EU print lab any time soon?
Kurgen
Registered Users Posts: 26 Big grins
I'm not holding my breath for this, as a search on the forums dragged up a few threads that asked the same question, and are now several years old, and still no EU based print labs. Is this ever going to become a reality? Right now, if a client orders 10 basic 4"x6" prints, costing £1.35, they get charged £5.13 for shipping! Naturally, no-one is buying a single thing, not with those prices. I've only joined SM in the last two months, but the primary reason for doing so; print sales, is never going to happen the way it is now. Please tell me I haven't just wasted a years subscription and weeks of setting-up?
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As far as I am aware, but I may be corrected by someone else. You can select Loxley Colour from the drop down menu when you creat a price list in account settings as long as you have a Portfolio or Business account otherwise I think you are limited to EZ Prints with with basic accounts.
Robin
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
[EDIT] Just checked, and no, my account type does not include selection of print lab. Wow. What a complete waste of time and money. The next level of account is almost three times the cost of the current one. I didn't realise at the time, that not having a selection of lab meant I could only use one that is physically thousands of miles away, on a different continent. Not happy.
That is correct, Loxley is only available to Portfolio and Business members at this time. You can add your votes and comments on our suggestion forum, regarding adding Loxley at the Basic/Power account levels here.
In your first post you mentioned that your primary reason to use SmugMug was print sales. At the Power account level you cannot sell prints for a profit - you can only sell prints at the base/default prices. I'm not sure if you were aware of this. You can upgrade your account by going into the Account Settings > Me > Subscription page, then click the Change Plan button (the upgrade fee is prorated).
If you have any questions feel free to email us at the help desk http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/emails/new.
Support Hero
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That is the main reason that I went with the Portfolio account, as it allowed me to make a small amount of profit on any prints that I sold. I only do it as a hobby, so my margins are quite low.
The Portfolio account only allows you to set one price list for all of the different types of prints available which would cover all of your galleries. If you want to have different prices for different galleries and/or clients you would need to upgrade to the Business account which is twice the cost of the Portfolio account.
Robin
Got a link to the gallery? If you don't want to post it publicly you can email us at help@smugmug.com
Support Hero
http://www.ivors.photos/Scenery/Panoramas/
This is a good example of the problem with WMs not showing on either the full size image or its thumbnail, but the main gallery pic (the square one) does. ???
http://www.ivors.photos/Motorsport/Knockhill-Racing-Circuit/2013-season
Hi Kurgen, I am sure you will not be disappointed with your upgrade. I have had a look at your site and you have some great shots on there. However I noticed that you have all of your galleries are set to show the original image, and this will allow visitors to your site to grab the original image without any need to purchase it. I would advise you change all of your gallery setting to show X2, X3 maximum. This will not affect any purchase of your prints as they are automatically taken from your original image..
Hopefully someone can get you sorted with your WM issue to give you a bit more protection of your images.
You may need to have a separate WM for your panoramas..... Have you tried adding more left & right transparency to it so that it does not need to stretch so much?
Robin
I noticed that I had to go into each gallery's settings/security & privacy dialog and set it to "apply watermark" & "watermark all in this gallery" to get the WMs to show properly? Last night I had gone in through : organize site (select gallery)/select all/edit/watermarks, but this didn't seem to do the same thing? It's kinda confusing to be honest. I wish there was some kind of global "watermark all my non-thumbnail and tile images please!" function. Having to go through each and every individual gallery is a slog, especially when you've already done it, only to discover you goofed somewhere.
Thanks for the help, I'm slowly but surely getting there!
Ivor.
Arggghhh!!! Am I going to have to rebuild all my galleries, again, or is there any way to bulk-overwrite what's already there using the same filenames but full-rez versions? I know the default upload setting is to skip dupes, but... please let there be an alternative.
*sigh*
You might be interested in Proof delay which allows you to replace images after they are ordered and before they are submitted to the print lab. As long as the image is large enough to order (chart above) the customer can place the order and you can later replace it with a larger size. http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/84523-proof-delay
Watermarks will only be applied if the original image is at least 801px on the long side.
Re-uploading and skip duplicates will be the best way to go I believe...
Support Hero
Trouble is, the way my image archive is setup here at home is to have one folder for each event with hi-rez photos in the main folder, and a sub-folder with the low-rez versions, but both the low-rez and high-rez images share the same name, so to upload all the high-rez ones would require me re-naming them all. Not that this in itself is a problem with the availability of bulk-renaming programs, but it would mean I'd have tens of thousands of extra files and folders kicking around, and I'd have to re-upload the entire site, with files that are considerably bigger than the current ones, e.g. one low-rez file at 400KB could easily be 10+MB at full rez. This, times 3000+ files would be excruciating.
The Proof Delay idea is looking mighty promising right now.
Speaking of which, and I'm dreading the (likely) reply, but is there a global "Proof Delay" setting, or is it per-gallery again?
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I've always uploaded full size photos to my site - but I have a fast internet connection.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Yes, thats correct. Your customer will only be able see available print sizes that the original image is suitable to be printed at. That is why you need your full rez original images if you want to offer larger prints and formats that Loxley offer.
I'm afraid that I can not help with how you are going to be able to repopulate your galleries with the original images with out it being a fair bit of work.
Robin