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MobileMe Gallery: Unleashing photos into the wild
One of the things I really like about Aperture is how it changed, simplified and organized the way I share, show, submit, distribute, present, and output my final images. At one time or another, I must have, and I still continue, to use the many different ways to release my photographs directly from Aperture: Web Journal, Web Page, Export, Output, Email, Slideshow, among other things. Almost every imaginable way for me to transfer my photographs from inside my computer and into the wild can probably be done from within Aperture. For me, it's no small matter because that's really the point of working in Aperture, that after I'm done importing, filing, selecting, editing and whatever else that needs to be done with the pictures, I can rely on Aperture to help me put my pictures into the hands of those who needs them: my clients, basically, and the people I work for and collaborate with.
Recently, I noticed that I'm beginning to favor distribution and sharing of photos through Aperture's built-in MobileMe Gallery. The latest version of Aperture includes a new option that allows you to directly create a MobileMe Gallery and automatically upload it online to a pre-configured .Mac (or @me.com) account. More and more, I am finding this a really convenient way to share and distribute images. This also makes excellent use of the storage space alloted in my MobileMe (or .Mac) account. When in the MobileMe Gallery section, a button is present with a menu that allows me to: tweak the settings, visit the gallery, or, tell a friend.
In Settings, I can quickly input all the necessary information about the gallery I want to create, from title and description to the size of the photographs such as optimized JPEGs and full high resolution original-size images. I can even check the option to make the photos available for download and password-protect it so that only certain people can view and access the gallery. Clicking on Tell a Friend creates a pre-formatted email that announces the gallery. And Visit Gallery opens a page from the browser.
When viewing the MobileMe gallery online, I can easily change into one of the three viewing modes (which includes the Cover Flow mode), and I also have the option to change the background color from black, grey or white. The layout of the MobileMe gallery is simple and well presented. Navigation of the gallery pages are easy. The focus is always in the pictures. If I need to quickly share or distribute or show a set of photographs, my first impulse nowadays is to whip up a new MobileMe gallery.
My only beef with MM galleries is the lack of ability to add comments. Certainly, I like the clean viewing interface, but comments in the EXIF data, or even a button to turn them on and off (like the other options) would be a welcome improvement.
If Apple could do that, they'd give facebook a run for its money, and maybe build up its .Mac group networks.
I agree with Daniel about the lack of comments in MobileMe web galleries. It would be nice to see an option to view comments. Other than that complaint, I find the MM galleries very user-friendly. By the way, the so-called ".Mac Groups" are now defunct with the transition from .Mac to MobileMe, so these groups won't be a challenge to Facebook anymore.
I am not sure what 'comments' you guys are on about. If you use iWeb to create your MM web pages, then the facility for viewers to leave comments is certainly there on certain page templates. I have used Aperture to create web pages in the past, even creating my own default styles, but there is a lack of flexibility so I use other methods now. However, iWeb has lots of options and having spent all day today playing with it, find it has many useful features that I will use in certain circumstances.
Neither is any good for adding such features as PayPal facilities though.
So if it is viewer comments you are after, it is a feature lacking in Aperture rather than MobileMe. If you want to write your own comments under an image, there are ways to do this.
Michael, I think the "comments" is the meta data field of Comments within Aperture. If you publish directly from Aperture to MobileMe gallery, I think you can only use the version name as a description of the photo.
It is nice to publish the photos as a new gallery directly from within Aperture, without having to startup iWeb.
Also, within Aperture, you can use the ratings to reduce the selection from a project, album, or folder. If you only wanted to use the selections, I think you would have to place the "top picks" into a new album / project / folder to be able to only see the selected photos within iWeb, (it's been a couple of years since I've used iWeb.
I have ranted about this before - hey are you guys running out of stuff, I remember this exact same post a while ago.
On to the rant - there is no way to get aperture to put downloadable images with an sRGB profile on a mobileMe /.mac web gallery. Even if the original master is an sRGB. This sucks, why not just allow the selection of an existing export preset instead of the rather vague and cryptic completely different export options for downloadable images on a web gallery. Why? WTF?
Almost useless.
RB
Ken, you are right about having to create a new album to view only the selected images via iWeb. This is still the way it works. And I also agree it would be great to be able to do everything from within Aperture, but creating an album from selected images is hardly an effort. I guess it will come in time. I only use my MM account for my own private fun stuff.
the MobileMe Gallery is a nice way to present your photos, but it is almost unusable for us users here in europe - especially from good old germany. The transfer rates from the mobileme gallery does not exceed approx 60 - 80 KB/s. So it's boring to wait and wait and wait for your photos.
It's a well known problem in the .mac discussions but without a solution from apple.
Greetings from Germany
Dirk
I agree with Dick Heuer.
In Australia the speed makes the system useless. Given enough time to do the initial sync, the service can be used for syncing, but for any other operation it is useless.
The other day it too me 3 hours and 45 minutes to get a directory listing of 10,000 files.
The same from jalbum.net takes 9 minutes.
Telling support about it is useless as they just keep sending the same information back that has nothing to do with the problem.
Apple has really come in below par on this one.
Doug
Hey guys,
If you're interested in pulling your MobileMe photos onto your blog or website I wrote up a little script that will do so. Right now I am using it to pull the latest 5 photos from my "iPhone" MobileMe library.
http://jcontonio.com/projects
Biggest barrier in using these galleries?... the out right denial of service for users of IE6. I don't like IE6 like anyone else, but for a vast majority of corp clients, they can't load firefox or IE7 and then can't see the galleries
I love the functionality of Mobile Me galleries, but really need a pro version. I run a website for an art gallery and if I could publish to my own site instead of to Mobile Me galleries, that would be incredible.
Even being able to link form mobile me to my site would do if the images could be searchable.
Any ideas?
The other thing about MM comments is that the view can't leave a comment. That would be a great feature. If we can subscribe to RSS it would be nice to have a comment function that would allow the views to leave thoughts about the image.
Does Mobile Me Gallery have a loop setting for the slideshow?
And to think, there were people who considered Mobileme a productive tool.
download software free
Does anyone know if you can post RAW files to a mobile.me gallery? I thought I had done this but later discovered that my friends could only download images that were only 748mb.