Forum: Using Media Gallery Manager

Karen, I welcome that you shared this point of view with us. I think you have caught well the main idea of how Media Gallery Manager is working.

Currently Media Gallery Manager does not cover all aspects of a full backup of a Zenfolio account which can be used to restore the whole site without any further editing...and most likely never will be.

If doing a full download sync starting with the top group (usually "All Photographs" if it has not been changed from the default) the following information is downloaded and saved on local harddrive:

• The complete structure of all nested groups and galleries using the title of the groups and galleries as the folder name on the local harddrive.
• All original image files (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF) including the metadata that are stored in the original image files at the time the image files have been uploaded (EXIF and IPTC metadata within the original files)
• For every group and gallery that is not already existing on the local harddrive some additional information is stored in a text file within the related folder. The text file has the name _mgmfolder.txt and holds the metadata title, caption, keywords and custome reference as described on this help page. Note: the password is not saved on download sync.

What is not saved during download sync:

• Additional information like title, caption and keywords of photos. Though during a new upload this information will be retrieved from the image file metadata (EXIF and IPTC) as it is done for any initial upload of images.
• Access control settings are not downloaded/saved.
• Collections are ignored during download sync.
• Video files are ignored during download sync and upload sync. Read more about video support on this blog post.
• No additional site elements like PDF-files or custom pages are supported. (The public Zenfolio API does not support to deal with these elements in a 3rd party application.)
• No settings of customized visitor views, custome themes or site menus. (These things are not supported by the public Zenfolio API.)

The vision of Media Gallery Manager is to be a tool that integrates well with most workflows to comfortable upload masses of images to online galleries and easily download images for purposes like order fulfillment.

My idea of the most common workflow is to have the master database of images and related metadata within the usual workflow tools or DAM solution. Media Gallery Manager is ment to be the link from the DAM tool to the online gallery. I do not see that Media Gallery Manager will ever be a full backup solution for the online galleries.

In my workflow I always try to prepare title, caption and keywords for all images in my local DAM tool (e.g. Adobe Lightroom) before uploading the images to Zenfolio. If doing so all metadata except categories will be retrieved by Zenfolio when images are uploaded.

That said I could imagine that one time Media Gallery Manager supports advanced workflows where smaller sized images are uploaded for proofing purpose and then can be replaced by full sized image files. Also resyncing of metadata like title, caption and keywords that are changed at a later time could be a feature that fits into my vision of Media Gallery Manager.

I hope this makes sense and does make some things more clear. Anyway I love to hear other opinions. I promise to think about all ideas and will try to consider all the different workflows that photographers might have.

Harald.