Setting prices, no easier way?

Purple Pear

Hello,

I've started to set prices for my pictures, but oh dear, what an utterly painful process! My galleries contain images in many different sizes (mostly tweaked a bit during postprocessing), i really dont want to sell pics that have to be cropped.
I started off with setting portfolio prices for the standard, uncropped format of my camera... but for every picture (and there's many!) that doesnt fit this i have to set all prices manually. To do this i first have to go to the picture i want to set prices for, go to 'buy this picture' and then leave this window open to see what sizes fit and which need cropping (why the heck isnt this visible in the 'set price' window?!). Then i have to open another window, navigate to the same picture and flip back and forth to see which formats need pricing. To make things worse, lets say i just set prices for a square format, i can not save this as some sort of template to apply it to other square pictures, only to whole galleries; so for the other squares i have to open another window, go check each time what prices i set for the other pic and type it over... etc etc. It's also becoming a pain to keep prices consistent, as i have to do them 1 by 1 and have to go search for similar formats to check what price i set there.

There must be a workaround for this i'm missing... no? I've really enjoyed smugmug so far and found it very user-friendly; but this is just insane. It literally will take days to price all my pics... so i sincerely hope i'm just missing something here. Isn't there an option to hide all sizes that need cropping (i know there is for customers, but thats not what i need), or a way to save prices for a specific format as a template, so it can be applied to other individual pictures?
Any help to make this process easier (and mostly faster) is seriously appreciated
Cheers!

Ann McRae

Hi

I have a few tips for you.

First, and foremost, please set a portfolio price list. This will be your safety net, and will protect you from any sales happening without pro pricing. It is really important.

For any print sizes, and merchandise, that you do not want to offer, set the price to $0.

You may still want to use gallery level pricing but I would not bother with image level pricing. Proof delay will help you to make sure that the customer gets an uncropped print. If you have images that are not cropped to print well at the standard print sizes, then you can change the print to 'no crop' during proof delay. This will print the full image onto the size of print paper chosen by your customer. To do so requires that white edges be printed on two sides of the resulting print, but that can be trimmed by the customer, or matted around. If your prints are not standard aspect ratios they will require custom framing anyway.

If you really have a common aspect ratio - perhaps you use square crops a lot - you can establish a gallery for a square print price list. Set up an unlisted gallery, put a representative image into it, and set a gallery level price list that only prices the square print products.

Put all of your square print photos into a gallery that uses that price list, and then use the collect photo tool to display those photos in what ever gallery you wish them to be in on your site, for viewing purposes. The collected images will obey the pricing of their original gallery, and you have effectively set image level pricing for them, using a preexisting 'price list'.

Let us know if you have further questions on how to do this,

ann

Purple Pear

Hello ann,

Thanks so much for your reply! I was on the right track, i set my portfolio prices but now was working on the image levels for individual pictures that required cropping. (a titan task )
The tip about putting for example all squares in a gallery and pricing them from there is exactely the sort of workaround i was looking for! I tried to find a workaround by creating temporary packages with images that have the same dimensions and price them there, but it didnt work... your solution definitely will.
Thanks again, you saved me a lot of hours!

As i mentioned above, i've really enjoyed smugmug so far, the helpdesk is the best, fastest and most personal i ever saw, site customization isnt too tough and very flexible + dgrin is another treasury of info and help... but there's definitely space for improvement when it comes to pricing. An option to create pricing templates or to hide all sizes that'd need cropping would be awesome... just suggesting

adamjasonphoto

great response Ann - i was hoping something along these lines would exist as a work around.
one question though:

The collected images will obey the pricing of their original gallery, and you have effectively set image level pricing for them...

The collected photos are using a "gallery level price" from their parent gallery, so I'm hoping you are not referring to true "image level pricing" above.
I'm hoping that if you change the hidden gallery price list (eg: markup all the square image prices by 10% next year) that the collected ones will still inherit and reflect this price change.
I'm trying to avoid any individual image level pricing, as it sounds like a pain if you want to (or need to) do some kind of global price adjustments.