TIFF files and other Zen/Smug differences
In general, for me, the basic "look and feel" of the new Smug is superior to Zen, primarily because Zen's hierarchy plants ugly icons for file folders on my home page rather than photo thumbnails. This will change soon at Zen, so the advantage is fleeting. Power and Pro users can also customize sites at Smug far more than at Zen, so far. The help available from the Digital Grin forum will likely mean that Smug will retain a significant customization advantage over Zen for sometime, unless Zen implements a more user friendly system than Smug (which requires learning, or at least becoming comfortable with, HTML, CSS, JAVA, etc.) Keyword and cloud tag searching at Smug is superior to Zen, though all functionality is lost on non-public galleries.
Zen has done a fantastic job with the permissions issue, though. No, it's not perfect, but it is very powerful and very flexible. Many of the initial omissions on Zen described earlier in this thread have already been addressed (printing, for example).
I have found a difference between Smug and Zen that relates to the actual images - rather than the GUI or security: Zen accepts TIFF format, and Smug does not. I've searched the forums, and found very little discussion on Digital Grin relating to TIFF file storage. I'm trying to decide whether this difference is significant enough to "tip the scale", and I would welcome Andy's or anyone's comments.
It would appear that making TIFFs available for download would eliminate many of the issues that arise with storing JPGS as "the original". (TIFFs are a lossless format, whereas JPGs recompress the image via the Discrete Cosine Transformation every time the JPG is saved. With lots of software, even a rotation or a name change will recompress the entire image). For people wanting to d/l an "original" to edit the photo themselves before printing, TIFF appears a superior choice over JPG. Further, as a backup/archive for my own photos, I would prefer access to original RAW files, but if RAW isn't available I would prefer a TIFF converted from RAW over a JPG. The final JPG uploaded reflects not just the camera, lens and composition at the time of the original capture, but also reflects the editing software and my editing skills, and editing decisions made that existed at the point in time of edit. (Imagine, for example, if you just now learned that you could convert your 15mm fisheye images into rectilinear images using software that you did not have, or that did not exist, when you first uploaded images to your online galleries! Where are your "original" images that you want to reprocess?)
What is the downside of TIFF? Well, they're bigger files. Converting a random 10D image from RAW to TIFF with no other processing produced a 4.5MB file a moment ago. Well within Smug's 8MB limit and Zen's 10MB limit, but a 5D or whatever is announced at PMA this year could create issues for Smug and Zen. In addition, most viewers know about JPG rather than TIFF, but I'm not sure that the underlying image format makes the same difference to a viewer or anyone ordering prints as it would to a downloader.
So, GUI=Smugmug, access controls=Zenfolio; is TIFF storage significant? I welcome any comments you may have!
Be seeing you,
The Duck
p.s. btw, I almost wrote Zen off when I read this post...but I investigated instead and learned more about the power of Zen's permission system. Thought I'd share:
The one thing I was really looking forward at Zenfolio was Collections. But after trying it out it just does not work for me. I really wish when/if Smugmug implements virtual gallery they do a complete job and treat it like a gallery but with links.
An example of how I would like to use virtual gallery:
1) Add all photos of my family vacation to a new gallery - password protected.
2) Create a virtual gallery with some photos that I want to make public (no password)
3) Create another virtual gallery with some photos that I want to share with friends - password protected but different from the original gallery
This way I can create different gallery for different groups of people.
Right now to do this in Smugmug I have to create different gallery and upload the photos again :cry
Zenfolio does it better by making it easy to add the photos into collection but the user needs to enter the original gallery password after entering the collection password Adding password to individual photos only complicates thing some more. I have to enter three passwords.
Zen's permission system allows you to handle this much more elegantly than you tried. Put your photos in a password-protected gallery for your family. BUT - explicitly make the photos themselves not-password protected. Now create a collection (Zen's virtual gallery term) for your friends, using a different password for the collection. Your friends only have to enter their password once to see all (but only) the photos you approved for them, and your family only has to enter their password once to see their set. No one else can access the photos. You can independantly specify permissions for search engines, and even whether your friends can add the photos you've allowed them to see into their own collections!
Zen accepts TIFF format, and Smug does not. I've searched the forums, and found very little discussion on Digital Grin relating to TIFF file storage. I'm trying to decide whether this difference is significant enough to "tip the scale", and I would welcome Andy's or anyone's comments.
I think in general, folks tend to over-think this. The digertati-measurebaiti crowd has said things like "lossy jpg!- bleh!" Well, those TIFFs have to be converted to JPGs for printing - if there's a print to be made, so what then?
I'd rather have total control over the process, and produce my own jpgs, ready for output on the web, and in print. Tiffs for archival purposes? My digital negatives are stored in RAW format, on Amazon's S3 service, using Jungle Disk.
widesreen monitors
I just got a new monitor yesterday and I hate to say it but SmugMug looks pretty bad on a high resolution wide screen Zenfolios dynamic resizing works wonders. Here are examples:
I realize that most visitors probably are not running their monitors at 1920 x 1200 now. The trend though is toward bigger wide screen monitors and hopefully Smug will be able to address the wasted space of the current design. Just an observation. I still love SmugMug for the great support and the ability to make our sites unique but a little work on the display of images is in order.
My Pictures : My Gear
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
I just got a new monitor yesterday and I hate to say it but SmugMug looks pretty bad on a high resolution wide screen Zenfolios dynamic resizing works wonders. Here are examples:
I realize that most visitors probably are not running their monitors at 1920 x 1200 now. The trend though is toward bigger wide screen monitors and hopefully Smug will be able to address the wasted space of the current design. Just an observation. I still love SmugMug for the great support and the ability to make our sites unique but a little work on the display of images is in order.
I just got a new monitor yesterday and I hate to say it but SmugMug looks pretty bad on a high resolution wide screen Zenfolios dynamic resizing works wonders. Here are examples:
I realize that most visitors probably are not running their monitors at 1920 x 1200 now. The trend though is toward bigger wide screen monitors and hopefully Smug will be able to address the wasted space of the current design. Just an observation. I still love SmugMug for the great support and the ability to make our sites unique but a little work on the display of images is in order.
We can't see your linked images.
Anyhow, we're working on SmugMug Gigantor- wide & big. You can add your voice here:
Zen accepts TIFF format, and Smug does not. I've searched the forums, and found very little discussion on Digital Grin relating to TIFF file storage. I'm trying to decide whether this difference is significant enough to "tip the scale", and I would welcome Andy's or anyone's comments...
So, GUI=Smugmug, access controls=Zenfolio; is TIFF storage significant? I welcome any comments you may have!..
I tried ou some tiff conversions and my verdict on the fact that Zen allows them is that it's irrelevant as long as their cap on image size is 10 MB.
Malte
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
Andy, thanks for the Jungle Disk plug—I'm trying them out now. It would have been a major coup if Aperture would support Network Vaults directly. AARGH!
On the Zen front, my tryout today turned up some VERY slow performance (click — 2 seconds — photo updates). on the positive front, they have a good feature set and nice looking pages. Lack of keywording would keep me away. I like a little Web 2.0 in my diet, just not my main course as I'm force-fed it by Flickr.
Feature Requests: External Slide Show Support
Black/White and Sepia Color Options
Photo/Discount Packages/Coupons
Electronic Payout for Pro accounts via PayPal
Self-Fulfilment (Custom "Items")
I have read a few posts that say for "pro" options, Smugmug offers much more then zenfolio.
Can anyone comment on that?
Thanks,
Brian
ZF really isn't a pro solution yet -- you cannot display your images for sale and adjust the price to your liking. They do say that functionality is on their road map -- not sure when though but it sounds like "soon". They just added the ability to order prints (at standard prices) from MPix and EZprints, with some interesting options regarding papers and framing. They also don't provide the extent of website customization that SmugMug Power/Pro users get, but again, they say they are working on something that will allow customization w/o CSS or HTML knowledge. Their current set of themes are nice, if somewhat limited, and they seem to add new ones on occasion. I've found their customer support responsiveness (including friendliness and helpfulness) to be on par w/ SmugMug's, although they lack direct and community support via a forum like DGrin.
also, they don't have a user-board, like this, from what I could tell...
Although you don't have to be a SM customer to use DGrin, I think DGrin in general illustrates the type of quality stock that make up Smugmug's core clientelle!
Those first two are critical if you want to sell photos which I would have to imagine is why most people even get a "pro" account here.
After realizing that, you really can't compare zenfolio's "unlimited" account to smugmug's "pro account" because zenfolio's is obviously (at this time) not geared for sells but rather a place only to store and show off your photos.
As for me, I have really enjoyed smugmug. I had a pro account for a while but was not using it so I canceled it earlier this month just before renewal. About 2-3 days later, I received a call with the opportunity of taking all the team, individual, and action photos for a little league type baseball league. Now I am scrambling to get this done and find myself back at smugmug!
I was grandfathered in at the old rate but after I canceled, I imagine I will have to cough up $30 more dollars if (more like when) I re join. :cry
Is it too late to great grandfather me in?!?!
Anyway, I wanted to explore my options and found zenfolio so then I searched dgrin and found this thread. I actually felt awkward reading it because this is the "home" of smugmug! What I found refreshing is the way the smugmug crew has handled this and responded to various posts. THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE TRUE PROFESSIONALS WE ARE DEALING WITH HERE.
Thank you Andy, Matt, and Pindy.
<snip>
After realizing that, you really can't compare zenfolio's "unlimited" account to smugmug's "pro account" because zenfolio's is obviously (at this time) not geared for sells but rather a place only to store and show off your photos.
<snip>
Anyway, I wanted to explore my options and found zenfolio so then I searched dgrin and found this thread. I actually felt awkward reading it because this is the "home" of smugmug! What I found refreshing is the way the smugmug crew has handled this and responded to various posts. THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE TRUE PROFESSIONALS WE ARE DEALING WITH HERE.
Thanks again,
Brian
2 comments:
1) Zenfolio's unlimited account seems similar to SmugMug's standard account, since it has unlimited storage (and is comparably priced) and doesn't really offer the flexibility of even the power account let alone the pro account (at least in terms of customization.)
2) As I understand it, DGrin is not affiliated w/ SmugMug (according to Baldy and One-Thumb) so I'm assuming these conversations are fair game. It is a bit awkward that this thread is in the SmugMug support forum, which would seem to blur the line regarding affiliation, but since Andy has been participating and hasn't moved the thread to another forum, I'm again assuming its OK.
2) As I understand it, DGrin is not affiliated w/ SmugMug (according to Baldy and One-Thumb) so I'm assuming these conversations are fair game. It is a bit awkward that this thread is in the SmugMug support forum, which would seem to blur the line regarding affiliation, but since Andy has been participating and hasn't moved the thread to another forum, I'm again assuming its OK.
Those first two are critical if you want to sell photos which I would have to imagine is why most people even get a "pro" account here.
After realizing that, you really can't compare zenfolio's "unlimited" account to smugmug's "pro account" because zenfolio's is obviously (at this time) not geared for sells but rather a place only to store and show off your photos.
As for me, I have really enjoyed smugmug. I had a pro account for a while but was not using it so I canceled it earlier this month just before renewal. About 2-3 days later, I received a call with the opportunity of taking all the team, individual, and action photos for a little league type baseball league. Now I am scrambling to get this done and find myself back at smugmug!
I was grandfathered in at the old rate but after I canceled, I imagine I will have to cough up $30 more dollars if (more like when) I re join. :cry
Is it too late to great grandfather me in?!?!
Anyway, I wanted to explore my options and found zenfolio so then I searched dgrin and found this thread. I actually felt awkward reading it because this is the "home" of smugmug! What I found refreshing is the way the smugmug crew has handled this and responded to various posts. THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE TRUE PROFESSIONALS WE ARE DEALING WITH HERE.
Thanks again,
Brian
re-upgrade back to pro, and then when you do, send a note to our help desk, ATTN: Andy and I'll take care of things
1) Zenfolio's unlimited account seems similar to SmugMug's standard account, since it has unlimited storage (and is comparably priced) and doesn't really offer the flexibility of even the power account let alone the pro account (at least in terms of customization.)
Now, I dont agree with that at all (besides the price similarities). IMO the $40 unlimited Zenfolio package blows away the Smugmug basic plan at the same price. Seriously, its just not a contest there. I dont think any person who has used those 2 account types with each service could honestly say any differently. Im not gonna list all the features you get with them, but trust me, there are A LOT of high end features you get that a basic SM account just dont give you.
With me using both services at this point, I would say that the $40 unlimited Zenfolio plan is currently in between a SM Power & Pro acount in terms of features, quickly approaching rivaling the Smugmug Pro plan as soon as you can set print/download prices (which is soon) & customize your page with more than just themes (with no html/css coding required). Now remember, thats all at the same $40 price as a SM basic account is. Dont know how they're pulling it off at that price, but im not complaining.
Both services approach to the whole customizing thing is different. I think that part is more of a personal preference honestly. People view customizing with their own html/css coding a blessing & some see it as a curse. Same thing with customizing without html/css coding. Its just different.
Well, I've got them both too. Have had standard, power and pro accounts at SmugMug and I've got the unlimited account at ZF. ZF is great and there is a lot of canned ability, but, since the conversation was about professional features, you simply cannot do as much with a ZF unlimited account in terms of raw customization and flexibility as you can w/ SmugMug Power account. For instance, there is no CSS/HTML therefore I cannot use StatCounter or any of that ilk to determine specifics regarding who is coming to my account. ZF does not let me setup nearly as customized an entry page as SmugMug does w/ CSS/HTML.
ZF does have different security features that I find I need, but, as far as I can tell, they don't relate to a professional account, which was the context of the post to which I was responding. Obviously I think the plan is superior for my needs b/c I'm migrating my photos there, but Brian didn't ask which was better for my needs, so I gave feedback related to his question, and I included the reference to SM power account as a point of reference -- unless you know of current functionality on ZF that provides more customization to the look/ feel than Themes and layout options -- which I would love to hear!
Also, in a previous post, I had already pointed out the upcoming items. Sounds like you might have more information than I do about timing, since all I was told was "its on the roadmap." Except for comments and a couple other things that I was told are "soon".
Zenfolio
I had never heard of Zenfolio until stumbling upon this post here about a week ago. I have since spent some time with a trial account and I must agree that the user interface is superior to what Smugmug is providing. You can have completely customized, professional looking galleries created in little or no time, and probably this biggest plus is that the process was intuitive to me. It just seemed to flow. While Smugmug’s tool set is greater at this point than Zenfolio’s, a lot of the features seem to be “bolted on” and there is not the same flow. I find the control panel view at Zenfolio to be much more user friendly.
Probably the biggest factor to me though was the “bang for the buck” with Zenfolio. Their “basic” account at the $20 price point is extremely full-featured and is very similar to most other sites professional level accounts. I think that they fact that they add another GB of storage space for every year that you renew a basic account is a wonderful idea. I am also a fan of Mpix printing and was happy to see that significant relationship in place for print fulfillment. Plus, they offer EZ Prints as well for reduced price printing, which I think Smugmug’s own testing at one point crowned as one of the best out there.
Once Zenfolio gets their print price functionality in place and allow users to sell for profit (which according to them is very soon)– that is almost the last piece of the puzzle for many pros. For me, the features offered for a $20 price tag were too great and I went for the Zenfolio account.
I think that Smugmug and Zenfolio are unique in their offerings and stand apart from the crowd when it comes to professional photo hosting. I also think that Zenfolio may be one of the best things to ever happen to Smugmug – having a close competitor is any business market is generally a good thing. It keeps both companies on their toes and innovating. I wish both companies a lot of success in the future.
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to this country and to mankind is to bring up a family. - George Bernard Shaw
You can have completely customized,...galleries created in little or no time,...
Well, not really. You can choose a theme much like you can with Smug. Themes, in my opinion, look better on Zen but an untouched standard page looks better on Smug. Customization is clearly supereor with Smug.
...a lot of the features seem to be “bolted on” and there is not the same flow.
I can agree with this as well. Maybe that's the flipside of listening so much to your customers and adding features as you go. I don't know if Zen listens like Smug does, I don't really feel I have a way to communicate with them. Sure, I can read their FAQ and email them but as someone else here said: "They don't have an Andy".
I have a Smugmug and a Zenfolio account. I love the user interface of Zenfolio. I especially like the feature of switching to user view. I like selecting multiple photos and updating the heading and description without having to select from a drop-down list and opening a new screen. And, for me anyway, Zenfolio is just much faster. No matter how many times I read that things have "speeded up" here, I find Zenfolio much faster.
On the other hand, I still have a Smugmug account because one of these days I plan on customizing my site and I still want to have that option. I'm not a professional, so it's just never been a priority with me.
I really do wish that Zenfolio had a forum. But I do have to say that Zenfolio's customer support is awesome - on par with Smugmug. They reply almost immediately to any question you email them.
Comments
In general, for me, the basic "look and feel" of the new Smug is superior to Zen, primarily because Zen's hierarchy plants ugly icons for file folders on my home page rather than photo thumbnails. This will change soon at Zen, so the advantage is fleeting. Power and Pro users can also customize sites at Smug far more than at Zen, so far. The help available from the Digital Grin forum will likely mean that Smug will retain a significant customization advantage over Zen for sometime, unless Zen implements a more user friendly system than Smug (which requires learning, or at least becoming comfortable with, HTML, CSS, JAVA, etc.) Keyword and cloud tag searching at Smug is superior to Zen, though all functionality is lost on non-public galleries.
Zen has done a fantastic job with the permissions issue, though. No, it's not perfect, but it is very powerful and very flexible. Many of the initial omissions on Zen described earlier in this thread have already been addressed (printing, for example).
I have found a difference between Smug and Zen that relates to the actual images - rather than the GUI or security: Zen accepts TIFF format, and Smug does not. I've searched the forums, and found very little discussion on Digital Grin relating to TIFF file storage. I'm trying to decide whether this difference is significant enough to "tip the scale", and I would welcome Andy's or anyone's comments.
It would appear that making TIFFs available for download would eliminate many of the issues that arise with storing JPGS as "the original". (TIFFs are a lossless format, whereas JPGs recompress the image via the Discrete Cosine Transformation every time the JPG is saved. With lots of software, even a rotation or a name change will recompress the entire image). For people wanting to d/l an "original" to edit the photo themselves before printing, TIFF appears a superior choice over JPG. Further, as a backup/archive for my own photos, I would prefer access to original RAW files, but if RAW isn't available I would prefer a TIFF converted from RAW over a JPG. The final JPG uploaded reflects not just the camera, lens and composition at the time of the original capture, but also reflects the editing software and my editing skills, and editing decisions made that existed at the point in time of edit. (Imagine, for example, if you just now learned that you could convert your 15mm fisheye images into rectilinear images using software that you did not have, or that did not exist, when you first uploaded images to your online galleries! Where are your "original" images that you want to reprocess?)
What is the downside of TIFF? Well, they're bigger files. Converting a random 10D image from RAW to TIFF with no other processing produced a 4.5MB file a moment ago. Well within Smug's 8MB limit and Zen's 10MB limit, but a 5D or whatever is announced at PMA this year could create issues for Smug and Zen. In addition, most viewers know about JPG rather than TIFF, but I'm not sure that the underlying image format makes the same difference to a viewer or anyone ordering prints as it would to a downloader.
So, GUI=Smugmug, access controls=Zenfolio; is TIFF storage significant? I welcome any comments you may have!
Be seeing you,
The Duck
p.s. btw, I almost wrote Zen off when I read this post...but I investigated instead and learned more about the power of Zen's permission system. Thought I'd share:
Zen's permission system allows you to handle this much more elegantly than you tried. Put your photos in a password-protected gallery for your family. BUT - explicitly make the photos themselves not-password protected. Now create a collection (Zen's virtual gallery term) for your friends, using a different password for the collection. Your friends only have to enter their password once to see all (but only) the photos you approved for them, and your family only has to enter their password once to see their set. No one else can access the photos. You can independantly specify permissions for search engines, and even whether your friends can add the photos you've allowed them to see into their own collections!
I think in general, folks tend to over-think this. The digertati-measurebaiti crowd has said things like "lossy jpg!- bleh!" Well, those TIFFs have to be converted to JPGs for printing - if there's a print to be made, so what then?
I'd rather have total control over the process, and produce my own jpgs, ready for output on the web, and in print. Tiffs for archival purposes? My digital negatives are stored in RAW format, on Amazon's S3 service, using Jungle Disk.
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I just got a new monitor yesterday and I hate to say it but SmugMug looks pretty bad on a high resolution wide screen
Zen http://cjyphoto.zenfolio.com/p1040326803/?photo=267517740
Smug http://cjyphoto.zenfolio.com/p1040326803/?photo=466439831
I realize that most visitors probably are not running their monitors at 1920 x 1200 now. The trend though is toward bigger wide screen monitors and hopefully Smug will be able to address the wasted space of the current design. Just an observation. I still love SmugMug for the great support and the ability to make our sites unique but a little work on the display of images is in order.
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
Yar.
Swim for Them | WellmanHouse.net | AlbumFetcher | SmugShowBuilder
Anyhow, we're working on SmugMug Gigantor- wide & big. You can add your voice here:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=32241
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My bad they should work now. Glad to hear that Smug is working on the issue.
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
I tried ou some tiff conversions and my verdict on the fact that Zen allows them is that it's irrelevant as long as their cap on image size is 10 MB.
Malte
On the Zen front, my tryout today turned up some VERY slow performance (click — 2 seconds — photo updates). on the positive front, they have a good feature set and nice looking pages. Lack of keywording would keep me away. I like a little Web 2.0 in my diet, just not my main course as I'm force-fed it by Flickr.
big plus, they're price...
cons, didn't see any support for proofing or watermarks.
also, they don't have a user-board, like this, from what I could tell...
You get what you pay for. :-D
coverthis.smugmug.com
SmugWP - now 30% more smug!
No Steam Shovel
Feature Requests:
External Slide Show Support
Black/White and Sepia Color Options
Photo/Discount Packages/Coupons
Electronic Payout for Pro accounts via PayPal
Self-Fulfilment (Custom "Items")
I have read a few posts that say for "pro" options, Smugmug offers much more then zenfolio.
Can anyone comment on that?
Thanks,
Brian
* set pro pricing, charge your price and be paid a profit
* custom watermarking
* backprinting
* proof & delay
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/Pros
Our Service, consistent track record of white glove support for pros and their customers
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=456689#post456689
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ZF really isn't a pro solution yet -- you cannot display your images for sale and adjust the price to your liking. They do say that functionality is on their road map -- not sure when though but it sounds like "soon". They just added the ability to order prints (at standard prices) from MPix and EZprints, with some interesting options regarding papers and framing. They also don't provide the extent of website customization that SmugMug Power/Pro users get, but again, they say they are working on something that will allow customization w/o CSS or HTML knowledge. Their current set of themes are nice, if somewhat limited, and they seem to add new ones on occasion. I've found their customer support responsiveness (including friendliness and helpfulness) to be on par w/ SmugMug's, although they lack direct and community support via a forum like DGrin.
http://mkress65.zenfolio.com
http://mkress65.smugmug.com
Although you don't have to be a SM customer to use DGrin, I think DGrin in general illustrates the type of quality stock that make up Smugmug's core clientelle!
Thank you Andy, Matt, and Pindy.
Those first two are critical if you want to sell photos which I would have to imagine is why most people even get a "pro" account here.
After realizing that, you really can't compare zenfolio's "unlimited" account to smugmug's "pro account" because zenfolio's is obviously (at this time) not geared for sells but rather a place only to store and show off your photos.
As for me, I have really enjoyed smugmug. I had a pro account for a while but was not using it so I canceled it earlier this month just before renewal. About 2-3 days later, I received a call with the opportunity of taking all the team, individual, and action photos for a little league type baseball league. Now I am scrambling to get this done and find myself back at smugmug!
I was grandfathered in at the old rate but after I canceled, I imagine I will have to cough up $30 more dollars if (more like when) I re join. :cry
Is it too late to great grandfather me in?!?!
Anyway, I wanted to explore my options and found zenfolio so then I searched dgrin and found this thread. I actually felt awkward reading it because this is the "home" of smugmug! What I found refreshing is the way the smugmug crew has handled this and responded to various posts. THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE TRUE PROFESSIONALS WE ARE DEALING WITH HERE.
Thanks again,
Brian
2 comments:
1) Zenfolio's unlimited account seems similar to SmugMug's standard account, since it has unlimited storage (and is comparably priced) and doesn't really offer the flexibility of even the power account let alone the pro account (at least in terms of customization.)
2) As I understand it, DGrin is not affiliated w/ SmugMug (according to Baldy and One-Thumb) so I'm assuming these conversations are fair game. It is a bit awkward that this thread is in the SmugMug support forum, which would seem to blur the line regarding affiliation, but since Andy has been participating and hasn't moved the thread to another forum, I'm again assuming its OK.
http://mkress65.zenfolio.com
http://mkress65.smugmug.com
Dgrin is owned by SmugMug.
Thanks for posting!
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Really? That's not what Chris and Don told me.
http://mkress65.zenfolio.com
http://mkress65.smugmug.com
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With me using both services at this point, I would say that the $40 unlimited Zenfolio plan is currently in between a SM Power & Pro acount in terms of features, quickly approaching rivaling the Smugmug Pro plan as soon as you can set print/download prices (which is soon) & customize your page with more than just themes (with no html/css coding required). Now remember, thats all at the same $40 price as a SM basic account is. Dont know how they're pulling it off at that price, but im not complaining.
Both services approach to the whole customizing thing is different. I think that part is more of a personal preference honestly. People view customizing with their own html/css coding a blessing & some see it as a curse. Same thing with customizing without html/css coding. Its just different.
ZF does have different security features that I find I need, but, as far as I can tell, they don't relate to a professional account, which was the context of the post to which I was responding. Obviously I think the plan is superior for my needs b/c I'm migrating my photos there, but Brian didn't ask which was better for my needs, so I gave feedback related to his question, and I included the reference to SM power account as a point of reference -- unless you know of current functionality on ZF that provides more customization to the look/ feel than Themes and layout options -- which I would love to hear!
Also, in a previous post, I had already pointed out the upcoming items. Sounds like you might have more information than I do about timing, since all I was told was "its on the roadmap." Except for comments and a couple other things that I was told are "soon".
http://mkress65.zenfolio.com
http://mkress65.smugmug.com
Thanks Andy!!!!!!
I had never heard of Zenfolio until stumbling upon this post here about a week ago. I have since spent some time with a trial account and I must agree that the user interface is superior to what Smugmug is providing. You can have completely customized, professional looking galleries created in little or no time, and probably this biggest plus is that the process was intuitive to me. It just seemed to flow. While Smugmug’s tool set is greater at this point than Zenfolio’s, a lot of the features seem to be “bolted on” and there is not the same flow. I find the control panel view at Zenfolio to be much more user friendly.
Probably the biggest factor to me though was the “bang for the buck” with Zenfolio. Their “basic” account at the $20 price point is extremely full-featured and is very similar to most other sites professional level accounts. I think that they fact that they add another GB of storage space for every year that you renew a basic account is a wonderful idea. I am also a fan of Mpix printing and was happy to see that significant relationship in place for print fulfillment. Plus, they offer EZ Prints as well for reduced price printing, which I think Smugmug’s own testing at one point crowned as one of the best out there.
Once Zenfolio gets their print price functionality in place and allow users to sell for profit (which according to them is very soon)– that is almost the last piece of the puzzle for many pros. For me, the features offered for a $20 price tag were too great and I went for the Zenfolio account.
I think that Smugmug and Zenfolio are unique in their offerings and stand apart from the crowd when it comes to professional photo hosting. I also think that Zenfolio may be one of the best things to ever happen to Smugmug – having a close competitor is any business market is generally a good thing. It keeps both companies on their toes and innovating. I wish both companies a lot of success in the future.
I hear you. Zen's user interface is like crack, you're hooked on the first fix.
Well, not really. You can choose a theme much like you can with Smug. Themes, in my opinion, look better on Zen but an untouched standard page looks better on Smug. Customization is clearly supereor with Smug.
I can agree with this as well. Maybe that's the flipside of listening so much to your customers and adding features as you go. I don't know if Zen listens like Smug does, I don't really feel I have a way to communicate with them. Sure, I can read their FAQ and email them but as someone else here said: "They don't have an Andy".
Malte
On the other hand, I still have a Smugmug account because one of these days I plan on customizing my site and I still want to have that option. I'm not a professional, so it's just never been a priority with me.
I really do wish that Zenfolio had a forum. But I do have to say that Zenfolio's customer support is awesome - on par with Smugmug. They reply almost immediately to any question you email them.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
I'd LOVE to know the details about why you feel this way - so that I can learn and maybe apply new things as we make new themes.
Thanks!
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