Absolutely stunning service!
Written: Jun 18 '06 (Updated Jun 23 '06)
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After buying myself a great new digital camera last summer, I knew I had to find someplace to store all the photos I'd be taking. I'd tried all the free sites, and most were unsatisfactory, either because they deleted my photos when I did not order prints of them, or because they made my photos too teeny-tiny, or because they made my friends register before seeing my photos.
With Smugmug I have none of these problems.
Yes, I was a little bit hesitant to shell out money for something that I could get for free, especially while I was a poor college student living off the savings from my summer job. But my friend Cat had an account, and I'd seen how worth it Smugmug had been for her. So nervously, I entered the 7-day trial period.
What I found was phenomenal.
Membership Tiers
There are three types of memberships at Smugmug -- Standard ($39.95), Power ($59.95), and Professional($149.95).
Standard users are able to upload an infinite amount of photos and get 6GB/month of bandwidth. As a Standard user, you can view traffic reports, create subcategories for Smugmug's pre-made gallery categories, and join or create Sharegroups for exchanging photos and ideas with people who enjoy similar things.
Gallery controls are numerous -- do you want people to be able to download your photos to their computer? Hotlink to the photos from your account? Order professional looking prints? Control who sees what gallery by setting a password only you and your friends know? You can control all that when you customize your gallery.
You can also customize the way your galleries look by thumbnailing your photo display on the left. It's a great way to make photos of different sizes look uniform. Not sure what I mean? Check out the screenshot: http://queequeg.smugmug.com/photos/76200596-L.jpg
And the customization doesn't end there! There are currently 25 basic themes (and always gathering more) you can use to make everything outside your galleries and photos beautiful. These are great for people who perhaps are not the best at computer related things, and who would like their accounts to look beautiful despite their skills.
And that's just the Standard! Power users have all of that, plus the ability to upload an unlimited number of videos so long as they add up to 8MBs worth, as well as a bandwidth limit of 12GB. They also have complete customization control and are not limited to the basic themes. This is great for people who know their way around web design.
Professional users also get all that, plus the ability to upload 16MB worth of videos. Their bandwidth level is also 32GB, with the ability to purchase more as needed. They can also use Smugmug to mark photos as "proof" when needed, and can make money off the prints ordered online. If they have their own domain, as well, they can embed the site there.
Personal Experience
I am a Standard user, and I have never had a problem. I took photos of the opera, Norma, that the School of Music at my university put on this spring and shared them with my roommate (who was a part of the production). She then forwarded the gallery to all the cast, who then forwarded it to all their families, who then forwarded it to all their envious friends. I was able to disable hotlinking (so that the cast had to download the photos to their own computer and find their own server, thus saving me the bandwidth), but kept everything else at pre-customized levels. Cast could order prints (which they did), or download the pictures so they could later upload them to their MySpace accounts (which they did). I could've also disabled those functions, but decided against. My bandwidth, at 6GB/month, did not even come close to being used up. I think the most I've used in a month has been 2GB or less -- and I share my photos with everybody!
I'll have had the account for a year in August, and currently have 6237 photos stored (10.35GB worth).
Organization
I think an important thing to note is organization, especially when considering how many photos someone can have on here. Even with just a Standard account, it's easy to organize, dividing your photos into groups by category, sub-category, and gallery.
You can also keyword all your photos, making it then searchable both within your account and within Smugmug as a whole.
Uploading
Uploading photos has never been easier. Perhaps the hardest thing when uploading photos is deciding which uploader to use. There are several methods you can use just within your browser! If these are not adequate for you, there's also a nifty little free program called Send to Smugmug. It's a little bit slower, but it automates large groups and makes life just that much simpler. There's also a pay program (I am not sure how much, it was only a small fee) developed by a Smugmug user called Star Explorer which does much the same thing.
Photo Quality
The quality of your photos is fantastic. You can upload photos as big as 8MB, and Smugmug WILL NOT shrink them. Your photos, if large enough, can then be viewed as Small, Medium, Large, or Original. With a large view, the photo's largest dimension on one size will be 800pixels. The original size will be whatever size your photo was when you uploaded it.
Storage
I can't stress this enough: unlimited photo storage. How can you beat that?
Ease
Everything is pretty self-explanatory. I recently bought my mom an account for mother's day, and she's the average, middle-aged computer user -- she has only enough computer smarts that she needs to check email and go in chatrooms. Well, she loves her account and has been exploring every feature possible. If she can use it, anyone can.
Sharing
Smugmug makes it easy even for the non-computer-knowledgeable snapshotter to share his or her photographs. I doubt I could do it justice trying to explain, so here's another screenshot:
http://queequeg.smugmug.com/photos/76207135-L.jpg
(What the screenshot does not explain is that you can replace the letter at the end of each of those individual links with whatever size you want; if you wanted to link to the original size, just replace L with O!)
There's also a great forum for Smugmug called DGrin, where so many photographers on so many different levels convene to discuss their favorite subjects. There's also a bi-monthly photo challenge that can challenge you to learn more about your craft and win you $40 of Smugmug stuff!
Customer Service
I have never used any service that had better customer service than Smugmug. Everytime I email them about a problem or with a question, I get a reply within a day, more often then not within the next few hours. They're always friendly, always knowledgeable, and always open to what I have to say. They never make me feel like I have a dumb question, and they're always listening to what you're saying so as to improve the service.
Also, upon ordering prints, you get a beautifully crafted email to confirm. Everyone who has ordered prints of my photos through Smugmug always comment on it as one of the nicest things about the service.
An End to My Long-Windedness
I think I've covered everything. If you're thinking about it, it's worth the 7day free trial. It doesn't hurt anything.
If you do decide to go for it, save $5 by using somebody's referral code. You can use mine (viewable on my profile) or somebody else's. By using a referral code, you get $5 off your price and the person whose code you used gets $10 credit for next year. It's yet another beautiful feature of Smugmug.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
bluequeequeg
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Member: Al
Location: California
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
College grad -- Originally from Long Island, transplanted to Southern California.
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