Zenfolio/Smugmug or other...?

<p>I need some advice from actual users for a reliable, user friendly and qualitative photo hosting service.<br>

The free hostings like Flickr or picasaweb or other do not appeal to me due to ads and various limitations.<br>

I am not interested in flickr-like photo critiques (I actually dislike the flickr user feed-back - too many prizes and groups and all kinds of gimmicky stuff)<br>

Thanks in advance!</p>

 

<p>Hi Marius,<br />I've used both over the last few years. I cancelled smugmug and went to Zenfolio for a couple reasons. 1) Cost! The cost of the Zenfolio account is approx. 1/2 of the smug mug account. While I had excellent success with Smugmug's order fulfillment, I appreciate Zenfolio using MPIX for order fulfilling. 2) I'm not proficient with HTML programming so for me, customizng the Zenfolio site was easier than Smugmug Lastly, 3) uploading to Zenfolio for me, is faster and easier.<br />Both are excellent products though. You really can't go wrong with either one.<br />Good luck</p>

<p>I have made a test with Smugmug<br /> http://kytra.smugmug.com/Other/Test-gallery/11915187_VcJhh#843555137_kKrwv-A-LB<br /> ...and with zenfolio<br /> http://kytra.zenfolio.com/p227795561<br /> Smug-mug seems a little more user friendly regarding the buttons and options but they cost 60% more than Zenfolio for the same service.<br /> Anyway, the $ difference is not that important at the end of the day, if the value compensates it.</p>

<p>Also Marius, Do a search of Photo.net.<br>

You will find this question comes up quite often, and you'll see answers right quick from previous posts.</p>

<p>You might want to read <a href="../pentax-camera-forum/00WETg">this thread,</a> that ended up becoming a photo hosting conversation.</p>

<p>I'd so a search, or just scroll down, we've been covering these for a few days.</p>

<p>Just as a note, on flickr you can turn off comments, and if you pay (which then makes it not free) you don't have adds.</p>

<p>Flickr is a lot more customizable then most people are aware. The only thing you can't customize (well not very much) is the layout. In some ways that is a plus. The reason, when people come to a site you designed, sure it looks different, but that sometimes becomes the core focus. When people visit a uniform looking site, either your photos standout or they don't, but you got a fair shake regardless of your taste in website layout. </p>

<p>That said, Smugmug is too expensive, too hard to customize (not really hard, just intensive). Although I haven't used Zenfolio, it would be my recommendation, and the route I was headed till recently.</p>

<p>Alternately, just host a domain and use JAlbum to showcase your images. Equally customizable, $0 in fees beyond the hosting cost (about $48 a year).</p>

<p>Flickr seems more like facebook to me, I find it rather annoying!</p>

<p>I use smugmug, pretty happy with it. I've been up and down, but I'm settling. Smugmug really isn't intensive to customize. I can edit photos, browse the internet, make a computer, not much else i can do though & I found it okay to deal with. There are lots of options you have with it and lots of help you can get (dedicated forum and 'real people' responses frm the admin team). Here is mine if you care to browse:</p>

<p>www.rharris-images.com</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Smugmug really isn't intensive to customize.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Unless they changed their interface, or you are just using the stock layout and happy, it's pretty intensive.</p>

<p>If you look a the forums then you'll see all the help questions. However, in that respect they are very good. People will help you get what you want. I don't know, I've coded web pages via HTML and later CSS from the ground up since the late 1990s and never had the issues I had with Smugmug.</p>

<p>Having some knowledge of CSS is also helpful. Although, the issue I had was that unlike being able to start with a blank page, you had to turn off all the CSS objects that were defaulted to get what you wanted.</p>

<p>Of course this was coming from someone who designed any entire "site" via smugmug. In hindsight, I might have been better off building a site (FAQ, About, etc) on a separate host, and then having a link to the Smugmug albums. So perhaps that is the lesson to be learned.</p>

<p>Flickr=Facebook?</p>

<p>Not a bad analogy, however, I've noticed lately most photographers have a Facebook page, so this might not be a bad thing.</p>

<p>Btw, better analogy.</p>

<p>Facebook=AOL</p>

<p>Think about it for a second. Facebook chat, companies have facebook fan pages like AOL had AOL keyworks (AOL: keyword Chevy), it's become a destination for everything from user generated info to search. Also like AOL, it's the one place on the internet you are likely to find your grandma!</p>

<p>We thought the days of AOL were dead, not at all, AOL just had it's lifespan.</p>

<p>LOL I haven't used AOL for like 10 years. That woman used to annoy the hell out of me! You had to remember to turn the speakers off of course ;)</p>

<p>I think your way probably was quite intensive :). There isn't an easy way to just build from a blank page, not that I'm aware of. But there are lots of ways to get what you want, where you want and lots of people to help you so I didn't find it took that long in the end.</p>

<p>I use my old flickr account for random uploads sometimes. I once tried to give a constructive criticism while I was there... soon realised i was in the wrong place! I don't know, pages and pages of 'awesome!', 'love it!', 'ooo' don't quite do it for me these days ;P :)</p>

<p>Marius,<br>

I've been a Smugmug user for five years. I like Zenfolio, check it out regularly as an ongoing option, but still stay with Smugmug. I don't use Smugmug to sell prints, though I will sometimes fulfill requests through there. I have helped other photographers setup their business accounts there including processing and pricing. It's very easy.</p>

<p>The costs associated with both sites I consider a bargain if one is a heavy user.</p>

<p>Zenfolio is a smaller operation. One advantage to Smugmug's being larger is that third-party plugins to processing software target Smugmug first. That may not matter to you, after all, as Pentax shooters we are used to get goodies later.</p>

<p>The pricing to me works out about the same for both sites when you compare functionality and services. It depends on what you want to get out of the site. While Zenfolio offers Mpix for making prints, Smugmug offers two choices. One of which is Bay Photo, an older professional lab that is held in much higher regard than Mpix. I've only seen large, commercial, color corrected work from Bay Photo and would recommend them fully.</p>

<p>I disagree, rather strongly, that Smugmug is "too hard to customize." It's quite easy with plenty of templates. The support forum, Digital Grin, is very active and very valuable. I hired a graphic artist to customize my site, but I could have done it myself without freaking out technically. Smugmug allows you to totally replace their look and feel, or just change the headers by pasting in some templated CSS code.</p>

<p>You can also show some video on Smugmug. That's pretty useful, but it depends on your needs. For families with younger kids it's a great service.</p>

<p>If you want to go with Smugmug, send me a PM and I'll get you a discount code that will provide both of us with a couple of shekels.</p>

<p>ME</p>

<p>Flickr is so cheap per year. It let's me post full resolution, if I want, so people can look at and even print full sizes.<br>

Case-in-point, previews with links to the full size of my first Macro tests: http://www.photo.net/pentax-camera-forum/00WHOd</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>Alternately, just host a domain and use JAlbum to showcase your images. Equally customizable, $0 in fees beyond the hosting cost (about $48 a year).</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Additional (probably competitive) options, there is also <a href="http://gallery.menalto.com/">Gallery</a> and <a href="http://www.zenphoto.org/">ZenPhoto</a>.</p>

<p>My take:</p>

<ol>

<li>If comment/critique is what you're looking for, photo.net is a pretty good choice.</li>

<li>If you want random people to find your images, Flickr. Flickr offers lots of storage including the ability to upload hi-res versions and has more flexible tools for managing and controlling access to images than p-net.</li>

<li>If you want to sell fine art images, I would think smugmug, zenfolio, etc. might be better-suited. The D-I-Y Gallery/ZenPhoto/JAlbum could be adapted for this purpose too.</li>

</ol>

<ul>

<li>The first two are cheap and can compliment #3 by helping direct traffic there.</li>

<li>Facebook is really lousy for image hosting--resolution & compression stink. Useful maybe as a point of contact to direct to other sites and to share images with family & friends who already use the site anyway. Can't stand the navigation and how it tends to be drastically re-organized every few months.</li>

</ul>

<p>Flickr is aimed at somewhat different audiences than Zenfolio and Smugmug. Flickr is more social than either of these other sites. That's a mixed blessing. Because there are so many Flickr users your work can get a lot of wanted and unwanted visibility. A huge number of photographers have sold images indirectly by having media buyers peruse their images searching for affordable product.<br>

On the other hand it seems easier for people to abuse copyrights on images. The whole creative commons copyright is still a challenge for many people to understand. A friend of mine (a very successful shooter and leader of a trade group) teaches photographic marketing at a local university--he advises his students not to use such that site for displaying their work because of all the abuses he gets contacted about.</p>

<p>That all said the variety of work on Flickr is amazing and it's the big dog in town.</p>

<p>Personally I find the user interface ridiculous, but that's just me. I also don't care for all the advertisements and social stuff.</p>

<p>SM and Zen allow you to post full resolution, but I can choose to do so under password protection. For most printing full rez is not necessary. Smugmug allows digital rights management for licensed professional distribution as well.</p>

<p>ME</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"That all said the variety of work on Flickr is amazing and it's the big dog in town.</em><br>

<em>Personally I find the user interface ridiculous, but that's just me. I also don't care for all the advertisements and social stuff."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't see much in the way of advertisements on Flickr; certainly less than on this site. I wonder if there are more ads if you're not a paid subscriber? Your comments pretty much echo my last post--horses for courses.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Michael E. wrote: SM and Zen allow you to post full resolution, but I can choose to do so under password protection. For most printing full rez is not necessary.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm not sure what you mean here. Zenfolio allows you to choose the maximum size you want your images displayed at (and does a good job at downrezzing), but printing always gets done from the original (full rez) uploaded file.</p>

<p>I have not used Zenfolio but have been considering it. I wanted easy order fulfillment for Wedding and Social events and had a Smugmug Pro account for a couple of years. I found Smugmug a pain to customize and limiting in what you could change. It's also impossible to completely remove all the Smugmug branding which makes it obvious for your customers they are buying from Smugmug and with a click to the basic site see all your actual print costs. I had a few problems with this from a couple of customers. So I've ended up just getting a web space and using lightroom to build galleries and handling ordders the old fasion way for now. Which way is best kind of depends on what your needs are. But I am not a Smugmug fan. </p>

<p>

<p >Mis,</p>

<p > </p>

<p >I can understand your confusion. I was conflating at least two points here:</p>

<p > </p>

<ol type="1">

<li >You can upload a full resolution 8MB jpeg to any of these sites (a few years ago one could not upload a jpeg larger than a certain size)</li>

</ol>

<p > </p>

<ol type="1">

<li >You don’t need to use a full res 8MB image to print out a typical 8x10 </li>

</ol>

<p > </p>

<p >Neither of these points has to do with the positive reality that images of any dimensions get printed at full resolution. A good point to make and one I neglected. Thanks for triggering clarity.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >My bigger concern is letting the original image free to the world in an uncontrolled manner, unless one intends it that way--and I do for some things.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >ME</p>

<p > </p>

</p>

<p>BTW, I am a non-professional, so my copyright worries are limited. However, I do mark all of my work as © All Rights Reserved. So I do have rights against some entities. But those looking for unavailability of higher resolutions without compensation may want to look elsewhere.</p>

<p>One of the biggest reasons I only post 1000px(long) images on flickr is to reduce the amount of copyright infringement upon myself. It doesn't eliminate it... no. But I've already had some order fulfillment requests based on my images from flickr, which I handled the old fashioned way. I believe that if I can generate interest in my work on flickr, that traffic would flow to Zenfolio or whatever I finally decide should host my stuff. But I'm with BryanS: I'm not a pro... I'm just a guy that could make some money having fun with my photography. Any paid gigs I get would never surpass the 51% mark of my total income.</p>

<p>OK Mike, clear now. I limit the max size my images are shown at; nobody can see the full rez file. People are welcome to try printing a 16x24" from a 400x600px file if they want :-) Or they can order it instead, ha ha.</p>

<blockquote>If you want to go with Smugmug, send me a PM and I'll get you a discount code that will provide both of us with a couple of shekels.</blockquote>

<p>Mmmm, sheckels! Too late for me to get in on that, darnit, but SmugMug meets my very rudimentary needs. I'm using the stock layout (I'm having a hard time learning photography:I'm going to take on web-design? I've steered clear of Fickr (& Facebook--at my age I prefer to be a virtual recluse ;~) If I ever get to the point where I have a portfolio of photographs which I'd be comfortable selling as prints, I'll reassess my approach.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Hmm... I don't see any adverts on Flickr either. For me, Flickr works well. Easy uploads from anywhere, I can control who sees what. Pretty easy to get it to look as I want. It can be good for social networking with the groups. It has some small bugs but for the price, it's worth it to me.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>A huge number of photographers have sold images indirectly by having media buyers peruse their images searching for affordable product.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I've sold grab shots like this. Although, with the advent of micro stock agencies, I don't know how affordable is defined. As an example, I know a guy that makes $30k a year selling $1 images from micro stock agencies, and he brags about it all the time. I think $1 is pretty low, certainly most images on flickr sell for more than that? Two that come to mind as images I never intended to sell and was thrilled to make even a buck off of; the fans at shea from the 2007 collapse (used for a portrait background), and some random knot shot I took while climbing. Neither shot did I ever expect to sell for even a buck. Granted the knot shot wasn't much above that, but the Shea shot was a good chunk of a lens.</p>

<p>Likewise, I've sold plenty of shots that weren't "budget" type sales. I recently was randomly contacted by the great grandson of one of the Adirondack's historically most wealthy families about a print of a scene taken on his grandfathers lake (and yeah, his grandfather not only owned the lake, but about 50 thousand acres of forest, dozens of other lakes, and just for good measure a few "towns" to go with his railroad stations and railroads. etc). Suffice to say, as a student of Adirondack history, I was a little bit shocked. These type of sales, which are fairly common thanks to Flickr/Yahoo/Google/Bing image search, really wouldn't be possible without Flickr and it's ties to image search.</p>

<p>Anyway, to me that is the biggest advantage of Flickr and one that I don't think Smug/Zen have an answer for at this time. Remember, companies pay google to get favorable placement in searches. And when you are getting something for free, why not take advantage of it?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Anyway, to me that is the biggest advantage of Flickr and one that I don't think Smug/Zen have an answer for at this time. Remember, companies pay google to get favorable placement in searches. And when you are getting something for free, why not take advantage of it?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's worked for you which is great, but others have had their work appropriated for no fees and sometimes no attribution. That's why it's a mixed blessing.</p>

<p>I agree that Flickr's openness and vastness is unmatched by Smugmug and Zenfolio and two dozen others. For some of us that level of control is what we're paying for, for others it's the wrong solution. It's great to have so many choices.</p>

<p>Microstock can go for a quarter a throw nowadays. Stock photography has become democratized and devaluated. Another mixed blessing. I used to work for Getty Images. My how some things have changed.</p>

<p>ME</p>

<p>Been in a photographic rut lately. Have decided on a Zenfolio start-up as a challenge to get going again. Camus, Mis, look out for the "How?, Where?, What?" cries!</p>