Share a photo link without 'exposing" gallery

alaios · January 20, 2016

Dear all,
is it possible to share a link for viewing a photo without "exposing" my gallery as well? If the user takes the link it can see the gallery name and see all the photos.
There are times that I need this flexibility to share "privately" a photo (in forum for example)
without exposing my web site and or my gallery behind the photos.

I know that I can make a separate gallery to hide owner for example but this takes time to share a single photo.
IS this feature available?

REgards
Alex

Allen · January 20, 2016

Copy the link from the "Share" button.
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/2016-Birding/Birding-2016-January/2016-01-11-Black-tailed-Gull/i-GTVhL2p/1/L/IMG_2104_7D2-2-L.jpg

Then change the link to this.
http://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-GTVhL2p/1/L/L.jpg
http://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-GTVhL2p/1/L/IMG_2104_7D2-2-L.jpg

I removed the photo filename but you don't have to.

Nothing about your site will be exposed.

alaios · January 21, 2016

Wow. Great tip.
How do I find how to do the transformation though any tutorial?
Alex

kdog · January 21, 2016

The simple way is to make the gallery unlisted. Then the direct photo links won't have the gallery visible, however it will have your website name visible (which I consider a feature). Unlisted is probably what you want anyhow if you don't want people browsing the gallery.

Allen · January 22, 2016

kdog wrote: »

The simple way is to make the gallery unlisted. Then the direct photo links won't have the gallery visible, however it will have your website name visible (which I consider a feature). Unlisted is probably what you want anyhow if you don't want people browsing the gallery.

"There are times that I need this flexibility to share "privately" a photo (in forum for example)
without exposing my web site and or my gallery behind the photos."

He does not want his site exposed.

kdog · January 22, 2016

Allen wrote: »

"There are times that I need this flexibility to share "privately" a photo (in forum for example)
without exposing my web site and or my gallery behind the photos."

He does not want his site exposed.

Oh, I missed that. Well then he could set the hide-owner gallery option which will do that. Your solution is good as well, but it's a bit putzy to edit the links as evidenced by the OP's follow up question.

Allen · January 22, 2016

kdog wrote: »

Oh, I missed that. Well then he could set the hide-owner gallery option which will do that. Your solution is good as well, but it's a bit putzy to edit the links as evidenced by the OP's follow up question.

Hide Owner will destroy any navigation for his regular visitors to his site.

kdog · January 22, 2016

Allen wrote: »

Hide Owner will destroy any navigation for his regular visitors to his site.

Sure, there's no linkage from a hidden-owner gallery back to his main site. You make it sound like it's going to destroy his whole site.

I guess it depends on what it is he wants to do. If posting photos anonymously is his goal, then he could have an unlisted hidden-owner gallery in which he puts copies of the photos he wants to post. Or he could do your filename hack, which is also good to know. Now he's got two ways of accomplishing what he wants to do depending on his needs. That's a good thing, right?

forestlitter · January 28, 2016

This topic keeps coming up. Yet smugmug keeps taking the position that they dont think it would be useful to many users.

Here's a recent discussion:

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=241965

leftquark · January 28, 2016

forestlitter wrote: »

This topic keeps coming up. Yet smugmug keeps taking the position that they dont think it would be useful to many users.

As kdog mentions, there are ways to do this today....

kdog wrote: »

Now he's got two ways of accomplishing what he wants to do depending on his needs. That's a good thing, right?

Keep in mind that it's very easy to look on dgrin and say that there's a large voice asking for things, when in fact, the dgrin community is an extremely small subset of the SmugMug user base. You guys are an amazing resource and I love bouncing ideas off you all but we have to balance feature requests with the number of people who will actually use them. Yes, some people will use a feature, but if it's not a strong majority, then it adds a lot of cost (building, maintaining, supporting, rebuilding, etc) that can weaken SmugMug, and that's not something we want to do.

With that said, we continuously monitor and gather data and listen to these feature requests, so while it might be "not at this time", it's certainly not "we will never do this."

forestlitter · January 29, 2016

The ways to do this today are work arounds. They are not simple & elegant methods, which should always be the goal of any software (IMO).

I understand how smugmug needs to balance the needs of all it's users. I assume that the Feature Request forum at http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug is the official process used to determine the level of interest in new features. If that is not correct, please let us know what the process is.

I encourage anyone tired of using work arounds and interested in having a cleaner way to obtain a non-identifying url to vote for this request:

feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/2511855-add-an-anonymous-option-to-the-shared-links-gene

If clicking the link above does not work for you, paste this link in your browser:

leftquark · January 30, 2016

forestlitter wrote: »

I understand how smugmug needs to balance the needs of all it's users. I assume that the Feature Request forum at http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug is the official process used to determine the level of interest in new features. If that is not correct, please let us know what the process is.

That's the best way! If we get the feedback that there's huge interest in it, we'll certainly consider it!

Just as a heads up: I edited your post to put the correct link to the feature request!

dmc · February 5, 2016

me too..
add me to the list of folks who sometimes want to put my pic in a forum but I don't my smugmug page revealed, and I don't want to move pics around in my smugmug site to special hidden owner, unlisted gallery, etc. just a simple link.. which is obviously possible.

I always have to search this forum to figure out how to make a link to one of my pics.... too bad the fancy new share dialog box won't do this for us...

there is no way for me to remember "cdn" or that I need to add "/1/L/L.jpg" etc...

example from above...
This is what you give us...
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/2016-Birding/Birding-2016-January/2016-01-11-Black-tailed-Gull/i-GTVhL2p/1/L/IMG_2104_7D2-2-L.jpg

This is all we want
http://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-GTVhL2p/1/L/L.jpg

yes, I'm still around after all this time....

Share a photo link without 'exposing" gallery

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