Drowning in Pictures? Smugmug makes Photo Storing, Printing, Sharing, and Enjoying EASY!
Written: Oct 31 '04 (Updated Oct 31 '04)
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I can not say enough good things about smugmug! I was skeptical at first, tried their free trial and fell in love! I spent a week uploading all my pics to shutterfly, but after trying out smugmug, I'm uploading everything to smugmug now! The best thing is you get access to your high resolution pictures. That means you and anyone you share your pics with can print them out on their home printer, or do whatever they want with them, including ordering high quality prints through smugmug/ezprints. With sites like ofoto and shutterfly your pictures are basically held hostage. If your friends want to print the pics, they have to order through ofoto or shutterfly.
What about print quality should you choose to print with smugmug? They use a professional, top rated lab in Georgia called EZ prints. I sent test shots to Ofoto, Shutterfly (with VividPic on and off), and Smugmug. The Smugmug photos were delivered the fastest and were the best overall compared to the other companies. I'm very pleased with all the pictures that came from smugmug. Some of the pics from ofoto and shutterfly were washed out, had unnatural colors, too much contrast, etc.
Smugmug also makes me feel my pictures are really safeguarded. They back up two copies of your original pictures on two separate datacenters. I feel good knowing I'm paying for this service, and I feel like I'm getting what I'm paying for. What kind of security do my pictures have on shutterfly? What kind of obligation does shutterfly have to safeguard my pictures?
Another thing that really stood out comparing shutterfly and smugmug is organization and customization. This really sold me on smugmug after trying to organize my pics first on shutterfly and feeling restricted by what shutterfly's site allows you to do. You can really organize like crazy with smugmug! You can create custom sub-categories. You can move multiple pics from one gallery to another at the same time. You can customize what order your galleries are displayed in. You can feature galleries to make them easier for friends to find. You can add descriptions to galleries. You can add captions to an entire gallery's worth of pictures on one screen, all at once! You can rearrange individual pictures placement within a gallery so that they are "in order" and do it with all the pics in that gallery on one screen, all at once. Their system is very easy to use yet very powerful at the same time. You can really do exactly what you want with your pictures on smugmug. You can even make galleries private and/or password protected. That rocks!
Here is why smugmug makes so much sense to me: I absolutely love pictures, but ever since buying our digital camera 4 years ago, I've struggled to keep up with home printing, organization, etc. It was always such a hassle and I never felt like I could really enjoy my pictures. Before smugmug, I had one years worth of pictures on my pc that were unprinted. I had 3 years worth of pictures that were printed on cheap plain paper just so I could get them out of the computer and into an album. I had a few months worth of pictures that were printed on a great canon dye sub printer, (that cost me about .39 cents a print), and I couldn't easily track down the necessary paper/ink to print out as often as I needed (my local stores were always out of stock). I had all kinds of albums with film prints and no way to integrate and organize them with my digital pics. I worried about my computer crashing and losing pics. I worried about my albums getting damaged or destroyed by fire, water, sunlight, time. Then along came smugmug into my life. Yeah smugmug!!!! Smugmug is an online photo album and more. It has allowed me to finally organize and integrate years and years worth of film and digital pictures, to safe-keep them for longevity, to share them without spam or ads with friends and family around the globe, and to truly enjoy my pictures again with easy and varied printing and viewing options! I really can't thank them enough! Smugmug is truly a revolutionary idea in photo management and enjoyment whose time has come! Smugmug has made this mom a very happy, photo crazed nut again! I'm loving my newest digital camera now more than ever!
Another thing that sets smugmug apart is customer service. Very quick and helpful response to emails. The folks that run smugmug really love pictures and that is important to me. I enjoy the fact that their site has a "face" to it. Like it is run by real people who really care about their business and not some faceless, automated corporation. That is what really made the difference in my decision on who to store, share, and print my pictures with.
Oh, and I should point out. I'm not a photography expert or camera freak or anything. I'm just a mom of two gorgeous kids who likes to take lots of pictures.
Try the free trial, you won't be disappointed! You'll wonder how you ever managed your pictures without smugmug! Enter my referral code, DLO4gAEy5j6gQ, to save $5 and earn me $10! Also you can check my galleries at http://windraven.smugmug.com to see how the galleries and organization works.
UPDATE: To answer some questions posted in a comment:
They've been around only a few years. The company was founded in November of 2002.
The standard user fee is $29.95 a year, but if you type in someone's referral code, you can save $5 and if someone uses your referral code, you earn a $10 credit. Smugmug is a photo storage and sharing company. It is tailored to suite those needs. Shutterfly and other free sites are tailored to sell prints, the sharing is just a by-product of allowing them to try and sell more prints and collect more email addresses to send spam offers to. That is the basic difference.
I should also point out that there are other companies out there that are geared for photo storage and sharing, such as homestead's photosite.com, and Funtigo deluxe, but they charge a monthly fee based on the number of photos you upload. Homestead's photosite, for example, allows 500 photos for $4.95 a month; 2,000 photos for $9.99 a month. That is $59.40 a year and you only get 500 photos! For 2,000 photos it is $119.88 a year! Funtigo Deluxe allows 1,000 photos for $7.99 a month. That is $95.88 a year for only 1,000 pictures! I've got over 4,000 photos on my smugmug account and I've still got tons of film photos to scan in and upload. Smugmug allows you UNLIMITED photo storage for the affordable YEARLY (not monthly) fee of $29.95. That breaks down to $2.50 a month for unlimited photos!
There is one other site that is also geared for photo storage and sharing, Sacko, and it is free. But they charge 49 cents for a 4x6! Smugmug keeps their price low. 4x6 are 29 cents with smugmug. The only cheaper price I found was shutterfly and snapfish at .22 cents and .19 cents a print, but those prices are for prepaid bulk prints only. Meaning you have to buy a whole bunch at one time to get that discount. With shutterfly you have to buy 450 prints at once to get the 22 cent price. Their regular price is the same as smugmug's, 29 cents. If you want to strictly get a bunch of photos printed, then shutterfly is probably the cheapest and best option. But if you are looking for somewhere to store your photos safely, to allow you access to your original photos without having to print through their service, to share easily without spam and email address harvesting, to be able to customize and organize to your heart's content, to be able to password protect and/or make private certain galleries, to be able to sit at home on your computer and browse through your custom organized and stylish looking photo galleries---then smugmug is for you!
You can make your galleries private, meaning only people you give the address to can find them (browsers won't see them at all), or you can also go a further step and password protect any galleries you want. So some galleries you can make public, some private, some public but password protected, some private and password protected, it really is up to you who has access to your pics and what level of security features you want for each individual gallery.
Also, if you don't want people accessing your high res originals, you can turn that feature off. For example if you take pictures for a living and charge people for prints, you don't want to give them access to the originals so they can print them. But if you're like me and want your dad or your brother or whoever you give access to, to able to print your pics on their home printer, then you can allow access to the high res original. Also, you can turn this feature on and off for each gallery individually to suite your needs, it's not an all or nothing kind of thing.
Hope I answered all the questions in the comment, and then some. :-)
Recommended:
Yes
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windravyn
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