Mirror SM Hierarchy to Hard Drive in LRCC with Plugin?

jhelms · May 26, 2015

I'm using Smugmug plugin 2.2.8 with LRCC.

2 Questions -

1) I have a large organized SM site that I now need to 'mirror' on a shared network drive. What is the easiest way for me to a) manage the initial setup / mirror of at least the structure and images and b) for future folders and galleries?

2) I have an additional ~40k image archive organized in LR but not published to SM - basically same questions as above I'd love to be able to 'click and drag' the folder hierarchy and images over to SM and our new network drive.

Obviously my main goal is to avoid having to setup each folder one-by-one. :thumb

Ferguson · May 26, 2015

I can think of no native way to do it that doesn't involve one-by-one. I'd look at people like JF's plugins, maybe even contact him directly (I haven't seen him on DGrin in a while, but he may be here).

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies

I'd think it MIGHT be possible, if not overly safe, to do this in SQL directly against the database, e.g. to mirror one of the published trees against the other, adding (removing?) as needed. Once you put an image in, LR will keep up with whether it needs to be republished so that aspect is easy, it's getting it in the first time. I'd think mirroring SM to disk would be the easiest as its format seems more simple.

Something like that I'm sure could be done in a plugin, I just suspect the need is enough of a niche you might have trouble finding someone who has done it.

Are you sure you want to mirror the published aspect, as opposed to mirroring the catalog itself to another disk? (Also some issues there, but frankly more straightforward).

jhelms · May 26, 2015

Ferguson wrote: »

I can think of no native way to do it that doesn't involve one-by-one. I'd look at people like JF's plugins, maybe even contact him directly (I haven't seen him on DGrin in a while, but he may be here).

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies

I'd think it MIGHT be possible, if not overly safe, to do this in SQL directly against the database, e.g. to mirror one of the published trees against the other, adding (removing?) as needed. Once you put an image in, LR will keep up with whether it needs to be republished so that aspect is easy, it's getting it in the first time. I'd think mirroring SM to disk would be the easiest as its format seems more simple.

Something like that I'm sure could be done in a plugin, I just suspect the need is enough of a niche you might have trouble finding someone who has done it.

Are you sure you want to mirror the published aspect, as opposed to mirroring the catalog itself to another disk? (Also some issues there, but frankly more straightforward).

Thanks; I looked at Jeffrey Freidl's plugins but not sure which one (if any) would do what I'm looking for - looks like either the 'folder publisher' or 'collection publisher' so I left a comment on his blog to ask him.

Interesting suggestion about a duplicate catalog - basically what I've been doing is organizing tons of photos on smugmug but now we have a new robust network server that ultimately will have the same folder structure and image sets.

devbobo · May 26, 2015

Do you need to duplicate folder structure on shared network drive....or do you ultimately want to move all the images to the network drive ?

The reason I ask is this is the workflow I use, but I do all this within LR and it handles all the links automatically with no need for any additional plugins.

1. I initially import new files onto my local HDD
2. Drag the folders from one location to the other in the "Folders" panel and LR moves all the files over keeping links to galleries etc

devbobo · May 26, 2015

or just copy the files across to the NAS, and once the copy has finished, you can use the "Update Folder Location" option to point it to the folders on the NAS

Ferguson · May 26, 2015

jhelms wrote: »

Interesting suggestion about a duplicate catalog - basically what I've been doing is organizing tons of photos on smugmug but now we have a new robust network server that ultimately will have the same folder structure and image sets.

The more I thought about this the more I realized there are some significant challenges. Consider if on SM you moved a gallery between folders, or moved a folder. That's beyond simply adding new images to a (similar) folder on the file publishing collection, it (whatever "it" is) would also need to make a similar change (and I'm not even sure how or if that works in the file publishing - I never use it).

I guess this last comment puzzles me a bit. When you say the new network server will have the same folder and image sets -- do you mean same as Smugmug, or same as your lightroom catalog?

To me the publishing structure would be quite different from the on-disk catalog structure. For example, multi-day events may yield one published collection, or single day multiple events might produce many collections. There's also duplication, e.g. I have a baseball cards collection which spans lots of games, and contains the same shots as individual published collections for each game. in Lightroom there's only one shot of course, but if published to disk there would be 2. Virtual copies of photos are an even stronger disconnect versus an on-disk image collection without a catalog.

If you want to duplicate the catalog (and by that I mean both the catalog-as-index and the images it points to), that's reasonably straightforward so long as they (whoever they are that will use this other than you) are not updating the catalog. But if they aren't using Lightroom it won't be much help.

On the other hand if you just are migrating your storage to the network -- well, just move it. Don't duplicate it?

jhelms · May 26, 2015

Short version - if I could do the initial mirror image setup of my folder/gallery structure from existing smugmug LR plugin that would help a ton. Keeping track of updating 2 organized publishing structures manually after that would be something I could live with.

Here's the reasoning / need for duplicates going forward (and I'm open to workflow suggestions).

- I shoot cooking products every day. Some of those shoots are just 1 product, but many times I'll shoot maybe a grill or other item where some images need to reside in multiple galleries (shots w/ food, grills, if the image contains accessories, etc.) so it's not as easy as "2015/05/23/grill photoshoot".

- Several dozen people in my office need daily access to the image archive, also, a very expensive promax system was ordered to house our video/photo database files and was installed this month.

- While waiting for the new server to be installed, I organized via smugmug and it works PERFECT for me in LR, and works ok for others in the office once they get the hang of browsing for files via web instead of regular Mac finder / windows explorer. Biggest issue we have is people right-clicking a non-original image to use when they actually need the full size high res (I'm educating as I can on that, but it's not as intuitive to them as just pulling up a file from a regular folder on the server).

- We also have employees and clients that need access to images outside of our office, smugmug has been a great answer for that as well.

- In addition to product shoots, I cover events with the public where we share watermarked non-high res images via smugmug

- I'd be happy using only SM but it would be a tough sell for me not to take advantage of the new server, plus there is an overwhelming comfort level of employees and clients that would prefer to access images via regular finder/windows file explorer methods.

Possible workflow changes for me:

- Should I setup folder hierarchy via smart collections in LR, then setup some sort of trigger via plugins to sync those w/ smugmug and the server?
- Or, if there is no easier way, should I manually setup a new hard drive publish mirroring the SM folder structure, then just put new images in both trees in the future?

Hope that clarifies things a bit, definitely appreciate the comments and suggestions!

Mirror SM Hierarchy to Hard Drive in LRCC with Plugin?

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