Upload Size vs Print Size

littleny

Hi, I'm new to having a Pro Account and have a question. I typically upload my photos the a 500 pixel long edge length. I do this to prevent someone saving it at full size. I know theres right click protection but its so easy to do a screen shot of large images that I always felt safer with the 500 pixel display. Now that I have a pro account and am directing customers to print directly from my smugmug gallery I realizing 500 pixels isnt going to cut it.

so my question is can I display a smaller (about 500 pixel ) image while allowing customers to print the full high res image?

denisegoldberg

littleny wrote: »

...I typically upload my photos the a 500 pixel long edge length. I do this to prevent someone saving it at full size. I know theres right click protection but its so easy to do a screen shot of large images that I always felt safer with the 500 pixel display. Now that I have a pro account and am directing customers to print directly from my smugmug gallery I realizing 500 pixels isnt going to cut it.

You're right, with originals that small you are going to be limited to what size you can sell. Your original needs to support the resolution requirements for the sizes you want to sell. See the help page Are there resolution requirements for printing through SmugMug?

With a pro account you can limit the display size of your photos to Medium. Whether that size meets your display needs is up to your site visitors. With today's large screens I think Medium is pretty small for photo enjoyment - but only you can decide what your comfort level is.

--- Denise

colourbox

The answer is to always upload print resolution images. To me, that means, always upload images at their original resolution and never bother downsizing them first. Because one benefit of Smugmug pro accounts is unlimited storage, there is no reason not to upload the full resolution.

Then, in your galleries, do what Denise recommended: Limit the display size to whatever you are comfortable with.

Using that combination means your Smugmug photos are always ready for any output. Site visitors can't access a size bigger than what you limited your galleries to, not even if they try to hack the URL. But if they click the Buy button, the image is printed from the full resolution version that you uploaded, so you keep full print quality. And because you have the full res versions on Smugmug, it's a nice backup of those images.