The Square Thumbs Thread

Andy · April 9, 2008

We've updated the way you can set your photos to have square or standard thumbnails.

If you have no Quick Settings templates made, this is what you now see when you click Add Photos and make a new gallery - notice that the theme preview will show you how your thumbs will look.

You can choose Original:

Or Square thumbs:

If you are a Quick Settings person, then set one for your preference, and when you create a gallery, you'll see that the theme preview will match your preference.

Squares Quicksetting:

No Squares Quicksetting:

Square thumbs give your gallery a clean look by automatically choosing a square portion of your image to be the representative thumbnail. This does not affect your original images and you can always switch back. Or, you can zoom the thumbs yourself, if you prefer.

You'll also notice a new tool in the Photo Tools Menu, under your photos, to bulk set square or Original thumbs. Choose some or all your photos in a gallery.

Square thumbs is the default for new galleries, so if you don't want 'em, be sure to uncheck the button for it in gallery customizing before uploading or applying watermarks, or rotating, or color effects or cropping... anything that will generate new display copies. Quick Settings to the rescue.

Questions? Ask 'em here :ear

Q: is there a way to convert my whole site over to square?
A: Only one gallery at a time, sorry!

PaulSpot · April 9, 2008

Thanks to the hard working SmugMug team; way to listen to your customers and follow up when we were concerned. No company will please everybody all fo the time with every move they make, but you guys seem to listen and react when we're not pleased!

I'll probably just live with it... but.. is there a way to convert my whole site over to square? If not I'll just do them one gallery at a time, or more likely, just forget about it and let the new ones drown out the old ones over time

Andy · April 9, 2008

Hi Paul, I've added your question to post one (and answered).

jfriend · April 9, 2008

Andy wrote:

We've updated the way you can set your photos to have square or standard thumbnails.

Great job fixing up this feature - especially the bulk thumb positioner. It is now much more consistent with Smugmug quality. I still wonder if square is the right default for newbies (and defaults should work well for newbies since that's mostly what they use), because close-up people shots basically never work right with the center square.

It is a little funny that just because I have some quick settings that I used a couple years ago, I don't get the checkboxes for what kind of thumbs and whether I want the gallery unlisted or not. I'd like those checkboxes. Why make me go make custom quicksettings when you could have just offered me this new UI?

Andy · April 9, 2008

jfriend wrote:

Why make me go make custom quicksettings when you could have just offered me this new UI?

Personally, I feel the same way, but the overall decision was made that making the create gallery screen with lots and lots of options makes it hard to read, and reading is hard for folks, so.... if you've made a quicksetting the idea is that you'll figure out to go make another one with thumbs on/off as you please.

We coulda gone that way, of course, but didn't, for that reason.

Thanks for the feedback, John!

AnneMcBean · April 10, 2008

jfriend wrote:

Great job fixing up this feature - especially the bulk thumb positioner.

Hmmm just to be clear on this, it's not a bulk thumb positioner so much as it is a bulk thumb selector. You just click on the photos that you want squared, but you still don't get to choose which part of the image to include in the square.

EDIT: A bulk thumb positioner is a great idea, though.

-Anne

jfriend · April 10, 2008

AnneMcBean wrote:

Hmmm just to be clear on this, it's not a bulk thumb positioner so much as it is a bulk thumb selector. You just click on the photos that you want squared, but you still don't get to choose which part of the image to include in the square.

-Anne

Hmmm. I jumped to a false conclusion (assuming you'd done what I thought was needed). I guess square thumbs aren't ready for me then.

For me, there's no way I'm using square thumbs until there's a bulk positioner. I take lots of people shots and square thumbs just look silly without manually positioning every single one. Doing them individually is way, way too slow to be worth my time.

You should see the event photos I just uploaded when viewed in the slideshow. The square thumbnails in the slideshow (which I don't have any choice about) look downright stupid because nearly all the shots are portrait orientation and everyone's head is cut off. There's no way I'd go for that in my galleries. I'm still surprised you are defaulting everyone to square thumbs, particularly newbies. You must have some really dynamic idea about how square thumbs is going to make the service so much more compelling that the way these often look by default is worth it. I don't get it. Maybe with auto-positioning based on face detection, but even then I'm not sure - I'd have to see how well it worked.

For now, I just create my galleries in StarExplorer where Nikolai gives me a checkbox to control square or non-square. But, I'm obviously not a typical user. Those typical users don't regularly converse in dgrin, don't use a third party uploader and mostly live with the defaults.

For reference, here's (post #79) what I thought was needed to make square thumbs really be good and useful.

devbobo · April 10, 2008

AnneMcBean wrote:

EDIT: A bulk thumb positioner is a great idea, though.

wow, that sounds so familiar

bobmorane · April 10, 2008

Andy wrote:

Q: is there a way to convert my whole site over to square?
A: Only one gallery at a time, sorry!

Is it definitive ?

If no, I'll wait...
If yes, let's spend hours to convert all my galeries... :cry

Another question: the adjust thumbnails tool isn't working for videos ?

Craig Ridley · April 10, 2008

devbobo wrote:

wow, that sounds so familiar

hehehe, long live Bulk Zoom Tool!!! Looks like I can not retire this code just yet - what a shame!

Ric Grupe · April 10, 2008

First off let me say I don't know *hit about coding and don't want to know!

Why can't we just have a tool like the contact sheet layout thumbnail zoom tool in Lightroom's print module?

claudermilk · April 10, 2008

AnneMcBean wrote:

EDIT: A bulk thumb positioner is a great idea, though.

-Anne

devbobo wrote:

wow, that sounds so familiar

Heh. My thoughts exactly! So now the question is: when does the long-lived, very popular hack become part of the main features?

jww · April 10, 2008

jfriend wrote:

... I'm still surprised you are defaulting everyone to square thumbs, particularly newbies. You must have some really dynamic idea about how square thumbs is going to make the service so much more compelling that the way these often look by default is worth it. I don't get it.

Yup!..exactly the point I was making on the other thread. It doesn't make any sense. Hopefully the folks at smugmug read my other post as I made quite a few valid points, but there was no reply.

What was funny to me is we got emails concerning stretchy galleries and a few other things, but not this one. I found the "feature" by looking at a gallery I had loaded several days earlier and wondered what goofy thing I had to done to chop all those pics off. ..it was an easy fix, but again... why is a new feature that can have a less than desirable impact a default?

Oh well.. I whipped this one to death... I have the new updated Send to Smugmug that contains the new check box so I can turn if off for future uploads.. So it is not an issue for me any longer..

Hopefully the awesome dev team at SmugMug will keep this in mind on any other new features coming.

Thanks for your time,

Andy · April 10, 2008

jww wrote:

Hopefully the awesome dev team at SmugMug will keep this in mind on any other new features coming.

Thanks for your time,
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We will, and have really internalized this one a lot over the past 2 weeks.

Thanks for sticking with us.

jww · April 10, 2008

Andy wrote:

We will, and have really internalized this one a lot over the past 2 weeks.

Thanks for sticking with us.

Sticking with you?... You guys are too awesome not too!

Thanks so much Andy.. I appreciate the wonderful reply and comment.

If at any time someone would like an outside perspective for an upcoming feature... give me a holler!

take care!

lynnor · April 13, 2008

Hmmm....is it by design that the bulk tool (on existing galleries) doesn't exist if the gallery contains video clips? So I have to do the whole rotate/un-rotate spiel on those galleries?

I was all excited about this, but enough of my galleries have a few videos in it that the tool is mostly useless to me.

Andy · April 13, 2008

lynnor wrote:

Hmmm....is it by design that the bulk tool (on existing galleries) doesn't exist if the gallery contains video clips? So I have to do the whole rotate/un-rotate spiel on those galleries?

I was all excited about this, but enough of my galleries have a few videos in it that the tool is mostly useless to me.

Seems that videos are handled differently - let me check into that, okay?

Andy · April 13, 2008

lynnor wrote:

Hmmm....is it by design that the bulk tool (on existing galleries) doesn't exist if the gallery contains video clips? So I have to do the whole rotate/un-rotate spiel on those galleries?

I was all excited about this, but enough of my galleries have a few videos in it that the tool is mostly useless to me.

I'm sorry, the thumbs for videos are not changeable in the same manner that photos are... so they'll be squared or not, based on the setting when you upload them.

I wish I had a different, better answer for you.

lynnor · April 13, 2008

Right...I wasn't expecting the video thumbs to be squared (based on my experience w/ rotate/re-rotate).

BUT, I *did* expect the bulk thumb tool to be available in a gallery that has video clips, assuming the current pic viewed in the gallery is a picture. (Just like all the other photo tools). So, if I have a gallery w/ 100 pics and 1 movie clip (in an existing gallery...of which I have several), I have to rotate the pics to square the thumbs. There is no other way for me to do it (don't have pro acct) w/ out moving stuff around all the time. To me, this comes across as a bug/oversite that QA missed.

Andy · April 13, 2008

lynnor wrote:

Right...I wasn't expecting the video thumbs to be squared (based on my experience w/ rotate/re-rotate).

BUT, I *did* expect the bulk thumb tool to be available in a gallery that has video clips, assuming the current pic viewed in the gallery is a picture. (Just like all the other photo tools). So, if I have a gallery w/ 100 pics and 1 movie clip (in an existing gallery...of which I have several), I have to rotate the pics to square the thumbs. There is no other way for me to do it (don't have pro acct) w/ out moving stuff around all the time. To me, this comes across as a bug/oversite that QA missed.

I checked with our CEO & Chief Geek, and it appears that we can't have the bulk tool in a gallery of mixed photos & vids. You could move the vids temporarily, to a holding gallery, do your thumbs, and then move them back? Sorry

mbrady · April 16, 2008

Andy wrote:

I checked with our CEO & Chief Geek, and it appears that we can't have the bulk tool in a gallery of mixed photos & vids. You could move the vids temporarily, to a holding gallery, do your thumbs, and then move them back? Sorry

Did I just accidentally find a way around this?

I have a gallery with several photos and 2 videos. The bulk thumbnail option is not available. However I went into the Gallery settings and set the thumbnail option to square and saved. Then I chose SmugMungous Bulk from the photo tools and it not only created the new photo sizes (it was an older gallery) but also made all the photo thumbnails square (except for the videos). This in effect was the same result as a bulk thumbnail operation in a mixed photo/video gallery.

I have not tried this on a newer gallery that already had the SmugMungous sizes though.

bushscapes · April 22, 2008

Can we have both?
Would it be possible to have both rectangle and square thumbs?

I want square thumbnails for my websites recent photo feed, and regular thumbnails for my smugmug galleries. You could define your preference in the theme like you do now, but instead of actually changing the thumbnails, just use two different versions xxx-Th.jpg and a xxx-Sq.jpg and the theme can choose the relevant one, and I can specify what I want when fetching the RSS feed.

This gives a bit more flexibility and switching between thumbnail types would be instant, the downside is smugmug has to store two thumbnails.

Andy · April 22, 2008

bushscapes wrote:

Would it be possible to have both rectangle and square thumbs?

I want square thumbnails for my websites recent photo feed, and regular thumbnails for my smugmug galleries. You could define your preference in the theme like you do now, but instead of actually changing the thumbnails, just use two different versions xxx-Th.jpg and a xxx-Sq.jpg and the theme can choose the relevant one, and I can specify what I want when fetching the RSS feed.

This gives a bit more flexibility and switching between thumbnail types would be instant, the downside is smugmug has to store two thumbnails.

welcome to the forum, and thanks for the feature request

Entropy512 · April 26, 2008

Does anyone know of a commandline Linux tool that allows this option to be set?

The default is (unfortunately) square, and I want the original behavior for all of my galleries. Unfortunately the tool I am using (sm_photo_tool.py) does not yet support setting this option. The end result is I have to upload, change the setting, then rotate left and rotate right to regenerate thumbnails. This is extremely time consuming.

I have attempted to change the option in gallery settings and then save the settings to the "smugmug default" quicksettings entry, but new galleries still have square thumbnails.

Andy · April 26, 2008

Entropy512 wrote:

Does anyone know of a commandline Linux tool that allows this option to be set?

The default is (unfortunately) square, and I want the original behavior for all of my galleries. Unfortunately the tool I am using (sm_photo_tool.py) does not yet support setting this option. The end result is I have to upload, change the setting, then rotate left and rotate right to regenerate thumbnails. This is extremely time consuming.

I have attempted to change the option in gallery settings and then save the settings to the "smugmug default" quicksettings entry, but new galleries still have square thumbnails.

Make a quicksetting with Standard thumbs (not square). Then apply that quick setting when you create your new galleries

Entropy512 · April 30, 2008

Same question - Know of any commandline Linux tools that can apply quicksettings? sm_photo_tool doesn't support this yet. I welcome other suggestions though. Has to be Linux, commandline is preferred.

Andy · April 30, 2008

Entropy512 wrote:

Same question - Know of any commandline Linux tools that can apply quicksettings? sm_photo_tool doesn't support this yet. I welcome other suggestions though. Has to be Linux, commandline is preferred.

Try posting in the API & Hacks forum, where the linux guys are

jtbarrett · July 3, 2008

bushscapes wrote:

Would it be possible to have both rectangle and square thumbs?

I want square thumbnails for my websites recent photo feed, and regular thumbnails for my smugmug galleries. You could define your preference in the theme like you do now, but instead of actually changing the thumbnails, just use two different versions xxx-Th.jpg and a xxx-Sq.jpg and the theme can choose the relevant one, and I can specify what I want when fetching the RSS feed.

This gives a bit more flexibility and switching between thumbnail types would be instant, the downside is smugmug has to store two thumbnails.

I enthusiastically second this feature request!

The Square Thumbs Thread

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