The Smart Galleries and Collect Photos Help Thread

Andy · January 27, 2010

[imgl]http://cmac.inside.smugmug.net/Other/Forum-photos/ReeseyBlog/147854_niPxw-M.jpg[/imgl] Today we released Smart Galleries :barb Until today, your galleries could only contain actual photos and videos that you uploaded. Now they can also display virtual copies so that one photo can be displayed in many locations.

This was also the #1 request on our feature request forum. :smo

The details are in the Release Notes and our help pages for Collecting Photos and for Smart Gallery Settings.

We'll answer all your questions here, or you can also write our Support Heroes as well!

[imgl]http://cdn.smugmug.com/img/help/smart-galleries/smart-galleries-rules.jpg[/imgl]

FAQs to come, right here.

Do collected photos obey the gallery settings from the original gallery? Yes.

I'm a Pro - why on earth would I want other people on SmugMug to collect my photos on their website? Since the collected photos respect your rules (size displayed, right click, pricing, for sale, not for sale, etc) and have a link back to your site, it's a great way for your stuff to be out there in more places, seen by more people.

Bah. I don't want my photos collected by anyone. No problem. Go to control panel, settings tab, and turn collecting off, sitewide. Or, set specific galleries to be unlisted, or external links off, or have a gallery or site password.

If I post an image on a forum using the link from the virtual copy, does the original image get hit with stat counts? Yup, indeed it will.

Seamus · January 27, 2010

It's magic !! that link is to a trial gallery i just setup, I followed the instructions on the help page and; BOOM the photos are there.

Thanks a mill folks, this is brilliant.

Shay.

wslam · January 27, 2010

Great stuff indeed. The Collect Feature is easy to use, but I find the options under Smart Gallery a little lacking.
I also tried setting up a Smart Gallery with two rules, one being Popular. But they are not showing up for some reasons. Popular just requires someone give it a thumbsup right? Or is popular define in some other way?

ws

Andy · January 27, 2010

wslam wrote:

Great stuff indeed. The Collect Feature is easy to use, but I find the options under Smart Gallery a little lacking.
I also tried setting up a Smart Gallery with two rules, one being Popular. But they are not showing up for some reasons. Popular just requires someone give it a thumbsup right? Or is popular define in some other way?

ws

These are your popular photos:
http://photos.lam.ws/popular/#98101199_NpAtE

if there are none in the gallery, then you'll get that message

J. Pollack Photography · January 27, 2010

It's a great feature, and I'm glad to see it. The only change I would like is for virtual copies to honor the strictest permissions of either the source or destination gallery, or at the very least a choice between either of those two.

Andy · January 27, 2010

J. Pollack Photography wrote:

It's a great feature, and I'm glad to see it. The only change I would like is for virtual copies to honor the strictest permissions of either the source or destination gallery, or at the very least a choice between either of those two.

They do honor the restrictions. What are you seeing (give links please)?

J. Pollack Photography · January 27, 2010

Andy wrote:

They do honor the restrictions. What are you seeing (give links please)?

I have a source gallery that allows Original-size downloads and a destination gallery that only allows large. Because the virtual copy is the same exact file, there's no way to restrict the sizes that people can view in the destination gallery.

I'll send you a private message with an example.

wslam · January 27, 2010

Andy wrote:

These are your popular photos:
http://photos.lam.ws/popular/#98101199_NpAtE

if there are none in the gallery, then you'll get that message

You are right, the photos I am looking for are not showing up in the link above.

I wonder why. Is it because my galleries are password protected?

Basically I have a bunch of photos that are password protected, only people with password have access. So once they rank (thumbs up) the photos, I want those photos to show up in a public smart gallery. Is this possible?

Andy · January 27, 2010

wslam wrote:

You are right, the photos I am looking for are not showing up in the link above.

I wonder why. Is it because my galleries are password protected?

Basically I have a bunch of photos that are password protected, only people with password have access. So once they rank (thumbs up) the photos, I want those photos to show up in a public smart gallery. Is this possible?

passworded photos aren't part of /popular. Only public photos.

wslam · January 27, 2010

Andy wrote:

passworded photos aren't part of /popular. Only public photos.

So basically, photo ranking in a password-protected gallery doesn't work?

BigAl · January 27, 2010

I'm missing something here. How are the smart galleries virtual galleries? I just want to add pics from different galleries (myself) to a gallery of my choice??

twincitiesphoto · January 27, 2010

I like the new feature - however I'm struggling to understand how this would be useful to me or to a customer of mine -

As an example - I have many photos of high school hockey - say a parent wants to review these galleries as they come on line and when they see a photo they like - but want to wait until the end of hte season to order all their prints - would they somehow be able to 'collect' their images to put in a particular gallery so they are all easily accessible to order at one time?

Andy · January 27, 2010

wslam wrote:

So basically, photo ranking in a password-protected gallery doesn't work?

it has been this way forever, yes...
https://www.smugmug.com/help/search-online-photo-album

Andy · January 27, 2010

BigAl wrote:

I'm missing something here. How are the smart galleries virtual galleries? I just want to add pics from different galleries (myself) to a gallery of my choice??

You aren't uploading photos more than once. You can collect from many galleries.. you can set smart rules in the collection gallery to show date, keyword, popular, etc.

Does this help?

wslam · January 27, 2010

Andy wrote:

it has been this way forever, yes...
https://www.smugmug.com/help/search-online-photo-album

Thanks. I read it just before you posted the link... hmmm so there is no way for 'user participation' in a password protected gallery that will become a 'variable' for the Smart Gallery then, right?

pguyton · January 27, 2010

very cool idea
very cool idea, i look forward to playing with it, I would like the ability to setup rights to make a collection in a private gallery; It would be cool for me to be able to show a client a set of "raw" prints in low res and then they could collect the ones they want touched up or full sized then email a link to me to that virtual gallery/collection. it's a very interesting idea with alot of potential.

Andy · January 27, 2010

pguyton wrote:

very cool idea, i look forward to playing with it, I would like the ability to setup rights to make a collection in a private gallery; It would be cool for me to be able to show a client a set of "raw" prints in low res and then they could collect the ones they want touched up or full sized then email a link to me to that virtual gallery/collection. it's a very interesting idea with alot of potential.

Thanks! Stay tuned

wslam · January 27, 2010

Andy wrote:

Thanks! Stay tuned

That would basically solve my problem too!

dwterry · January 27, 2010

I had a Bridal gallery sorted in Date Uploaded + Descending order, so that the newest pictures show up first.

The moment I added just one image to that gallery as a virtual image ... the sort order broke. It now just shows in what I believe is the default order (the order in which pictures were added to the gallery).

Can this be fixed?

dwterry · January 27, 2010

What about clean-up?

When I decide to delete files from a gallery containing both actual pictures and virtual pictures ... what will happen? Will I be able to tell if it's a real or virtual image? If I delete one of the virtual images, will it delete the source image too?

Ronaldwwy · January 27, 2010

It's a great feature. Thanks Hero.

I have a comment... I suggest to default "No" for "Include my unlisted/password protected galleries"; otherwise, it's quite easy to mis-share private photos.

Ronald

Andy · January 27, 2010

dwterry wrote:

What about clean-up?

When I decide to delete files from a gallery containing both actual pictures and virtual pictures ... what will happen? Will I be able to tell if it's a real or virtual image? If I delete one of the virtual images, will it delete the source image too?

Try it now - go to delete many photos and see how that page has changed a bit - let us know if you have questions

BigAl · January 27, 2010

Andy wrote:

You aren't uploading photos more than once. You can collect from many galleries.. you can set smart rules in the collection gallery to show date, keyword, popular, etc.

Does this help?

erm, no. I just want to go to an existing gallery, and pick a pic then add it to a virtual gallery - I don't want to go through your decision tree to get the pic I want in the gallery??

As I said, am I missing something?

Andy · January 27, 2010

BigAl wrote:

erm, no. I just want to go to an existing gallery, and pick a pic then add it to a virtual gallery - I don't want to go through your decision tree to get the pic I want in the gallery??

As I said, am I missing something?

So, yeah- you'd make a new gallery (call it say, My Bird Collection) - then go to your bird galleries, and start clicking the collect photo icon on the photos you want to go to the new collection gallery. That's another way to collect.

Helping?

dwterry · January 27, 2010

Andy wrote:

Try it now - go to delete many photos and see how that page has changed a bit - let us know if you have questions

Got it.

Now if we could just get the sort order fixed. I hate to delete old images, but I don't really want old images at the beginning of the gallery.

rainforest1155 · January 27, 2010

dwterry wrote:

I had a Bridal gallery sorted in Date Uploaded + Descending order, so that the newest pictures show up first.

The moment I added just one image to that gallery as a virtual image ... the sort order broke. It now just shows in what I believe is the default order (the order in which pictures were added to the gallery).

Can this be fixed?

Hi,

We are aware there is a problem with the arrange/sort feature and have our engineers looking at it right now. Please stand by while we work on getting this issue resolved. We're very sorry for the inconvenience!

Sebastian

dwterry · January 27, 2010

rainforest1155 wrote:

Hi,

We are aware there is a problem with the arrange/sort feature and have our engineers looking at it right now. Please stand by while we work on getting this issue resolved. We're very sorry for the inconvenience!

Sebastian

Awesome. Thanks!

BELphotos · January 27, 2010

Very slick feature. Seems like basic Unix i-node access to create aliases. Apple does the same thing in their OS X. I'm sure I have oversimplified that.

This is a great way to constantly update portfolios and keep them current.

The Auto-Sort bug is annoying, but I'm sure that the mad scientists at SM are feverishly working on the problem.

Nice job everyone.

darryl · January 27, 2010

Interesting stuff. I created a "Favorites" gallery based on my popular photos (since I'm the only person who votes on my photos).

Found a bug that you may not be able to fix:

When viewing a video in Lightbox mode, when you click on the Collect button, the dialogue box pops *beneath* the Flash video.

I know that getting layers to work w/ Flash is tricky and sometimes completely impossible. Maybe in this case you can have the dialogue box pop-up further down on the page so that it's not covered by the video.

Andy · January 27, 2010

darryl wrote:

Interesting stuff. I created a "Favorites" gallery based on my popular photos (since I'm the only person who votes on my photos).

Found a bug that you may not be able to fix:

When viewing a video in Lightbox mode, when you click on the Collect button, the dialogue box pops *beneath* the Flash video.

I know that getting layers to work w/ Flash is tricky and sometimes completely impossible. Maybe in this case you can have the dialogue box pop-up further down on the page so that it's not covered by the video.

Darryl: it's the same with the QT player on Mac... we'll fix.

WinsomeWorks · January 27, 2010

grand new deal - Virtual Galleries!
Wow-- this is grand, you Smuggie heroes, wizzes, geeks and magicians!! I'm nearly shuddering with excitement to try it out. But I was a good girl and made myself read this whole thread first, and will read the other wikis & release notes & all first too. Your timing is also grand, because I have a lot of galleries of "vintage" photos planned (been going through lots of old photos here) and this will solve umpteen problems at once. Sung in the voice of Kaspar in "Amahl and the Night Visitors"-- "Oh Thank you, THANK you, THA-A-aNK YOU!!"

The Smart Galleries and Collect Photos Help Thread

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