iStock 2 SmugMug

I created this little web app for myself originally, posting it up because maybe it will help others. I like to keep an album on SM that shows all of my images for sale on IS but it was a pain to keep it up to date all the time. is2sm will pull all your IS images and put them into a specified SM album. Some features:

• Puts IS image title and description into SM caption field, also makes title direct link to image w/ your referral code.
  
  
• Includes your painstakingly selected keywords.
  
  
• You can run it every day and it will only upload images that don't already exist in your album, no need to re-do all of them.
  
  
• Translates very basic UBB code so links to lightboxes & images will show up in album.
• 
  
  Since the images are pulled straight from istock they will already include the watermark so you should disable it in your album, also disable print sales.
  There is an issue with an error being thrown by the SM api at times that I still need to debug so some images may get skipped. If you notice them missing from the final album just run it again and they will get picked up, I will add an automatic retry at some point so this doesn't happen.
  
  Here is the link:
  http://www.slm-tech.com/is2sm/default.aspx
  and a sample album that it created:
  http://scottvickers.smugmug.com/gallery/3473491
  
• 
  
  (Edited on 2007-11-26 13:36:47 by f00sion)
  

Wow. Great tool. Thanks for sharing. I will consider SM as replacement of Flickr... unless you can make a flickr version of this tool too

Cheers.

Looks like a cunning bit of code!

Are SmugMug albums searchable by others? Or is it only a tool for your own convenience?

yes, smugmug albums are fully searchable. they also get included by search engines so you have a keyword-rich page that links directly to the image on istock. The links include your referral code so if a new user signs up you get the $10.

What a great tool! Thanks for your hard work, and for sharing.

Here's my effort to date: http://robynm.smugmug.com/

awesome, glad you were able to get some use out of it. how long did it take for the initial transfer of your portfolio?

It took only a few minutes - I went off and did something else at the time, so didn't notice exactly. It's interesting that I've had about 12,000 hits on my new stock images smugmug gallery in the 8 days or so since I set it up. Any extra exposure has got to be good! Thanks again for sharing.

very cool tool! thanks! nice touch copying over keywords too...

as a few ideas for future feature consideration:

- some options for what to do with UBB code in the istockphoto descriptions. Seems like it is not quite correctly translated, could offer to translate, strip all, just strip certain UBB, etc. fwiw I'm actually impressed that you already have it working for much of it, like linked thumbs to related images... cool!

- an option to list the istockphoto image number in the caption field on smugmug.

- done! now what? it came up with a Done box but no way to dismiss it...

- put it with SSL on your site, so our ISP and SM logins are protected a bit more...

- is there a good way to sort the resulting gallery by reverse age? I tried by filename but since istock photo numbers have grown in # of characters that doesn't totally work...

anyway, those are little nits... it's a great tool! thanks!

jeff

p.s. here's my smugmug gallery of my istockphoto portfolio using your tool (hand sorted so far)

(Edited on 2007-12-18 00:19:02 by jwilkinson)

I am trying to upload and I see the message: Getting iStock Image List.. for quite some time already. Is this the way it has to be?

Dont know if it means anything, but about 3 days after i opened a smugmug account and tranfered all my images over, I had a referal, was a nice supprise, they do have an annual fee but it is small, I am really considering it, has anyone else had this kind of luck with smug mug, or is it more of a coinsidence

I've really enjoyed smugmug. I use them for 2 non-profit group setups (which smugmug provides free), and for my own (wilk4.smugmug.com)

Their features, support, templates, etc are great, and well worth the cost.

I actually had my first referral last month also, not sure if it came through my SM gallery or not... too bad there is no way to track it better in istock.

I haven't been able to use this application for a couple of days - I get a server error / resource cannot be found message. Does anyone know if this a problem with iStock or with the application?

I cant seem to get hold of the application... so if the application needs to communicate with that server... that might be the problem...

you should be good to go now, I got all the files transfered over to my new web host.

Thanks!

I would be eternally grateful is someone could have a look at this thread:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=67956&page=1

I'm having real problems getting this to work. The web app is hanging with the following screen for several hours and the result is nothing is getting transferred to smugmug.



Any help would be really appreciated

I am having the same problem as timeflight... I get to the "Getting iStock Image List..." and the computer just hangs.

I tried Safari & Firefox... both had the same issue.

My portfolio is mostly photographs, but I do have a few vectors in my portfolio.

I'll be giving it a try before I go to sleep, and I'll let you know if it works, Bonnie.

I went with the Pro option, for many reasons - including the print sales options and the dominion name (in my case, http://www.justiceimages.com ). I keep meaning to upload my entire hard drive of images for permanent storage, but that would require a LOT of time and one seriously plugged bandwidth pipe.

UPDATE - it won't even recognize my "username" and password for SmugMug. Rats.

joe, on smugmug you can use your alias name for logins too, you don't have to use the email that can use. IOW, if your url is example.smugmug.com, you can use 'example' as your smugmug login.

have you tried that form with IS2SM?