I'm missing? :scratch

leftquark · September 22, 2015

You're correct in your assumption. As long as you don't delete the original, the virtual copies should be OK!

Richard · September 22, 2015

I just did an experiment that gave some unsettling results. I collected a pic into a test gallery. It showed up immediately and as expected and the Organizer showed the little collected tag. Then I went to the source gallery and deleted the pic. It asked me to confirm the deletion, but it gave no warning that the pic had been collected and that the virtual copy would also disappear (which is the behavior I would expect, hopefully with a link to the collected version's location). Not optimal. But then I looked at the gallery that had the virtual copy and it was still there. Refreshed the browser, still there. Opened it in a different browser and it was still there. Hmmm...I seem to recall that there was a problem with deletions not appearing immediately because of caching in the CDN, and perhaps that explains it. I'll check tomorrow to see what it looks like.

To be fair, I move pics around a lot but I rarely delete them altogether from SM (storage is their problem, not mine

). So this isn't likely to ruin my whole day. But I think there's room for improvement, especially in giving a useful warning at deletion time.

David_S85 · September 22, 2015

Richard, it might take a day (or more) for the orphaned photo to vanish. Just call it a ghost photo for now and wait for the internet exorcism to happen.

leftquark · September 22, 2015

David is correct ... it takes about a day or so to actually process through the network, but deleting the original will ultimately result in the collected photo being removed. I do agree we could do a better job of mentioning that virtual copies will be impacted.

Richard · September 23, 2015

OK, got it. One final question here: Let's say I have a pic in gallery A and virtual copy of the pic in gallery B. I post the pic on Dgrin using the link of the virtual copy in B. At some later date, I delete the virtual copy from B, but leave the original intact in A. Will the pic still show in Dgrin? I just tried it--the gallery views on the site itself behaved as expected: it was gone from B but showed in A. The pic is still showing on Dgrin, but I don't know whether that's because of the caching issue or because it's doing what I want.

leftquark · September 23, 2015

Richard wrote: »

OK, got it. One final question here: Let's say I have a pic in gallery A and virtual copy of the pic in gallery B. I post the pic on Dgrin using the link of the virtual copy in B. At some later date, I delete the virtual copy from B, but leave the original intact in A. Will the pic still show in Dgrin? I just tried it--the gallery views on the site itself behaved as expected: it was gone from B but showed in A. The pic is still showing on Dgrin, but I don't know whether that's because of the caching issue or because it's doing what I want.

Man, you keep comin' at me with the hard (and excellent) questions! As far as I understand, it should be removed from DGrin and the cache issue is causing it to remain for the time being. I'm on a plane tomorrow and out the rest of the week due to some family things, but I'll see if I can get an answer from one of the Engineers.

David_S85 · September 23, 2015

Richard, when I looked at the test image post, the photo was still there a few minutes ago, if that helps. Since it was never in my browser cache to begin with, I must have seen it as a ghost.

Richard · September 23, 2015

leftquark wrote:

Man, you keep comin' at me with the hard (and excellent) questions!

Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes the bug.

OK, so the bottom line seems to be that one shouldn't link to virtual copies if you want them to persist. Since you can get to the original from the lightbox, I suppose that's OK, though it is a couple more clicks.

Richard · September 23, 2015

David_S85 wrote: »

Richard, when I looked at the test image post, the photo was still there a few minutes ago, if that helps. Since it was never in my browser cache to begin with, I must have seen it as a ghost.

Doesn't help, really. The issue on deletions is caching in the cloud. Local caching is easier to control.

leftquark · September 23, 2015

Of course, if you never plan on deleting the virtual copies, then linking to them is fine

Richard · September 23, 2015

Right, but that's probably not going to be the way my site is going to work, at least not for New Pics, my most active gallery. I'll upload to whichever gallery should be the permanent home, then collect the ones I want to show into New Pics, deleting the virtual copy of the stale stuff. Should be more efficient than my current workflow, which involves lots of moving files around.

How can I see if a pic has been collected?

Comments