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What's to come of MobileMe Gallery?

Waybo said:
If I'm going to go to the effort of making my photos look the best I can (in my photography and in my post editing), I don't want the images to change ... if someone is going to download my photo, I want them to get the same quality as I have. Even if it's just family and friends.
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Yeah...maybe I'll just start putting zip files in dropbox.

I don't like any other gallery sites so that may be what I'm left with.
 
Small White Car said:
Ok, I've been playing with Zenfolio for half an hour and I'm still stuck with several major problems. Maybe I'm missing options (this thing has control panels all over the place) so I might just need more time.

But as of right now, my problems are:

1) The gallery thumbnails won't fill the page. I can turn off all the stuff in the left column but it just stays as a big empty blank space so half the page is just empty for no reason.

2) Same problem when viewing an individual photo. It's not as big as it could be because the page is reserving the right column for options that I have hidden.

3) I can't seem to hide the 'buy' button.

4) It took me forever to turn off all the stuff on the page, can I save that as a default somehow? I wouldn't want to have to do that every time I make a gallery.

5) What's the point of my home page? It shows the logo I uploaded but nothing else. I have to click 'all my photos' to see anything. So what's the point of the nice clean URL if that's never what I'd e-mail anybody? Am I supposed to somehow add galleries to this page manually? (Not a dealbreaker, just weird.)

6) Not too fond of the guestbook, but I could live with it. Likewise, the menus are always on showing way more than they need to, but I'll live. (Not a dealbreaker.)

7) How can my guests download all the photos at full resolution with one button? I can't even figure out how to do it in a complicated way (like, by manually selecting them all) let alone in an easy "here's a button" way.

8) There's probably no way to view these on an AppleTV, is there? (Not a dealbreaker.)

- - -

So 5 of these 8 items are deal-breakers for me and the other 3 are just annoying. Maybe I'll figure them all out but I'm not feeling too positive.

I've said I've never found anything as perfect as MobileMe. It's been several years now. I don't think anyone else is interested in making something like that or they would have by now.
Click to expand...

I know it can take a bit of time to setup in the beginning, but that can be a good thing... you can do a lot of customization and make it work the way you want. I believe that you can make changes that are saved to the templates so they become global... it's been awhile though since I have modified my setup.

Sharing a link to one of your galleries is easy using the "Share" button on each page. Which is also handy for sharing pictures here, as you just grab the link to the appropriately sized image and drop it here.

To view an image at max size in the browser window... simply click it. There is a bit of space reserved on either side for navigating through the pics (left and right buttons). But the larger you make your browser, the larger the image displayed will be.

You can navigate between images in a gallery using the arrow keys, the arrow buttons, or clicking thumbnails. You can also run a full screen slide show that cycles automatically or on command.

Downloading pics is limited to one at at time (at least the way I have it setup)... You mouse over the displayed image on the upper left corner to make a menu appear. I'm not sure why someone would want to download an entire gallery (to print it all?)... since it's not going away. But I suppose if that's important, then that is one shortcoming with Zenfolio. However, Zenfolio was designed more to protect your photos from being stolen... they do an awesome job protecting your photos from being pirated if you set it up that way.

As I said before, what was most important to me was...
- Control over the presentation (I prefer a dark background and a sidebar of thumbnails).
- High quality - no noticeable recompression or loss in sharpness from Aperture
- Easy export directly from Aperture
- Easy to share links and photos with Facebook, friends and family, and threads here
- Nice iOS app so I can take my Zenfolio offline without having to resync my photos with my devices through iTunes.

Zenfolio does all of this extremely well, but I recognize that it may not be for everyone.

Note: JDDavis has his setup very nicely (link in his sig). He clearly has it setup as a portfolio style of site - organized by subject. I organize my galleries by shoot/event. His galleries display thumbnails in a strip on the top, mine display thumbs in a grid on the right. If you want to see mine, PM me and I'll send you the link. :)
 
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VirtualRain said:
Downloading pics is limited to one at at time (at least the way I have it setup)... You mouse over the displayed image on the upper left corner to make a menu appear. I'm not sure why someone would want to download an entire gallery (to print it all?)... since it's not going away. But I suppose if that's important, then that is one shortcoming with Zenfolio. However, Zenfolio was designed more to protect your photos from being stolen... they do an awesome job protecting your photos from being pirated if you set it up that way.
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Ok, then it's not for me. Sharing full-resolution versions is the primary requirement I have for pretty much anything I put online. (And having it be easy and not having to explain HOW to do it to people is the 2nd requirement...that's where Flickr falls down.)

As I said above, if MM goes away I may just start putting zip files in Dropbox. It'll be a shame that people won't be able to see them before downloading, but I won't have too many other options.

VirtualRain said:
Note: JDDavis has his setup very nicely (link in his sig).
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Yes, it looks nice and I'm sure it fits his needs, but that's way too cluttered for what I want. Now, clearly he's showing information he wants to show so that works well for him. But it's not what I need.
 
Apparently Zenfolio has a batch download of originals... I just have never used it... http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/news/09-08-14

Anyway, if Zenfolio still doesn't have what you are looking for, and MM goes away, Smugmug is another popular hosting site, but I didn't like the templates and UI as much as Zenfolio, but that's a very personal and subjective thing.
 
VirtualRain said:
Apparently Zenfolio has a batch download of originals... I just have never used it... http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/news/09-08-14

Anyway, if Zenfolio still doesn't have what you are looking for, and MM goes away, Smugmug is another popular hosting site, but I didn't like the templates and UI as much as Zenfolio, but that's a very personal and subjective thing.
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Cool. Thanks. I'll save these links for if MM Galleries ever fold. If so I could see Zen being a nice 2nd place winner. I could probably make it work if I had to.
 
I'm a bit late to this party, but the topic really interests me. I'm disappointed that Apple is discontinuing their integrated approach towards publishing and sharing photos and videos. iMovie in particular has worked very well and I use it quite regularly to publish and share movies to my MobileMe Gallery. It's especially useful to be able to publish in 4 different resolutions because some of the viewers are viewing on their iPhones, others on Macs, but with slow internet connections, and some probably prefer the highest resolution possible. It's very important to me that my content be presented 100% ad-free. I'm still working with iMovie 8.0 ('09) and the only option I see for movie sharing is Youtube and MobileMe. Perhaps iMovie '11 has a Vimeo option? The problem is that Vimeo Plus is $60/year. I can stomach paying $99 to Apple for MobileMe because of all the other features it includes (iDisk, push Mail, Contacts, Calendars...)
I don't think people can really suggest YouTube as a viable alternative - it is littered with ads and has a sloppy interface.
 
idanielandrew said:
I'm a bit late to this party, but the topic really interests me. I'm disappointed that Apple is discontinuing their integrated approach towards publishing and sharing photos and videos. iMovie in particular has worked very well and I use it quite regularly to publish and share movies to my MobileMe Gallery. It's especially useful to be able to publish in 4 different resolutions because some of the viewers are viewing on their iPhones, others on Macs, but with slow internet connections, and some probably prefer the highest resolution possible. It's very important to me that my content be presented 100% ad-free. I'm still working with iMovie 8.0 ('09) and the only option I see for movie sharing is Youtube and MobileMe. Perhaps iMovie '11 has a Vimeo option? The problem is that Vimeo Plus is $60/year. I can stomach paying $99 to Apple for MobileMe because of all the other features it includes (iDisk, push Mail, Contacts, Calendars...)
I don't think people can really suggest YouTube as a viable alternative - it is littered with ads and has a sloppy interface.
Click to expand...

Imovie 11 does have a Vimeo option, I prefer Vimeo, much cleaner site. No advertisement, regardless is you are a Vimeo plus member or not, however the Vimeo plus is worth it, for $5 a month, it was not a hard choice for me.

would be nice to find a website that allows host of pictures like mobile me, add free, even if it cost a little, non off the big ones do (flickr / photo bucket). I might just end up host my own website and use iWeb to easily create and upload my pics.
 
I'm in the process of designing my own site and have been using the Aperture 'Export as web page' module. Works well and I can go in and edit the HTML/CSS later if needed.

I use Flickr for everyday stuff but for when I was using MobileMe (family sharing, quick viewing) this will suffice.

I tried Zenfolio but for my purposes it was too much. I don't have clients, I don't need to sell - but if I were a professional it would be perfect.
 
Glad to see this topic is still kicking around. As the iCloud rolls in on us it will be interesting to see what everyone's approach to publishing video and pics will be. Maybe Apple has something in store? I was happy with MobileMe because I could quickly post family pics and videos to the same location. If Apple does nothing to replace or continue a Gallery like service in the cloud then I will be looking for an alternative. YouTube is out of the picture. Vimeo looks ok but there is no photo hosting (right?). Flickr at least has Aperture and Apple TV integration so that's a plus. I might go back to an iWeb site but I'm not that confident that iWeb will continue on after the cloud. I've been looking at the WordPress software.....the wordpress.org stuff you download as a free alternative to iWeb. I might go with hosting a family website with that. The main thing I want is tight integration with Aperture and iMovie with photos and videos in the same place.

Still waiting and watching...:rolleyes:
 
Thought I'd post something to bump this topic back up and give a few updates. I'm about ready to pull the trigger on a SmugMug Power account. My plan would be to use SmugMug for family photos and videos only. I'll use Zenfolio for all non family photos and YouTube for all non family videos. And I'll probably keep using Flickr for random stuff that I don't want on Zenfolio. A little more complicated but will cost me a little less since I won't be paying for Mobile Me.

There are Aperture plugins for SmugMug, Zenfolio, and Flickr. iMovie can post directly to Youtube. The only thing missing is iMovie directly to SmugMug. Workflow won't take too much of a hit, it's just going to be a royal pain re-uploading everything that is on Mobile Me Gallery.

There's a lengthy discussion here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3102548?start=0&tstart=0 on Mobile Me Gallery services.

A link to send Apple feedback on Mobile Me https://www.apple.com/feedback/mobileme.html

An Apple link for what seems to be about the final word on the subject http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4597

But wait....just so we can all hold on to a little bit of hope there's this http://www.appleinsider.com/article...storing_axed_mobileme_features_in_icloud.html
 
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