panoramic prints

winnjewett

Baldy, you have mentioned several times in the past week that panoramic prints is one of the services that ezprints offers that smugmug doesn't. I would love to see these kind of prints offered. Is this on the horizon any time soon?

-Winn

Baldy

The honest answer is ... I don't know. The biggest barrier for us (but not the only one) is that EZ Prints used a Mileca printer for panoramics, which is a previous-generation CRT-based printer. It's harder to keep them in calibration than laser printers and they lack the sharpness you can get from lasers.

I notice that they're not selling them off their new retail site currently, but there is a coming soon notice there (it's been there awhile).

There are some user interface issues too. You charge by the 6" for them and if you think through how you make that clear in the shopping cart, how to update it when someone crops, etc., it becomes clear that it's not like adding just another print size.

And customers are banging the drums loudly for digital downloads, cards, calendars, backprinting, making the API mission critical, red-eye correction, more customization, etc., and I'm not sure the business case for panoramics can compete with those.

winnjewett

Well baldy, It sounds like you really haven't thought this one through! ;-)

Hopefully once the SM dust settles, ezprints will have their act together with their printers. While I'm thinking about it, I'd vote for no cropping on the panoramics. Since the long side is variable, there is no need to crop other than composition. And, since the photographer had to work with the originals to create the pano in the first place, there should be little to no need to crop. This should make pricing easy since you will know ahead of time what the price will be for a 6" or 12" tall print.

-Winn