Can I upload low-rez photos and send hi-rez photos to EZ-Prints when orders are made?

hofphotos

Can I upload low-rez photos and send high-rez photos to EZ-Prints when orders are made?

It takes very long to upload high-rez 8 megapixel photos to my smugmug site. Is their any way to just upload the low-rez version of each photo and when an order is made I can then either upload the high-rez version or send it directly to EZ-Prints via email?

Is there any other way to do this? Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Regards, Dustin

DodgeV83

Unfortunately not,

Just push the upload button before you go to bed?

hofphotos

Any other suggestions?

DodgeV83 wrote:

Unfortunately not,

Just push the upload button before you go to bed?

Thanks for the reply. It's a shame SmugMug doesn't implement this feature, especially for Event Photogs who want to display hundreds of photos and sell them online.

Anybody else have a solution?

jfriend

Only two options I'm aware of

hofphotos wrote:

Thanks for the reply. It's a shame SmugMug doesn't implement this feature, especially for Event Photogs who want to display hundreds of photos and sell them online.

Anybody else have a solution?

This subject has been discussed here a number of times before and others have asked for something similar to what you are asking for. I've wanted the same thing myself, not because of a difficulty in uploading, but because I'd like to do custom retouch/crop work on the photos that people actually order. That's how professional photographers have traditionally done things. They give you proofs, you figure out what you want to order and in what sizes and they then optimize the results for your order without having to optimize every print at every size.

The only options I'm aware of today are:

1. Use smugmug only for viewing low-res photos, but not ordering or fullfillment. Have your users place orders directly with you (often done via email) and take payment through something like PayPal. You would then get them printed wherever you want using your originals (you could use EZPrints if you wanted) and deal with fullfillment and payment yourself. There are a fair number of smugmug customers doing this.
2. Use a different photo service that supports this type of fullfillment-on-demand. Some of the services that cater more to professionals do support this type of feature for event photography, but those same services are typically lacking in other areas vs. smugmug.

While folks from smugmug have clearly discussed this feature before here on dgrin, I haven't seen any indication one way or the other whether they were likely to add it sometime in the future.

jfriend

Some other ideas...

hofphotos wrote:

Thanks for the reply. It's a shame SmugMug doesn't implement this feature, especially for Event Photogs who want to display hundreds of photos and sell them online.

Anybody else have a solution?

Since you are talking about a lot of photos for event photography, I will assume this isn't something that occurs every day. If that's the case, you might just want to find a faster or more convenient way to do your event uploads. Some ideas:

• Take a WiFi laptop to a Starbucks (or some other WiFi provider) and pay $10 for some faster connect time to do the uploads.
• Burn your images to a CD and go to a library with public access computers and upload from there.
• Get broadband at home (or upgrade your broadband to a faster upload connection)
• Take a CD to work and upload from there (depends upon your employer's policies)
• Use one of the uploaders that lets you pre-specify unlimited numbers of images across unlimited numbers of galleries and do the entire upload unattended overnight (I use StarExplorer myself) so even though it takes a long time, you can just walk away and let it go.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

While folks from smugmug have clearly discussed this feature before here on dgrin, I haven't seen any indication one way or the other whether they were likely to add it sometime in the future.

Why would you ever say such a thing?

jfriend

???

Andy wrote:

Why would you ever say such a thing?

Andy, I can't tell if you're making a joke (because your policy is not to ever pre-announce anything) or asking me a serious question about why I would say what I did?

To clarify what I meant, the topic of on-demand fullfillment has been discussed here before. To my recollection I don't remember leaving that conversation with any feeling one way or another whether smugmug was likely to implement the feature in the future.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

Andy, I can't tell if you're making a joke (because your policy is not to ever pre-announce anything) or asking me a serious question about why I would say what I did?

To clarify what I meant, the topic of on-demand fullfillment has been discussed here before. To my recollection I don't remember leaving that conversation with any feeling one way or another whether smugmug was likely to implement the feature in the future.

We don't pre announce anything you are correct but I and others have said this is a feature we'd very much like to offer.

jfriend

Looking forward to it...

Andy wrote:

We don't pre announce anything you are correct but I and others have said this is a feature we'd very much like to offer.

I hope we see it in the near future then :.

I'm still trying to learn the code :heh. It sounds like "we'd very much like to offer that feature" means "unless our plans change for some unforseen reason, we're going to do that feature sometime soon, but policy prevents me from promising you anything". I'll add that one to my smugmug dictionary.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

I hope we see it in the near future then :.

I'm still trying to learn the code :heh. It sounds like "we'd very much like to offer that feature" means "unless our plans change for some unforseen reason, we're going to do that feature sometime soon, but policy prevents me from promising you anything". I'll add that one to my smugmug dictionary.

:nah there's no "code." Lots of folks want this feature. Plenty of others don't want it, also. I've interviewed personally many many of our pros on this subject.

I know some really good event shooters that, once the come back from the event, they run their shots through their perfected photoshop routines/actions, load to SmugMug, and send out the word on that the shots are ready. They're on to the next event and they now let the website and SmugMug take over.

All this said, if we can put it together in a way that we can still guarantee satisfaction to our pros and their customers, not cause any additional support issues, etc, we'd love to do it. Still, there's no promise on if or when.

Thanks!

hofphotos

Thank you
Thank you for your insight. The two options you presented seem to be what I was thinking as alternatives, thanks for specifying them for me. I love SmugMug's interface and love the fact that they take care of my orders...it's just a pain if I want to upload 1000 8megapixel photos!

Thanks again!

Regards, Dustin

jfriend wrote:

This subject has been discussed here a number of times before and others have asked for something similar to what you are asking for. I've wanted the same thing myself, not because of a difficulty in uploading, but because I'd like to do custom retouch/crop work on the photos that people actually order. That's how professional photographers have traditionally done things. They give you proofs, you figure out what you want to order and in what sizes and they then optimize the results for your order without having to optimize every print at every size.

The only options I'm aware of today are:

1. Use smugmug only for viewing low-res photos, but not ordering or fullfillment. Have your users place orders directly with you (often done via email) and take payment through something like PayPal. You would then get them printed wherever you want using your originals (you could use EZPrints if you wanted) and deal with fullfillment and payment yourself. There are a fair number of smugmug customers doing this.
2. Use a different photo service that supports this type of fullfillment-on-demand. Some of the services that cater more to professionals do support this type of feature for event photography, but those same services are typically lacking in other areas vs. smugmug.

While folks from smugmug have clearly discussed this feature before here on dgrin, I haven't seen any indication one way or the other whether they were likely to add it sometime in the future.

marlinspike

Andy wrote:

I know some really good event shooters that, once the come back from the event, they run their shots through their perfected photoshop routines/actions, load to SmugMug, and send out the word on that the shots are ready. They're on to the next event and they now let the website and SmugMug take over.

I was one of the people who voted in this camp. Woooo-hooo I'm considered pro enough to be asked!