Spring 2024 Enhancements (May 24, v14)
Our spring release makes DBGallery more efficient and pleasant to use with many new capabilities. Expiring shares, a share management page, a 'related image' sidebar, faster thumbs loading, 360 video support, and a few others.
It's a large update with a number of customer requested improvements, along with some that have been lingering around our Agile lanes for a while now.
For example, customers have had concerns about Amazon AWS using images sent for object recognition being used to train and improve their AI object recognition service. Amazon AWS now provides a means to opt-out of storage/training and we have done so. This applies to all DBGallery clients using our supplied object recognition, whether your DBGallery is hosted with us or on-premise. It does not apply to those using their own Amazon account for object recognition services.
Setting an expiry date for shares is another feature our customers has felt was needed. It is finally in this release! Not just that, but also a number of other important improvements we feel will make sharing all that much better: a share management page as well as more meaningful and shorter URLs. More on these below.
Asset Sharing Improvements
- Set an Expiry Date and Time
- Name the share
- The share URL is now shorter and more meaningful, with the share name used in the URL
- A share management page has been introduced
The screenshot below demonstrates items 1 - 3: An expiration date being set, the share being given a name, and also notice how the share title becomes the final part of the URL. That name replaces the previous very long random URL. DBGallery customers have been asking for setting an expiry on shares, and while we've provided that, we decided to go further with the addition of title and shorter URL.
A newly introduced Share Management page (found under the Tools menu) introduces a number of capabilities that will surely prove to be very useful. Until this page's introduction, finding previous shares were only possible in the audit trail and an individual images' Version tab. Rather inconvenient. This page changes all that!
- Search for a share name
- Get a copy the share URL (previously found only in the audit trail)
- Suspend shares (similar to expire but can be turned back on)
- See the number of times the share has been opened (something not previously available)
- View the number of images in the share
- Sort by when the share was created, its name or even the open count
To see all about sharing, see Sharing in our Knowledge Base.
Related Images
Here we introduce an experimental feature: Select a photo and DBGallery will show related photos in a sidebar!
Related images come from 3 categories:
- Visually Similar
- Similar Time
- Similar Objects
To get to that sidebar, select a thumb and press the Related Images button (it is near the top right as in the screenshot below). An image must be selected for the sidebar to appear. Once turned on, select another thumb to see its related images. This works for a single thumb only. The sidebar will hide when more than one thumb is selected.
To see all the interesting points of this great new feature, please see Related Images in our Knowledge Base.
Note: Not all DBGallery systems have this feature enabled. If you don't see the Related Images button and would like it turned on, contact your DBGallery administrator or DBGallery support. There is no additional cost.
A new List custom field type
Custom fields can now include a static list of data values in a dropdown. This can be useful when there is a static list of values that should be chosen from, rather than a freeform text field. A list of four seasons would be an example. A static list of product codes would be another. When there is a finite list of values to choose from, avoid spelling errors and make it more convenient and less confusing for those editing metadata.
Current text fields can be converted to a list! If there was a freeform text field that in reality should have only a finite set of values, it can be converted to a list! To convert an existing text field to a list, where all existing unique text values placed in the list, simply change the Text field type to List. This conversion can be valuable when freeform text was entered prior to DBGallery’s ability to have this static dropdown list.
A List field in action:
To see all the details of this new feature, see Custom Fields in our Knowledge Base.
Object recognition privacy change
Customers have had concerns about Amazon AWS using images to train and improve their AI object recognition service.
For some customers this was just about images being stored in a different country. Amazon now provides a means to opt-out of that so we have done so. This applies to all DBGallery clients using our supplied object recognition, whether your DBGallery is hosted with us or on-premise. This does not apply to those using their own Amazon account for object recognition services.
360 degree video
360 video, also known as spherical, immersive, surround, or virtual reality (VR) video, can now be viewed in DBGallery. They no longer need to be downloaded and viewed in a native viewer.
Faster scrolling through results pages
While scrolling through pages of thumbs in the main gallery view, thumbs will load significantly faster. To accomplish this we pre-load data as the current page is viewed. The thumbs images themselves are not pre-loaded so the first time scrolling through will not be quite as extra speedy, although much improvement should still be noticed.
There has also been a new page size of 1000 added to the thumbs results footer. Please use this sparingly, and only when there is a good reason to use it. Displaying 1000 thumbs eats up a lot of resources. Loading 1000 image thumbs into your browser takes up significant memory, and can take a while to display.
Fixes and smaller updates
- Improved Safari support
- Audit trail times are now displayed in the browser's local timezone (rather than GMT)
- On Download, DBGallery checks if PDF file contain fillable form data (aka, form fields) and if yes we skip writing XMP date into PDF. This is because in some cases that would prevent that PDF from being editable in PDF editors.
- Fixed Select All where in special cases it would not actually select all shown thumb images.
- API tweaks for expanded and improved usage.
- Many small improvements and a number of small bug fixes.