Aperture and iCloud - what happens to MobileMe galleries?

Mr Grinch wrote:

Looks like we are hosed- galleries going away completely.

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/transition.html

Any recommendations for web hosting services with Aperture?

I haven't been able to find anything that is as tightly integrated with Aperture as MobileMe Gallery. Aperture supports direct uploads to Facebook and Flickr, but compared to Gallery, those services are completely inadequate. Based on what people had posted in other threads about this same issue, I tried out Picasa, SmugMug, and Zenfolio. Picasa is the least expensive and in some ways, most user-friendly, but the galleries are not as aesthetically pleasing as MM Gallery.

All three services have plug-ins for Aperture, but I found the Picasa and Zenfolio plug-ins to be more trouble than they're worth, and instead have altered my workflow. I export my photos from Aperture to a folder on my Mac, then use the proprietary web uploader for the service. It gives you better feedback on the upload process and seemed faster to me.

SmugMug and Zenfolio look a lot better than Picasa, but it took me time to customize each of them to get rid of the elements I didn't want. Both are designed to meet the needs of professional photographers who want to sell their photos, but I don't want to send a link to a friend and have them see a shopping cart on the page when they go to view my photos. After some tweaking, you can get rid of that feature, as well as "like" and "dislike" buttons and other "social networking" clutter that I don't want or need.

SmugMug is much faster at uploading photos than Zenfolio, but I don't like SmugMug's user interface as much. Both services have user interfaces that offer you a lot more control and options than MM Gallery, which is a plus, but they both look a lot like Windows, with too many menus, so I had to do a lot of searching to find what I was looking for. They are not Mac-like at all. However, once you've got the settings the way you want them, both sites do a good job of displaying your photos in galleries and a slideshow. I prefer Zenfolio's slideshow, which automatically expands the image to fill the monitor (SmugMug might have the option to do this, but I gave up trying to find the setting in their maze of menus).

Zenfolio also has a decent iOS app (universal for both iPhone and iPad) which is free and offers more functionality than Apple's Gallery app (which will no doubt die when MobileMe dies). The prices for both services are similar. Each offers a free 14-day trial of their top-line pro package. As of now, I'm probably going to go with Zenfolio. I want to make the switch soon, because I see no point in uploading any new photos to MM Gallery.

Hope this helps, and if you find something better out there, please share! Good luck!

I have used both MobileMe and Zenfolio for the past several years. Zenfolio has worked great, including the uploader for Aperture. I have uploaded several times a week for 3 years and have never had a problem. In fact, I had more problems syncing with MobileMe than uploading to Zenfolio.

Zenfolio is highly customizable, which allows you to make it look the way you want. I can't recommend Zenfolio enough (and I don't work for them!).

Dan

There are some Aperture plug-ins that offer support for more sharing/hosting services. For example... there is a Zenfolio plug-in (I have not tried it.)

See: http://www.apple.com/aperture/resources/plugins.html#export

It's good to know that you've had a positive experience with Zenfolio. The more I use it, the more I like it, and you make a good point about issues syncing with MobileMe, which doesn't always work as well as it should. It looks as if the demise of MobileMe will save me money, since iCloud will offer calendar and contact syncing, and I can use Dropbox instead of iDisk. Zenfolio is reasonably priced compared to MobileMe.

Thanks again for the information.

Like others, I dread the loss of MobileMe Galleries, and the ability of Aperture to easily Create/Organize/Change MobileMe Galleries. Last year I spent some time looking at using SmugMug as a replacement for MobileMe, and there is an Aperture to SmugMug Plugin from NZWidgets.com that provides a way to upload from Aperture to SmugMug from within Aperture.

See: http://nzwidgets.com/smugin/smugin.html

And I liked it enough that I then bought the SmuginProForAperture plugin for $20 in order to get the additional features. And I was using it for awhile, but missed the drag-and-drop capability of MobileMe implementation, and the website design on SmugMug was not the most intuitive. I have the Power plan for $60/yr which gives more flexibility on customizing your page and a separate domain.

Now with MobileMe going away, and no publicized strategy from Apple for posting Galleries online, I am restarting my transition to move my Aperture photos to SmugMug instead of MobileMe. It is also providing the opportunity to better organize my Aperture Libraries. I hope to be fully transitioned in the next couple of months. I have most of my SmugMug galleries as "unlisted" or "password protected" with links to them from articles on my website. And I have also been using the SmugMug iPhone App.

Hope this helps others.

Tom

Everyone should read this and make our voices heard!!!

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/12/apple_open_to_restoring_axed_mobil eme_features_in_icloud.html

What Alessandra said. Tim Cook has indicated willingness to listen, and Apple in the past has sometimes listened (e.g. they brought back anti-glare MBP options after image pro users loudly complained).

-Allen

Each one of us has to do it... for idisk, gallery and web hosting (maybe a iweb pro??)

send your feedback using the MobileMe feedback form and once iCloud launches I suggest people also send their feedback using the iCloud feedback form. Or, you could do what the guy in the article did and send your feedback directly to Tim Cook but I think that we would get a more favourable response if we go through official channels, that being the feedback mechanism.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/mobileme.html

Tim Cook has indicated willingness to listen, and Apple in the past has sometimes listened (e.g. they brought back anti-glare MBP options after image pro users loudly complained).

The original aluminum MacBook (with no Firewire port) was greeted with a sustained howl of protest in the Apple Discussion forums. A few months later, the aluminum MacBook was magically replaced by the first 13" aluminum MacBook Pro (with the missing Firewire port restored). Apple may act blindly on occasion, but they are not completely deaf.

So feedback is important, but I would encourage people not to limit their complaints to official channels. In many companies, "official channels" lead exactly nowhere. The Apple Discussion forums are not an official channel for customer complaints either, but if customers make enough noise here, Apple will eventually take notice. Same for writing to Tim Cook: He may not like receiving hundreds of emails in protest of Apple's decision to discontinue MobileMe, but it would be hard for him to ignore such an outpouring of complaint from Apple's customers. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Obviously, there's no point in ranting and raving to Tim Cook; but a sincere, intelligently-written protest directed his way certainly can't hurt.

The other thing that I think we should remember is that publishing galleries-to-the-cloud is an Aperture feature that we all paid for when we bought Aperture. Apple can discontinue the Mobileme service to Mobileme users when their subscriptions expire, but galleries-to-the-cloud is an Aperture feature that IMO Apple has no business taking out of a product we paid for.

IMO we should use all opportunities to comment on photogs' need for galleries-to-the-cloud. We should remind Apple how important the galleries-to-the-cloud feature is to us by also going to Provide Aperture Feedback under the Aperture menu.

Personally I expect Apple io continue galleries-to-the-cloud as a pro Aperture feature independent of whatever goes on with Mobileme and iCloud, which are an OS-wide products. However our comments may help.

-Allen Wicks

Gallery is a great feature and as you said is one of the killer apps. There is really no subsitute. Flickr and Picasa look terrible and both downsize pics. Neither is integrated into iPad or iPhone well at all. Flickr has some but its poorly done. Flickr has some integration on Apple TV, but again poorly done. There is no photo viewing service in Apple TV. Galery integration with Apple TV made Apple TV a great tool. im going to have to switch to Roku and find anotehr photo service. Really dumb idea to do away with Gallery without some kind of replacement. Whats the point of having the ability to upgrade your iCloud disk space when there is really nothing you would want to post/sync there?

No expert here, but what I have read would suggest that iCloud is not for sharing with others, at all, but rather only between your personal devices.

For several years now I have not been using MM galleries at all (although subscribing to MM), and found SmugMug services to be far superior and flexible. I use the Pro level subscription, but there are levels below that. There is a plugin uploader for Aperture, and it works great, and SmugMug allows full quality images to be shared, offered for printing, etc.

MobileMe was just too problematic for people I knew with older browsers.

Ernie

DigiLabs Pro is good, a bit pricey but professional.

http://www.digilabspro.com/?utm_content=truckeedragon%40yahoo.com&utm_source=Ver ticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=&utm_campaign=Getting%20Ready%20for%20th e%20Holidayscontent

-Allen