Smugmug caters to Pros? (Lack of auto-rotation, videos)

darryl · October 30, 2006

Apologies in advance for this rant. Feel free to ignore. :-}

I've been with SmugMug for the past couple of years. Love the long uptimes, somewhat attentive customer support, and enthusiastic community.

But I can't help but wonder if in pleasing their Pro customers, they've neglected their Standard and Power users.

I know that browsing Dgrin forums is a bad measure, because most of you all are Pros, but as a non-Pro who just opened an account with Phanfare, I've gotta say there are some shortcomings for "regular Joe's".

First off, let's define a regular Joe. He paid $400+ or maybe even $1000 for a digital camera. He takes a crapload of photos of his 2.5-year-old kid and his friends and family.

He doesn't have the time nor inclination to buy an additional piece of software to help him "manage his workflow" or "automatically handle rotation" or "fix everything in post". Remember, he's already made a huge investment (by his standards) in equipment and a Smugmug account. He doesn't want to spend money or time on extra software.

Here's the thing: Phanfare, and I'm sure other websites, do auto-rotation. Maybe this doesn't work for you Pros, but for 95% of amateur shooters that are not doing any post-processing w/ their photos, I'm sure it would work fine. [This brings to question the % of revenue Smugmug sees from Professional vs. Standard/Power accounts.]

[I was going to go into an additional rant about how nice it is to be able to have an Uploader that easily lets you delete/hide photos from view, uploads in the background, etc., but that's a whole 'nother topic. Yes, I just tried Star*Explorer, and while it's a vast improvement over using the Java uploader, it doesn't actually let you manage your albums locally and have those changes be reflected on the website immediately. I can't understate how nice a feature this is for Regular Joe. Seriously, go get a free 30-day trial from Phanfare and try it out. It will blow your mind about photo management workflow.]

Oh. And videos. Smugmug is stuck in the old ages w/ MPEG-1. My same old complaint.

Anyways, all this is to say, it seems like Smugmug is probably doing the financially prudent thing and making sure they don't make any changes that would piss off their lucrative Professional users.

Granted, they're not actively doing anything to piss off this Power User, but their inaction does make him a little frustrated. :-{

--Darryl

Andy · October 30, 2006

Hi Darryl,

Thanks for posting!

darryl wrote:

Apologies in advance for this rant. Feel free to ignore. :-}

I've been with SmugMug for the past couple of years. Love the long uptimes, somewhat attentive customer support,

As the guy responsible for this, I'd love to here more about "somewhat attentive." Are we lacking in something? Did we misfire with you somehow? Please let us know - we pride ourselves on our service.

and enthusiastic community.

You bet. Dgrin and the entire SmugMug community is tops. I'm amazed at the great stuff I see all the time.

But I can't help but wonder if in pleasing their Pro customers, they've neglected their Standard and Power users.

I know that browsing Dgrin forums is a bad measure, because most of you all are Pros,

Actually, Dgrinners represent Standard, Power and Pro SmugMug customers. And also, non-SmugMug customers

but as a non-Pro who just opened an account with Phanfare, I've gotta say there are some shortcomings for "regular Joe's".

First off, let's define a regular Joe. He paid $400+ or maybe even $1000 for a digital camera. He takes a crapload of photos of his 2.5-year-old kid and his friends and family.

He doesn't have the time nor inclination to buy an additional piece of software to help him "manage his workflow" or "automatically handle rotation" or "fix everything in post". Remember, he's already made a huge investment (by his standards) in equipment and a Smugmug account. He doesn't want to spend money or time on extra software.

Here's the thing: Phanfare, and I'm sure other websites, do auto-rotation. Maybe this doesn't work for you Pros, but for 95% of amateur shooters that are not doing any post-processing w/ their photos, I'm sure it would work fine.

It's a great point. And as it stands now, we don't auto-rotate because some folks already rotate. Some exif tags are different. But we've been testing some uploaders that will allow you to rotate the photos on upload

and I hope we can have them live at some point soon

Can't promise if/when, but we are working on that!

[This brings to question the % of revenue Smugmug sees from Professional vs. Standard/Power accounts.]

We don't publish such numbers, but I can tell you that our subscriber base is distributed across all types of customer - and so we want very much to satisfy the needs of every type of account subscriber.

[I was going to go into an additional rant about how nice it is to be able to have an Uploader that easily lets you delete/hide photos from view, uploads in the background, etc., but that's a whole 'nother topic.

You might like Devbobo's SmugBrowser, Firefox Extension http://smugbrowser.introversion.com.au/beta

And have you tried SendToSmugMug?
http://wiki.shahine.com/default.aspx/MyWiki.SendToSmugMug

Yes, I just tried Star*Explorer, and while it's a vast improvement over using the Java uploader, it doesn't actually let you manage your albums locally and have those changes be reflected on the website immediately. I can't understate how nice a feature this is for Regular Joe. Seriously, go get a free 30-day trial from Phanfare and try it out. It will blow your mind about photo management workflow.]

Oh. And videos. Smugmug is stuck in the old ages w/ MPEG-1. My same old complaint.

No question, it's something I wish, too, we could change

Anyways, all this is to say, it seems like Smugmug is probably doing the financially prudent thing and making sure they don't make any changes that would piss off their lucrative Professional users.

Granted, they're not actively doing anything to piss off this Power User, but their inaction does make him a little frustrated. :-{

--Darryl

I just want to assure you that we don't have any sort of thinking like this. We want to make this site great for ALL of our customers. Many thanks for telling it like it is, Darryl - I'll make sure the rest of the team sees this post!

All the best,

devbobo · October 30, 2006

Andy wrote:

You might like Devbobo's SmugBrowser, Firefox Browser

Please everyone don't start downloading this, it's not all fully operational, I am hoping to have a beta out very shortly.

Cheers,

David

darryl · October 30, 2006

Andy wrote:

Hi Darryl,

Thanks for posting!

As the guy responsible for this, I'd love to here more about "somewhat attentive." Are we lacking in something? Did we misfire with you somehow? Please let us know - we pride ourselves on our service.

Andy -- thank you for your thoughtful response to my little rant. When I say "somewhat attentive", I guess I'm talking about feature requests: "Thanks for your feedback! We hope to get to that soon/someday!"

I think I've had maybe 1-2 actual occasions for real technical support, and got valid answers within a day or two, which was great.

Anyways, I should provide some context about my rant: Today I brought in a 1GB USB Flash Drive w/ about 707MB of photos. I wanted to prune out the bad ones, and upload the rest to Smugmug.

I ended up using Picasa to prune, crop and touch-up, then I dragged into Star*Explorer. I would've hoped that Star*Explorer would let me do some of this management, but no such luck. It's just a nicer upload manager. Being able to queue up 3 albums' worth of photos *was* nice though.

Picasa is free, as you know, and it supports auto-rotation, and (gasp!) it works! So it was disappointing to see the photos uploaded in the wrong orientation and having to rotate them by hand.

So I'm glad to hear about future plans re: auto-rotation.

I will look into those other Uploaders. I guess what got me all cranky was that after a few weeks of playing with Phanfare's more full-featured manager/uploader (Windows and OS X), I've gotten a little spoiled.

OTOH, they only offer two "styles" of viewing, and they don't have any of the very nice private but not passworded sharing options, nor Sharegroups, which I just recently rediscovered and *love*.

If only Smugmug could acquire them and their sweet client-side apps...

Oh, and their better video processing bits too.

:-}

--Darryl

JimM · October 30, 2006

devbobo wrote:

Please everyone don't start downloading this, it's not all fully operational, I am hoping to have a beta out very shortly.

Cheers,

David

Oops, I downloaded it. Looks very cool. I see some parts that are not operational, but this is going to be very cool when it is done!!!

devbobo · October 30, 2006

JimM wrote:

Oops, I downloaded it. Looks very cool. I see some parts that are not operational, but this is going to be very cool when it is done!!!

i see a few late nights ahead of me finishing it off now

dmc · October 30, 2006

darryl wrote:

Apologies in advance for this rant. Feel free to ignore. :-}

I've been with SmugMug for the past couple of years. Love the long uptimes, somewhat attentive customer support, and enthusiastic community.

But I can't help but wonder if in pleasing their Pro customers, they've neglected their Standard and Power users.

....

Granted, they're not actively doing anything to piss off this Power User, but their inaction does make him a little frustrated. :-{

--Darryl

hey fellow "non pro" user! I had the same rant just recently, especially about some of the seemingly simple requests that are made, but I don't see those addressed. (like, why can't I download an original if I am logged in?)
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=405978&postcount=111

some days I log on and there's a whole new Filmstrip style, or Map this, or Popular photos, but the simple tweaks don't happen....

here's one...
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=224093&postcount=119

or when the java uploader dissappears because you started browsing with the window that launched the uploader! or the uploader fails because one of your files are > 8MB... but it doesn't tell you that is the problem!

I hear ya...

pat.kane · October 30, 2006

dmc wrote:

[snip] here's one...
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=224093&postcount=119

I'm with you on that one. A "prev" and "next" would definitely be easier to click on.

marlinspike · October 30, 2006

I always figured just about any camera sold within the last 2 years has a built in auto rotate, no?

I dunno, I guess maybe it's because I'm a pro user, but outside of the one thing in my sig I can't think of anything I want (there used to be 3, one was 24x36 as a standard print, they took care of that, and I can't remember what the third was but if I got rid of it they must have taken care of it).

PBolchover · October 31, 2006

marlinspike wrote:

I always figured just about any camera sold within the last 2 years has a built in auto rotate, no?

Only SLRs, mega-zooms and very high-end point-and-clicks. I have two cameras, both bought in the last year. One of them auto-rotates, the other does not. (Ironically, the more expensive camera does not.) Some graphics software recognises the auto-rotate flag, others do no. There is nothing more irritating than having rotated a picture by hand, only to find that the graphics package then decides to auto-rotate the picture by another 90 degrees.

marlinspike · October 31, 2006

PBolchover wrote:

Only SLRs, mega-zooms and very high-end point-and-clicks. I have two cameras, both bought in the last year. One of them auto-rotates, the other does not. (Ironically, the more expensive camera does not.) Some graphics software recognises the auto-rotate flag, others do no. There is nothing more irritating than having rotated a picture by hand, only to find that the graphics package then decides to auto-rotate the picture by another 90 degrees.

Wow, with that knowledge, even though it wouldn't affect me personally, I think smugmug needs to implement the auto rotation.

Andy · October 31, 2006

marlinspike wrote:

Wow, with that knowledge, even though it wouldn't affect me personally, I think smugmug needs to implement the auto rotation.

And have lots of our customers really, really upset? :nah

It's a tough problem, and as soon as Onethumb has a solution that will work for alll customers, it'll be done!

Until then....

claudermilk · October 31, 2006

JimM wrote:

Oops, I downloaded it. Looks very cool. I see some parts that are not operational, but this is going to be very cool when it is done!!!

Ditto.

devbobo wrote:

i see a few late nights ahead of me finishing it off now

It looks like an extremely cool concept. I'll be patient--I did note the early version number, so expected limitations.

mkress65 · October 31, 2006

Andy wrote:

And have lots of our customers really, really upset? :nah

It's a tough problem, and as soon as Onethumb has a solution that will work for alll customers, it'll be done!

Until then....

I'd think it would be fairly easy to allow the user to set a flag either on a gallery by gallery basis or just as SOP that when they upload to their SmugMug account auto rotation is either on or off. But I'm sure I'm missing something much more complex in the background...

Andy · October 31, 2006

mkress65 wrote:

I'd think it would be fairly easy to allow the user to set a flag either on a gallery by gallery basis or just as SOP that when they upload to their SmugMug account auto rotation is either on or off. But I'm sure I'm missing something much more complex in the background...

That's one way - thanks for the suggestion

cmason · October 31, 2006

devbobo wrote:

i see a few late nights ahead of me finishing it off now.

better believe it, it looks great!

marlinspike · October 31, 2006

Andy wrote:

And have lots of our customers really, really upset? :nah

It's a tough problem, and as soon as Onethumb has a solution that will work for alll customers, it'll be done!

Until then....

I meant the thing that lets you rotate them on upload, not the problematic one.

Andy · October 31, 2006

marlinspike wrote:

I meant the thing that lets you rotate them on upload, not the problematic one.

PBolchover · October 31, 2006

marlinspike wrote:

Wow, with that knowledge, even though it wouldn't affect me personally, I think smugmug needs to implement the auto rotation.

I disagree. Even though I have auto-rotation possible with one of my cameras, I would much prefer it that smugmug _not_ rotate the photos.

darryl · October 31, 2006

PBolchover wrote:

I disagree. Even though I have auto-rotation possible with one of my cameras, I would much prefer it that smugmug _not_ rotate the photos.

Right -- this is why it should be a per-user (or better still, per upload) option, and why it should default to off. (But it should remember your last setting.)

--Darryl

darryl · October 31, 2006

dmc wrote:

hey fellow "non pro" user! I had the same rant just recently, especially about some of the seemingly simple requests that are made, but I don't see those addressed. (like, why can't I download an original if I am logged in?)
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=405978&postcount=111

some days I log on and there's a whole new Filmstrip style, or Map this, or Popular photos, but the simple tweaks don't happen....

Hey DMC, nice to meet ya.

Yeah, for a site that prides itself on usability, they sometimes seem to be adding whizzy new features faster than fixing old bugs.

dmc wrote:

here's one... [re: changing nav links to easier to click <prev and next>]
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=224093&postcount=119

That's a good one! My son is starting to use the computer now, and boy is it excruciating watching him try to navigate to such a small target.

dmc wrote:

or when the java uploader dissappears because you started browsing with the window that launched the uploader! or the uploader fails because one of your files are > 8MB... but it doesn't tell you that is the problem!

I complained about the very same bug about killing the uploader by mistake on August 26, and even came up with a lame solution:

Since leaving that page kills the upload, and I've forgotten that on several occasions, it seems like there shouldn't be a big old link up at the top that tempts you to click on your gallery.

Well, glad to see that I'm not the only one complaining. And yes Andy, I guess it's nice to know that we're being heard. But is anybody *listening*?

[BTW Andy, I just noticed the other night that your avatar was smirking and winking at me. That's creepy!]

Andy · October 31, 2006

darryl wrote:

But is anybody *listening*?

Our site has grown since the beginning as a result of input from customers. We've implemented many, many customer-driven features. Thanks again, for telling us how important yours are!

All the best,

Dna · November 1, 2006

darryl wrote:

Picasa is free, as you know, and it supports auto-rotation, and (gasp!) it works! So it was disappointing to see the photos uploaded in the wrong orientation and having to rotate them by hand.

Which means that Picasa isn't actually rotating the photo, it is only reading the exif and displaying it in the correct orientation. Yes, Smugmug could do this but I believe there is a lot of manufacturers who don't follow the Exif standard and have either no flag for rotation or it's in the wrong place.

I don't have a problem with rotation, either the camera does it if I shoot jpeg, or the raw processor does if if I shoot raw. Anyway it's not too much of a big deal to rotate an album after uploading. It's an easy click and forget procedure.

Dna

jevidon · November 1, 2006

devbobo wrote:

Please everyone don't start downloading this, it's not all fully operational, I am hoping to have a beta out very shortly.

Cheers,

David

You are a genius. I love it already.

darryl · November 1, 2006

Dna wrote:

Which means that Picasa isn't actually rotating the photo, it is only reading the exif and displaying it in the correct orientation. Yes, Smugmug could do this but I believe there is a lot of manufacturers who don't follow the Exif standard and have either no flag for rotation or it's in the wrong place.

I don't have a problem with rotation, either the camera does it if I shoot jpeg, or the raw processor does if if I shoot raw. Anyway it's not too much of a big deal to rotate an album after uploading. It's an easy click and forget procedure.

Dna

It's a big deal to non-Pros that don't want to do any post-processing of their photos. That's me and 100% of people that do have cameras that have proper orientation info in their EXIF data.

We see properly oriented photos in Picasa, or OS X Preview or Graphic Converter or the Windows File Explorer, and when after uploading, we have to freaking rotate a bunch of photos.

--Darryl

cmason · November 1, 2006

darryl wrote:

It's a big deal to non-Pros that don't want to do any post-processing of their photos. That's me and 100% of people that do have cameras that have proper orientation info in their EXIF data.

We see properly oriented photos in Picasa, or OS X Preview or Graphic Converter or the Windows File Explorer, and when after uploading, we have to freaking rotate a bunch of photos.

--Darryl

Hmm, must be missing something. I don't rotate my photos, and dont do any of that kind of editting. I use Picasa quite a bit, and never rotate in it either. Upload to smugmug, and it gets the rotations correct. What am I missing here? This just has never been an issue for me, and I have never rotated a picture.

dmc · November 1, 2006

cmason wrote:

Hmm, must be missing something. I don't rotate my photos, and dont do any of that kind of editting. I use Picasa quite a bit, and never rotate in it either. Upload to smugmug, and it gets the rotations correct. What am I missing here? This just has never been an issue for me, and I have never rotated a picture.

I use ACDSee (similar to picassa) and its "acquisition wizard" has the option that rotates my photos as part of the download. It is not merely showing the files correctly, they are getting rotated. When I upload to smugmug, they are oriented correctly. I don't know if ACDSee updates the exif after they rotate pics though.

I think the minimum smugmug could offer is a flag in the Bulk rotate tool that when set, will rotate all the photos according to the exif. People would not be using the rotate tool if their photos were not sideways.

cmason · November 1, 2006

dmc wrote:

I use ACDSee (similar to picassa) and its "acquisition wizard" has the option that rotates my photos as part of the download. It is not merely showing the files correctly, they are getting rotated. When I upload to smugmug, they are oriented correctly. I don't know if ACDSee updates the exif after they rotate pics though.

I think the minimum smugmug could offer is a flag in the Bulk rotate tool that when set, will rotate all the photos according to the exif. People would not be using the rotate tool if their photos were not sideways.

I dont use Picasa for anything other than viewing. I download photos with a card reader, many I send directly to smugmug. Those that I do edit, I never, ever have to rotate in the apps I use: PS2, Lightroom, RSE

dmc · November 1, 2006

cmason wrote:

I dont use Picasa for anything other than viewing. I download photos with a card reader, many I send directly to smugmug. Those that I do edit, I never, ever have to rotate in the apps I use: PS2, Lightroom, RSE

could be an option in your camera that rotates the pics before writing them to your memory card? seems like that would be a neat feature anyway.

what camera are you using?

jfriend · November 1, 2006

Smugmug caters to Pros?

darryl wrote:

Apologies in advance for this rant. Feel free to ignore. :-}

The title of this thread is somewhat amusing to me because until the last round of pro features in August (proof delay, back printing, order communication, digital downloads, etc...), Smugmug was regularly accused of ignoring the needs of their pros for too long, particularly because they had introduced several new feature releases that were not aimed at the pros.

My guess is that this is just a pendulum that swings back and forth and the constituency that was not served with the latest release will be crying for some new things - that's human nature. The next round of improvements will probably not be targeted at the pros and then the pros will again be screaming that they are being ignored and they need packages, discount coupons, more efficient proof delay re-upload, shopping cart branding, etc.... A big cycle.

Let's all see what they come up with in the next feature upgrade and provide feedback on that.

darryl · November 1, 2006

dmc wrote:

could be an option in your camera that rotates the pics before writing them to your memory card? seems like that would be a neat feature anyway.

what camera are you using?

He's got a Rebel XT, it says on his sig. :-}

And hey hey, check this out:

...On the other hand, if I've taken a lot of shots, hand-rotating the vertical ones when I copy them to a computer is a bit of a pain. The Rebel XTi will let you have the best of both. Auto rotate can either rotate the images on the camera and the computer, or leave them as captured on the camera and rotate them on the computer. That time savings alone is worth the upgrade if you take enough pictures.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/XTI/XTIA.HTM

So I guess his camera does has this feature, and it's turned on. Nifty.

Smugmug caters to Pros? (Lack of auto-rotation, videos)

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