Photo Sharing : SmugMug

So it's been a while, but I finally have some time to start reviewing SmugMug. After my computer crashed over the summer, I somewhat forgot about the blog as I spent much time restoring everything from my backup copy of the drive. Also, if you're not aware, Phanfare changed its site/service model to be more of a family/friends-only sharing service. One big feature that was changed was that "there is no way to get a link to an open gallery with multiple albums". I'm an advocate for privacy settings, but public albums are a necessity for me. Anyway, on to SmugMug.

The first thing I noticed was that there are tons of uploader options once signed up for the free trial. There are multiple options in terms of transfer method for both PCs (including a Picasa Plugin) and Macs, as well as a way to migrate photos over from Flickr, Phanfare, Yahoo, and ImageStation. I'll try the options for starting from scratch for now. Their Mac uploader utilities allow users to add photos from iPhoto, Lightroom, Aperture, and more (what that more is, I haven't figured out yet). Since I now own a Macbook in addition to my PC, I'll be able to review their Mac utilities, too. Off the bat, all of the plug-ins for different software and operating systems are a huge plus.

My next blog post will go into detail on uploading, organizing, and publishing photos. You can't expect me to come back from a 7.5 month hiatus and expect me to jump right in, can you?

Using Phanfare

I finally added my first album into Phanfare, and it's pretty easy to work. I just clicked the "Create New Album" button, chose which photos to use, and Phanfare imported the images into the program.

While loading the photos into the program, I was prompted for an album name and description, and once that was entered, Phanfare started to upload my photos and website. The status bar on the bottom of the program kept me updated about the photo uploading, while allowing me to edit photos or add captions. It was pretty amazing that I could do editing on the site as the photos were being uploaded without having to manually re-upload the photos after I was done with the edits. Also, Phanfare send smaller size photos to the website at first, so that your albums will show up on the site before all of the full resolution original photos are online (which can take a long time in my case since I have about 500MB of photos for one album alone).

Once my photos are all uploaded, I'll review the album designs, slideshow, and security.

Phanfare

I finally found the time to install Phanfare on my computer, and it was the easiest installation process of any program I've ever used. It was literally a 3 click installation - One to open the installer, and 2 clicks inside of the installer. It didn't give me the option to choose the location to install the software in, but that was not an issue for me.

Once in the program, I was prompted to login to my account, and choose a preliminary style (color scheme) for my account.

There were about 30 styles by my quick count, and I decided to go with the default, black "Urban Loft" style. The next step was to create an album, and possibly setting a password. Passwords can be set on the album basis or the entire site basis in Phanfare, and I chose to password protect the entire site for the time being (to protect the photos that my father and I took - These may be going up for sale eventually, so I'm protecting all images).

The installation and setup process of photo sharing with Phanfare was quick and painless, and it looks like the rest of the software will be the same.

Photo Sharing

I thought it'd be useful to post all of the sites I looked at for ad-free premium photo sharing before deciding to test Phanfare and SmugMug for now. Here are some quick summaries of photo sharing programs I decided to pass up testing for now.

1.) Pbase - Nice and clean looking galleries (see http://www.pbase.com/fotoopa/water_figures_2007 for an example), however, the pricing is pretty steep. Pricing is $23/year for 500MB of photos or $60/year for 1500MB of photos. One of my photo sets from China weighs in at a hefty 490MB for 190 photos, so this can get pretty expensive for photographers who wish to upload full quality photos (either for backup or quality purposes).

2.) dotPhoto Pro - dotPhoto is a pretty popular free service, so I decided to see if they had an ad-free premium version. However, it turns out that this service is actually geared towards professional event photographers, and has a limit on how long photos can be stored (without paying extra). This looks promising for event photographers, as a large percentage of sales goes to the photographer.


3.) Picasa (by Google) - A great program and interface, but limits users to 1GB of photos on the free version. Paying a yearly fee will greatly increase the storage limit. There is a disturbing point in their terms of service, however, that gives Google the right to use your image for whatever they want: By submitting, posting or displaying Content which is intended to be available to the general public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.

4.) DropShots - DropShots has a great deal on the surface: For less than $5/month, users get unlimited photo and video storage, that offers higher quality images than their free version. However, original images are not able to be re-downloaded, and the site's interface is not customizable. That wouldn't be a big issue normally, but the header of the page clearly promotes DropShots and their photo printing store, and does not have a slick interface in general.

5.) Flickr Pro - If you like Flickr, want unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth (people viewing your photos), and no ads, this is for you. Just $25/year. However, I am not a fan of the free version of Flickr to begin with (I'm not crazy about tagging, the community aspect, or the organization of their albums), so I have decided not to test Flickr for now.

My next post will detail the features that I liked at Phanfare and SmugMug, perhaps with reviews on the installation and setup of those programs.

Basic Security Features

Today I read an entry on The "Break it Down" Blog about SmugMug's new security features, or "islands" as they call it. Prior to this new feature rolling out, SmugMug's albums were either password protected or public (searchable by Google, as well as in SmugMug's own directory) as I understand it. The new options allow users to have more flexibility. The settings give the following access levels: Public to everyone, homepage public (but albums protected), or public but with search engines unable to index the site. There's another "island" that dictates how people can search or see your website from SmugMug's album list, and lastly a setting that prohibits anyone without a password from seeing any of your site.

Phanfare has similar features - Their sites can either be public, public but hidden from search engines, or completely password protected. Each of those options allows individual albums to be password protected, as well. One area that Phanfare already beats SmugMug in is that there is no site-wide Phanfare search of photos or galleries as SmugMug does, so there does not need to be any security setting like SmugMug has. Screenshots will be posted sometime soon, once I get some time to sit down with the programs.

The start of it all

I took a 10-day vacation to China this past March, and still haven't gotten the chance to show all of my friends and family the hundreds of photos from the trip. So... I finally decided to put them online. My first choice was to go with Kodak Gallery (formerly ofoto), a site that I had used for photo sharing until about 1.5 years ago.

While going through my Kodak gallery I realized that I didn't have the original photos from a few old albums anymore, so I decided to download the images. Thing is, the only images I could download were 25KB files that were about 400x400 pixels. For anyone who doesn't speak tech or camera speak, that's pretty poor quality and size, and is nowhere near the quality or size that I had from my camera originally. I don't think I'm going to make that mistake again.

After looking over many of the free photo sharing websites, I decided that they're just not for me anymore; I want to be able to download my original photos at anytime, I don't want my photos viewable by anyone who wishes, and I don't want annoying ads all over my albums.

After a bit of initial research, I've decided to try Phanfare and SmugMug, two subscription-based photo sharing sites. Neither site is free (Phanfare charges $54.95 for a year, and SmugMug charges either $39.95/year for the basic plan, $59.95/year for more album customization and video, or $149.95/year for the ability to sell prints and images to others), but both sites are ad-free and will continue to host photos (and the originals) as long as your bill is paid up. Phanfare and SmugMug have trials of their software and sites, so I don't even have to throw money in up-front to try them out.

I'm installing both programs now, and should have some more details and reviews up soon.