Thread

Curious as to what photo sites you’re all using and why. Not a fan of Fickr - layout/design wise - don’t think it shows off the photography that well.

Personally, I use Picasa a lot, and I know a number of people happy with Smugmug.

I started with Ignmar’s stopdesign conversion, and ended up rolling my own (No PHP!, Sorry Ingmar!) as weblogs, not galleries.

In iPhoto ‘06 (and previous) there’s a great plugin called Photon, that allows you to set up XML-RPC publishing to a weblog from iPhoto.
Aperture 2.0 (which I use now) has a similar plugin.

So now, I can publish my photos direct from my photo manager. Flickr, I’d use as a brain dump/life stream of photos, while Aperture + XMLRPC, I’ll use to “publish” galleries. And I can still publish those sets to Flickr as well.

But Picasa is really nice. Maybe it’ll come to the mac someday. 😊

I started with Ingmar’s stopdesign conversion, and ended up rolling my own (No PHP!, Sorry Ingmar!) as weblogs, not galleries.

Hey, I remember that one! Still have it running at one of my sites, but didn’t play with it in ages. Never quite got around finishing it, I am afraid.

But Picasa is really nice. Maybe it’ll come to the mac someday. 😊

Actually, I don’t use the offline tool all that much, although they do have a Linux version, which is alway appreciated.

AJP - Got a link to that Aperture plugin?

Edit-Add: Thanks!

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~marianmi/mtexport.html

I used to use pixagogo.com but moved to Flickr which I much prefer.

I am a fan of Smugmug myself.

Anyone want to expand on the “why” SmugMug (or others)

I went with SmugMug because of all the sites I reviewed I believe they care the most about the personal value of my photos. In other words, their commitment is to photography first, community second. By this I mean that the photo is sacred from start to finish. Its protected, it will be safely archived, and I can get it whenever I so choose. For example they do painstaking research on their printing services and offer a ton of options centered around treating photos and photographers with respect. Their customer service is killer as well.

Most other photo-sharing sites (Flickr, Zooomr, etc) are the reverse. They focus on giving you organizational tools to get your photo in front of as many eyeballs as possible because that is the revenue model the business is built on. If there is a dispute between sharing, privacy, or the longevity of the photo, sharing will win out because that’s what the revenue model is based on.

I’m not criticizing that model, its just not the model I want to entrust my 20k+ family photos of the last decade to. I want my photo company to be committed to my photos above anything else. If you spend some time browsing their “Chief Geek” Don MacAskill’s blog you can see this commitment proven time and time again.

If you keep a separate archive of your photos and just want the best photo-sharing tools available then SmugMug may not be the best choice though it is certainly a very capable photo-sharing site as well.

Thanks Les!!

I know a great website called http://www.sxc.hu/, the images there are amazing.

I know a great website called http://www.sxc.hu/, the images there are amazing.

SXC is very good but more for getting hold of free images for use in designs. SmugMug and others are more for protection of your precious photos of which they do very very well indeed as they have a massive architecture behind them.

Best wishes,

Mark

I use both but for different reasons. I use flickr for the community and for getting the images in front of as many eyeballs as possible. I also use smugmug because it allows me to set prices for clients. Yeah I am a professional photographer as well. http://www.marcusneto.com for those of you that want to see 😉 Smugmug does strive for excellence in protecting images. You can add watermarks to your images, lock down galleries, for pros you can set prices and ensure that no one can download the images unless you want them to. They even allow you to limit the size of the image that is displayed so people that might view the largest and then do a screen capture… well they can’t do it. Anyway, I dig both but for different reasons. Flickr builds community. Smugmug makes me money 😉

M.