As for the dynamic resize: click on any picture and they'll show a lightbox with one resized to your browser window (keeping a fixed black margin) - here for example.
Sebastian
Hmm, so I'm not seeing that. It's not resizing to my window at all (I'm running at 1920x1200), I'm just getting a larger version of the image and tons of black space.
Hmm, so I'm not seeing that. It's not resizing to my window at all (I'm running at 1920x1200), I'm just getting a larger version of the image and tons of black space.
?
Don
maybe it doesn't work with soo big resolution:) but on my laptop 1280x800 it resizes when I press F11 for normal/fullscreen mode, same for desktop with 1280x1024
Hmm, so I'm not seeing that. It's not resizing to my window at all (I'm running at 1920x1200), I'm just getting a larger version of the image and tons of black space.
Okay, I also was on 1280x1024 and had the impression they serve up on the fly, but now I had my old 19" CRT booted up to 1920x1440 @ 60Hz and it seems that their XL size is 1100x794px.
Also they've been painfully slow recently for me - I downloaded an original at 10kb/s and for browsing that made a huge impact.
Sebastian
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
0
BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
I've been trying to post them side-by-side here but use the same size images, since a small version will always look worse than a big one, but I'm sure I'm being dumb and missing something simple. How do I embed an image from Zenfolio in a post? The link it gives me seems to be to a whole page and not just the image.
Instead of linking directly, you seem to have moved the images to your server.
With regard to full-screen size, it appears to be their extra large display size:
Very Large image (1,100 pixels along the longest side for horizontal photos, 850 pixels along the longest side for vertical photos)
There doesn't seem to be a mechanism to sense your screen size and make special sizes that fit it. Am I missing something?
How do I embed an image from Zenfolio in a post? The link it gives me seems to be to a whole page and not just the image.
Very Large image (1,100 pixels along the longest side for horizontal photos, 850 pixels along the longest side for vertical photos)
There doesn't seem to be a mechanism to sense your screen size and make special sizes that fit it. Am I missing something?
I believe they're trying to protect the URLs to their images with Javascript and I haven't found anything on the site. So I guess they don't want people to hotlink images. Maybe BWG finds something about this topic.
From their filenaming scheme (p[imageid]-[single digit indicating size] )it looks like they've got 6 sizes. So far I've seen the following [single digits] in my browser cache:
0 - thumbnail (80px longest side)
1 - square thumbs (60px)
2 - ?? didn't have any in my cache
3 - medium (515x450px, 580x387px for landscape or 450px long for portrait)
4 - large (800px wide for landscape or 630px long for portrait)
5 - XL (1100px wide for landscape or 850px long for portrait)
I uploaded two files http://pronvit.1gb.ru/p/sm.jpg and http://pronvit.1gb.ru/p/zf.jpg with images from SM and zenfolio. can you see artifacts around flower or just when green color ends on top? these images are from my accounts pronvit.smugmug.com and pronvit.zenfolio.com maybe the difference isn't very big but it's disturbing sometimes and when we're talking about profesional photo hosting, image quality is most important thing I think
Interesting. Their photo is 35% larger (aka 35% slower to load), but I'm unable to detect a difference on my high-end LCD. I suspect that on a lower resolution display the differences may be more apparent, but they're not for me.
Interesting. Their photo is 35% larger (aka 35% slower to load), but I'm unable to detect a difference on my high-end LCD. I suspect that on a lower resolution display the differences may be more apparent, but they're not for me.
I think they win here (on a calibrated iMac). The "sm" image has more artifacts along the top of the hood. Also, the "zf" image appears slightly sharper to me.
I think they win here (on a calibrated iMac). The "sm" image has more artifacts along the top of the hood. Also, the "zf" image appears slightly sharper to me.
They're *clearly* sharpening more than we do. But unless that's configurable at Zenfolio, there's going to be problems for people who have already sharpened their photos to their taste prior to uploading.
Then the display sizes will appear way too sharpened and it'll add additional artifacts.
(One of the lessons learned from 70,000,000 photos )
Don
0
BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
edited May 17, 2006
The unsharp mask swamp is a treacherous one. :uhoh We've had to back down from the level of unsharp mask we apply over time in response to user feedback and still we receive more pressure to go soft than we do for sharp.
The main issue is the preference for portraits is soft but for shots of action, cars, and some landscapes it's sharp.
The deciding factor is the emotion level for someone whose close-up made their wrinkles and pores show is high, so we hear about them more. I don't think you can judge sharpness on one shot, especially of a child with perfect skin.
SM SlideShow limitations
If you have restrictions set on original or large images from your gallery, SM slideshow ends up presenting very poor quality images because their system relys on upsampling from large images. Otherwise they have to upsample from medium sized images and the resulting slideshow is very pixelated and low quality.
So either you allow large or original sized images in your galleries so the slide shows look okay, (and risk having your images pilfered as I have witnessed), or you limit image sizes and suffer the consequences of visitors being presented with low resolution slideshow, or disable the option for slideshows completely.
User vs Geek
It looks to me like they have a less geeky interface. I'm a geek, I don't mind, I like control. But making layout choices more visual is cool
Some Gallery2 templates do that floating EXIf Thing it is cool
If they had e-commerce working and custom watermarks, I would comparing trial accounts.
If you have restrictions set on original or large images from your gallery, SM slideshow ends up presenting very poor quality images because their system relys on upsampling from large images. Otherwise they have to upsample from medium sized images and the resulting slideshow is very pixelated and low quality.
So either you allow large or original sized images in your galleries so the slide shows look okay, (and risk having your images pilfered as I have witnessed), or you limit image sizes and suffer the consequences of visitors being presented with low resolution slideshow, or disable the option for slideshows completely.
okay....this is a designed and documented behavior of smugmug. How does it relate to this thread?
To be honest: i LOVE their style. Design and buttons are simple but very classy to me. I also like their Lightbox: nothing else to see but the picture, it is centered (i really like that!), on a black background. And it all runs so smooth.
With our lightbox it takes longer for the picture to upload. Sometimes it mentions "uploading" but it doesnt....
The slideshow function in Zenfolio doesn't behave this way. The images may not fill the whole screen, but what you see looks cleaner.
does the slideshow gallery style not accomplish the same thing?
zenfolio has 1 slideshow. smugmug has 2. one for specific viewing sizes (s/m/l) and one for full screen. if you disable originals and larges then sure the fullscreen slideshow wont be the best choice, but the slideshow gallery style will still work fine.
I think zenfolio did a better job with the presentation of their full screen slideshow (if you can call it full screen), but functionality wise i dont think they have an advantage.
So basically they're violating your protection settings? Your customers can get nice high-resolution images even if you've told them not to?
That sounds like a Bad Idea.
Don
I don't think they do...
With the full-screen slideshow, use the largest size possible (based on protection settings) and scale down to fit the (entire) screen. If this means that the image won't fill the entire screen, then that's OK.
So basically they're violating your protection settings? Your customers can get nice high-resolution images even if you've told them not to?
That sounds like a Bad Idea.
Don
From what I can see they still don't access or display full size or "large" images if you don't allow it. They display the images in smaller size, but higher quality because it's not being pixelated to fill a whole screen.
They also said they will be announcing soon who will handle their printing & that it will make some services "jealous".
For them being such a new service with only 6 months online, I must say im pretty impressed. Im not jumping ship from Smugmug or anything, but these guys seem to mean business & getting stuff together super fast.
Zenfolio seems too "busy" for me. Seems to be less focus on photographer's photo. I'm not drawn into the photos like I am at Smugmug. Could be because I'm just not used to seeing Zenfolio yet. Also, there seems to be too much Java and like. You can't right click a lot of the content and open it up in another window or tab. As with the galleries. With Smugmug I can open a photographers front page. Keep it open and right click subsequent galleries with them opening in a new tab or window. This is important to me, as it allows be to browse galleries and categories quicker. I suspect all the Java Zenfolio uses will really slow their sight down if they start getting more browsers and users.
Just my two cents.
Also, I have to say I find it unusual to see a thread posted about Zenfolio here within Smugmug's forums. Seems almost like someone taking a comment box or sheet about Burger King and posting it at McDonald's. Interesting.
A huge pet peeve for me. You cannot resize the slideshow window that pops up in Zenfolio. I think it's a big "NO, NO" when you start taking control and funtionality away from a user. Don't be messing with my browser windows! Sometimes, I like to shrink down a slide show window while I work on something else, all the while keeping an eye on the slideshow.
I write these things not to bash Zenfolio, but in hopes Smugmug won't follow suit with the same type of format.
well i saw this thread and tried to check out what zenfolio had to offer, but ran into major browser layout issues!!!! anyone else seeing this?
i tried to view the popular and featured galleries from zenfolio's main site but i could not even access anything larger than the thumbnails so i don't know what's going on...
neither firefox nor ie would display anything correctly in ANY of the galleries i tried to check out. so no thanks. i'll stick with smugmug
One thing I noticed while browsing a few galleries on their site is that it feels really, really fast when browsing. As best I can tell, they must be prefetching images that you are likely to go to. Costs them bandwidth (if you don't go to that image), but it seems to be pretty effective in enhancing browsing speed.
WOW man that IS fast
Now if only SM could get that speed I'd be a happy chappy!
One thinmg you could mention is that SM has larger upload file capacity (for Pros)
We used to do this, too, since it's worth the extra bandwidth for speed, but in real world use, it wasn't noticeably better.
I haven't had a chance to play with them yet, but just hazarding a guess, I'll bet they're fast because they're new (Jan 2006) and don't have half a billion JPGs and millions of browsers per day.
I've heard great things about them, so we'll definitely check it out and see if there's anything we can learn - but we're so busy just implementing customer requested features we don't have a lot of time to do competitive research.
Don
Well I rerally do wish you could implement my request for better speed!
May be you're right and they are fast cos they're small ( at the moment) but as a non tech user Im really sorry to say it just sounds like an excuse. I don't mean that nastily!
As a frequent participant in the "which photo sharing service is the best" threads in other online forums, I've just recently started to see a bunch of fairly positive references to Zenfolio, http://www.zenfolio.com.
As feedback for Smugmug, I've recently seen more users on some other online forums choosing Zenfolio, even after trying Smugmug. In a recent exchange, I asked why they chose Zenfolio. Here's the response I got:
I do not believe there is a bandwidth limit on my account. But e-mail their support to confirm, they are usually pretty quick to reply. To answer the question on what I liked about Zenfolio over others, here is a short list: - Much easier to use interface for uploading/managing photos and galleries - Groups/folders hierarchy that's completely free of any imposed structure - Gorgeous page designs are much cleaner and more professional-looking to my eye. Since I do not know HTML or CSS, customizing my own pages with Smugmug was not an option, and the layouts and themes Zenfolio has are very very good. - A much better Slideshow
- More refined access protection where I can lock individual photos
A lot of this stuff is look-and-feel though so at the end of the day you should try them both and decide for yourself what "feels" better to you and your visitors. Hope this helps.
Comments
Hmm, so I'm not seeing that. It's not resizing to my window at all (I'm running at 1920x1200), I'm just getting a larger version of the image and tons of black space.
?
Don
maybe it doesn't work with soo big resolution:) but on my laptop 1280x800 it resizes when I press F11 for normal/fullscreen mode, same for desktop with 1280x1024
Also they've been painfully slow recently for me - I downloaded an original at 10kb/s and for browsing that made a huge impact.
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
I've been trying to post them side-by-side here but use the same size images, since a small version will always look worse than a big one, but I'm sure I'm being dumb and missing something simple. How do I embed an image from Zenfolio in a post? The link it gives me seems to be to a whole page and not just the image.
Instead of linking directly, you seem to have moved the images to your server.
With regard to full-screen size, it appears to be their extra large display size:
Very Large image (1,100 pixels along the longest side for horizontal photos, 850 pixels along the longest side for vertical photos)
There doesn't seem to be a mechanism to sense your screen size and make special sizes that fit it. Am I missing something?
Thanks,
Baldy
Whatever you end up choosing, you've asked some great questions, which will keep us honest.
From their filenaming scheme (p[imageid]-[single digit indicating size] )it looks like they've got 6 sizes. So far I've seen the following [single digits] in my browser cache:
0 - thumbnail (80px longest side)
1 - square thumbs (60px)
2 - ?? didn't have any in my cache
3 - medium (515x450px, 580x387px for landscape or 450px long for portrait)
4 - large (800px wide for landscape or 630px long for portrait)
5 - XL (1100px wide for landscape or 850px long for portrait)
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
Interesting. Their photo is 35% larger (aka 35% slower to load), but I'm unable to detect a difference on my high-end LCD. I suspect that on a lower resolution display the differences may be more apparent, but they're not for me.
Yep, this is coming for SmugMug too.
Don
They're *clearly* sharpening more than we do. But unless that's configurable at Zenfolio, there's going to be problems for people who have already sharpened their photos to their taste prior to uploading.
Then the display sizes will appear way too sharpened and it'll add additional artifacts.
(One of the lessons learned from 70,000,000 photos
Don
Here's some history.
The main issue is the preference for portraits is soft but for shots of action, cars, and some landscapes it's sharp.
The deciding factor is the emotion level for someone whose close-up made their wrinkles and pores show is high, so we hear about them more. I don't think you can judge sharpness on one shot, especially of a child with perfect skin.
If you have restrictions set on original or large images from your gallery, SM slideshow ends up presenting very poor quality images because their system relys on upsampling from large images. Otherwise they have to upsample from medium sized images and the resulting slideshow is very pixelated and low quality.
So either you allow large or original sized images in your galleries so the slide shows look okay, (and risk having your images pilfered as I have witnessed), or you limit image sizes and suffer the consequences of visitors being presented with low resolution slideshow, or disable the option for slideshows completely.
It looks to me like they have a less geeky interface. I'm a geek, I don't mind, I like control. But making layout choices more visual is cool
Some Gallery2 templates do that floating EXIf Thing it is cool
If they had e-commerce working and custom watermarks, I would comparing trial accounts.
Swim for Them | WellmanHouse.net | AlbumFetcher | SmugShowBuilder
With our lightbox it takes longer for the picture to upload. Sometimes it mentions "uploading" but it doesnt....
My SmugMug: desmurfjes.smugmug.com
My website: http://www.DigiDiDi.com/
zenfolio has 1 slideshow. smugmug has 2. one for specific viewing sizes (s/m/l) and one for full screen. if you disable originals and larges then sure the fullscreen slideshow wont be the best choice, but the slideshow gallery style will still work fine.
I think zenfolio did a better job with the presentation of their full screen slideshow (if you can call it full screen), but functionality wise i dont think they have an advantage.
So basically they're violating your protection settings? Your customers can get nice high-resolution images even if you've told them not to?
That sounds like a Bad Idea.
Don
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I don't think they do...
With the full-screen slideshow, use the largest size possible (based on protection settings) and scale down to fit the (entire) screen. If this means that the image won't fill the entire screen, then that's OK.
When I hear the earth will melt into the sun,
in two billion years,
all I can think is:
"Will that be on a Monday?"
==========================
http://www.streetsofboston.com
http://blog.antonspaans.com
From what I can see they still don't access or display full size or "large" images if you don't allow it. They display the images in smaller size, but higher quality because it's not being pixelated to fill a whole screen.
-Custom domain names using CNAME (www.yourname.com)
-Ability to set print prices
-Ability to set prices for digital downloads
-Customizing your pages your own way
They also said they will be announcing soon who will handle their printing & that it will make some services "jealous".
For them being such a new service with only 6 months online, I must say im pretty impressed. Im not jumping ship from Smugmug or anything, but these guys seem to mean business & getting stuff together super fast.
Just my two cents.
Also, I have to say I find it unusual to see a thread posted about Zenfolio here within Smugmug's forums. Seems almost like someone taking a comment box or sheet about Burger King and posting it at McDonald's. Interesting.
A huge pet peeve for me. You cannot resize the slideshow window that pops up in Zenfolio. I think it's a big "NO, NO" when you start taking control and funtionality away from a user. Don't be messing with my browser windows! Sometimes, I like to shrink down a slide show window while I work on something else, all the while keeping an eye on the slideshow.
I write these things not to bash Zenfolio, but in hopes Smugmug won't follow suit with the same type of format.
i tried to view the popular and featured galleries from zenfolio's main site but i could not even access anything larger than the thumbnails
neither firefox nor ie would display anything correctly in ANY of the galleries i tried to check out. so no thanks. i'll stick with smugmug
http://www.williamrollins.smugmug.com/
WOW man that IS fast
Now if only SM could get that speed I'd be a happy chappy!
One thinmg you could mention is that SM has larger upload file capacity (for Pros)
...pics..
Well I rerally do wish you could implement my request for better speed!
May be you're right and they are fast cos they're small ( at the moment) but as a non tech user Im really sorry to say it just sounds like an excuse. I don't mean that nastily!
...pics..
YUP! REALLY bad!
...pics..
As feedback for Smugmug, I've recently seen more users on some other online forums choosing Zenfolio, even after trying Smugmug. In a recent exchange, I asked why they chose Zenfolio. Here's the response I got:
I do not believe there is a bandwidth limit on my account. But e-mail their support to confirm, they are usually pretty quick to reply.
To answer the question on what I liked about Zenfolio over others, here is a short list:
- Much easier to use interface for uploading/managing photos and galleries - Groups/folders hierarchy that's completely free of any imposed structure
- Gorgeous page designs are much cleaner and more professional-looking to my eye. Since I do not know HTML or CSS, customizing my own pages with Smugmug was not an option, and the layouts and themes Zenfolio has are very very good. - A much better Slideshow
- More refined access protection where I can lock individual photos
A lot of this stuff is look-and-feel though so at the end of the day you should try them both and decide for yourself what "feels" better to you and your visitors.
Hope this helps.
The original thread at dpreview is here.
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Thanks. We'll read it for sure. But you should be aware of this, too:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=36689
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