FB vs. Smugmug - how do you do it?

jfriend

This question is about family/friend photos, not about commercial photos you might be trying to sell. Years ago, all I had was Smugmug for my photos. If I wanted to tell some friends about them, I'd email them a link to the gallery.

Then, along came Facebook. For many (including myself), it's become a primary means of sharing things with friends/family. So, when I want to share photos, I don't generally send an email any more. I post something on my wall and let them know about the photos that way. Here's where the conundrum starts. Do you put the photos in a FB album, in a Smugmug gallery and link to it or some of both?

The two main advantages I see of putting them right into FB are that 1) they are really easy and quick to browse and 2) you can tag faces so the people in the photos (and their friends) will automatically be notified that there's a new photo of that person available for viewing. Both are significant advantages.

On the other hand, FB image viewing is pretty rinky dink. I use my family Smugmug site as a repository and history of things we've done through the years. I can't imagine using FB for that - it just doesn't seem to have that level of organization. Plus Smugmug has lots more capabiliteis for sharing originals, seeing full screen slideshows, seeing large photos, it's color managed, and so on...

So, I'm in a quandary. I want the convenience of viewing images that are right in FB. I want to use tagging so people and their friends get notified of images they are in. But, there's no way I'm going to give up the higher quality viewing experience on Smugmug and the better ability to organize and present hundreds of galleries across many years. So, what to do?

How do you do it?

For now, here's what I'm doing. When I have a new gallery to share, I upload the whole gallery to Smugmug. I then pick 6-10 photos from that gallery and make a FB album with those photos in it. If they have people in them that are on FB, I tag those FB photos with the people's names. Then, I publish the FB album to my profile and in the description when I publish it, I put a link to the Smug gallery. The FB post ends up looking like this:



It works OK, but it's a major compromise and it's a lot of work. It takes a lot of steps to do (uploading photos in multiple places, creating a short link, etc...). I can only tag the few that I uploaded to FB (I wish I could FB tag all the photos in my Smug gallery), the Smug gallery isn't as quick to view as the FB photos so people may end either only seeing a few of the photos in FB or having to go two places and so on...

Anyone else thought much about this? How do you do it?

Art Scott

I have a few things in the galleries on FB but mostly I link to the photos on my SM site on my wall on FB.....................
I have only linked a couple of things so far.........I am sure I will make a PS action to down size any more photos I actually post on FB.......
and then will watermark them with another action ..................

jhelms

It seems like every time I read one of your posts it's almost like I could have written it myself - I TOTALLY AGREE!

Currently, I'm doing something very similar to what you are doing; except that sometimes I just post the smugmug link instead of a few teaser photos.

I"m also REALLY hoping to see something done about the full gallery links that you mentioned in the other post (and about the useless list of galleries that doesn't show info that we need when moving photos, etc.)

Tracker

I just recently decided to go a slightly different route. A number of months ago I decided to get off the (FB) grid. I'll save the reasons for another day. In its place, to connect with family & friends, I'm using Picasa Web/Google sites. I'm still refining it, but Google sites has a lot of potential for a free service. My pics pretty much get imported into my local drive into one of two folders--Family (& friends) or Smugged. For really special family/friend processing, I'll go LR route before uploading to a special Picasa Web album. For more basic snapshots in time, Picasa. Although it sounds complicated as I read over it, it's really pretty easy.

If I do go back to FB, it will be strictly to do a business promo. I am slowly working my SM account to have a more professional bent.

chrisjohnson

I totally agree with jfriend - been through the same thought process and come to the same conclusion.

I started with FB fairly recently and honestly doubt that I will continue for long. For one thing very few of my friends are members and those that are members are not active. I suspect, like me, they signed up once and quickly lost interest. FB is 99% media hype, similar to Twitter. I don't suppose I'll give up on FB altogether - there a couple of people there who I like to follow ... we will see what happens.

So I'll be sticking with Smugmug for my photos for the reasons given, and I'll be providing links wherever I feel appropriate.

jfriend

goldenballs wrote: »

I totally agree with jfriend - been through the same thought process and come to the same conclusion.

I started with FB fairly recently and honestly doubt that I will continue for long. For one thing very few of my friends are members and those that are members are not active. I suspect, like me, they signed up once and quickly lost interest. FB is 99% media hype, similar to Twitter. I don't suppose I'll give up on FB altogether - there a couple of people there who I like to follow ... we will see what happens.

So I'll be sticking with Smugmug for my photos for the reasons given, and I'll be providing links wherever I feel appropriate.

I don't agree that FB is 99% hype. You should see my teenagers on it. And, I have many family members on it and it's a way better way to share stuff with them than email. It is true that it is only interesting to you if you have friends on it, but if you do, it can be very useful.

Foques

^^
I'm with this guy.

I found many, many clients specifically over Facebook.
However, I just gave up on hoping that smugmug will do what I need it to do, and just am uploading images manually..

BenA2

Put me firmly into the category of struggling with this issue as well.

John, I'd say 50% of the time, I do exactly as you described: post a few select images to a FB gallery, tag them, post all of the images to a SmugMug gallery, and post a link to the SmugMug gallery in the comments. The other 50% of the time, when I'm just lazy, in a hurry, or I don't have anyone worth tagging in the gallery, I just post a link to the SmugMug gallery on my FB wall.

I will always post all of my family photos to SmugMug. SmugMug is here for long-term backup and beautiful display. FB is only an add-on. I will never post anything to FB that isn't posted to SmugMug. While I see a lot of value in FB, in terms of communicating easily and non-intrusively with my friends and family, I'm not expecting it to be around forever like I am SmugMug.

I am very hopeful that SmugMug will find a way to integrate FB tagging and comments into SmugMug galleries. If that feature existed today, I would stop posting photos to FB albums altogether, only post photo links to SmugMug, and end up driving more traffic to SmugMug, which is good for me and SmugMug. I just don't know if this level of integration is technically achievable.

jfriend

BenA2 wrote: »

I am very hopeful that SmugMug will find a way to integrate FB tagging and comments into SmugMug galleries. If that feature existed today, I would stop posting photos to FB albums altogether, only post photo links to SmugMug, and end up driving more traffic to SmugMug, which is good for me and SmugMug. I just don't know if this level of integration is technically achievable.

I agree with this comment completely. I suspect it isn't doable, but if it was, it would be great and would take away one of the reasons for posting any photos in FB.

digismile

It's each persons choice how much information they are willing to share on the world wide web. I do have a facebook account and I do share a few photos related to family and friends. But I continue to have concerns with FB privacy issues and the ease with which information (including photos) can easily be acquired/captured/taken/repurposed (you fill in the blank).

The whole purpose of FB is to share, which it does extremely well! So I only put those photos on FB that I won't mind ending up in someone else's hands/control. So I would definitely not link an entire Smugmug gallery to my facebook site.

My 2 cents,

rt2photo

FB is definitely not media hype - I've not only got customers that I work with directly through FB, but my family is on another continent, and it's a good way to keep them in touch with the latest shots of their only grandkid.

For personal stuff, I just stick them on FB. Sure, it's not as pretty as Smug, and misses a TON of the features - but those features are things I, as a semi-pro photographer care about (slideshows, color balancing etc), and not things my family and friends could give a poop for. They don't even notice if someone posts an out of focus photo of a baby, let alone if it's color balance is good!

For my business or portfolio stuff, Smugmug all the way. I might post one or two teasers for a shoot to my wall (especially if multiple people are involved ... I'll post the organizer or the most popular person's shot, and tag them - it then shows up on their wall to their friends - instant promotion) - but the vast bulk of the shots are in a Smug gallery, linked to my FB page.

huseyin

Facebook recently improved their photo storage & display and added support for originals/high resolution pictures. I don't know if they really keep originals untouched, but it seems to me like FB is cooking something up. They could soon introduce printing services.

jfriend

huseyin wrote: »

Facebook recently improved their photo storage & display and added support for originals/high resolution pictures. I don't know if they really keep originals untouched, but it seems to me like FB is cooking something up. They could soon introduce printing services.

Their "high res" is still not very high res. It's downsamples on your computer before it's uploaded. I don't remember the actual number, but I think the longest dimension is somewhere around 2000px so the overall image would likely be less than 6MP. It's better than they had, but not "originals".

huseyin

I wouldn't think of facebook as a place for photo storage service at all anyway, everything feels so locked in.

jfriend

huseyin wrote: »

I wouldn't think of facebook as a place for photo storage service at all anyway, everything feels so locked in.

I'm not sure what you mean by "locked in". They have galleries and photos in those galleries and lots of methods of sharing and methods of controlling access. They don't have much in terms of gallery organization or gallery display. I posted this thread because FB is now an easier and quicker way to share a group of photos from a family trip with family members.

There are other compromises when doing so, but I see more and more people (who also have Smugmug accounts) sharing photos with me via FB rather than via Smugmug. That means that some amount of photo sharing that was previously done via Smugmug is now being done via FB.

huseyin

Oh by locked in I mean lack of customization and feels like a coinbox, you are putting pictures in there, and you can't really get rid of them if you really wanted to
Well, there is really no comparison between SM or FB, other than the fact that the only thing I like with FB is the face tagging or face recognition, which seems to work extremely well.

jfriend

huseyin wrote: »

Oh by locked in I mean lack of customization and feels like a coinbox, you are putting pictures in there, and you can't really get rid of them if you really wanted to
Well, there is really no comparison between SM or FB, other than the fact that the only thing I like with FB is the face tagging or face recognition, which seems to work extremely well.

Agree that FB is a lot less flexible or powerful for displaying photos, but if you just want to show family/friends 1-20 photos from an outing and your family/friends are all friends on FB, FB might actually be a better way to do so, especially with face tagging and how quick is is to view photos in FB. That's what I was trying to say. For me, and others, SM is losing some of this casual photo sharing that it used to be used for and I'm now trying to decide which photos should be shared via FB, which via SM and which via both. Just wondering how others are thinking of this same issue.

And, I think it's ultimately a competitive threat for SM's standard users (not power or pro) since it's does some sharing things well and it's free.

huseyin

jfriend wrote: »

Agree that FB is a lot less flexible or powerful for displaying photos, but if you just want to show family/friends 1-20 photos from an outing and your family/friends are all friends on FB, FB might actually be a better way to do so, especially with face tagging and how quick is is to view photos in FB. That's what I was trying to say. For me, and others, SM is losing some of this casual photo sharing that it used to be used for and I'm now trying to decide which photos should be shared via FB, which via SM and which via both. Just wondering how others are thinking of this same issue.

And, I think it's ultimately a competitive threat for SM's standard users (not power or pro) since it's does some sharing things well and it's free.

You got a very valid point there. SM is not social, for example you cannot tag a picture with a friend's name & e-mail and have SM e-mail that person, plus allow "view only" or "share only" type of account, where you cannot upload anything but can comment, follow, or subscribe to password protected directory, at least they should allow RSS for pass protected gallery, or subscribe via e-mail so if any new picture is added, that person can be notified.