SmugMug - Store & Share Photos

I was a long time Flickr and Google Photos user. I have to say that Flickr is probably the best, I just don’t feel secure with Flickr being around a long while. This is my first time giving Smug a shot. It has potentials. It’s nice to have the ability to use templates to create photo sites and galleries. I even find it a tad faster to upload batch photos than Flickr or Google Photos. If Smug can figure this out, they would be perfect! I would love to have the ability to double tap with a single finger to zoom in. I’m a pixel peeper and it’s important. Also would be nice to swipe down on a full photo view to return back to the gallery view. And I’d like to view the exif data without having to reach my thumb far up to the more icon in the upper nav bar. These are basically the mental model that users have towards photo apps. But for some reason, I either have to use two fingers to zoom in and zoom out or at times it doesn’t even let me zoom in at all. Please update this and you’ll have a paying member for life. And I’d actually open the app a whole lot more. Otherwise, I’m currently paying for storage and a slightly improved upload speed more than anything else.

I have been dealing with various apps including this one for 6 years now. None of them offered an easy way to upload (backup) my photos iPad and iPhone to smugmug. I did not need a sync app, I needed a way to back up the photos I didnt want to sync. This 2018 updated app is exactly what I need. I manage 2 smugmug accounts- one is personal and one is for a non-profit. I use my iPhone to take pictures for both accounts and I get emailed photos on my iPhone and iPad that apply to one or both accounts. With this app update I can switch log-ins quickly. I can select a gallery and directly upload images in seconds. I can create a new gallery. I can change gallery settings. I can add photos to both smug mug accounts. I can delete photos. I can download selected photos to either device. I can show entire galleries or a single photo when I need to. If you need an app that allows backup and organization of your photos in smugmug then this app fits the bill.

ask user to change the rating

...are you aware of this? You offer a way to keep images on the device, for display when the network is unavailable. Good idea ... flawed implementation. I have this option set on most of my galleries. I discover some images display “thumbnail” resolution when in full-screen display. I watch the progess of the download (the little green “thermometer” bar; the eventual grey circle checkmark) ... I think “good, that one is downloaded” ... I open that image, and it is full resolution. I move on, and then come back to that same image ... the grey circle checkmark is gone, and the black space for the green progress thermometer is there again. I wait and watch it all happen again ... green thermometer, then circled grey checkmark ... high resolution photo ... then, the process repeats! I cannot rely on this offline storage. I cannot afford to display my professional artwork this way!!! This happens to the same images, time amd time again, yet does not happen to other images. I note no pattern to this problem.

I love this app, and it has been great for my photo and video storage. But for the first few days, I couldn’t watch any videos within the app. I finally figured out that if I saved the videos to my iPad’s camera roll, I could then watch them on my app. But I have quite a lot of videos, and it is frustrating to have to do this every time I want to watch a video. I have also been having trouble uploading certain videos in the first place. It isn’t the case with every video, but fairly often I will be told that a video can not be uploaded, even when I try to upload it multiple times. I would GREATLY appreciate these being fixed, as it would save me a lot of time and work. But, overall I am very pleased with this app!

I have been trying to upload photos from a recent Central America trip. Three times the upload has stalled at approximately 2/3 completion. I made the suggested changes to my settings and the problem remains. Reading discussions on this topic, I see it’s a continuing problem. What a waste of time! I tried again another day and the large file (number of photos) froze again about 2/3 of the way. This time I was able to exit, determine the number of the last photo accepted, and continue uploading from that point. Success! I really like everything about Smugmug but found that exercise frustrating. Finding a work around leads me to updating my review to a more positive one.