Smugmug Pro Account Review
Smugmug is an excellent photo sharing website. There are a bunch of similar sites out there, but Smugmug stands out for a number of reasons.
You can read lots of reviews telling you all about the main highlights of Smugmug, and they really are excellent: unlimited uploads, using your own .com domain name, an excellent interface, lots of privacy, no ads, an excellent community for support, backup DVDs in case you need to recover your photos again later, adding your photos to Google Maps and keeping track of your travels, etc. There is some seriously cool stuff you can do. Check out the following page for more detailed info: Smugmug Professional Features
What makes Smugmug special are the little things… things like cropping. In the past with other printers, I’ve had to process different photos for various aspect ratios like 4×6, 5×7, and 8×10. Each individual shot had to be processed and uploaded. Smugmug makes it very easy to upload the full file and subsequently crop online. This is such a huge help, both for pros who sell lots of photos, and for regular folks who don’t want to spend all day learning complex programs like Photoshop.
The site is super customizable. They have excellent tutorials you can check out and learn how to change everything from colors, to backgrounds, to styles and themes. There are lots of precreated ones, or you can make one yourself. It’s more than just a photo gallery. Smugmug lets you turn your page into a full-fledged website, complete with contact information, info about you, a guestbook, and more. Check out some themes here: themes.smugmug.com
If you want to get fancy, you can even upload videos right alongside your photos and remember the experience that much more vividly! For all the pros out there, they offer lots of image protection features such as lots of watermarking functionality, right click disabling, hotlink prevention, etc. Of course all of these settings can be turned on and off at will. Adding or removing watermarks is a snap. The whole process is very thorough and well thought out.
If you’d like to see Smugmug’s community in action, see their support staff, view their discussions on customization, learn about the photography business, or just share and view photos, head over to www.dgrin.com
How much are your photos worth to you? Would you like the peace of mind of knowing that even if something happens to your computer, or even to your backups at home, your photos are still available in full resolution online in multiple locations on redundant servers? Should something ever happen to your photos at home (knock on wood), you can take comfort in knowing that you have online copies available as a backup. Even if you don’t want everyone seeing them, you can always make a private and password protected gallery to use JUST for backup! How cool is that!
Smugmug Strengths:
Unlimited uploads
Backup DVDs
LOTS of customizability… not just another image gallery site!
Use your own domain name
No bandwidth restrictions
Delayed proofing: you can post proofs and only process photos when people order
Google Maps support… easy to use with or without GPS
Lots of privacy options
Top notch support if you have any questions
Custom uploading programs for web browsers, Windows, and Macs
Color calibration information to make sure the skin tones in your photos don’t look tomato’ed!
Weaknesses:
(I’ve been sitting here a while thinking and can’t really come up with anything)
Similar Products Used:
Flickr, Gallery, Pixelpost
Customer Service:
Personal! Quick! If you ever have any questions, they’ll get back to you very quickly and answer your question exactly. It’s not some machine making you feel like just another number. With them, you really are a part of the community. No canned lines from Smugmug! Plus, their online forum at dgrin.com has lots of questions and answers which will probably not only answer your question, but walk you step-by-step through the process and even offer you alternatives you may not have even considered!
Last, but not least, you can save $5 when you sign up and take advantage of a FREE 14 day trial. (They don’t even require a credit card so no worries!) To save some cash, punch in the following coupon: hDBXAc8lccGdQ
You can make life even easier just by using this handy link instead: http://www.smugmugcoupon.com/pro/