Keeping space down and quality up

TZZDC

I've been using SmugMug for nearly 2 years now and my images take up over 9gb of space, realizing that this is a cost issue for smugmug as with everything else in life that costs $ I'm looking for ways to keep images as small as possible but having clients be able to order up to poster size. I've toyed around with keeping the images web sized but I realized that clients can only order 4x6 prints. So if I wanted to keep images from a 1D Mk II and 5D at the same pixel size but lets say use jpeg quality of 20-30% would that work?

I want the images to look great downsized on here for when people order but use the proof delay to slip in a 100% jpeg before the order. 9GB I realize is a lot and even with 60% jpeg its still a lot.

Anyone else have any other tips as I cant really remove any older galleries.

cmason

Why are you worried about file size? Smugmug doesn't give us limits. I upload 90% Jpegs. full size, and Smugmug automatically creates the other sizes = no work for me.

I would not worry about Smugmug's business or capacity, if it was a concern and/or if it were a factor, we would be paying for it, I have no doubt.

TZZDC

I guess because at some point someone at Amazon or SmugMug will figure out that space as abundant as it is will start charging for it (similar to what ISP's are doing advertising unlimited usage but now in their policy its capped).

I guess seeing 9GB worth of photos online just encourages me to make better use of the space since there's 15-20 concerts a year x 2 years so far and more to come.

Haigh

The time, energy, badwidth and frustration you are going to have to spend to manage doing all this to reduce disk usage will cost you, and eventually all of us, more than if you just stick to the product as it was designed and use the space. Don´t go looking for trouble where there is none.....

Robert

cmason

TZZDC wrote:

I guess because at some point someone at Amazon or SmugMug will figure out that space as abundant as it is will start charging for it (similar to what ISP's are doing advertising unlimited usage but now in their policy its capped).

I guess seeing 9GB worth of photos online just encourages me to make better use of the space since there's 15-20 concerts a year x 2 years so far and more to come.

Don't forget that the SM service was at one time limited, depending on your account type. Pro's got more storage than standard. Then it changed to bandwidth limits, meaning how much you uploaded and downloaded, with again bigger limits for Pros.

But as the SM business model as well as the technology evolved, it is now at a place when bandwidth and storage is essentially unlimited. I just don't see it going backwards, SM has already been down the path that you fear will happen, and I just don't see it.

There is a post somewhere, and I can not find it, where a prospective customer posted that they wanted to upload an UNGODLY number of photos. It was fascinating to watch the SM team respond, and offer to put additional storage hardware in place JUST FOR THIS ONE CUSTOMER. I believe that this discussion was among those that lead to the use of Amazon as part of their architecture, but that is just conjecture on my part.

If someone has the link to that discussion thread, please post it.

gluwater

cmason wrote:

There is a post somewhere, and I can not find it, where a prospective customer posted that they wanted to upload an UNGODLY number of photos. It was fascinating to watch the SM team respond, and offer to put additional storage hardware in place JUST FOR THIS ONE CUSTOMER. I believe that this discussion was among those that lead to the use of Amazon as part of their architecture, but that is just conjecture on my part.

If someone has the link to that discussion thread, please post it.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=24847

gluwater

TZZDC wrote:

I've been using SmugMug for nearly 2 years now and my images take up over 9gb of space, realizing that this is a cost issue for smugmug as with everything else in life that costs $ I'm looking for ways to keep images as small as possible but having clients be able to order up to poster size.

Don't worry about us, store as many photos as you can. We suggest uploading the largest size you can and set the jpg quality to 10 in PS. We're not going to start charging for space. That would be so not SmugMug .

Halliday

The reason I went with SM was because of unlimited space. If that changes then I'll jump ship if I can find a better deal.

PeterLyons

9GB is actually a pretty trivial amount of space. You can buy a 1 TB drive for $225.